Activist > Writer

Someone suggested to me that I should settle down about government, policy and media outlets so I can write something that would humanize Palestinians for the outside world. “Why don’t you write something about a normal Palestinian person, like a portrait” or “why not a story about a little Palestinian boy?—even a novel!”

There are several problems with this idea. The first problem is I already considered the idea and I liked it much better when I had it, not someone else; nothing takes the shine out of an idea like someone else prompting me with it. If someone else thought of it, then they should get on a plane, come over here and do it; it’s so obvious. I could as easily find new ways to paint the horror of occupation. I am not here to catalogue their memories in preparation for their demise—I’m here in solidarity while they resist the forces that threaten their way of life.They really would not need to be humanized if others were not out there dehumanizing them.

The main reason I am reluctant to start profiling Palestinians or create a Palestinian storyline is because that is not my story to tell. The implications are disgusting to me. If I were a naturalist, this would be an excellent time to find my voice on behalf of trees, birds, animals and landscapes in danger. I am a peace-worker: my job is to make people listen to the voices that are already crying to be heard. I do want to tell stories about Palestinians but I want to step carefully because I am not better equipped to tell those stories than they are. I will be the best vessel possible, I promise, when I return to the United States but I think the author of the novel about the little Palestinian boy should be a Palestinian man remembering his childhood. He will be perfectly capable of telling his own story ten times better than I might.

We have passed the age of 35mm film; I am capable of posting pictures that speak louder than my words, via this blog and social networks, with relative ease. What I cannot do it locate one of those tiny, plastic film canisters. Every morning, I day-dream about unscrewing the lid from one of those and moseying over to the apartheid wall. There, I would scoop in some dirt and squirrel it away for the next year. When mid-terms came and I made my brief visit to Michigan (to tell family hellogoodbye) I would take that little vial of dirt with my everywhere that I spoke. Whenever someone contested me, I would carefully pour some of that dirt on the nearest table and say “if you have any dirt from underneath the apartheid wall, you got me. Otherwise, I advise you to sit quietly and listen for a while.” That dirt would scream louder than any picture. This is my selfish little fantasy because I was not believed when I spoke at West Michigan Annual Conference. I relied upon the witness of a friend to make my case for divestment and the assembly voted to the contrary for reasons I still do not fully understand. I like to say that people are pro-Israel but the Israel they favor does not actually exist—it’s in their imaginations.

So, here I am cutting down the audience at home instead of building Palestinians up. I know this is a dead-end and I'll have to do better. The thing is, patting these wonderful people on the back repeatedly does too little. They already know that they deserve better—they are extremely hospitable. They are more multi-lingual, on average, then Americans. They drink better coffee over here. Their kids can dance. They suffer more with less bitching. They also know all of this. I would feel silly, sitting here patronizing Palestinians when I feel as if what they need me to do, for them, is hammer very very hard on my passport country and all its ridiculous policies that support what will be legendary levels of oppression. In the grander scheme, I have too little faith in my compatriots overseas. I’m afraid I would write a stirring and accurate portrayal just for someone in the mid-West to go ...

“Oh, that’s nice...” and never do anything.

So, I’ll save my stories for another day. Today, I will keep ringing in peoples ears about government, policies, unethical media and all of the other macro-level garbage that makes me cantankerous on a daily basis because I DO know that these people deserve better. I also know that the only people who read my blog regularly are also Young Adult Mission Personnel who get cranky about similar things and right now I want solidarity, not a Pulitzer Prize.

The Time Change

I live in the third story apartment that sits atop Zoughbi Zoughbi’s home in the Zoughbi family complex. From my balcony, I could watch the sun set each night between supper and prayers. In the morning, it just barely peaked through my East window as I began my morning devotions, six hours after my friends in the Pacific y siete horas antes de mis amigos en Americana Latina. All of that changed Friday morning, when I descended to breakfast with the Zoughbis at eight and discovered that it was actually seven.

