SUMMER in Jerusalem means a massive influx of tourists from around the world, including hundreds of participants in Zionist youth programs. The streets of the Old City and the town center are flooded with camera-wielding American and European teens, drinking in the milk and honey narrative served up by their guides.
Birthright and its affiliate schemes have a particular line to push, and glossing over the injustices and iniquities makes it easier for them to sell their sugar-coated narrative to their charges.
On the eastern side of town, another group of internationals are finding their feet during their first trip to the Holy Land, but in very different circumstances. They are taking part in ICAHD’s (Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions) sixth Summer Rebuilding Camp, in which volunteers join local Palestinians to reconstruct a family home demolished by the Israeli authorities. In the space of two weeks, they will build the house from scratch, which is a enormous boost for the homeless residents in question, but has a far wider reaching impact. By bringing Israel’s discriminatory demolition policies to the attention of the outside world, a light is shone on one of the cruellest aspects of the conflict. “The demolition of a home is the demolition of a family,” reads the introduction to a photo exhibition in Bet Arabiya, where the volunteers are staying, and which itself has been knocked down four times by the authorities, who claim it is illegally built. “You can see the whole of the occupation from here,” Angela Godfrey-Goldstein of ICAHD told me.
For the majority, this was their first visit to Israel, and even after just a few days the experience had left an indelible impression. “I didn’t realise how systematic and well thought out the laws are to separate the two societies,” said one man over lunch. “It’s a bit shocking -— I had no idea of the extent to which housing demolition happened,” said Mimi Micner, a Jewish student from Canada. “I’ve stopped looking at the conflict through a religious lens. Now I see it through a human rights lens instead. It’s not about Biblical claims to the land; the reality of the situation is that both peoples are here, and it doesn’t matter about history. They need to coexist, and if they don’t treat each other humanely, then it just can’t work.”
ICAHD’s work, as well as that done by other Israeli-run NGOs, is crucial precisely because it does away with hypothesizing and gets on with practical, hands-on righting of the wrongs carried out by the Israeli authorities. Not only do those taking part get firsthand experience of the situation, but the Palestinians being assisted are shown that not all Israelis are cut from the same cloth.
