Nursery School and the West Bank

Last night I went to the first US Screening of a documentary by Ilan Ziv called The Junction about the families of three young men that were killed around the Netzarim Junction in the Gaza Strip at the start of the Second Intifada in 2000. I can't even begin to express how moved I was by this film, but my stomach was in knots all last night and I kept bursting out into tears at random moments. Netzarat was a Palestinian village that was vacated and plowed down to the ground and replaced by two enormous apartment complexes and a military base, a Israeli settlement. They changed the name to Netzarim and relocated all the Palestinian inhabitants right across the road to the Netzarat Refugee Camp. But that really wasn't what the film was about. The film was about three families and the huge gaping holes left in their lives by the death of their sons. They were all 18 years old. My age. And for the first time I didn't scoff and think about how many more Palestinian mothers had grieved the death of children than the Israeli mothers, because who gives a shit, that's not the point. The two main young men David and Rasfid lost their lives. One was a drafted Israeli soldier who in high school had done anti-occupation ads but whose skewed 17year old sense of duty had led him to choose a combat unit in Netzarim, sacrificed for ideas that he did not understand. I think of the Rembrandt painting of Abraham knife poised on the top of the mountain, and of Isaacs terrified eyes, his long, scared, boyish neck...So vulnerable. The other was a poor Palestinian boy who had thrown "stones at the tanks rolling over his home" as my sister so elegantly put it, who looked out the window of his plaster home and seen two towers of wealth where his home used to be. His father had left his mother and sister and him when he was twelve and at 18 he was their sole source. His mother said with tears in her eyes that Rasfid's dream was to be a martyr and that he had gotten his wish. The day after Sharon's visit to the Gaza, the second intifada broke out and Rasfid went with all the young men of Netzarat to throw stones at the military base and the apartment buildings. After twelve hours of riots, the Israeli Army sent helicopters and fired at the crowd from the sky and dropped missiles into the refugee camp. Rasfid was shot in the head seven times.

But that's not what the film was about either. It was about Rasfid's mother telling us that their used to be orange groves and she would watch her son and daughter climb the trees and throw oranges at each other. It was about a father watching home videos and cracking his knuckles. After the film I asked the director where David's mother was (they only interviewed his father) and he said that she had backed out at the last minute. He said that David's mother during the interviews was intellectually incomprehensible, but emotionally she said everything. He said to me "You couldn't understand a word that came out of her mouth, and yet you could understand everything." I immediately felt so stupid. How could you talk to a video camera when you could hardly bring yourself to get out of bed in the morning?
And Rasfid's mother, averted her grief in other ways, speaking of holy trascendence and of martyrs sitting to the right of the Prophet. And I am thinking, what is it like to have no present, either grieving past evils and loss and horror, angry and frustrated, or obsessing over the future, your place in heaven, the reward for your diligent suffering on earth? What is it like to never be able to just live? What is like when the only weapon you have against your Goliath strength enemy is that you are willing to die? Rasfid was my age. I thought honestly and carefully about it and found that I can think of no cause that I would be willing to die for.
This isn't terribly coherent at all. But how many children must die before it stops mattering who started it or whose holy text gives them right to a piece of land. Ilan Viz said that it would be a movement of mothers and fathers who are tired of losing their children and not a movement of the children themselves.

So in a moment today at the Nursery School I understood the dilemma that is faced in Palestine in a new light.

We teach the three and four year olds at the nursery school to use words when they are angry and we reward that kind of rational behavior by listening and evaluating the situation listening to both side and then by trying to change it. For example, today. Emma and Abby are playing together in the playhouse and Abby decides that she wants to play alone and so she shoves Emma out. Emma cries and in turn shoves Abby. At this point I intervene and ask screaming Emma to stop kicking things and use her words. "But she pushed me FIRST," Emma wails over and over again. Me: "Can you use your words to tell Abby why you are upset." She gulps and says through tears to the halfway oblivious Abby "I didn't like it when you pushed me out of the playhouse. It hurt my feelings." I feel a twinge of pride because I feel like I have become a part of something really good and lasting. So then we have a short conversation about the advantages of sharing and apologies are said and a reminder given that hitting and shoving is not an unacceptable way of dealing with anger and that in the future we (and there is a chorus) "USE OUR WORDS!!" This is why I love kids.
We teach our children to express their anger through words if they want to change a situation and we all agree that words are more effective than hitting people and throwing temper tantrums. Agreed? But what happens when the teacher asks the child to use words and he does but the teacher isn't really interested at all in listening to those words and only cares about putting a stop to the violent action and doesn't really address the actual issue that sparked the action in the first place?
We ask why the Palestinians resort to violence over and over again (note to add that Palestinian violence is called terrorism while Israeli violence is called action), and I can only ask What else are they to do when their words have been ignored, when their voices have no standing, appreciation, or real consideration to those they are in conflict with? So you don't know what else to do but to throw stones, and then you grow up and realize that your stones barely scratch the surface of ANYTHING and so you use the only weapon that you have, a willingness to give up your life, and you strap a bomb to yourself, say a prayer, and you walk into a government building.
Okay, I'm done for now. I have to go read about the fiery pit of hell (Jonathan Edwards).