The robbery was the proverbial straw that broke Amira’s back.

Two weeks ago, Amira, her husband, and three children discovered their house in Shuafat Refugee Camp had been broken into. The money that Amira and her husband, Munir, had set aside for a family vacation to Jordan—where Amira’s parents and three brothers live—was gone. Jewelry that had sentimental value was gone.

Even though Shuafat is inside Jerusalem municipal boundaries, and even though Amira and Munir pay taxes to the city, they didn’t bother calling the police. When Munir and two of his brothers were assaulted in the past and they called for an ambulance, they were told that neither would venture past the massive checkpoint that separates Shuafat from the rest of Jerusalem.

“Our Christian neighbors took us to the checkpoint in their cars [and] the police and ambulance were there,” Amira recalls.

It’s not just the money and the jewelry that upset Amira. It’s that the police won’t come; it’s that she feels insecure in Shuafat—cast aside, uncared for. It’s the checkpoint. It’s the lack of municipal services like garbage pick-up.

The separation barrier and a guard tower on the edge of Shuafat Refugee Camp (photo: Mya Guarnieri)

As we walk towards Amira and Munir’s house, deep in the camp, she points at the litter on the sidewalks and the trickle of sewage flowing in the street. “The camp is looking even worse,” she comments.

The air is smoky. I recognize the acrid smell as burning trash.

Munir’s parents are Palestinian refugees of the 1948 war. They lived in the Old City for some time before they ended up in Shuafat.

We arrive at the family compound that Munir’s parents have made in the years since. Amira and Munir live in one house. Munir’s brother, who is married to Amira’s sister, live in an attached house with their three children and, in the third house, is another brother, his wife, and their children.

Tucked away from the street, the compound is something of a sanctuary. The walkway is clean and lined with plants. Amira sighs happily as she points out her nana (mint) and sage. The tension drops of out her shoulders for a moment.

“It’s nice,” she says. “We don’t have much green in the camp.”

As we step inside, Amira thanks for me coming. She knows it’s out of my way. We were supposed to meet somewhere else, next to the place she teaches Arabic on Mondays. But she’s missed a lot of classes since the robbery.

We take food from the kitchen and I notice a child’s drawing of the iconic symbol of the Boycott Divestment Sanctions movement—a boy with his back turned towards the viewer. Amira says that one of her nieces did it.

We sit at a dark wood dining table in the salon and Amira unwinds her beige hijab. I compliment Amira’s dark brown hair, which I’ve never seen before. She thanks me, gives me a sad smile, and apologizes for her bad mood.

I’ve come to visit Amira and to interview her, as well. But I say that we don’t have to do the interview today.

She insists, “Walla, talking makes me feel better.”

We chat over lunch and then start the interview, beginning with Amira’s relationship with her mom, Sabah, whom I visited recently in Amman.

***

Sabah visited Jerusalem in 1999 for Amira’s sister’s wedding and then in 2000 for Amira’s wedding. During the twelve years that Amira has lived in Shuafat Refugee Camp, her mother has made multiple requests to come visit. All but three visa requests have been denied by the Israelis. In the past month, I’ve managed to find out why.

The Ministry of Interior admitted to me that Israel has no security claim against Amira’s mother, who is now in her early 50s. The MOI suggested I talk to the Israeli consulate in Amman, which told me that Sabah’s visa requests were rejected due to criteria set by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. No, they would not tell me what those criteria were. I needed to talk to the MFA.

So, I got in touch with Yigal Palmor at the MFA, who said he needed to talk to the Israeli consulate in Amman. “No, no, I already talked to them,” I said, feeling like the whole thing was Kafka-esque. I forwarded Palmor the lengthy email exchange I had with the consulate in Amman.

Nonetheless, the answer came from the consulate in Amman, via the MFA. Apparently, Palmor told me, the consulate had some concerns about Sabah’s “migration intentions.” Sabah is a 50-something woman with a husband, three sons, and multiple grandchildren in Amman.

The three visas that were approved were for two weeks each. Even though Sabah has two children in East Jerusalem, she received less time than a random tourist coming to Israel would get. Most tourists get three month visas, issued on the border.

Between Amira and her sister, Sabah has missed the births of seven grandchildren. She was granted a visa when Amira’s niece died, however, in 2001.

Amira’s relationship with her mother takes place mostly on the phone.

