Humiliation

 Humiliation

We were walking in the Muslim Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem yesterday and witnessed a nasty random act of violence by IDF soldiers against a young Palestinian man.

Four soldiers, two men and two women, all young, were posted at an intersection, right on the Via Dolorosa - the street that is said to be the route of Jesus on his humiliating and torturous march up to his crucifixion on Calvary. The route has plaques on the wall along the way marking the actual locations of the stations of the cross found in Catholic Churches around the world. Supposedly the real places where Christ lugged his cross, fell three times, was helped by Simon the Cyrenean, had his face wiped by Mary Magdalene, all that.

So it was more than a little ironic that Israeli soldiers on this street grabbed a Palestinian man, probably in his twenties, who was simply passing by on his way somewhere or other in this bustling city. The two male soldiers pulled him aside while the female soldiers stepped up in front of them to prevent anyone on the street from intervening. They demanded his identification card, which he showed them, then they shoved him and made him put his hands on the wall, with feet spread out. From behind him, they roughly patted him down, though it was more of a shake down than a pat down. Then they jerked him around, had him put his hands up in the air and did the same to his front. A woman who may have been his mother stood witnessing this. 

When the soldiers were done, the Palestinian man took a moment to tuck his shirt in his pants, then walked away looking pissed. Throughout this ordeal, he had offered no resistance and to my eye, maintained his own dignity. I probably felt more outrage than he did. No doubt he was used to this kind of abuse. Just as Black people in the US are used to it.

Our Israeli friend Jeff told us at dinner last night that Palestinians were now being given 3 options by Israelis, in this moment of all-out “pacification.” They could leave, be killed, or submit. And submission means accepting that they have no rights and are subject to domination by Israelis. The stop-and-search routine that we saw today is one daily reminder of who’s in charge and a way of “normalizing” state terror towards Palestinians. Teaching submission is the point.

If this reminds us of the horrors of slavery in the US, it shouldn’t be a surprise. Ta-Nehisi Coates, after his recent visit to Palestine, made this exact comparison. 

I think many of us may not see the stark similarity of the settler colonial state of Israel with the settler colonial United States. The genocide, the slavery, the white supremacy. 

It’s not surprising that the US now provides such unrelenting support for Israel, its ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, its expansionist vision for a Greater Israel. Israel is our progeny, our mirror image. We are one.

And at the heart of this bloody relationship is a racist “othering” of the indigenous people who get in the way of our domination and exploitation. There are many ways of enforcing this othering in overtly apartheid Israel. The humiliation we watched today is just one.