By Amer Zahr
We Palestinians have been struggling for a long time. I am not speaking of the struggle to be recognized as an independent state, or the struggle to be recognized in the United Nations, or even the struggle to be recognized in international courts. I am speaking, rather, of the struggle to be recognized as human beings.
I am a comedian, and I travel to Israel and Palestine often to perform, visit, and conduct workshops. I have, until this point, done all of my work for Palestinian audiences and participants. My first job is to be funny. But I also hope to show that Palestinians can laugh just like everyone else, especially at ourselves. If I do my job well, maybe I can show that we can be funny too.
The legal decision handed down this week in Israel, absolving the government of any and all responsibility in the 2003 death of American Rachel Corrie in Gaza, confirmed something to the world that we Palestinians are already acutely aware of: We, and those who dare to stand with us, are simply not human beings.
In the past few weeks, this phenomenon has become all too clear in Israel. On August 16, a group of teenagers beat a Palestinian boy to near death in a Jerusalem square. One of those arrested for that crime publicly declared his astonishment for being held accountable for beating an Arab. On that same day, a taxi carrying a family of Palestinians was firebombed near Hebron in the southern West Bank. Six Palestinians were injured in that attack.
Rachel Corrie was killed while she was decrying the demolition of homes in the Gaza Strip. She was engaging in something that we Americans have been politically and socially bred to have pride in: nonviolent protest. She stood in front of a bulldozer, only to have the driver run her over, viewing her life as no more worthy than the owners of the house he was destroying.
It is no small thing to say that the state of Israel views Palestinians as subhuman. I do not say it lightly. I have traveled to Israel many times, encountering the various checkpoints, border crossings, and security personnel. I am always shocked by how Palestinians deal with this everyday. I am never shocked by, sadly, the subhuman manner in which Israel treats them.
The Qalandia checkpoint from Ramallah to Jerusalem consists of cages and steel revolvers. Palestinians are let through at the whim of the Israeli soldiers manning their stations. The checkpoint itself is filthy and unsanitary. Arab towns inside Israel are many times rundown, almost completely neglected by the Israeli government, while Jewish towns are generously funded and kept up, resembling upscale American suburbs. Studies have shown that the Israeli government spends three times less on schools populated by Arab students as it does on schools with Jewish students.
Qalandiya checkpoint (angrywhitekid/CC BY NC ND 2.0)
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu once referred to the Palestinian citizens of Israel as a “demographic threat.” That remark, is, of course, utterly racist. But one has to wonder how someone like Mr. Netanyahu, who graduated from both high school and college in America, could refer to a group of people that existed in that land for centuries before the establishment of Israel as a “demographic threat.” The answer is simple: Palestinians are simply not human.
Newt Gingrich has called us “invented,” Barack Obama was attacked in 2008 for having a “Palestinian friend,” Ehud Barak referred to us as “crocodiles,” and former Prime Minister Menachem Begin, who famously made peace with Egypt, said that Palestinians were “beasts.” Why would we expect Israel to hold anyone responsible for killing a young woman foolish enough to protect the rights of these creatures?
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Aaron
This has gotta be one of the stupidest articles ever written by a human being. Amazing.
Miriam
Well, you’re calling him a human being, so that’s a start.
Aaron
Yes, that was the joke. Thanks.
SUAD
Yours the most stupid comment ever ..
Palestinian
stupid article Aaror ? Because he mentioned several solid facts that show the ugly face of Israel ?!
Elisabeth
I remember again why I should never look at the comments at 972mag: Makes you detest Israelis.
Aaron
Dunno if that applies to me, but if so: I identify primarily as American, not Israeli. So detest Americans, please. Thank you.
Kolumn9
Oh come on Elisabeth, be honest! You detest Israelis anyway. You avoid the comments here because you might actually see an opinion that disagrees with yours. That would indeed be a shame.
Zahr Fan Club!
Amer Zahr really deserves a yasher koach for this piece. In reply to this comment, I’ll talk about three policies that the Ummah can adopt which would get Israelis to stop hating the “Palestinians”.
But I have been following politics in the Middle East for a decade, and this is the FIRST time I have ever seen a Mohammedan acknowledge that Koranic policies must change. And they must change now.
Walt + Mersheimer have talked a lot about how the “Palestinians” are going to face genocide soon. The “Palestinians” themselves generally seem blissfully unaware about how deeply their Koranic policies are hated and – if the genocide is to be avoided – how crucial it is for their policies to change.
