Never Again.

Yad Vashem (the Holocaust museum) was not something any of us was looking forward to. Suffering is never fun to watch. Around every corner of the museum was something horrifying and disturbing. Photos and testimonies and journal entries and letters memorializing and documenting the horrendous and appalling acts that were committed against Jewish people and other non-white non-christian non-heterosexual people during the Holocaust. It was a lot to take in. It was also very emotional because every time I saw a quote on a plaque that said some thing like "A country is not just what it does, it is also what it tolerates" (Kurt Tucholsky), or the words of St. Augustine "slay them not, but scatter them abroad" I cringed inside at the the thought of the implications of these words for Palestinians as well. It was difficult not feel desensitized and angry. I found myself constantly thinking about all of the acts of violence, structural and physical that have been and are still being committed throughout the world that have not and will not have a museum to commemorate them. Part of this is because our education system legitimizes talking about the holocaust in a way that it does not legitimize talking about many, if not most other instances of systematic oppression and violence. Unlike many other instances of genocide, this was a story I had heard before, and much of what I saw and read about was not new information. After spending about an hour and a half walking through the museum, the last room talked about the importance of Zionism and spit you out onto a beautiful view of Mt. Herzl. HARK, what we have created for you! The hills seemed to call out, but for many of us, there was a steady whisper which shouted HARK, what you have destroyed! 

View of Mt. Herzl from Yad Vashem

We walked a bit outside until we reached the Children's Memorial. You walk inside and are tunneled underground into dark depths, surrounded by candles and mirrors, in remembrance of the 1.5 million children murdered in the holocaust. Here, emotion came rushing up inside me in a way that it had not been so present before. Ah, sadness. Here you are old friend. I felt a relief to feel emotional about this and as my eyes swelled up with tears, I felt increasingly angry. HOW? How does this happen? The six million jews slaughtered and millions of others with their spirits destroyed have been reduced to propaganda by the Israeli government. The memory of their suffering is being used to oppress other people. This is so unfair! Not only to those being oppressed today, but also to their memory. This is so shameful. I felt ashamed at myself for not allowing the victims of the holocaust their own space in my processing, for automatically going there with my thought process and not allowing the space for grieving. We should never feel like we have to stop talking about injustice, like it's reached some kind of saturation point. That's not it at all. It's when the horrible injustices one people has witnessed become a tool for oppressing another that we have a problem.

After Yad Vashem, we spent some time walking around West Jerusalem, which is in Israel proper (as opposed to East Jerusalem, which is occupied Palestinian land and where our hotel is). It certainly has a much different feel, and I felt very uncomfortable being there. Every block or two, you would see a soldier with an M-16. I felt a distinct sense of not belonging.

Some of us made a stop at the weekly Women in Black vigil in the center of town. They have protesting there since 1988, in solidarity with those participating in the first intifada (literally "shaking off," uprising). They come  every Friday afternoon and hold signs saying "stop the occupation in Arabic, Hebrew and English. A few of the people here have been doing this for 25 years, since its inception. We faced small opposition of one woman standing across the street with sign saying "The people of Israel will be in the land of Israel forever." This, of course, is not the issue. We simply want all the people of this land to be treated with equal respect.

This gentleman immigrated from Hungary in 1946, and has been coming to these protests every Friday since they began. He says he came after WWII, and he hates the occupation.

One of the founding members of the group (left) with Sandy, a member of our delegation. Sandy goes to the same vigils in NYC.

Oh look, it's me!

When we returned back to the hotel, some of us took a walk to an awesome educational bookstore with many, many awesome resources. We also went to a fair trade Palestinian crafts store called Sunbula, which was also great. This was an adventure. The walk was much longer than any of us realized. On the way back, we came across the weekly protest outside Sheikh Jarrah, where we had been just a few days ago. 

People protesting the settlements in Sheikh Jarrah.

 We returned to the hotel for a meeting with some young Israeli activists. This was very inspiring, especially after the disheartening conversation with Ido yesterday. One particular story that really tied everything together for me was the story of Eran. Eran's grandmother was a holocaust survivor, who was in Auschwitz during the war. He remembers living with her and hearing her scream in the middle of the night, and not understanding why. As a teenager, he went on a pilgrimage to Europe to visit Auschwitz and other sites of concentration camps. He even got the chance to see the bed she slept in. At the end of this tour, the leaders told him that in order to ensure this would never happen again, he must continue on to fulfill his duty to protect the state of Israel. So he went on to do so. During his second week as a combat soldier, his troop was a-fluster as they realized that they had shot and killed a young boy. This of course was disturbing to Eran and others in the group, so they returned the next day. When they returned, there was commotion because a funeral procession trying to leave the home where they had been, and was not permitted to do so. The father of the child who had been killed placed a hand on the shoulder of the soldier, trying to push him out of the way so that they could go on grieving. When the soldier became more forceful, a scream escaped the mouth of the child's mother. Eran thought to himself, where have I heard this scream? and he suddenly remembered this is the same scream as my grandmother. It all began to click for him. The next day he saw in the free newspaper Israel Today the claim that his troops had victoriously killed a terrorist. A few years later, when his service had ended, he joined Breaking the Silence, and began collecting stories and testimonies from IDF soldiers. When he gathered a good number of them and submitted them to the newspaper, they were not allowed in. The government was censoring the voices of their own soldiers. IT was then that he realized that while Breaking the Silence is doing what they can to spread the word about the terrors of the Israeli army, it is simply not enough. "We need your help." He told us. "I am asking you to join the call for BDS." It couldn't have been more clear. It is not only oppressive to the Palestinians, but to every person who is part of this system.

Sahar, Uri, Maya and Eran telling us their stories. Sahar and Maya were imprisoned for refusing to serve. They also talked about he socioeconomic implications of the service. People are profiled based on their socio-economic status in order to determine where they are placed. Lower class people are placed in less desirable positions, making it more difficult for them to find good work after their service. This reinforces the internal social hierarchy as well, and many refuse to service for this reason.