***

Amira reflects on all the moments in her life her mother has missed: “I don’t think there is anything more difficult than [giving birth]. I really wanted [my mother] there next to me. I didn’t want anyone there except her. But [she] missed it, three times, and I really needed help.”

In Arabic, Amira adds, “This is the world, here.”

She continues in English, “I would like to meet the person who keeps rejecting my mother. I want him to see her face…”

Amira calls the rejected visa requests, “random,” and says that it’s the state’s attempt “to show that they [can] control everyone, even people’s lives, their own private lives.”

***

The control—in the form of permits and checkpoints—is real. Amira’s father is from Hebron so Amira holds a green West Bank identification card. Because she is married to an East Jerusalemite and works in Jerusalem, Amira has a permit to enter. She can move about Israel freely, more or less. Only Eilat is off to limits to her.

Amira’s oldest, a 10-year-old girl with red hair, goes to school on the other side of the separation barrier. The child must go through the massive checkpoint every day. Amira is worried about her daughter. The girl seems angry, Amira observes, and she is gaining weight.

Because the school she attends is funded by the state, Amira’s daughter and classmates will not mark the nakba today. Will they discuss it at home?

“She’s too young and she experiences a lot everyday at the checkpoint,” Amira says, adding that she will explain things about 1948 and 1967 and the occupation as the issues arise.

“I don’t want her to generalize or to have [preconceived] ideas about the yahud [Jew]… First she has to learn to love, that comes before anything else.”

Amira talks with her five-year-old son after he has returned from kindergarten (photo: Mya Guarnieri)

As for Amira’s personal thoughts about the nakba, she feels that the conditions in Shuafat are designed to push Palestinians out. She thinks that limiting family visits is also an attempt to put pressure on the Palestinians, to encourage them to emigrate. The nakba, Amira says, is ongoing.

“We are humiliated every day, we are consumed every day, we are exhausted every day… it’s not because we work, no, it’s because something is consuming us from inside. You don’t feel like a human anymore. It’s like, why am I supposed to show my bag what’s inside my bag three times a day or four times a day? It’s like there is no privacy, my life is not mine…

“I don’t want to give anymore of myself.”

Amira feels that there is no “value for my dignity and for my time.” The 45 minutes she spends at the checkpoint every morning leaves her stressed all day. And the time adds up, she says,

“You calculate 45 minutes by 7 by [52 weeks a year] or [45 minutes] by 365 [days a year]. Keep calculating. My time is consumed. I’m stressed all the time and worried all the time.”

When she leaves the house, she worries she forgot her ID. If she misplaces her purse, even for a moment, she panics, thinking she might have lost her ID.

“I don’t want to leave my house, I’m getting depressed. Not only me—my children are sick. They are violent. Most of the children in Shuafat camp, you see them fighting rather than playing. And where to play? There’s no space to play.

“They steal. They shout, they hit, they yell, they beat, they slap. They don’t have any other way to express themselves. My children are violent. They are verbally violent and they use their hands as well. They yell and then they cry because they can’t control it. They feel guilty, they feel bad, they say, ‘Oh, it’s my fault [for acting out].’  No it’s not your fault that you were born here in this area, in this particular area.”

People sometimes ask Amira why she and her family don’t move to another area of East Jerusalem, like Beit Hanina, Beit Safafa, or the Shuafat neighborhood (which is not part of the refugee camp).

She and her husband don’t make enough money to move, Amira says, “not even in my dreams.” Her husband has a degree in accounting but has been unable to find a job in his field. He works at a hotel.

“We are a simple family and we have worked hard to make this house. I’m not leaving my house to rent another house.”

But you’re looking for work in Australia?

“I want to leave, yes, I want the best for my children, I don’t want them to grow up in such a situation, in these bad circumstances. I want to raise them in a good way, to love people. In this place, they will end up hating people. They will never learn how to love, how to give, how to forgive.

“When [my siblings and I] were at their age, we learned how to pick up the rubbish and put it in cans. In Amman, we learned how to respect old people, we learned how to get up and let an old woman or old man sit, we learned how to greet [people], how to love.

Amira opens her hand, and traces two parallel lines on her palm. “I’m comparing my daughter’s life to my life. The teachers come to school depressed and reflect this towards the students…this environment is sick, I’m not letting my children live in a sick environment.”

Even if this means that Munir and the kids will lose their Jerusalem IDs? Even is this means giving up Palestine?

