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I had the incredible opportunity to travel to the West Bank this previous summer with some dear friends. I took this picture as we walked along the border of Israel and the West Bank. Israel has constructed a large 'barrier' that separates the West Bank from the state of Israel. On the Palestinian side of the wall, tons of graffiti litters the concrete monolith. I was particularly struck by this graffiti. I distinctly remember pausing for several minutes, not just to take pictures but to simply reflect on the moment.

DARKNESS CANNOT DRIVE OUT DARKNESS
ONLY LIGHT CAN DO THAT
HATE CANNOT DRIVE OUT HATE
ONLY LOVE CAN DO THAT

What powerful words in perspective to the political situation and conflict going on in Israel/Palestine, and not only there, but here--and in my own soul.

In whatever we do, we should be reminded that hate cannot turn back the powers of hate. Darkness cannot expunge itself. Only light can turn darkness into light, and only love can bring us out of a steeped hatred of ourselves, our world, our neighbor, and God back to himself and ourself.

Lord bring me back to you. Bring back to myself. Bring me back to my friends and family. And bring me back to the Earth you created.

Wesley

District 9 is a movie I've been looking forward to ever since I heard about it. I finally got the chance to see it about a week ago when I was home visiting Texas before school starts again in Santa Barbara. Most people I talked to didn't think much of the movie, other than it was an alien shoot-em-up movie with a lot of exploding human corpses and barbarously disgusting (to a degree, they have a point).

However, what really intrigued me about the movie was the story it told. It is the story of an alien race, who are stranded from their home planet and out of fuel preventing their return. They request to stay on Earth in the meantime and become the guinea pigs of hideous experiments ran by a multi-billion dollar corporation contracted by the governments of the world to harness their power and technology. The human governments treat the aliens like absolute trash. They are housed in a refugee camp called District 9.

What I liked about the movie was its twist on the typical alien genre. Typically you have the aliens arriving at earth and destroying the entire planet, attempting to systematically wipe out the human race. Then there is a counter-insurgence and the humans achieve victory at the last possible moment and this usually happens as the result of an inspiring speech to a meager remnant of volunteer civilians. (Don't forget you can't have a good alien movie without Will Smith.) But District 9 takes this archetype and turns in over on itself, the hierarchy of aliens dominating humans reverses and it is now we, the humans, who are the oppressors.

After spending a little more than a month this summer in Israel/Palestine, the story within District 9 sparked particular interest in me. How is it that two peoples can come to such a deeply founded level of hatred for each other? Is there any hope of reconciliation? Can there be peace? Or will the cycle synthesize itself in violent bloodshed as thought by thinkers such as Hegel and Marx?

One reviewer on Rotten Tomatoes said (I paraphrase), If it takes an alien-bug movie to talk about social issues in our world today then that's okay.

I won't give too much of the story away, I think you should go see it for yourself if you haven't already. I encourage you to look beyond the obvious and find the story that is oftentimes hidden underneath; for it is that story that is really the event of reality.

If you've been watching/listening to the news (at least the 'right' news, not CNN, FOX, or some other American bullshit) you'll have noticed that Benyamin Netanyahu, Israel's Prime Minister, has been traveling around Europe meeting with various foreign diplomats including George Mitchell, whom President Barack Obama appointed as US Envoy to the Middle East earlier this year. They have been discussing different diplomatic options on the table in the Middle East. E.g. the issues of Settlements (in the West Bank) and Israel's perceived threat: Iran. Basically a lot of political banter about the stability of the region. What will come from it is yet to be seen.

My friend pointed me to this Op/Ed piece in the LA Times, and asked for some thoughts. I will oblige him in this post. Besides, its been a while since I wrote something on this blog. (Don't get me wrong, I love photography, but even sometimes pictures can't do something justice. As if words ever could? Anyways, I digress.)

The article calls for a boycott of the state of Israel: after all, it was a similar (and largely effective) push that "put an end to the practice of apartheid in South Africa." Why a boycott? Because some voices in the international community largely disapprove of the ways in which Israel treats their neighbors: Palestine. At least this much is obvious.

