Why Go to Palestine [by Mark]

When with Pat Geier , I  decided to commit to working with the ISM in Palestine in the fall of 2003 my former prof Marc Ellis advised against it, saying it wasn’t safe, it wasn't the right time,  etc. He wanted to know why I was going.  So I wrote him the following, September 2003.

I am going because of my students – Sofia, Zeina, Lubna, Layla, Safa, Nina, Aryeh, Mahmoun, Ambareen, Liz, Marilyn, …

I am going because Thich Nhat Hanh teaches me:

Do not avoid contact with suffering or close your eyes before suffering.  Do not lose awareness of the existence of suffering in the life of the world.  Find ways to be with those who are suffering, including personal contact, visits, images and sounds.  By such means, awaken yourself and others to the reality of suffering in the world. 

I am going because Pema Chödrön advised “Go to the places that scare you.”

I am going because Palestinians issued a call for internationals to come since UN won’t send anyone.

I am going to walk with my fears and neuroses.

I am going because breakdown always precedes breakthrough.

I am going to understand the varieties of insomnia.

I am going because I want to be responsible Jewish-Buddhist-Catholic American (AJ Heschel: “few are guilty, all are responsible…”).

I am going because I have been blessed with health, a woman who loves me, and a community that sustains me.

I am going because I don’t want to accept “this filthy, rotten system” (Dorothy Day).

I am going because, who knows, maybe I will meet Arundhati Roy at a checkpoint.

I am going because Rachel Corrie died for my sins.

I am going because I have brooded on the historical period, 1933-1945, and wondered – Why didn’t more people stand up?  

I am going to see if Peter Maurin was correct: “The future will be different if we make the present different.”

I am going because “jeena kaisa pyar bina/is duniya mein aaye ho to/ek do jai se pyar karo” (Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan).

I am going because if not me, who?  Waco’s own Mr. Rappaport? If not now, when?  2008?

I am going because Ani Di Franco sang, “The mainstream is so polluted with lies/Once you are wet it's so hard to get dry.”

I am going to experience free healing and open commensality.

I am going because I look at my father and see in him the end of Jewish history.

I am going because I need a sabbatical and I always tell my students, “You gotta leave yr comfort zone.”

I am going to celebrate Ramadan in a Muslim country.

I am going now because I know neither the hour nor the day, this life is over so quickly.

 

I am going because I need to learn how to open up, 264 times a day, day after day.

I am going because a “cloud of witness” accompanied me when Mev was being drained of life, I want to be part of a cloud for others.

I am going to subvert any tendency toward demonization.

I am going to practice reverence for life.

I am going because I went to the School of Americas for a few years and it  got to be so predictable and scripted I realized, Hey, this is not pushing the envelope.

I am going because to contextualize Gustavo Gutiérrez, someone has to make a preferential option for the Palestinian people.

I am going because I want to look in the eyes of a five year-old prophet.

I am going because I’m not getting any younger.

I am going because Dylan sang, “Seen the arrow on the doorpost, saying “This land is condemned, all the way from New Orleans to Jerusalem.”

I am going because I had the nerve to write an article on Elie Wiesel in Tikkun and I quoted Baruch Kimmerling as follows:

      I accuse those people, of all ranks, who order the black flag hoisted above them, and those who follow their unlawful orders. The late philosopher Yeshayahu Leibovitz was right -- the occupation has ruined every good part and destroyed the moral infrastructure upon which Israeli society exists. Let's stop this march of fools and build society anew, clean of militarism and oppression and exploitation of other people, if not worse.

     I accuse everyone who sees and knows all of this of doing nothing to prevent the emerging catastrophe. Sabra and Shatilla events were nothing compared to what has happened and what is going to happen to us. We have to go out not only to the town squares, but also to the checkpoints. We have to speak to the soldiers in the tanks and the troop carriers -- like the Russians spoke to their soldiers when they were ordered to retake control in Red Square -- before entry into Palestinian cities turns into a murderous urban warfare.

     And I accuse myself of knowing all of this, yet crying little and keeping quiet too often.

I am going because Elie Wiesel won’t go.

I am going because Sri Anandamayi Ma suggested, “Widen your shriveled heart, make the interests of others your own and serve them as much as you can by sympathy, kindness, presents and so forth.”

I am going to talk to the soldiers from Brooklyn.

I am going to question authority.

I am going because if Mev had never gotten ill, she would have already been to Palestine by now.