“I think one person can make a difference and they are three, my children. One person can make a difference but if they stay here, they will absorb what the culture imposes upon them, what the political situation opposes upon them.”

Amira feels that change is only going to come from the outside. Or from people who have lived outside and immigrate or come back. Or from people who, somehow, manage to put themselves outside of the mainstream conversations about Israel and Palestine.

Amira adds that moments like the one we’re sharing also give her hope.

Some people would say that our friendship is normalization.

“At least when I’m talking to [someone] like you, I become optimistic because the Israelis have people like you. I become proud. I think oh my god, there are good people, you cannot feel how comforting it is and how happy I feel to see people like you… this is the only thing that makes me feel good.

“You are my neighbor, you are my friend. Am I going to deny this? Am I going to lie? You are a part of this place; you’re a part of this land.

“[Palestinians] can judge me and say whatever they want,” Amira says, “But, from my point of view, [the nakba] happened and I don’t want a nakba to happen again.”

For Amira, who believes in a one-state solution, that means an end to the separation and an end to the checkpoints. It means getting municipal services in Shuafat Refugee Camp. It means that the state, whatever its name, would let her mother visit. It also means learning to accept and embrace a Jewish presence in the land.

“We have to love and respect each other,” she says. “This is my idea.”

For some reason, the woman smiles at me as I interview a pair of Eritrean refugees. Though her skin is fair and she is freckled, I guess her to be Indian. She stands by the slide, keeping an eye on her son and watching us, too. When I finish talking to the Eritrean men–who are less concerned about the recent violence in South Tel Aviv and more concerned with making enough money to keep a roof over their heads–I make my way towards the woman and her child.

I introduce myself and we fall into a conversation. As I guessed, C.–who asked to remain anonymous for reasons I’ll reveal below–is Indian. She hails from a village near Goa and is Catholic. Like many Indians from her area, she has a Portuguese family name, a remnant of Portuguese colonialism. She guesses that her freckles and fair skin are, too. She holds her forearm out to compare it to mine. We press our arms together and laugh at how similar our coloring is.

Her two-and-a-half-year-old son is zooming about the playground and she calls him over in Hebrew. She tells him to say hello and he offers me a quick “Shalom” before zipping back off.

I inquire then about her husband. She admits, shyly, that she doesn’t have one. Her son’s father is from the Ivory Coast. They met here, when C. was just 23.

“My first boyfriend,” she tells me.

C.’s boyfriend went back to the Ivory Coast when she was four months pregnant, abandoning her and the baby. It took her a while to understand that he wasn’t coming back. In the meantime, she says, “My belly grew.”

Frightened by the prospect of caring for a child alone, worried that her parents would disown her because she hadn’t married the baby’s father, she went to the doctor to see if she could have an abortion. The doctor told her it was too late.

Throughout her pregnancy, C. did her best to avoid other Indian workers. India is a big country but the overseas communities function something like a small village. Her parents didn’t know that she was with child. And she didn’t intend them to find out–the consequences could be severe.

But somehow, an Indian worker in Israel found out and called home to tell C.’s parents. C.’s family called her, hysterical. C., now 26, recalls the conversation:

‘You are not married. What will everyone say about us? You cannot bring that baby home. You will ruin our name and your brother and sister will never be able to marry!’ they said.

C. is still so worried about shaming her family that she asks me not to use my digital recorder. She eyes it mistrustfully. “I don’t know if you have a camera in there,” she says, “And then, maybe, my face will be on the television.”

Although C. arrived in Israel on a work visa, she lost her legal status and her job shortly after she gave birth due to an Israeli policy that forbids migrant workers from having (and keeping) children in the country. Although the Israeli Supreme Court struck that policy down in April 2011–calling it a violation of Israel’s own labor laws–C. and her child, as well as hundreds of other migrant families, still face imminent deportation.

C.’s parents demand that she leave her son in Israel so as not to shame the family. If she brings her child back to India she will probably be disowned by her parents. C. has a 10th grade education. Before she came to Israel to work as a caregiver, she worked in a beauty salon. She made 1000 rupees a month (about 250 USD).

If her parents do not allow her and her son to live with them, C. is worried that they won’t survive. She adds that she has heard stories about women in India who have been disowned by their families and have ended up committing suicide.

