Dissenting Voices

Sitting in the twilight of my Jerusalem apartment of an evening, I had ample time to mull over the events of each day. If I were to find a narrative which explains the Palestinians situation, one people could read without switching off, that would have to be through storytelling. The first story I wrote, was Walid’s, the strong, swarthy, olive farmer from Hebron, with melting brown eyes, and the biggest black moustache I had ever seen. On the balcony early one morning, listening to the distant sing song of the Muezzin as hickory wood smoke swirled above the tangled roofs of Beit Jala, down in the valley, I began writing. From that one story, others flowed.

If online diaries were the norm then, I would have relished being a daily writer. Instead, I wrote long newsy letters to family and friends. Those were often written at weekends, while having breakfast at the Osteria Papas in Moshe Salomon Street in West Jerusalem, or when having lunch in the courtyard of the American Colony Hotel in East Jerusalem. In my first year there I split my recreation between Palestinian and Israeli areas. I never once raised the Palestinians situation with any Israelis. I had no way of knowing, if the person I was conversing with could be a member of the Shin Bet (security police). Thereafter, I mostly confined myself to Palestinian areas where I was emotionally more comfortable. My Palestinian friends and students became family.

How does one describe a military occupation? Oppressive, powerful, terrifying, controlling and sanctioning - are relevant words. The control affects most aspects of people’s daily living activities. There is no autonomy, no democracy, no self-determination, for an occupied people. The rules are laid down by the occupiers and the occupied must obey or perish. The burden of this situation for Palestinians and Israelis has essential differences and some similarities. The main similarity being, neither side is achieving any tangible long term security. The two communities are locked in a dehumanising, spiralling degradation, which appears to have no end.

Tomes have been written about this 60 year conflict. What we often do not hear are the dissenting voices in Israel, or those of the Jews in other countries speaking out against the oppressive measures of the Israeli State. Those people often silenced by accusations of anti-semitism, anti-Zionism and disloyalty, are gaining a momentum. Some dissenters believe Israel has become an out of control renegade state. Others wearied by the constant militarism and the settler intransigence, are taking a firmer human rights stand in support of a just peace.

“Legitimate self-defence does not mean oppressing a whole community or people. It does not mean demolishing their houses. Nor does it mean uprooting their olive trees, something that is specifically forbidden in the Torah (Dueteronomy20:19-20). It does not mean preventing them and their children from getting to hospitals or subjecting them to humiliation” (Mongtague, 2008).

Sara Roy’s most recent book, published in 2007, presents a collection of her research in the Gaza Strip over 20 years. Roy, a Harvard academic, the daughter of holocaust survivors, first went to Gaza in the summer of 1985 to conduct fieldwork for her doctoral dissertation. Her research focused on whether it was possible to promote economic development under the conditions of a military occupation.

Roy states that summer in Gaza changed her life. "I learned how occupation works, its impact on the economy, on daily life, and its grinding impact on the people, what it means to have little control over one’s life and, more importantly, over the lives of one’s children." Her shock when first going into Gaza, has parallels with my first reaction. It seemed inconceivable, that people should have to live in such appalling conditions.

A feature of life in Gaza has always been the constant closures by the Israeli military which cuts off trade, preventing produce such as fruit and vegetables grown in Gaza from access to markets, and workers from access to their jobs in Israel. Closures also prevent essential supplies of all kinds, including food and medicines, from going into Gaza. Try to imagine a month when the town or city you live in is completely cut off. How long do you think would it take before basic needs cease to be met? It is difficult to imagine, unless you think of hurricane examples such as, Katrina and New Orleans.

Imagine having to go through military checkpoints in your country, with no guarantee from day to day that the soldiers will let you pass. Then there is the wall which cuts off farmers from their olive trees, isolates villages and towns, making travel if a permit is given, even more torturous in the West Bank.

One has to question if illegal walls such as this one, erected around Bethlehem in 2005, is more representative of state belligerence against peace, as opposed to being a protection barrier against suicide bombers. And why has the constant building of illegal Israeli settlements become the norm in Palestinian land since1967, if peace is truly desired by the Israeli State?