So while I will make three specific suggestions below, Amer deserves tremendous accolades for the courage to discuss the possibility that the Koran is false and therefore Shar’iah-adherent “Palestinian” policies must change.
Good on ya!
Amer Zahr
I appreciate everyone’s thoughts, but the above comment is so incoherent, I cannot decide whether it is an insult or a compliment. Just in case it’s the latter, THANK YOU!
Jadeer
This article truely explains what really is going on. Israelis are really defensive when the truth comes out. It’s ok, their defense will always be the holocaust that happened over 60 years ago. Yet, they seem to not believe they are the Nazi’s now.
RockyMissouri
Thank you …..for your comment Jadeer… Yes, they are the nazis, now.. I am heartbroken.
Vicky
It’s interesting that you mention checkpoint architecture. I don’t find Bethlehem’s main checkpoint as bad as Qalandia (perhaps because they try to make it more comfy for all the tourists who pass through) but there are aspects of its design that are obviously intended to dehumanise – not just the most obvious ones either. The provision of water fountains, for example. There are two fountains in the second portion of the checkpoint. But to get to them you first need to queue in those cages, and it can take hours. There was one day not long before Ramadan when people were so tightly wedged into the cage that it was a struggle to lift your water bottle. A lot of people had run out of things to drink anyway because the wait was so long, and in any case you don’t want to risk needing the toilet when you’re boxed up in there. (There’s a toilet in the middle part of 300, but not once in the past six years have I known it to be unlocked – just for show?) The presence of the fountains on the other side of the bars where you can’t access them is like a taunt in that condition. And when you’re finally released through the first turnstile there is no time to grab a drink – you have to hurry to the rugby scrum at the next turnstile or risk being swallowed up in the back of the queue again. For workers who have to be at their jobs on time or risk being fired there’s no choice. I hardly ever see Palestinians using the fountains at busy times, only tourists, who have the luxury of jumping the queue.
Then there is a non-caged way in – for tourists. ‘Entry’, ‘Exit’, and ‘Tourist and Humanitarian Lane’. Sometimes I have stood in the cage waiting to pass, and people have said to me, genuinely puzzled, “Why are you here – if you go in the foreigners’ lane they’ll let you through first.” What got me was that they seemed to see this as totally acceptable, that they should be made to wait for hours while others could just be waved through on the strength of a passport.
Finally the way the checkpoint guards can watch you without being seen themselves – through booths with smoked glass, cameras, bridges over your head, etc. There will be a loudspeaker screaming orders (“Kundara! Kundara! Kundara!” being the usual refrain at 300) but it doesn’t come from a visible person, and it’s hard to believe that it’s owner sees the people he’s yelling at as actual people. Going through the checkpoint when it’s empty is eerie for this reason. It’s like a maze and you’re the mouse, and somewhere the experimenter is watching you. It’s hard not to think that it was designed for this.
Kolumn9
These checkpoints were built during the second intifada and they are solely designed to complicate the job of Palestinian suicide bombers in killing the Israelis that work in these crossings. This is why the Israelis are hidden and barely visible and the whole process is rigidly designed.
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I personally would close them all down and prevent any access by West Bank Palestinians into Jerusalem from Ramallah and Bethlehem. Presumably that would remove these heart-wrenching images and thus heal your bleeding heart.
Vicky
1.) Movement was restricted long before the Second Intifada. It’s a natural part of life under martial law.
2.) It’s possible to bypass the Bethlehem checkpoint illegally if you’re able to walk some distance, and illegal workers do it every day. So have Israeli friends who have visited me in Area A without a car.
3.) The soldiers don’t search everyone passing through the checkpoint. Very often I’ve been in there and the metal detectors have beeped for every single person going through, and the guard hasn’t done a thing – he’s sitting there snacking on bamba and playing games on his iPhone. There will be a hold-up for two hours, and all of a sudden people get through without a search. Or ten people will pass through with no search and they decide to make an old man take off his shoes when he can barely bend down. Then make him do it again fifty yards later. It’s arbitrary and it’s done on a whim.
4.) I know what you would like to do to Palestinians, K9. When it comes to illustrating the Amer’s original point, you’re Exhibit A.