“They changed the time, I think—“said my boss, phoning other people from the office to get a consensus on whether the Palestinian territories had just abandoned daylight savings’ time. “Well, I didn’t like that time anyway. It was too early...” Zoughbi used the extra hour to prepare us a grand breakfast and then run away on an errand. The other volunteer and I found “Trading Places” with Eddie Murphey and Dan Akroyd on Lebanese TV (“...in Philadelphia, that watch is worth 50 dollars...”—from the pawn shop scene). Zoughbi came back to pick us up, as promised, but he hadn’t had any breakfast yet, himself, so we stopped at his favorite place on Manger Street (this is Bethlehem, by the way...) to get fresh homus and falafel. I think that we must have stepped into a time-warp. This place was so packed, so busy, and so Palestinian that it seemed as if we all became petrified in place waiting for his order.

Janet warned me that I would become frustrated with ‘Palestinian time’. She warned it takes them a week to do what “we could do in a day”. Now, with an extra hour in our schedule, we were destined to be late anyway. Last night, I got my second bad-taste of Palestinian time when Zoughbi insisted that we go visit some of his friends after the concert we attended. I sat for some shred of infinity listening to old men carry-on in Arabic, only catching something about a man with no pants on. Zoughbi finally gave me leave to walk home...

Up until that point, I was trying to stick to him like I would to my grandfather. I remember the time we spent over an hour at Bonnie & Clydes’s restaurant with some friends of his. I fidgeted and mumbled something about getting back to work and Buck just laughed and said “don’t worry, you’re still getting paid...” It was a similar vibe when we arrived late to Wi’am Friday. I set my computer up in the conference room, as usual, to show everyone how productive I could be for the center and (through it) the causes of Palestinian Liberation, World Peace, Proper English Grammar, etc.

“Why are you sitting in the dark?” said Imad, “come have some breakfast outside...”

“Zoughbi already fed us a big breakfast...”

“Come have some tea...” –he had me suckered, right there.

I made an appearance at the picnic table and started drinking the ‘nana’. Virtually all the other staff were there, plus a calligraphy artist, a pregnant woman from Mennonite World Service, and the guy who paints buildings.

“I’d better do something productive for the Center today, huh?”

“Sit down—you build the relationships; ...you want falafel?”

After all these years of berating myself, my ‘discipline’ was slain by the scent of falafel. A moment later, a revelation seized me: the homus we waited so long for was the best DAMN homus I’d ever tasted. As second breakfast drew to a close, everyone started to rise and make their way back to the building. As I did, Zoughbi said “no, don’t rush—finish your eating.”

This was not the first or last time I had heard something like that...

“You slept-in? Good—it is good you sleep away your jet-lag. No need to get-up at seven.”

“Are you done with supper? No no... don’t get up. We’ll wait. You’d like to have more?”

“You want ice-cream?” “You want fruit?” “Have some more coffee...” (well, okay...) “You want to go to the dead-sea? It’s fine—you should go.”—and that’s how my late day at the office ended. We had lunch with a group who was headed to the Dead-sea and I went with them. Since I hadn’t had time to get involved with a project, it really didn’t interrupt the flow of my day. Things have a way of working out: Zoughbi had no staff who spoke French but a visitor from Kairos Canada came unexpectedly and we were able to ply him into translating with copious hospitality. “Kairos,” I said, “that means ‘right timing’. Americans maximize the minute for quantity and miss the hour of quality. My last boss, Andy Page, was a great boss by American standards. He was so efficient that he could be the executive director of four Boys & Girls Clubs. He was also a ghost. He asked me to do a grant and then never offered guidance or feedback. “You gotta keep moving, John...” he commented weeks later, “Your writing is great but you need to learn to be less detail oriented.”

What? That was a grant to help underprivileged children! Imad and I sat down together, my third day at work, and started working on the language of a grant to fund young peoples’ mediator training. We read passages back and forth to each other, chiseling at this grant between cups of coffee. We really strained over every phrase—until about four o’clock. “That’s enough for today,” he said, “tomorrow, we do it together—like twins.” We did. We finished it, without killing ourselves. There was no need to rush and destroy the chance to form a good relationship. Now, he’s going to give me Arabic lessons.