The author (Neve Gordon) claims that this call for a boycott doesn't gain a lot of attention in Israel because it is seen as blatantly anti-Semitic. While I definitely see where such an accusation would have grounding, I don't think this defensive mechanism of 'playing the victim' (there might be a technical psychological term for this, I don't know) is very helpful to what goes on in these lands. I must say that terrible things have happened to Jewish people and the nation of Israel in the past, and we should not encourage a state of anti-Semitism anywhere. Maybe it takes an extra step of caution on our part: to make clear that when we critique Israel's violent and unnecessary use of force (cf. Gaza engagement in '08-'09) and even their general attitude toward its neighbors that we are not throwing out careless and arbitrary criticism bent on the humiliation of Israel. This boycott is careful and deliberate in its make light of Israel's faults, and does not seek to merely accuse but to also redeem. What is accusation without redemption anyways but empty words?

Gordon goes on to describe the current political state of Israel: more or less an unofficial apartheid regime.

For more than 42 years, Israel has controlled the land between the Jordan Valley and the Mediterranean Sea. With this region about 6 million Jews and close to 5 million Palestinians reside. Out of this population, 3.5 million Palestinians and almost half a million Jews live in the areas Israel occupied in 1967, and yet while these two groups live in the same area, they are subjected to totally different legal systems. The Palestinians are stateless and lack many of the most basic human rights. By sharp contrast, all Jews -- whether they live in the occupied territories or in Israel -- are citizens of the state of Israel.

Specifically in the West Bank, Israel has put in place a ethnic road system. There are roads that run through the West Bank connecting various settlements that only Jewish people can use. (The United Nations OCHA has a great resource of maps detailing this intricate system.) To some, this makes sense. But the reality is that these roads fragment the West Bank into smaller cantons (thus decimating any chance at economic viability, a viability which will determine the foundation of any future Palestinian state). Avraham Burg writes in his book 'The Holocaust is Over We Must Rise From its Ashes,' that these roads are used as 'reality bypass roads.' They serve to remove (both physically and mentally) the entire existence of the Palestinian people, thus the term bypassing reality. It's bizarre, you can drive miles and miles (or kilometers and kilometers) through Palestinian territory without encountering a single Palestinian.

There is a deeply engrained hatred between these peoples. After spending 5 weeks in Israel/Palestine this summer I have experienced what seems like an incomprehensibly small sliver of what this conflict is. One bit I came away with was the experience of hatred; there is a hatred that runs deep in the blood of Israelis against the Palestinians and vice versa to an equal degree. But this hatred does not stay contained in the psyche of these peoples, it lashes out in offenses and suicide bombings. It is known in the songs sung by young Palestinian children in the Jenin Refugee Camp: 

Answer the call from the Aqsa mosque, call out against those who oppress us. For you sake, my steadfast people, together we will fight and struggle. Raise your voice and say: God is Great, God is great. Every mother's tear and every drop of blood takes its toll. For every martyr that falls a new one will rise. For your sake, my steadfast people... 

It is a hatred that is known in the Israeli education laws that require young students in public education to read from the book of Joshua, to learn of the conquest commanded by God to annihilate the peoples of the Promised Land (this is their interpretation of the text). As of now, both vocal majorities of both the Israel and the Palestinian narrative promote violence against the other.

Gordon sees massive international pressure as the only way to make Israel avoid their fate, a fate they cannot see themselves; there needs to be a large international push against Israel to avoid a new Apartheid. It must be noted that Gordon is an Israeli citizen; he can't bear the sight of seeing his two boys grow up with the deeply entrenched hatred for their neighbors.

As an American, looking at this issue from thousands of miles away, I think Gordon makes a strong point in that the U.S. and the international community (especially including the United Nations) need to take a more forward approach to the situation in Israel/Palestine. Without their initiative, there will never be any progress. Whether the result is a binational state, or a two-state solution, that is neither here nor there. The fact is that Israel and Palestine cannot redeem their hatred alone.

Israel will not take this lightly, there will be much resentment towards the West. But if we are to be ethically responsible humans we must understand that Israel, by her actions, continues dig further and further down a deep hole that only ends in a similar fate experienced in Israel's past. But it is our duty as humans to answer to the call of the oppressed and seek out redemption of those who oppress.

I will close with a reference to this article.

The lesson that Israel must learn from the Holocaust is that it can never get security through fences, walls and guns." Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu of South Africa.

Seriously, this article will floor you. It floored me, especially the last line.

If you have any questions, don't hesitate to ask. I'd love feedback or just general comments about this conflict.