In the meantime, C. rarely ventures out of the house with her son for fear of attracting the authorities’ attention. She takes him straight to the nursery when she goes to work as a house cleaner. When she picks him up, they head straight home. Because she lost her work visa, she is having trouble supporting herself and her little boy. Rent is the first priority, food is second. When I ask C. if she has enough to eat, she answers that her son gets enough food.

I don’t know what to say to C.. I wish I had some way of helping her. I sit down on the ground and open my phone to find telephone numbers of NGOs for her to call. As I scroll through my contacts, C. squats beside me and asks me about my life–my age, my work, my income, my family status. She seems impressed that I’m a female journalist making her way in the world without the help of a husband or parents. I understand then why she’d watched me interview the Eritrean refugees.

I hand her the paper and we stand. I want to take this young woman in my arms. I want to hug her and tell her that everything will be okay. But that wouldn’t be professional and, besides, I’m not sure it’s true.

We shake hands. Her palm is rough and dry. I wish her luck.

Stop the Wall, a 10-year-old organization that advocates for non-violent resistance to the Israeli occupation, reports:

At 1.30am this morning ten armoured jeeps of the Israeli occupation forces and intelligence surrounded and raided the offices of Stop the Wall in Ramallah. Israeli military stole 2 laptops, 3 hard drives and 10 memory cards containing files and photos as well as archive material relating to the work that the organisation does in opposition to Israel’s apartheid wall and the attack on Palestinian human rights that the wall and the settlement represent. This is a renewed attack upon Palestinian civil society and their struggle against the physical and psychological oppression, land confiscation and ethnic cleansing policies of the Israel.

It is no coincidence that the Israeli authorities have chosen this moment to escalate their repression against the Stop the Wall grassroots network of civil resistance against the Wall and the settlements, choosing to act on the same day that the Israeli High Court rejected the appeals of Palestinian hunger strikers Bilal Diab and Tha’’ir Halahleh, imprisoned without charge and without trial, effectively condemning them to death. Israel is fearing popular resistance and at the same time prepares for confrontation and more repression, clearly showing that it is not ready to relinquish any of the international sanctioned rights the Palestinian people are struggling for.

Area A is supposed to be under the control of the Palestinian Authority. So, Israeli forces either got permission from the PA to enter the area–another indication that the PA is just a puppet of Israel–or Israeli forces entered by their own volition. Either way, the raid shows that there is no place where Palestinians are fully in control of their lives. It also reminds that Israel will not tolerate any form of Palestinian resistance, even non-violent resistance.

Addendum: Israeli forces enter Area A frequently. The Israeli army admits to this, stating it conducts about six raids in Area A every night.

Two Molotov cocktails were hurled at the home of Nigerian immigrants in the HaTikva neighborhood in South Tel Aviv on Saturday night, according to Maariv (Hebrew). The firebombs did not penetrate the structure, which is located near the HaTikva market. No injuries were reported and no arrests have been made in connection with the incident.

The 20-year-old Israeli who was arrested in connection with last week’s attacks on the African community is expected to appear in court today. Police believe that the attacks were racially motivated and that the suspect intended to drive Africans from the neighborhood; the suspect has been arrested in the past for throwing eggs at a Sudanese refugee.

The past several years have seen Jewish Israelis in impoverished south Tel Aviv neighborhoods growing increasingly angry about the presence of foreigners. Locals have held a number of protests calling for the deportation of Africans; migrants and their children have been targeted in a number of violent attacks. Several south Tel Aviv schools have barred non-Israeli children from enrolling.

Jewish Israeli residents of South Tel Aviv say that the government is dumping the problem of refugees on their neighborhoods and that the area lacks the resources to cope.

While Africans are frightened by recent events, they have also expressed compassion for Jewish Israelis and agree with locals’ statements that the government must address the areas’ issues. African residents of South Tel Aviv have called on their Israeli neighbors to meet and discuss the problems and to come up with a solution together.

Haggai Matar contributed to this report.

It wasn’t the newspapers and journalists who freed the Filipino people from hundreds of years of Spanish colonialism. It was literature.

Jose Rizal’s novel Noli Me Tangere (Touch me not) is widely credited as having fanned the flames of the revolution that eventually overthrew the Spanish and led to an independent Philippines. The book, which I picked up and read during my travels in the Philippines, is an emotional, character-driven account of life under Spanish occupation. It perfectly captures the nuances of colonialism’s impact upon relationships, families, and personal identity.