Avraham Burg (2008) author of The Holocaust Is Over We Must Rise From Its Ashes, published the article The End of Zionism Israel must shed its illusions and choose between racist oppression and democracy, in 2003. Burg, a former speaker of the Knesset became a political dissenter. "It turns out that the 2000-year struggle for Jewish survival comes down to a state of settlements, run by an amoral clique of corrupt lawbreakers who are deaf both to their citizens and to their enemies. A state lacking justice cannot survive."

Burg's anxiety for the future of Israel, is replicated by other Jewish dissenters, academics, and people from all walks of life in Jewish communities. Dissention is presently a hopeful, more than a strong enough presence for peace. The powerful Jewish lobby in America, vigorously, sometimes visciously, oppose dissenters. That resonates with totalitarianism. Free speech can only be free, if people tow the party line. Some like Burg, believe the soul of Judaism, which embeds Jewish identity, is being eroded by state policies against the Palestinian people.

References
Avraham Burg (2008) The Holcaust Is Over We Must Rise From The Ashes, New York, Palgrave McMillan.

Sara Roy (2007) Failing Peace: Gaza and the Palestinian Conflict, London & Ann Arbor MI, Pluto Press.

Jeremy Montague (2008)You Shall Not Follow a Multitude to Do Evil in Independent Jewish Voices on Israel, Zionism And Jewish Identity: A Time To Speak Out, London & New York, Verso Press.

Other Reading
Norman G. Finklestein (2005) Beyond Chutzpah On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History, London & New York, Verso Press.
Neturei Karta Jews Against Zionism.

The Simple Life

A diary can be a voyage of self-discovery, or even a rediscovery of one's surroundings. This year I'm more mindful of my immediate locality, not just the village where I live, more the wider area. That has tended to be given a cursory glance. Rather than glance, and with the digital camera in hand, I have some excursions in mind. Sounds simple enough, however, I'm sure my powers of observation will be improved in doing that. What I want to achieve this year, is get the hang of using the digital camera. I enjoy using my Nikon D40x but I’m not a dedicated photographer. Not with the same passion I have for creative writing.

Many years ago on a train journey to Scotland, I chatted with a beautiful woman aged eighty. I asked her, "what's your secret for looking so young and healthy?" Her reply: Living a simple life, keeping myself busy. Never looking back, without looking forward. She had the power of positive thinking. A highland woman, she remembered when her cottage was lit by oil lamps. When she had to draw water from a well, and walked long distances to see her neighbours. She had a smallholding, and the land, she said, mostly gave her enough to live from. What she couldn't afford to buy, she made or her neighbours made. People had more practical skills then. They survived by sharing those.

Foiled Again!

No trip to Norfolk. The weekend weather was wild, with buckets of rain and gusting winds. At least today, be that drizzly, happens to be more calm. I worked on a short story, and whilst that came easily, I’m not satisfied with the ending. There is only so much tweaking I can do. I decided to put it aside for a few days, hoping I’ll be inspired. This month, I’ve been reading The Best American Short Stories. Heartened to know, every author had many drafts. That I’m not slogging away alone!

Last year I disposed of over 600 books, all in pristine condition. Some went to the village bazaar, others to students, friends, and colleagues. Books had taken over my home, to such an extent that was more like a library. Sometimes a space, should just be a space. Discussing this with a friend, she would feel uncomfortable if not having every space in her home filled. She collects frogs: ceramic, metal, and glass. There was time when she collected flat irons, before then owls. Every collection has taken over her home.

Apart from books, if I collect anything, that’s water colour paintings. Most are by the artist George Kosinski, some the work of a few local artists. Those have not taken over the walls in my home. I went into a more minimalist trajectory last year. Hired a painter to do major redecorating throughout. I now enjoy new style rooms with a better use of the space. Although clutter is passé, that tends to creep surreptitiously, like the unsuspected villain in a mystery story. My home office has a distinctly disordered corner. A jumble I should attend to, and keep putting off. I had a friend whose home was positively surgical. She was obsessively tidy, uncluttered to an extreme. Her home whilst modern, had no heart. The house seemed eviscerated.

My neighbour Eileen, has tasteful clutter, mostly memorabilia. Her family photographs adorn a corner wall. I always enjoy looking at those. Many are black and white, each one evokes a past era. Every picture has a family story, which I enjoy hearing. I doesn’t matter that I’ve listened to those before. They always seem fresh. Eileen lived through World War Two. She has vivid memories of the London Blitz in 1941. We frequently discuss how, and why, our culture has changed. I’m sure this is a common topic for many people, a peculiarity of a long life, with a tendency to look backwards more than forward.