For every time that I have sat and chilled for a moment, there has been a time when someone on the street has yelled “Abu-Tarek! Keiv hala?” ~Abu-Tarek means “Tarek’s Dad”: it’s Zoughbi’s nickname. Everyone knows Zoughbi Zoughbi (everyone knew John K. Gore...). Efficiency is not equal to effectuality—people can get a lot of garbage done quickly. Sometimes, having a positive impact means letting plans go: one day, some staff left at the drop of a hat to mediate a traffic accident. On the other hand, everyone might be outside having coffee when the guy who paints houses shows up, this time needing advice. I am seeing the phrase “time is money” in a whole new light, now. For people who value money or time more than the things that can be done with them, sparing a minute or a shekel is costly. For people who value people, time is measured in cups of coffee. They get important work done year after year not by trying to maximize productivity but by being steadfast in their commitments. So far, it seems as if everyone at Wi’am is internally motivated to play their role and do it right.My discipline is not slain at all but finally coming to maturity. My own internal motivation increases daily. Schedules are only scaffolds.

Palestinian time, at its best, is extremely rich. My co-workers have the strength to wrestle with uncertainty on a daily basis, sometimes working on conflicts late into the night or taking surprise guests on tours of the refugee camp. All of that still does not account for why the Palestinian Authority was so insistent that the West Bank change its clocks on Friday. After all, Israel was just about to turn their own clocks back an hour the following Sunday.

“It used to be that an Israeli soldier could ask for the time and, if the Palestinian told him anything other than his own time, the soldier would take his watch and smash it right there...”

That’s why Palestine falls back on Friday—the Muslim Holy Day—and is deliberately an hour late for the entire weekend.

The sun sets at the same time, in the grander scheme, but now my prayer time comes earlier in my day. I can often see fireworks going off in the city, weeks past Ramadan and now the bid for statehood. In the morning, I get to feel like I am sleeping-in as I draw the curtains at six and go back to bed until the new seven o’clock comes.

Rebels' Fatherland

Flag Day was several days ago and The Fourth of July is not far behind. My mother, sister and I are going North to visit Lake Huron at Alpena and the big bridge between peninsulas at Mackinac. Before Labor Day dawns on the United States, I will be in another country working as a missionary. It was not long ago that I was on my grandmother’s couch, watching a Memorial Day special on the battle of Gettysburg and studying the reenacted patriotic acts of Americans fighting Americans—the men in grey who fought for economic strength versus those in blue who fought for the freedom of men and the unification of the land. Neither line was wanting for men of character and conviction who loved this country above safety and family.

I lost the patriotic stirrings of my youth and I probe, pacing my apartment, for an eloquent way to explain why I do not want them back. Patriotism’s close association with war is not helpful. As a boy, I was moved to tears by the sepia images of brave men sacrificing themselves, playing like a newsreel in my imagination. A decade hence, a schoolmate of mine returned from Iraq with a serious case of PTSD that he ‘caught’ the moment his truck exploded and splattered friends’ entrails onto his face. The heroics of the silver screen era were long ago tinted red by more realistic portrayals but I believe even those images have not lost their power, whether it is determination embodied as the flag is raised on Iwo Jima or determination, again, when the flag is planted on our Moon. Someone might get the buzz watching “Saving Private Ryan” or “Apollo 13” (thanks, Tom Hanks).

Rhetorically speaking, the key phrases are worn from too much nationalistic wordsmithing. JFK promised the USA would be on the Moon before the 60s were finished. Among several iconic sound bites, he left us “Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country,” a stirring piece of Americana that is also a device. There was no less pride or dedication from the citizens of Imperial Japan—to the contrary, there is a collectivist sentiment in it; ‘Do not be concerned with your own desires, determine what you can do for the nation’, or perhaps another nation. Adolf Hitler “liberated” Poland as he spurred the Third Reich across Europe. Stalin’s Soviet Union “liberated” them again. Finally, the Poles liberated Poland. Decades later, a group of desperate Al Qaeda members hijacked aircraft and crashed them into New York City buildings. Why? My guess is that they believed it was to help free souls from worldly corruption. The United States brought the most powerful military forces in the world to their homeland in the name of “enduring freedom”. I have deleted as many examples from this paragraph as are left behind. The point is that the words are just a fresh coat of paint on a given agenda: take resources from China, ethnically cleanse Europe, score points for Jihad, establish presence in the Middle East. Still, I cannot say that “liberty and justice for all” are not important, even if battling tyranny sometimes looks suspiciously like being tyrannical.