The book often reminded me of Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories. The story of Sisa and her two young sons Crispin and Basilio was particularly familiar. Fearing that her children have been wrongfully arrested (and held in something that resembles Israel’s administrative detention), Sisa

ran to her house in the grip of that panic which seizes the mind when in misfortune we find ourselves forsaken by all and hope flees elusive before us…She wanted to save her sons and mothers do not stop to ask how when it comes to helping their flesh and blood.

She ran headlong, pursued by fears and sinister premonitions. Had they already arrested Basilio? Where had Crispin gone?

Nearing her house she recognized, over her orchard fence, the helmets of two Constabulary soldiers. Her feelings were indescribable; her mind went blank.

Spanish soldiers, the narrator explains, were “deaf to pleas and blind to tears.”

Rizal dedicated Noli Me Tangere to his country, writing, “I shall endeavor to show your condition, faithfully and ruthlessly. I shall lift a corner of the veil which shrouds the disease, sacrificing to truth everything, even self-love…”

Today, more than 100 years after Filipino Independence, school children still read Noli Me Tangere. Rizal is hailed as a national hero.

I believe in fiction. It reveals truth in a way that non-fiction cannot. It connects people, creating a sense of community and purpose. And, like journalism, it speaks truth to power. But because fiction captures emotional truth—and emotions tend to drive our lives and the world we live in more than the facts and logic ever do—it is even more potent than journalism.

Let me put it this way: have you ever heard of a newspaper article sparking a revolution?

Just in case Big Brother is watching, I should expressly state that I do not intend to start a revolution myself.

But, what I would like to do is help local authors—Israeli, Palestinian, Jordanian, and international—who write in English reach their full potential. To that end, I am kicking off a reasonably priced workshop for both non-fiction and fiction writers. Workshops will be held in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, and, if there are enough registrants, Ramallah.

(Note to Jordanian authors who write in English: I’ve got some registrants in Amman. Just a few more and I will arrange, somehow, to hold a workshop there, too).

You can read more about my qualifications here and join the Facebook conversation about workshops, writing, and literature here.

World Jewry seems to be standing at a critical junction in history. While more than half of us still remain in the Diaspora, intermarriage will probably tip the balance towards Israel in the next two decades. Ironically, Israel is pursuing expansionist and settlement policies that will most likely result in one state, where Jews will be a minority, the Palestinian population the majority.

At the same time, the discourse surrounding Israel’s history vis a vis the Palestinians (including the Nakba), its current policies of expansion and occupation, as well as Israel’s poor treatment of Palestinians and other non-Jews is growing increasingly heated. Nowhere is this truer than in the Diaspora, where many Jews consider Israel the symbol of Judaism and the representative body of the Jewish people—politically and culturally—taking any criticism of the country as an attack on Judaism itself. Such a conversation is one-dimensional: being Jewish equals being Israeli or supporting Israel.

In his latest piece for Tablet, journalist Joseph Dana reminds us that there are other ways of being Jewish and developing Hebrew and Jewish culture without living in or pledging allegiance to a Jewish majority state.

Dana uses the life and work of the Russian-born Jewish writer David Vogel as a lens. Vogel left the Pale of Settlement as a young man and ended up in Vienna. There he eked out a living while writing poetry, novellas, and novels in Hebrew. Although he wrote in what would become Israel’s national language, and despite the historical moment he found himself in—Vogel would die in a Nazi concentration camp—he was not a Zionist. He spent a year in Palestine only to return to Europe.

Vogel’s life story runs counter to the insistence that a Jewish-majority Israel is the logical center of Jewish and Hebrew culture and thought. As Dana points out, a number of academics consider Vogel’s work—which was written in the Diaspora and steered clear of nationalist themes—critical to the revival of the Hebrew language as well as the progression of Hebrew literature.

In light of this Diaspora Jew’s central role in the evolution of the Israeli national language, bold statements like A.B. Yehoshua’s claim that he is a “complete Jew” while those of us in the Diaspora are only “partial” Jews seem confused and short-sighted. Speaking to Dana, Shachar Pinsker, a professor of Hebrew literature at the University of Michigan, described Vogel as a writer who bore some similarities to:

…an early Woody Allen. He was introverted, consumed with sexual hang-ups and lived as a perpetual outsider, a character closer to an American Jew than a Zionist pioneer.

So where does the focal point of Jewish identity lie? Do we need to decide?

