I’ve been taking some time off this fall and spring to work on a mid-career program, studying AI and disinformation and the way they affect our economy and society. And, I’m working on a couple of books. But I got a message recently from a friend from Bethlehem, someone I met while I was reporting on the restoration of the Church of the Nativity. In 2016-2017, I spent a year-and-a-half working part-time with the United Nations on economic development in Palestine. I’m proud to say I established enough respect among the staffs on the ground that I was able to interview senior leaders on both sides for reports to inform policy in the region. I still maintain friendships there. When a friend asked me to write something about what’s happening to Palestinians, I couldn’t say no.
One of the reasons I sat on my hands for weeks – I’m sorry to admit this cowardice on my part — was that saying anything even remotely positive about Palestinians is seen as critical of Israel, and therefore carries risks in the United States, even for business journalists. When I first wrote about Palestinian entrepreneurs years ago, I lost clients and income. That’s how censorship works. That’s how bullies work.
Fueling Anti-Semitism
It doesn’t sit well with me to give in to either. The actions of would-be censors at universities, which have included threats to people’s livelihoods, have probably silenced the most sensitive and sensible people and fueled the anger of those who are anti-Semitic. There are bullies and censorship in the Arab world, too. In a healthy media environment, you would expect to see a raging debate about why Egypt is not opening the border to allow Palestinians to flee, if they want to.
When I visited Gaza, one of the hardest things was the sense of abandonment; no one was listening as people’s lives and potential were being strangled out of existence, under Hamas and under the Israeli blockade. This is why I hate censorship so much. It denies people their right to be heard and to be part of the human story. I find this vicious. The occupation and blockade didn’t cause Oct. 7 –millions of Palestinians didn’t turn to violence. But malignant organizations like Hamas spread, particularly among young men, when the world refuses to listen.
That is why, when my friend asked me to write something, I couldn’t say no. I know what he sees: that Palestinians are being dehumanized, again. He said: “You know how we Palestinians love life and justice. All we want is just peace starting with immediate ceasefire and ending the occupation.”
There are powerful reasons for that not to happen. The status quo – brutal West Bank occupation, Hamas torturers in charge inside Gaza and yet still able to strike Israel, violent settlers in the West Bank, terrified Israelis – existed because ethnic-religious conflict evolved into a dynamic that serves the interests of the world’s most powerful countries and people.
A ‘Tough’ Neighborhood
In America, we hear that Israel is a small country in a tough neighborhood. But the Middle East is not a “tough neighborhood,” any tougher than many other regions of the world. It’s a strategically located, oil-rich neighborhood. The United States now needs oil less. The bombardment of Gaza is the first time I have heard people on the left and the right question the $3 billion in annual aid the United States gives to Israel. People who benefit from that arrangement do not want that conversation to happen. In America, social and big media have turned to what is OK to say, and what is not. The censors are reasserting their control.
I included the political paragraph above in part to establish my bona fides. If you’re a woman, a person of faith, and an advocate for peace and economic development, and someone who puts children first, the establishment dismisses you as not serious. That, too, is a form of censorship.
So, for my friend from Bethlehem, I’ll do, for a minute, the job of bearing witness. I’ll tell you straight what I saw in Israel/Palestine, where most people are indeed good people who want only a just peace, and who deserve an immediate cease fire and a chance to live freely. None of it is simple. But if you, as an American, find yourself indulging in self-righteous anger over this situation, or thinking of one “side” as evil or at fault, look around you: chances are you are being manipulated into seeing through a constructed, fractured reality.
Embracing and Rejecting the Occupation
One thing I remember is a woman in Gaza who was selling off her jewelry, bit by bit, to pay for her daughter’s university, so that she could leave. That mother could have been me: that’s what I would have done. I would have held on to the land and tried like hell to get my kids out.
I also remember the warmth and laughter of a dinner with an Israeli man, by the sea in Tel Aviv. He warned me about the danger of getting involved; he wasn’t wrong. Palestinians, maybe harboring a deep-seated anger against Americans or looking to use me to advance their goals (or feed their families!), sometimes tossed me under the bus professionally.
I saw a young Israeli soldier torturing an ill, elderly Gazan woman at the border crossing. But I also remember a soldier from Breaking the Silence, stolid, walking up a hillside in Hebron, while young settler children, already indoctrinated, spat at him. I think of brave Israelis who have come to the United States as a rejection of the occupation in their country; they reach out to me sometimes as a journalist: “Let’s make some good trouble,” one said to me, not long ago.
Courage in one brings out courage in another.
In Gaza, I remember preschool teachers playing with puppets, a fish stew on a terrace at sunset; the men outside the Gaza checkpoint who fixed my car. I remember the office of Gaza Sky Geeks, which existed despite the threats of Hamas to close it down. They say Palestine is a graveyard of heroes. I watched any number of American tech executives bury their naivete in Israel-Palestine and keep trying, while wealthy Arabs had long since turned cynical. American power is brutal, but American optimism is a strength. Now, the office of Gaza Sky Geeks is gone. The daughter of an Israeli executive who worked with GSG died in the Oct. 7 massacre. Now, one young woman trying to make a life by learning to code has been killed in the bombardment, along with her family.
The Heart of the World
I also remember the hills of the Holy Land. The Palestinian couple who invited me on-the-spot to their wedding; a young man who gave me a tour of Roman ruins just before his restaurant was demolished by Israeli tanks. An Israeli executive who urged me to read Man’s Search for Meaning. A beautiful estate on a hillside above Nablus, an ice cream factory in the town; a shopping center in Nazareth, a kind Israeli waitress who helped me when I was locked out; townspeople in Bethlehem and Nablus gathered in their squares for holidays, cheers and laughter like anywhere else in the world. Their celebrations no less joyful, and maybe even more so, despite the occupation and despite the violence.
When I first went to Palestine, I interviewed the artist Sliman Mansour, in a rose garden near Ramallah. “We are normal people. We want to live nicely in a free way,” he said. “But when someone comes and tells you that you do not exist, and your land is my land.”
His voice trailed away. He was smoking. “When we were children, we spent our time in the land. There was spring, and there was a small pool. Everybody brought the sheep to wash them.” He described the scene, the children, and the village dogs herding the sheep in the pool, all the life threading together, slipping and sliding through the mud, joyful.
I believe if we’re to find a way forward, beyond the tired two-state, one-state language, Palestinians should speak and tell their stories freely in America, as Israelis have done and ought to continue to do. And like my friend, I pray for a cease fire. The bombardment isn’t rooting out Hamas. It is creating millions of new refugees and traumatized children. There will always be new monsters growing in places where power seeks and feeds them with its own fear. We all know that.
News Blockade
Since the truce and the resumption of battle, we no longer see many images of Gaza. The Christmas celebration is cancelled this year in Bethlehem, in solidarity for what all of us who are outside the Gaza wall cannot witness. Scores of journalists have been killed because it is too hard to look at the consequences of American military power. More than 7,000 children have died, officially. But there will be no image of a toddler, washed up on a beach, to galvanize the world.
I can’t help but think today of a different child, lying in a manger. I hope his image speaks to the churchgoers and power brokers of America.
Enough Israeli and Palestinian children have died; dozens more die each day. There are so many brave soldiers in Israel, ready to risk and give their lives. The cessation of battle will be an act of faith, and hope for a different future. The reality of today is the children. All children, every child, is life itself, and loving life in the face of death is what humans do.