Vicky
Oh, as for the guards being able to stay hidden, that only applies to the central part of the checkpoint complex. Obviously there has to be direct contact when they want to check permits and scan people’s handprints.
It would seem that the guards don’t share your concern for their physical safety, as they usually don’t wear flak jackets or helmets. Once I found two women soldiers applying nail varnish, oblivious to all the passing Palestinians; and on another occasion I had to reach into the permit-checking booth to prod a guy awake so he could unlock the turnstile. It’s always interesting watching occupation supporters try to rationalise what they’ve never seen.
Kolumn9
1)Movement got restricted following Palestinian attacks on Israelis in the first intifada and as you choose to forget there was a wave of suicide bombings in 1993-1996. There was no restriction on movement between 1967 and 1987, which suggests your narrative is nonsense.
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2) Bypassing the checkpoint is something that is possible at the moment. In case of the likely renewal of hostilities I can assure you this will stop.
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3) See 2. No intelligence warnings, no need to do much checking. Given a renewal of violence you will see a very different behavior at the checkpoint.
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4) I would like Israel to separate from the Palestinians, which includes not employing the Palestinians in Israel and not allowing them access. This is what is normally done to foreigners who have a repeated tendency to take advantage of easy access in order to blow up your country’s civilians.
Vicky
No, K9, movement began to be restricted when the occupation began in the West Bank and Gaza in 1967, with a system of curfews, closures, and collective punishment. It began for Palestinians in Israel (supposedly equal citizens) in 1948. In Jaffa, Palestinians were removed from their homes, corralled into one neighbourhood (‘Ajami), and kept behind barbed wire for two years, used as a pool of cheap labour. It was a ghetto. That was the first and most obvious military restriction on movement. The restrictions weren’t fully lifted until 1966.
These are the stories that you don’t hear because there is already so much separation, within the Green Line as well as without, and most Israelis and overseas occupation supporters don’t want to know – overseas occupation supporters because it damages the idea, and Israelis because thinking about these things is tough for them personally. You talk about suicide bombings, but you don’t mention what was being done to Palestinians for decades before they began – and this is actually an illustration of Amer’s point. When you think of death and suffering, you look first at Jewish life. The Palestinians who died before that you don’t even know about. What is a Palestinian supposed to conclude from that other than, “In their eyes we are not as human as they are”?
Your justification of the arbitrariness of checkpoint behaviour is one that the soldiers themselves don’t trouble to give, and the way you keep altering it to try and excuse or explain the soldiers’ every action suggests that no matter what they do, you’ll find a reason to pass it. Interestingly they don’t always try to excuse themselves with the same determination. There are enough testimonies out there from soldiers who have used the checkpoint to degrade and humiliate to show what drives it, and it’s not special security intelligence. Try boredom, peer pressure, a sense of power, and difficulty saying no all shaken up in a nasty cocktail – all things that people in their late teens are particularly vulnerable to. The only thing missing from Amer’s article is commentary on what this system can do to the people who administer it. It’s not just about seeing Palestinian life as beneath Israeli life, but about seeing life in general as worth less than power. A sense I also get from your own comments sometimes.
Jan
@Kolumn 9 – Checkpoints have been around for many years. When Israel and apartheid South Africa were close allies in the 1970s, South African military came to Israel to learn how to improve their checkpoints so as to better control their black population. Looks like birds of a feather flocked together.
Piotr Berman
Concerning comments: it helps to have a wider perspective, like knowing vicious comments written in other contexts. I am from Poland, living in USA, and I sometimes read comments at Polish websites.
Also, sometimes otherwise polite and good natured people adopt a much darker persona when communicating electronically.
In that spirit, I doubt if Aaron post above passed Turing test.
Aaron
Ah, you finally figured me out. Yes, I’m an AI program, like the famous ELIZA. But please, Piotr, let’s keep this as our little secret.
Danny
Of course, Palestinians are vastly inferior to the Jewish people – after all, who did God choose, the Palestinians or the Jews (rhyme unintended)? There you go. Mitt Romney said it best – Palestinians are culturally inferior, by which he was actually saying that they ARE inferior, period, and hence Israel’s version of the white man’s burden was just. David Ben Gurion thought Arab citizens of Israel were inferior, which is why he kept them locked up under military guard for the first 18 years of Israel’s existence. And, of course, our newly-crowned king, who hails from one of Israel’s most racist, Arab-hating families (his father was too extreme even for Begin’s tastes) cannot be outdone in the ‘Palestinians are inferior’ debate by Mitt Romney, can he? I mean, with all due respect, Mitt is a puppet who will only say what his Las Vegas pimp will tell him to say. Mitt never stared a Palestinian in the face and seen the whites of his eyes, before pulling the trigger.
