UN-Truth

On Israel’s Independence Day, according to the Jewish calendar, today, there was a total closure of the West Bank, with certain exceptions, including journalists.

Despite the 45-minute wait just to enter the Qalandia checkpoint from Jerusalem, caused by extra “security” measures — and tightened restrictions at several checkpoints along the way — I went along with a group of colleagues who were filming interviews first in the Jenin (Palestinian) Refugee Camp, in the West Bank, and then in Wadi Ara, a Palestinian-Arab city in Israel’s Galilee region.

The purpose of the trip was to follow up on an interesting human dilemma caused by a complete collapse of mutual comprehension.

A month earlier, some 13 kids from Jenin Refugee Camp taken by their music teacher, Wafaa Younis from Wadi Ara, to sing and play violin for an Israeli audience of about 30 mostly-elderly people at the Holocaust Survivor’s Center in the city of Holon, south of Tel Aviv. 

Neither the music students nor their parents were informed in advance that the audience would
include aging Israeli survivors of the Holocaust — the World War Two genocidal “program” that
deliberately, methodically, and bureaucratically first dehumanized, then exterminated some six million Jews in Nazi-run concentration camps in several European countries then occupied by German troops under orders from Adolph Hitler and his henchmen. There were reports that Wafaa Younis had tried to explain on the way to the performance, but that the message did not get through due to chaos on the bus. [Well, but why wait until they are on the bus? If the intention was really to get the message through, this could have been done...]

Anyway, nor were the Israeli audience informed in advance that the performance would be by Palestinian kids from the West Bank — “a rare sight in Israel these days”, as Haaretz newspaper later wrote, wryly, here .

The Jenin (Palestinian) refugee camp has become one of the iconic places of Palestinian suffering, after being devastated by a traumatic IDF incursion in 2002 whose declared mission was to prevent Palestinian attacks inside Israel. There was resistance, and some 23 IDF soldiers were killed, as well as 53 Palestinians.

[It is important to put this into context: George W. Bush had his Presidential Vision of a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, of the creation of a viable and contiguous Palestinian State, after the world-wide reaction to the brutality of this "incursion" of Jenin, which again appeared to many as collective punishment. This "incursion", and the re-occupation of Palestinian cities in the West Bank, as well as the total seige on Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's Muqata'a Presidential headquarters in Ramallah, were designed to quash the Second Palestinian Intifada, which followed the failed Camp David Peace talks hosted by U.S. President Bill Clinton]

The musical performance was one of an annual series of events arranged on “Good Deeds Day” marked by an organization belonging to Israel’s richest woman, billionaire Shari Arison, of the Bank Hapolim fortune. 

After the initial shock, both sides reportedly warmed up to the event. The Israelis apparently soon joined in singing with the Palestinian kids, who in turn learned a little bit about the Jewish experiences during the Holocaust.

Arison’s PR apparatus worked well, there was a reasonably good turnout of journalists, and within hours of the event a quirky “feel-good” story was on the wires.  The AP story can be read in full here. The NYTimes was also there.

Israel’s YNet news reported later that Ali Zeid, an 18-year-old Palestinian keyboard player from Jenin Refugee Camp said after the concert that “he was shocked by what he learned about the Holocaust, in which the Nazis killed 6 million Jews in their campaign to wipe out European Jewry. ‘I feel sympathy for them … Only people who have been through suffering understand each other’, added Zeid, who said his grandparents were Palestinian refugees forced to flee the northern city of Haifa during the war that followed Israel’s creation in 1948″. This story can be read in full strong>here.

The next morning, after the initial global burst of publicity, the camp committee of the Jenin Refugee Camp were furiously indignant. The kids had been used for political purposes, they felt. The music teacher, though beloved, had acted insensitively and insensitively. Had she ever taken the kids to sing for Palestinian political prisoners (something that would be impossible, actually, as the Israeli Prison Service would never allow it)? Had the Israelis learned about what the Palestinians were suffering, every day for the last sixty-one years?

