Now that I have seen, I am responsible

February 27, 2013 | Young Voices
Kayla Drudge | Special to Young Voices

On my recent two-week visit to Palestine/Israel, I had the pleasure of meeting the renowned author and archbishop, Elias Chacour. Referring to the Israeli occupation of his homeland, Father Chacour said, “People come for a few days and they go home and write a book about it. They come for a few weeks and they go home and write an article. But people who come for a year or two go home and are silent. They are too confused.”

Here I am, writing an article . . . and I am confused.

I think it started as I stood on a roof in Bethlehem, now a sprawl of concrete boxes boxed in by concrete, and looked over the separation wall between Israel and Palestine to the red-roofed Israeli settlements on the next hill. It was the first day of my visit, and I was meeting the wall for the first time in its most heart-breaking form. On the Palestinian side, the cold, crass concrete is spray-painted over with colourful messages and elaborate illustrations proclaiming a hope for peace, freedom and better days to come. One message read, “Now that I have seen, I am responsible.”

I wasn’t confused yet. Instead, I was angry, as though the wall’s violation of this land infringed on my own fragile belief in peace. Then the Palestinian man standing next to me spoke. “If you want to help Israel,” he said, “help end the occupation. The occupation is evil. It is hurting their reputation, not ours.” In the midst of Palestinian reality, the man on the roof was not making a political claim, simply an observation.

And now, as I think back to his words from the far-removed vantage point of snow-blown Manitoba, I begin to understand why they keep coming back to me. There is an old Palestinian woman who must enter her house by climbing a ladder onto her roof; her front door opens on an Israeli settler’s road and she is not allowed to use it.

Another Palestinian woman runs a small family store, surrounded by the wall on three sides. What used to be a thriving business on a busy street is now a cornered store from which the woman sells her story to tourists, making money off their pity.

Above the old city streets of Hebron, which are packed with Palestinian villagers, tarps and netting are strung. They are meant to shelter villagers from refuse thrown out of the windows of Jewish settlers living above: furniture, garbage, even bleach.

The occupation is a situation of tangible oppression in which Israel wields the power, and, as with any system of oppression, there is a patent element of evil in this reality. In a world of walls, it is natural to find oneself standing on one side of the conflict. It is easy for me to pick a side from the comfort of my Canadian home. But I am not as convinced as I once was that being pro-Palestinian is the way towards peace, that simply picking a side—even if it seems to be the “right” one—is the best way to help the oppressed.

My brief window into the reality of Israel and Palestine reminds me that the conflict affects real lives on both sides, that this is a conflict of individuals with unique histories, not just of one political group opposed to another.

In Palestine, the face of Israel is found less in its prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, than in the 18-year-old sitting on a roof in Hebron, holding a machine gun with his finger on the trigger, obviously bored as he watches Palestinian children playing in the rusted playground below. The gun in his hands does not make him any more evil than the children he is watching. The occupation also occupies the occupier; it oppresses the oppressor as well as the oppressed. Now that is confusing.

So as I return to my life in Manitoba, far from those faces in Palestine and Israel, I often think back to the roofs of Bethlehem and Hebron with their jarring paradoxes of politics and humanity. I pray I will never forget that this conflict is made up not only of walls and history, but of roofs and real lives, too. I may remain confused, but may I not be silent. Now that I have seen, I am responsible.

Kayla Drudge,17, has been home-schoolled all her life. She attends Covenant Mennonite Church, Winkler, Man.

Share this page: Twitter Instagram

Add new comment

Canadian Mennonite invites comments and encourages constructive discussion about our content. Actual full names (first and last) are required. Comments are moderated and may be edited. They will not appear online until approved and will be posted during business hours. Some comments may be reproduced in print.