What is clear is that Hebrew language and culture does not necessarily need to exist inside a Jewish majority country to thrive — they simply need people like Vogel who are willing to engage with it, develop it, and push it in new directions. Vogel’s work serves as a reminder to those who have yet to embrace the inevitable one-state solution that, yes, we can retain a unique, rich identity even as a minority group.

No injuries were reported. Police are investigating the incidents that activists call a “coordinated” attack.

The African community in Israel has been the target of numerous acts of violence in the past. In January of 2011, for example, a burning tire was thrown into the apartment five Sudanese refugees shared in Ashdod. The men suffered from smoke inhalation and two were hospitalized.

Also in January of 2011, three teenage girls – the Israeli-born, Hebrew-speaking daughters of African migrant workers – were beaten by a group of Jewish teenagers. The attackers, one of whom was armed with a knife, allegedly called them “dirty niggers.” One of the girls needed medical treatment for her injuries.

Speaking in the aftermath of the 2011 attack on the girls, Poriya Gal, spokeswoman for the Hotline of Migrant Workers, told me, “It’s worth noting that the girls had already experienced such violence in the neighbourhood. But they chose not to report it to the police out of the fear that they would be attacked again.”

South Tel Aviv has become a flash point for Israeli aggression towards the foreign community. Right wing Jewish Israelis have held protests against the presence of Africans and migrant workers in the area. In the summer of 2010–months before rabbis across the country issued a letter calling on Jews not to rent or sell to Arabs–25 Tel Aviv rabbis signed a proclamation forbidding Jews from renting to “infiltrators,” a term the government and the right wing uses for African refugees. Ten real estate agents who work in neighborhoods that are home to large populations of African refugees answered the call, publicly stating that they would refuse such tenants and would not renew the leases of those who are currently residing there.

Several municipally-funded kindergartens in south Tel Aviv have also barred the children of foreign parents.

See Haggai Matar’s report on the community’s reaction to last night’s incidents.

Rampant anti-Semitism drove my great-grandmother from Eastern Europe. There’d been pogroms; there were restrictions on the type of work Jews could do. My family made their way to New York City with little more than the clothes on their backs; the relatives they’d left behind disappeared during the Holocaust, never to be heard from again.

So when the United Nations voted in favor of the partition of Palestine in 1947, my great-grandmother’s son, my grandfather, rejoiced. He ran into the street and danced. He sang HaTikva. And when fighting broke out in Palestine, he decided that he would make the trip east and join the Haganah, which later became the Israeli army. Sure, he was only 16, but he would lie about his age and enlist.

It was my great-grandmother—an Orthodox Jew who’d fled anti-Semitism, who’d lost family and friends in the Holocaust—who stopped him.

“No way are you going to fight the Arabs,” she said. She was an anti-Zionist and, as such, there was a lot packed into those words.

Even though I never met her, I always find myself thinking about my great-grandmother a lot this time of year. This is the period in Israel when we enter the cycle of nationalist holidays that starts with Yom HaShoah (Holocaust Day). Never mind that Israel treats Holocaust survivors so poorly that they have protested the issue. Never mind that many Holocaust survivors are still struggling to survive in Israel and that, according to Ynet, that state is cutting their benefits by twenty percent. Never mind that Israel cynically uses the Holocaust as a political tool to defend indefensible policies of occupation and expansion and to beat the war drums against Iran.

After Yom HaShoah, the flag-waving continues with Yom HaZikaron (Remembrance Day) and culminates with Yom HaAtzmaut (Independence Day). Stacked one on top of the other, the three holidays maximize feelings of victimhood, self-righteousness, and unity. For many Israelis, that the sad Yom HaZikaron rolls straight into the joyful Yom HaAtzmaut gives a feeling of triumph, of exhilaration. It’s intoxicating. And it’s dangerous.

Maybe that’s why my great-grandmother didn’t want her son to fight in a war that wasn’t her own. I think she understood that Israel wasn’t the solution to the Jewish people’s problems. Today, I’m watching the bits of democracy that exist here tremble under the weight of the occupation. I watch the conversation about Israel grow increasingly divisive in the Diaspora. I consider the vibrant Jewish cultures and languages that were virtually wiped out for the sake of forging an Israeli identity. I see Jews turn away from Judaism because of Israel’s ill-doings. I wonder if my great-grandmother saw all this coming, if she knew the trouble that lay ahead.

