Moreover, it is impossible to view in the situation in terms of black and white or moral and immoral. The Palestinian side is divided, the most famous of which is between Hamas and Fatah.
What you don't often see in the cable news channels is the divisions among Israelis. The media has failed to present the folks who do not readily subscribe to the prevailing notion of an Israeli Jew.
One account is Ezra Nawi. In an article in The Nation, he reveals the "culture of deceit that has taken over all official discourse relating to the Occupied Palestinian Territories," in Israel. His account is deeply moving and a provocative reminder of the ongoing strife that is continually difficult to deal with.
Despite petitions on Nawi's behalf, he will be sentenced in July after the courts found him guilty of "assaulting two police officers in 2007 while struggling against the demolition of a Palestinian house in Um El Hir, located in the southern part of the West Bank."
Even more tragic is that he was found guilty by the same bodies that promote and enable grave injustice against humanity. He elucidates:
Was I the one who beat young Palestinian children?The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has proven itself to be so enduring, that it even outlives plagues and wars. Even in the spirit of hope, Pres. Obama does not seem to be a promising agent of change in this foreign policy area.Did I hit the elderly?
Did I poison the Palestinian residents' sheep?
Did I demolish homes and destroy tractors?
Did I block roads and restrict movement?
Was I the one who prevented people from connecting their homes to running water and electricity?
Did I forbid Palestinians from building homes?
Over the past eight years, I have seen with my own two eyes hundreds of abuses such as these and exposed them to the public--therefore I am considered a provocateur. I can only say that I am proud to be a provoker.
Because I am a provoker, the police together with their allies have threatened me, beaten me and arrested me on numerous occasions. And when I continued to "provoke" them, they did not hesitate to out me as a gay man; indeed, they spread rumors among the Palestinians with whom I work that I have AIDS.
One of the reasons I have been singled out has to do with who I am. It is difficult to explain, but as a Mizrahi Jew (descended from Jewish communities in the Arab and Muslim world), a gay man and a plumber, I do not belong to the elite of Israeli society and do not fit the stereotype of the Israeli peacenik--namely, an intellectual Jew of Ashkenazi decent. Actually, the police officers who constantly arrest me and I are part of the same social strata. I was programmed like them, have a similar accent, know their jargon and our historical background is comparable. And yet, in their eyes I am on and for the other side, the Palestinian side.