Kolumn9
This is a dumb article that makes no sense whatsoever. Somehow it connects the accidental death of a misguided American girl with checkpoints set up by Israel to allow access to Palestinians into Israel in way that prevents the Palestinians from being able to blow themselves up and take Israelis with them. Like most similar articles on the Corrie death, this one doesn’t care about the facts of the case. The IDF is guilty a priori, and it is unacceptable for the facts or opinions to disagree.
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Then it throws in some isolated incidents carried out by extremists and dumb teens to generalize on Israel. I presume the persistent rock throwing attacks on Israeli cars and the brutal rape of Israeli women by Palestinians should likewise be used to generalize about the Palestinians and their culture? Then again it would be too much to ask about fairness in an obviously and deliberately biased article like this one.
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I am sure you are a great comedian. Stick to that.
Sean Mullin
1. The separation barrier has the additional function of providing a territorial barrier, as acknowledged by the Knesset in 2005.If it was just to stop suicide bombers, within Israel, it would be built along the green line. It’s not, it practically dissects the West bank in places, and still leaves quite large settlements such as on the Palestinian side of it. Not allot of suicide bombing in them lately.
2.1.5 million Palestinians live within Israel already, not too many bombs from those guys lately either
3. Anyone who has stood at check points, be they at Qualandiya or in Hebron and talked to a few “friendly” IDF knows there is substance and resonance to what this guy is saying. Israeli conscripts are brutalized, too often, their opinions on “Arabs” would make your stomach turn.
4. As I always like to point out, IDF have killed far more Palestinians civilians than suicide bombers have, in fact, they killed more Palestinians altogether in 3 weeks in Gaza than suicide bombers from Palestine managed in 10 years.
5 Anyone who thinks the death of Rachel Corrie and the mistreatment of Palestinians aren’t related has a reality bypass going on up there. The overall context of greed and the need for Israel to dominate a land that should be shared fairly is the genesis of the violence on both sides.
6. You, Kolumn9, come out with most consistently bigoted, deluded things on this page. If you could lose a bit of the venom, you might make a decent comedian yourself!
Whats your real name so I can look out for it on the comedy circuit? shame you can’t be honest about who you are, but then with your opinions…
Greg Pollock
Vicky, your statements are still being truncated in the “more” area..there is a word limit now.
A Palestinian comedian with a law degree. No wonder K9 cannot understand you.
The institutionalized treatment of a targeted class creates acceptable racism, and racism usually does not see itself as arbitrarily racist. If you want to prevent future bombing you need to understand the families, hopes, despairs and laughter of Palestinians. That can’t happen looking at them in crushingly long lines. It is my view that what they have gone through, what has happened to them, how they respond, can tell us something reaching far beyond those long lines.
Prometheus
Amer,
“When will Palestinians become human?”
Why won’t you ask your Arab “brethren” the very same question?
Apparently you have no problem with dehumanization of Palestinians by the Ummah.
Gil Franco
Vicious, simplistic anti-Semitic propaganda. The comments from creeps babbling about the chosen people and Nazis really must make the author proud.
Seriously 972, I know you want to give voice to Palestinians, but can’t you find some one who can get past the doctored quotes and tendentious self pity?
TruthSeeker
I think I understand why Muslims like to point the finger / attack Israel. I think deep down they are ashamed of the atrocities going in the world – due to their own people’s intolerance and hatefulness. The messed up part is they cry victim, all the while being the people we see on the news bombing and terrorizing everyone else.
emma
“Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu once referred to the Palestinian citizens of Israel as a “demographic threat.” That remark, is, of course, utterly racist.” The Palestianians are not citizens of the State of Israel. The State of Israel is the ONLY Jewish State in the world and therefore it is definitely not “utterly racist” to say that having a Palestian majority in a Jewish State is a demographic threat. It is.
Danny
Believe me: not everyone refuses to see you as humans. I may be a proud Jew and supporter of Israel, but what some of my people do the Palestinians makes my blood boil. NOT IN MY NAME