Pat Taub
GUEST POST by SALLY BOWDEN-SCHAIBLE
I look into the bright slate-blue eyes of Olivia and the dark brown eyes of Ruby, my little granddaughters, and I see looking back at me the eyes of Mervet, Kinda and Alma (our friend Yasser’s family) and the little children running up and down the wide stone stairs of Yasser’s apartment building in Al Ram (a West Bank village near East Jerusalem in Palestine). I see the cautious but curious two-year-old eyes of Johnny, a Palestinian olive farmer’s son, peering around his mother’s body as he snuggled closely to her. While these children have so much in common with my granddaughters, their day-to-day lives are vastly different.
Johnny and his mother picking olives
Olivia and Ruby don’t have to contend with the daily perils of life under Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestinian land. They don’t have to worry about being evicted from their homes or having their homes demolished. As they grow older, they won’t live with the fear of being arrested, blindfolded, and ripped away from their parents.
It is beyond my heart’s imagining that Palestinian children are frequently tortured by 18 to 20-year-old Israeli soldiers, doing the bidding of their superiors. The unlucky ones are killed by a sniper’s bullet.
Olive picking in Palestine is a family affair where children join in
A few months ago my husband I and made our fifth visit to the region, and, for the second time, participated in the olive harvest.*
Olive farming is a traditional way of life for many Palestinians who make their living on family land handed down through the generations. Sadly, it is a life in jeopardy. Jewish colonizers claim this land as God-given to them—and they steal it without compunction or penalty. If a Palestinian is injured or killed trying to protect his land, ears are closed, eyes averted, mouths shut. It’s the proverbial “hear, see, speak no evil.”
A Palestinian woman in despair after her family’s olive grove was destroyed by Israeli settlers
We were assigned to Palestinian fields considered most vulnerable—those with Israeli Jewish colonies (settlements) at their edges. Our presence as “internationals” provided some protection from the colonizers (settlers). While our group experienced no trouble, there were other fields in the West Bank ravaged by fire, presumably set by the settlers. Olives from hundreds of trees in another area were stolen, and olive pickers, including 80-year-old Rabbi Moshe Yehudai, a member of Rabbis for Human Rights, were attacked and injured.
Rabbi Yehudi being rushed to hospital with severe head injuries and a broken arm after being beaten by settlers.
I’ve never been close enough to a colonizer to look into his/her eyes, but this I know: each of them was once a child. Each has a child-story that includes learning sounds and words, learning how to sing and play. Most probably they snuggled with their mothers and peered out at the world with cautious and curious eyes. Somewhere along the way to adulthood, I imagine their stories, if I knew them, would offer information that could help me understand the unfolding of a life leading to setting fires, uprooting olive trees, stealing land inhabited by families dependent on it, and beating an 80-year-old man.
Israeli settlers on stolen Palestinian land burning the Palestine flag
During my first visit to Palestine (2009), when my daughter was completing an internship in Jerusalem related to her graduate degree in Peace and Conflict at Brandeis University, I heard and saw firsthand the deep suffering of the Palestinian people caused by the daily hardships endured because of the occupation. I vowed then to speak out about the oppressive and brutal actions of the colonizers.
If I could look into the eyes of these oppressors, who would I see looking back at me?
Sally Bowden-Schaible is a psychotherapist, educator, human rights advocate and Buddhist student/practitioner. She views social action through human rights advocacy as an integral part of her spiritual practice. Her particular focus for nearly two decades has been on promoting full human rights for all people in Israel and Palestine. She has traveled to the Israel and the West Bank of Palestine several times and has developed friendships with both Palestinians and Israeli Jews. She has seen firsthand, and felt the effects of, Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian Territories
*Sponsored by Joint Advocacy Initiative (YMCA/YWCA of Palestine) and the Alternative Tour Group. Along with us came 15 others from Maine and New Hampshire. Maine was the most represented state in the US!