I wondered if my patriotism could be cut down by the actual lapses in liberty and justice. Hundreds of broken treaties with native peoples litter the United States’ history; that alone is enough to shame me. Our economy was at one time built upon slaves, then upon freed slaves exploited as tenant farmers. Thousands of Japanese Americans were put into concentration camps so that white people could feel more comfortable. Women still have trouble getting equitable pay in this country. I could go on without even leaving our borders. To be honest, though, I can overlook all of that. I knew all of those things at sixteen and still managed to convince myself that our nation’s mistakes were in the past. At the end, I believed my country would make restitution to the best of its abilities.

What irks me about American patriotism is the insistence that this is the best nation in the world: an addiction to the superlative. It reminds me of small-minded little boys arguing about whose Dad is the best. “My Dad has the biggest guns” “My Dad is the toughest” “My Dad buys me more stuff” “My Dad is the smartest and the nicest” Patriotism, after all, comes from the prefix “patri”, from the Latin “pater”, meaning father . That is why I have declared so bitterly that I am not patriotic and hope never to be. If our country has become the fatherland, then ours is a rich, manipulative father who gives lavishly and then expects unquestioning loyalty, like a mob boss. Our Dad is the one all the other Dads quietly hate but have to tolerate because he has clout. Our Dad buys cheap medical insurance and maxes-out his credit card on flashy, dangerous toys. Our Dad drives his SUV around the neighborhood, giving unsolicited advice. Some of the other Dads complain but most quietly wait for the bank to foreclose on him. At a bar in Belize, some locals laughingly criticized the United States’ people for electing an obvious fool like George W. Bush. I was helpless—Americans are too much like Yankee fans: our country overspends on strong arms every year and we love them for being the ‘best’. Those Belizeans are like Cubs fans: their country is theirs and that is all that matters. They do not need to be the ‘best’ to stay proud.

Entrenched in these thoughts on grandma’s couch, again, I found an unwelcome epiphany. Playing on the television was a Harrison Ford film where he plays a police officer; Brad Pitt plays his Irish houseguest, who we discover is an Irish Republican Army operative. Pitt’s character demolishes a group of gangsters in order to collect several crates of missiles to smuggle back to Ireland. On his way to New York Harbor, he has to shoot Ford’s partner to evade capture. Meanwhile, Ford refuses to help a British agent locate him, choosing to track him personally. As the film draws to a close, Ford boards the hijacked fishing vessel and insists that Pitt turn the boat around before “more innocent people die”. In my mind I knew that was right but in my heart I felt like he should go with him. In the end, the Irish American Cop shoots the IRA man. I was disappointed. Something in me wanted him to return to Ireland and blow-up some buildings.

It was my sense of patriotism. Though it may be wrong, this raw brand of Irish patriotism resonates in me.

I pushed cognitively against the thought but it pushed back much harder. When I took my stance on the Israeli conflict at a church conference I acted as if I were merely disgusted with the Israeli government yet, I admit now, I was also refusing to be disgusted with the Palestinian Liberation Organization. It makes me wince to hear them called “terrorists” when they are clearly trying to oust a foreign occupancy—like Poles in Poland, Irish in Ireland or Indians in India. I am a sympathizer. The image of an Arab boy throwing rocks at soldiers carries a familiar meme and I, in spite of myself, carry its receptor. I admire the rebels, not invaders, occupiers or even loyalists; the Royalists of our Revolutionary period must have believed that it was ‘best’ to remain part of the British empire. They were excellent patriots (God, King and Country!) but history books revere the trouble-makers who did not want to pay their tea tax. Our “founders” had even less right than the IRA and PLO to claim the land as their own, yet I remain a fan of their rebels’ patriotism. The more I think about that, the more I begin to believe that my discontent and nasty criticism for the United States actually brings me closer to the spirit that created this country. The United States that we celebrate does not share enough features with the canonized one.

If you want to see a film that makes me feel more patriotic than any other, watch a Jim Carrey movie called The Majestic; the final courtroom scene clearly places the ideological America against the historical one and allows the legend of our nation to win in a convincing way. He might not change the entire course of American history but he does marry the girl and live happily ever after.