I am going because I don’t have kids.

I am going in the spirit of Dr. King: “I am cognizant of the interrelatedness of all communities and states. I cannot sit idly by in Atlanta and not be concerned about what happens in Birmingham. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.”

I am going because Walter Benjamin committed suicide.

I am going because I know you won’t let Aaron go.

I am going because Clara revealed to me it is possible to be a bodhisattva at despairing street corners and to bring life to forlorn, tourist-less shops.

I am going because, if only for a little while, I’d rather be with the losers than with the liars.

I am going to celebrate twenty years of friendship with Pat Geier, where else should we go (we studied at Maryknoll, 1985), the French Riveria, Rio, Florence?

 

I am going because Dan Berrigan wrote in his commentary on Isaiah:

Where are the Isaiahs of our day?  Could they be found among the outsiders -- a prisoner or a widow or an orphan or a homeless one or an ‘illegal alien’ or someone driven mad by the system?  The vision often starts among such persons who can cut to the essentials in matters of life and death, of compassion and right judgment, while the rest of us know nothing.

I am going because my friend Ibrahim Imam can’t go.

I am going because Hamlet said, with weariness, “words words words…”

I am going to practice works of mercy.

I am going to receive works of mercy.

I am going to celebrate the ordinary miracle of falafil sandwiches.

I am going because Mev once wrote (and it is the conclusion to my memoir about her, revised edition):

This is a turning point in my life.  I was an activist in college, engaged in various ways.  But the Middle East situation has told me that my life as usual can’t continue when such massive bloodshed is being planned, discussed, prepared for!  It makes me sick.  There is not a moral indignation, but a moral revulsion, nearly physical, that impels me to move, to do, to deepen my reflection, to put my body out there on the line. Enough.  Stop the bloodshed.  Repent.  God have mercy.  God, empower us to strive and struggle with integrity, love and humility for a better world, to strive and struggle courageously, willing to risk, willing to be inaccommodated, placing our freedom on behalf of others’ unfreedom — empower and inspire us to act creatively and justly and lovingly and disruptingly.  Life as usual cannot go on, as it grinds the poor into the dust and sand – sick, sick, sick.  God, heal this sick world and let us be your hands.  Condemning no one and afraid of no one.  Putting our bodies before the wheels of the great machine that crushes the bones of the poor, blacks, gays, PWAs, elderly, children, orphans, strangers, Jews, Palestinians, Latin Americans, Iraqis, U.S. soldiers – no more.  No more.  No more. 

I am going because I am getting old.

I am going because I’ve never felt better.

I am going because Bono hasn’t gone yet.

I am going because I have no career to endanger.

I am going because I come after (thank you, George Steiner).

I am going because America’s brass-knuckled hands are all over the Middle East.

I am going because Palestinian beings are innumerable, I vow to save them all.

I am going because American delusions are countless, I vow to cut through them all.

I am going to offer myself to the Razi’s and Hedab’s of the younger generation.

I am going because I would rather be an instrument of peace than an armchair cynic.

I am going  because I want to chant, “Just like me, the Israelis want to be happy; they don’t want to suffer.”

I am going because I want to do my part to challenge terrorism, state-sponsored and paid for by the U.S. government.

I am going because my right hand doesn’t know what my left hand is doing.

I am going because I need to learn to listen more, talk less.

I am going because Edward Said said, "I think the major choice faced by the intellectual is whether to be allied with the stability of the victors and rulers or -- the more difficult path -- to consider that stability as a state of emergency threatening the less fortunate with the danger of complete extinction, and take into account the experience of subordination itself."

I am going to investigate current applicability of Buddha’s Four Noble Truths.

I am going because you once wrote:

     Why is it that I meet so many Jewish and Christian leaders who support empire, actively or through silence, and so many "unaffiliated" Jews and Christians who, confused, searching, and without the requisite Hebrew training or Christian "faith," resist empire?

      It may be that what is called for is a new discipline, a new crossing of boundaries that joins fidelity to the dead and seeks to build a world that protects and encourages life.  This discipline would promote community and fight against empire, not so much in search of utopia but a life grounded in hospitality in the broadest sense-- personal, cultural, spiritual, and political.

I am going because I’d rather resist empire with mindfulness.

Dr Marc Ellis and Rabbi Yitz Greenberg, Maryknoll, NY; summer 1988; photo by Mev