Anna Baltzer
I have spent the last four years touring the United States telling stories about life in Occupied Palestine, highlighting both the suffering and the resilience of the Palestinian people living and dying under Israeli Apartheid. What is most striking to me is the reality that I am invited to tell Palestinians’ stories, yet Palestinians themselves are rarely invited to tell their own stories. Or if they are invited, audiences are less likely to show up to listen to them. More often than not Palestinian voices are dismissed as biased or irrelevant.
Can you imagine during the Feminist movement if women’s voices were dismissed as less credible than men’s voices? Or if my grandmother, a Holocaust survivor, were dismissed in her talks as biased for not representing people on the other side? Like all victims of persecution, Palestinians themselves are the experts on their own plight and liberation struggle, and their voices are the ones that most need to be heard.
When Jewish voices are privileged and Palestinian voices dismissed, it reinforces the false and racist notion that what’s important is what specifically Jews think, whether or not it is right and just. Elevating the Jewish voices even most critical of Israel may fulfill the short-term goal of garnering support for Palestinian rights today, but it’s a setback from the ultimate goal of living in a just and truly anti-racist society. I spoke at a church in Kansas City once where the preacher said it best to his Christian congregation: “If we cared half as much about the voices of those oppressed in the Holy Land today as we do about what Jewish Americans we know say and think of us and this issue, we could truly follow in the footsteps of Jesus.”
As you’ll find in this book, Palestinians are a diverse people like any other. Consequently, and particularly in light of ongoing Palestinian factionalism, the task of following the lead of Palestinians often seems easier said than done — what voice can we look to as representative of the Palestinian people and their struggle?
The difficulty of answering this question has been partially resolved through an exciting development in the movement for justice and equality in Palestine. In 2005, hundreds of organizations representing all walks of Palestinian society issued a unified call for supporters around the world to impose Boycott/Divestment/Sanctions (BDS) on Israel until it complies with international law and universal principles of human rights. Hundreds of Palestinian NGOs, political parties, refugee and civil rights groups joined unions of women, farmers, teachers, lawyers, doctors, dentists, professors and more with a simple demand: if people around the world cannot stop the billions of tax dollars going from our government to Israel, at least we can stop profiting from the oppression of Palestinians on an individual and institutional level.
BDS is a Palestinian-led nonviolent movement that has the potential to work, as evidenced by similar boycott campaigns used to topple US segregation and Apartheid in South Africa, and by the incredible momentum it has already generated in just a few years. As you get to know the hardships suffered by Palestinians through the accounts in this book, remember that Palestinians on the whole are not asking for our sympathy. Most needed from supporters is the willingness to take action towards real change.
The letters in this book will break your heart and they will make you laugh. I am excited to invite others to learn from them as I have. It is the creativity, strength, and resilience of the Palestinian people — as evidenced in this book — that strengthen me to continue to work for change. It is my hope that these Palestinian voices will inspire you, as they have inspired me, to believe that a peaceful and just future in Palestine is not only essential, but indeed possible.
| Anna Baltzer December 7, 2009 Author, Witness in Palestine Filmmaker, Life in Occupied Palestine www.AnnaInTheMiddleEast.com |
