Chris Hedges: Israel's Barrier To Peace

And what of the good Israelis? Where are they? What are they doing?

I found Allegra Pacheco mopping the floors of her small second-story apartment in Bethlehem. Her infant son is asleep. The furniture is upended in the corner of the living room. She is scrubbing away. The scent of ammonia from the tiled floor fills the room, even with the windows open.

<snip>

Allegra is a Jew. She grew up in Long Island, where she was a member of a “Zionist-oriented family.” She visited Israel as a teenager on one of the tours designed to get Americans to bond with the Jewish state. She went to Barnard and Columbia Law School. She began to ask questions, questions many around her refused to ask.

She read about the Middle East. The story of the Palestinians began to unsettle her. She began to see another side of Israel. She moved to Israel after a few years as a lawyer in New York. She studied for the Israeli bar. She looked to Lea Tsmel, the Israeli lawyer who has often defended Palestinians, as a mentor.

She opened a law office in Bethlehem. She was the only Israeli ever to open a law office in Palestinian territory. She handled cases involving house demolitions, land confiscations, torture and prisoners who had been incarcerated without ever being charged. She documented some torture practices, at first denied by Israel, and took the case to the Supreme Court. Most of the practices were outlawed.

The second Palestinian uprising began as she had taken a break and was writing a book as a Peace Fellow at Harvard University. She dropped the manuscript and came back. The restrictions, however, were so draconian she often could not get through the checkpoints to her office. It was hard to see clients or make court appearances. She took over the case of a Palestinian human rights activist, Abed al-Rahman al-Ahmar, being held without charge in administrative detention.

“I met my husband Abed in 1996, when he was under interrogation and being tortured,” she says. “He was then sent to two and a half years of administrative detention and I continued to represent him. When he was released, he helped me set up my law office and worked with me. That’s how we fell in love.”

They married. They spent their honeymoon trapped in their apartment under almost continuous curfew.

She was eight months pregnant when Abed was arrested for the 13th time. He was sent to Ofra prison. The prisoners live 20 to a tent in the desert. They sleep on wooden pallets. The tents are sweltering in the summer and cold in the winter.

<snip>

She is an Israeli citizen, but because her husband is Palestinian, because of his ethnicity, he is refused citizenship. She was born in Long Island. He was born here. This is how it works in Israel. Israel is a democracy only for Jews. If she had married a Jew he would have a passport and citizenship.

“What democratic state builds its laws based on a person’s ethnicity?” she asks. “The goal of the South African apartheid regime was to separate whites and blacks to preserve white privilege. How is this different from what is being done to the Palestinians?”

“Who is really being shut out by this wall?” she adds. “Who is being shut in? Israel will be a closed society when the wall is finished. It will even further shun reality.”

http://www.truthdig.com/dig/page4/20060725_israels_wall/

interesting.

"Monarchies for Arabs"

interesting

that would respect human rights. I'm sure he regrets the error and will correct himself in the future.

So because most Arab governments are brutal monarchies, Israel should set them as her example?

one would think that a civilized nation like Israel would endorse such unions.

But instead they break apart families and refuse to recognize the Palestinian as part of the larger Israeli nation.

They say Palestinian never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity, but what do we call this policy?

try again.

they dont wear uniforms..hard to tell....

you will never have to burden yourself with that knowledge, despite what his wife says about him.

his nationality.