Even though almost all of the “Welcome to Palestine” participants were prevented from reaching the West Bank, the campaign was a success. As the international and local media watched, 79 internationals were refused entry to Israel. But they weren’t trying to enter Israel. They were trying to get to Bethlehem, in Palestinian Authority-controlled Area A. And they brought the world’s attention to the fact that Israel seems to consider even Area A its own, that Palestinians have zero power over their own territory, that the occupation shuts Palestinians off from the world and makes any sort of normal life impossible.

The campaign also shed light on how intolerant the only democracy in the Middle East is of the mere words “Palestine” and “Palestinian.”

On the airplane from Geneva to Tel Aviv, I had the chance to meet some of the activists. One showed me the letter she would present to Israeli authorities. It didn’t say anything about the occupation or the nakba—the type of things that are sure to send security forces into a panic. No, all it said was that she had been invited to help build a Palestinian school and would be hosted in Bethlehem.

Israeli authorities said that the activists were provocateurs who sought to delegitimize Israel. If building a Palestinian school is provocative, if the mere act of meeting Palestinians is “delegitimizing,” what does that say about Israel?

After we got off the plane, I hung back and stayed behind a group of activists as they went through passport control. They silently handed their “provocative” letter to authorities who promptly whisked them away.

As for me, I was allowed to photograph only the Ministry of Tourism officials who were handing out flowers and water to the passengers arriving at Terminal 1. Security guards threatened to arrest me when I tried to film anything else. They threatened to arrest me for moving too slowly through passport control, too.  Eventually, I was forced to present my passport and then two men escorted me to a bus that took me, the other Israelis, and a few internationals to Terminal 3, the main building.

There, I was reminded that Israel’s intolerance doesn’t stop with Palestinians. When I got to the arrivals hall, I noticed that right-wingers were allowed to protest the fly-in. When Israeli leftists quietly unfolded small sheets of paper that read “Welcome to Palestine”—and when one held a drawing by a Palestinian child—security swarmed them. As they were hustled off to detention, the right-wingers followed, screaming that the leftists should “go to Syria” and that “Israel is the most democratic country in the Middle East”—which was ironic given that the activists were being detained for holding up a small piece of paper that included the word Palestine.

Israel’s true colors were also on display at Sunday’s Ramle Conference, a short ride away from Ben Gurion International Airport. There, Israeli politicians and right-wingers—including Knesset Members and rabbis who are paid by the government—gathered to discuss the “problem “of foreigners (read: non-Jews) in Israel, or as Interior Minister Eli Yishai put it, how to “protect the Zionist enterprise.”

David Sheen attended the conference and, via Twitter, reported on the politicians and rabbis’ incitement. (Sheen’s tweets were storified by Issa Edward Boursheh. Click here to read.) One MK said he started an organization to “save” the Jews of Tel Aviv from foreigners, another claimed that there are no African refugees—they’re all just infiltrators. (Considering the horrors that many Sudanese escaped, is that not reminiscent of Holocaust denial?)

Yishai reduced migrant workers, including those who come here with Israeli-issued work visas, to machines with the remark that they oughtn’t to get maternity leave, saying “they’re only here to work for us.”

There was open discussion of maintaining Israel’s “ethnic majority,” and one MK remarked, “Non-Jewish migration to the State of Israel is no less dangerous than the military threat from Iran.”

Anyone in the audience who presented facts to counter the politicians’ and rabbis’ bigoted arguments—or who questioned them—were shouted and hissed into silence, including representatives of the United Nations.

This is how Israel and Israelis deal with dissent—by bullying people into silence.

As though that point wasn’t made well enough in Ramle or at the airport, some Beitar soccer fans drove it home on Sunday evening by beating a middle-aged woman who protested their use of the racist slogan “Death to the Arabs.”

Taken together, Sunday’s events prove that Israeli intolerance and racism extends beyond the Palestinians. It’s about non-Jews, in general, and anyone who supports them. If you dare to use the word “Palestinian” or “Palestine,” and if you speak out against racism, you will be put in your proverbial place, sometimes violently. Welcome to Israel: a frightening place where not being racist is dangerous.

Activists who told this writer in the Geneva airport that they are traveling to Palestine cheered quietly and smiled as the plane took off.

However, a number of those activists declined to be interviewed. Several who had said, in the airport, that they were part of the action became skittish and recanted, claiming that they were visiting Tel Aviv or that they didn’t speak English at all.