We all have cherished memories, or otherwise, with a proclivity to reinvent aspects of the past through embellishment. In that respect every person is a storyteller. My latest short story is rooted in childhood. A few aspects are true, most are not. I rarely use first person, in this instance I have. When writing stories, I come home to my richly cluttered inner self.

Homely Mastery

We knit our silence
with calm presence
cut the cloth
to shape our lives
smooth the creases of our grief
ironing the pain
birth our souls with recipes
this homely mastery
women’s work.

Cool Jazz

Photo and video editing at www.OneTrueMedia.com

Peter White

Which Ography?

Nope, this isn’t about geography. There is a relationship to autobiography. In this instance autoethnography, which is quite new to me. I pondered about including something not quite mainstream in yesterday’s research theory session. Would the students think this a valid approach to research or not? The standpoint taken, admitting I did not know this in depth. I would present the basics to them, and be very interested in their thoughts.

Before doing that they had introductions to autobiography and memoir. Posing the question, could we trust those as the truth? Well, a big discussion followed about recognising truthfulness in what we read. Some thought the Diary of Anne Frank is autobiography. Others said no, this is a memoir. Three decided diary writing is personal reflections. The truth is how the writer perceives that to be. I threw in, what about multiple realities? Saying, we have many dimensions to our inner life. That reality isn’t so clear cut. Reality can be fuzzy because we depend upon memory, feelings, and perceptions of particular events. That caused a flurry of discussion, which rapidly became a fast flowing exchange of memories. A good point at which to say, “Okay. Let’s move on to authoethenography.”

So what is this and could it be something people do in online journals? Auto (self), ethno (cultural), the self in culture using one’s own life to create a personal narrative. Sounds familiar doesn’t it? This is a highly personalised style of writing. Researching self is the focus. Is that likely to be rigorous in terms of validity? Some say it is not others can justify what the rigor should be.

Lived experience is the focus of qualitative research. The main reason why I’m so tuned into these approaches. Lived experience becomes textual because we have language. And it is through language and writing we bring structure to the experiences of life. If all experience is text, that can be analysed in the dimensions of its behavioural, social, and cultural contexts.

Although autoethnography has been around for twenty years, traditional researchers view this as self-indulgent, even to suggesting it’s narcissistic. This is not strictly speaking an autobiography or a memoir. It does though require a good understanding of the reflective process.

Traditionally when doing research the self is excluded. Qualitative researchers interpret the life world of others. So where does that place the person in terms of researching self? Are there clear cut differences between autobiography, memoir, and autoethnography? Coming to this initially, the lines appeared to be somewhat blurred.

“Autoethnography is an autobiographical genre of writing and research that displays multiple layers of consciousness, connecting the personal to the cultural. Back and forth ethnographers gaze, first through an ethnographic wide-angle lens, focussing outward on social and cultural aspects of their personal experience; then, they look inward, exposing a vulnerable self that is moved by and may move through, refract, and resist cultural interpretations.” (Ellis & Bochner 2001)

Women can be subversive when writing. Many women have long resisted imposed cultural interpretations of how we should be. We find that in novels and poetry. Kate Chopin’s novel The Awakening, published in 1899, was vilified. I can’t say for certain if she consciously set out to be subversive. So possibly, Chopin unconsciously dissented when writing about the reality of a woman’s deep feelings. Her character Edna Pontellier, felt trapped in a mundane passionless marriage, her affair unconsummated. Regardless of that latter fact, Chopin’s book caused moral outrage. She was socially ostracised, silenced, and never published another novel.

This brings me to Anaïs Nin’s journals. Those are distinctly autobiographical veering more in the direction of autoethnography, than The Diary of Anne Frank. I’m treading to some extent upon swampy ground here. My thoughts are fluid, likely to deepen and change, as I discover more about autoethnography.

So far, auto-ethnographic accounts emerge as personal reflections of a multi-facetted inner life. Unlike the usual approaches to research, there is no single testable proposition. The researcher and the data is a unified embodied life. This is an examined life using reflective journal writing, ethnographic analysis and narrative reporting. In that respect veers away from standing on its own as an autobiography or a memoir. Which although related to those, the subtle differences are clearer.