The music teacher, Wafaa Younis, was also accused by some in Jenin — who had read a report in the Jerusalem Post — of having the kids sing for the liberation of IDF soldier Gilad Shalit, who has been held — presumably somewhere in Gaza — since his capture near the Kerem Shalom crossing in June 2006.  She later explained that this is completely untrue, and said that the kids were singing for the liberation of all prisoners, including the 11,000+ Palestinians who are currently in Israeli detention.

In any case, in the heat of the moment, the music classes were abruptly cancelled the day after the Holon field trip.  Then, the Palestinian Authority (PA) Security Services’ area commander in Jenin escorted the beloved music teacher away from the area, at least until things calm down. “The whole world has blown this out of proportion”, he added.

But, the studio apartment that Wafaa Younis rented in the Jenin refugee camp to teach music to her students in the camps was sealed. Some members of the camp committee said they would look for a Palestinian music teacher to replace her.

The PA area commander, however, said that he will authorize Wafaa Younis’ return at an agreed moment in the future, after consultation with the Jenin Refugee Camp’s camp committee. “I told her it’s not forever, and she can come back … [But] she made a mistake, maybe unintentionally, by abusing the children and placing them in a political situation”, he said. “This led to some people in the Jenin Governorate to threaten her … Therefore I had to talk to her, and deliver her to the Israeli side to preserve her safety … Before that, Wafaa had worked for six years without any interference. We let her work. We trusted her”.

One of the students, who had studied music with Wafaa Younis for about three years, and her mother, both said that the music teacher was wonderful, and that their lives had improved and their horizons broadened — far beyond the confines of the refugee camp — as a result of their exposure to music through the music teacher’s efforts.

While they felt that the punishment of the teacher was unfair, they did also say they felt that the teacher had been insensitive to their own situation in the Jenin refugee camp, and to the fact (as the mother said) that they were “burnt” every day in their own “holocaust” with a lower-case “H”.
“She should have realized that we Palestinians cannot support this, and the Holocaust is a very sensitive issue that we have a hard time dealing with”.

When asked about the Holocaust, one student said she had not really known anything about it before this controversy — and still was unsure what it was all about.  “Since we’ve come back, the whole camp is talking about the Holocaust, but I still don’t understand”. Told that six million Jews had been killed, the young girl’s facial expression collapsed, and she dropped her head.  No, she said, she could not accept that in any way. Her mother did the same, but protested that they were little kids, and did not know about these things. She said she thought that the music teather “has also been a victim of conspiracy”.

Her daughter, asked about her memories of the 2002 IDF incursion, said that the Israeli soldiers suddenly broke through the wall of the living room we were sitting in, injuring her father [the soldiers went through the walls from house to house, to avoid being exposed to sniper fire in the streets]. And, she said, she remembered seeing how Israeli tanks ran over bodies of Palestinians who had been killed in the fighting. But, the daughter said, “these old people [we sang for] have nothing to do with the incursion”.

Later, the music teacher allowed our group of journalists to visit her parallel music class in Wadi Ara, and we saw a rapt and disciplined group of even younger Palestinian-Arab citizens of Israel, who wore, over their clothing, oversized white shirts — with room to grow) and black ties, playing their violins in unison with a rhythmic drum accompaniment.

They they rose as a group and sang the very same song that the Palestinian girl in the Jenin refugee camp had sung, solo, for the journalists earlier in the day, and that they had sung to the Holocaust survivors: “Nahnu nusalli li salaam…” [in Arabic], or “We pray for peace”, a refrain which is repeated many times. Then, they sang the next lines: “We pray for peace…between Tel Aviv and Jenin”.

The song, composed by the music teacher, is at least two years old, and predaties the current controversy.

Wafaa Younis said, once again, that she did not feel she had done anything wrong — and indicated she would do it all over again, if she could.

Filed under: International Law, Iran, Israel, Journalism and Journalists, Middle East Peace Process, Palestine & Palestinians, UN Secretary-General, UN Security Council