Two men, aged 25 and 49, said that they were, indeed, headed to Bethlehem but that they were feeling “paranoid” and preferred to talk after they landed in Tel Aviv.

A majority of the activists appeared to be in their twenties.

One 19-year-old man who asked to remain anonymous said he is traveling to the West Bank to “help the Palestinian people…because they are my brothers in religion and humanity.” The young man is a French national who is the son of an Algerian Muslim father and a French mother. He is studying to be a plumber and heating technician and is active with the Boycott Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement.

When asked about critics’ claims that “Welcome to Palestine” activists don’t want Israel to exist and are attempting to delegitimize the country, he shook his head. “No, that’s not true,” he answered. “[Jews and Palestinians] can live with two countries, with two equal states.”

Ofir Gendelmen, a spokesman for the Prime Minister’s Office claimed on Twitter, however, that, “The #airflotilla2 provocation was conceived by extremist Islamic+anti-Israel organizations who object to peace&call for Israel’s destruction.”

The young activist added that he had joined the action not just because he is a Muslim but also because he feels that Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians is unjust.

When asked if he is nervous about arriving to Ben Gurion International Airport—where hundreds of Israeli police and security forces await the unarmed activists—he smiled and nodded. “Sure, I’m scared.”

Loubna Amar, a 37-year-old French national of Moroccan and Algerian descent, was hesitant to be interviewed. Only after this writer mentioned that she was employed, in the past, by Al Jazeera, did she consent.

“Okay, for you I speak English,” Amar said, smiling.

She said she had joined the “Welcome to Palestine” campaign because, “We have a right to [travel] to Palestine freely.

“[Palestinians under Israeli occupation] are like prisoners. It’s not acceptable.”

She added that “we have to show people all over the world” that Palestinians, including those in Palestinian-authority controlled Area A, live with severe restrictions imposed by the Israeli government.

Amar, a sales assistant who lives in Lyon, France, said that she feels that the “Welcome to Palestine” campaign is “good for Palestinians as well as Israelis” because an end to the occupation would mean that Israelis could “live peacefully—no more war, no more wall of shame.”

Amar is active in the BDS movement and said she believes in one state, to be shared by Jews and Palestinians alike. “Jews and Palestinians lived together before 1948. Why isn’t it possible now?”

When asked about critics’ claims that “Welcome to Palestine” activists want to see Israel blotted out of existence, Amar said, “No, not at all. [Jews] have the right to live…what’s important is the human being, not [whether they are] Palestinian or Israeli.”

Does Israel have the right to block her passage to Bethlehem? “No,” Amar answered. “We are pacifists and we want to go to [build the] school [in Bethlehem]. If there was an airport in Palestine, in the West Bank, we would go there.”

Amar showed this writer the letter she intended to present to Israeli border control. It stated that she had been” invited to participate in the building of the Palestine International School” and that she “will be hosted… in Bethlehem.”

Amar explained that she became interested in Palestine about five years ago, when she befriended a Palestinian Jordanian whose parents were from Jenin. He wasn’t politically active, but he did tell Amar about his family’s roots and she began exploring the issues on her own.

While more than half the passengers on the flight from Geneva were expected to be activists, Amar estimated that about 20 of the passengers were taking part in the action.

She acknowledged, however, that she might not know all the activists on the plane.

Many passengers said that they knew about the action but that they weren’t involved. Some passengers said they had not heard about the “Welcome to Palestine” campaign. A number of Israeli passengers seemed suspicious of the internationals and several used their cell phones to snap photos of this journalist and her interviewees.

Asked for her personal thoughts about the activists’ intention to visit Bethlehem, Tehilla Michel—a 54-year old French-Israeli social worker who lives in Jerusalem—remarked, “I don’t have a problem with it.”

Michel added, however, that she thinks that Israel has a right to decide who can enter the country. “Every country does this.”

When this writer pointed out that the activists aren’t trying to enter Israel, that they’re trying to reach Bethlehem, Michel countered that they needed to enter Israel to do so, not realizing, perhaps, that the action was meant to call attention to exactly that–that Israel ultimately controls even Area A of the West Bank.

A young Israeli man who this writer mistook for an activist said, derisively, that “thank God” he is not a part of the “Welcome to Palestine” campaign.

UPDATE: I saw the 19 and 25-year-old men I spoke with taken away by security after they presented their letters.