Navigating Fear, Finding Solidarity: A Personal Journey Through the Palestine-Israel Divide.

By Rita Mendes-Flohr

To my friends outside of Israel, 

You have been asking me, am I okay?

A sense of darkness, of doom and paralysis has descended upon me in this horrific war. Like so many others, I am not able to concentrate, not able to detach myself from the news. I lie in bed much of the day, or sit aimlessly in front of the computer, doing nothing, not even able to read for any length of time. 

Is it fear? I fear for our 25-year-old grandson, a mobilized combat soldier on the southern front with a ground invasion into Gaza pending. I fear too for our son and granddaughter, his niece, both living in the ecological village of Klil, not far from the Lebanese border, who do not yet sense the urgency to move further south from that potential front. Somehow, we still feel safe in Jerusalem, though with more precision missiles, this might be an illusion, as it will be possible to bomb Western Jerusalem without the risk of hitting the Muslim holy sites. 

I think the fear is beyond the personal, beyond my immediate family. It is a fear for, and identification with, all those living in this land, Jews and Arabs alike – a sense of being connected to all those whose lives, or those of their friends and family, have been so brutally ended, to all those whose homes have been destroyed, and worst of all, to all those who have been taken hostage. I am a part of much wider networks, beyond those of my family and close friends – networks from my hiking, political activism, and art worlds, even from Facebook, with my many “Friends” I do not know personally. And even if I don’t see myself as an Israeli, but more as the eternal outsider, this is where I have become rooted over the past 53 years. And now, I am part of a country at war.

Perhaps that is why I cannot stop checking the messages on my phone or tuning in to the news on the radio, to hear who was barbarically murdered, killed in action, or abducted, and whose friend, or family member was. That is why I, like so many others, have the need to know, to keep up with the news, to hear the story of the nightmare at the exact moment it is known, becomes public. To feel the horror and the pain - together. 

And then, there is the fear for the future of this country. Where is it going, with its bombing the hell out of Gaza, without regard for the civilian population, without seemingly caring for the Israeli hostages held there? And where will that lead us, what does it give us? 

After this war, I fear Israel will become an even more fascist country, a country that believes in more and more military power and nothing but power to quell resistance, violence that is bound to be countered by more and more violence – as weapons become more sophisticated and deadly on all sides, not to speak of the billions they will cost at the expense of the health and wellbeing of all. I fear that if our government and so many Israelis do not wake up and realize we must find a way to live together, Jews and Palestinians, that more bombs cannot possibly be the solution, it will be the end of us all. 

I am not only bound to people in my Israeli networks, but also fear for the Palestinians in the occupied territories, where settlers are taking advantage of the situation, and finalizing their transfer of Palestinian shepherd communities in area C, with the IDF passively looking on. 

This morning I heard, with great sadness, of the imminent expulsion of the Ein Rashash community, where I would join the Bedouin shepherds almost weekly, roaming their beautiful fields overlooking the Jordan Valley. Now, settlers, doing the dirty work for our settler government, knowing they won’t be punished, have been even more resolutely terrorizing our Bedouin friends, bursting into their homes in the night, killing their sheep. Meanwhile, Israeli activists, who have been organizing in shifts to be there 24 hours a day, are no longer able to stop the terror. 

With the settlers becoming increasingly violent, I had already become wary of returning to accompany the Bedouin shepherds, even before this war. We would be a team of only two or three activists on each shift to face the terror of the settlers, and that now feels insufficient and unsafe. And so, I have been going less frequently.

If I do anything in this war, it will be to accompany the Palestinians in their olive harvest, when circumstances allow the Rabbis for Human Rights to organize this activity again, as they have been doing every single year – hopefully before the olives start to fall off the trees, as we are now in high picking season. I don’t know why the olive harvest feels less scary, as even in less volatile times, there have been attacks by vicious settlers, which is why the Palestinian farmers need our protection. Perhaps because I would be less in charge - there is an organization running the activity, with its expertise and connections, and I would be a member of a larger group while in the field. 

On the other hand, I don’t envision myself volunteering to prepare food for the mobilized soldiers or even to deliver clothes and other necessities to people evacuated from the kibbutzim and communities around the Gaza Strip who left all their belongings behind. There are enough Israelis doing that. In fact there is a huge wave of volunteering – whereas very few are concerned with protecting the Palestinians in the occupied territories, where the violent settlers have free rein. 

I was feeling paralyzed. So, I wrote this. 

Perhaps now I will be able to act. 

Rita

Jerusalem, October 14h, 2023, the eighth day of the war. 

Rita Mendes-Flohr

Rita Mendes-Flohr, the Mendes to our founder Paul's Flohr, is a visual artist, writer, avid hiker, and human rights activist. Born on the Dutch Caribbean island of Curaçao, she studied in the USA and now lives in Jerusalem, feeling at home only in the ‘in-between’. Explore her work on her website: www.ritamendesflohr.com.