As for the students, they enjoyed being part of my learning process, as I do of theirs. Sharing learning together generated a terrific buzz.

Reference
Ellis C.E., Bochner A.P., (2001) Ethnographically Speaking: Autoethnography, Literature and Aesthetics, Ethnographic Alternatives Series, AltaMira Press, USA.

Ghosts

Ghosts whispering in the wind: the title of my journal written when working in the Palestinian West Bank and Gaza Strip. My jottings about living with the Palestinian people, became the warp and the weft of their story. It’s also the first time in my life, when I took on board a cause that continues to absorb me. This was inevitable, who can live with a despairing nation and not be deeply moved?

They were like ghosts on the day when I drove Wajiha, Huda, and Rasmia, from the student’s hostel in Bethlehem to the Erez checkpoint the entrance to the Gaza Strip, their home, where we said goodbye. Watching them cross no-mans-land, the chimera on the road turned them into spectral figures. Would I ever see them again? Deep down feeling that was unlikely, they vanished in the fierce glare of the Mediterranean sun.

More than when in Iran, working in Palestine is the most defining period of my life. To be immersed in the culture, a uniquely formative experience. I returned in 1998 after the deaths of my parents and Kevin. That was a brief visit. Again in 2000 to complete some research, then optimism was more evident in the people. That was short lived when the second Intifada, unlike the first, was met with unprecedented bombing by Israel. Decent kind people I knew had their homes destroyed. The daily bombardments decimated familiar places in Bethlehem and Beit Jala. The peace masterminded in Oslo, which had always been tenuous, was dead.

Distanced and safe over here, I felt guilty for not being there, for not sharing this new horror with Palestinian friends. Their story had become my story, as if stitched on my skin like an embroidered Thobe. Mostly my thoughts were for the children, always the innocent victims of conflicts. There is a garden in the mountains beyond Hebron, where children play. Their mother and I together had planted the roses. Would I hold their tiny hands in mine again, see their eyes gaze in wonderment at the beauty of a rose? My anxiety eased somewhat when I called their mother. They were far enough from the focus of the bombing and safer. Her fear was the unpredictable Israeli settlers, who if riled thought nothing of evicting Palestinian families from their homes.

Life when working there from 1992 to 1996, for sure was not all gloom and misery. Mostly that was an exciting, happy adventure, especially with my dearest friend and her children. There is much I could say about the courage of this articulate, feisty Palestinian American woman, who when speaking street Arabic, often made people laugh. Like most women, her major concern is for her family. Living there was and still is unpredictable, an aspect one had to adjust to. Most foreign nationals were deeply committed to working there. Living in a warm friendly culture where the people are neighbourly, kind and generous, was downright homely.
Diaries:Live From Palestine.

Desert Island Discs

My library day had a special tick much like a friendly clock. On those days, I never wanted to linger in bed. After having a fortifying breakfast, I walked to the bus stop. Waiting for the bus had an exciting purpose. The town centre library, a stately Victorian building, spoke of serious purpose. The librarians, all female, were middle aged plain looking women, wearing cardigans and high neck blouses, plaid skirts and stout shoes. They had muted voices, with slow precise movements. The library seemed sacred then. The rituals there much like a religious service, with solemn incantations.

Fiction had the lion’s share of the bays rows. Poetry, drama, and music, squeezed in miserably with fiction. History, geography, travel, had capacious shelves mostly for the taller books. For a frequent user the book bays were predictable. That Saturday morning ritual set the tone for the week. I walked home from the bus stop, carrying a bag full of thrilling stories.

My sister also an avid reader, scathingly pushed me from L.M. Montgomery’s, Anne of Green Gables to Leo Tolstoy’s, Anna Karenina. Kid’s books were passé. She was in a Russian literature phase, reading Dostoyevsky, Chekhov, and Tolstoy. If there were no town library, I doubt that our lives would have been quite so enriched or our reading eclectic. If anyone asked what my favourite book was then, there are too many. Whichever one I selected, would feel like a betrayal of the others.

If a castaway, however, on the BBC Desert Island Discs radio programme, given the choice to take a favourite book, I would have Anne Shirley. Alone on a desert island, Anne would generate optimism and laughter. Over the years of engaging with books, those read in childhood resound most like bells.