by Kathryn Shihadah

Nabi Saleh is a small Palestinian village with a big reputation. Surrounded by settlers and walls and soldiers, it was the site of the 2017 Slap that was Heard Around the World. This village has been the site of hundreds of Friday protests, during which Palestinians and their allies have stared down Israeli soldiers and sometimes been shot by them.

Bassem Tamimi, activist and father of Ahed Tamimi

Nabi Saleh activists are not a crowd of bored teenagers making trouble. This is a town with a mission, where village elders have created a life-giving space in spite of the limitations imposed by the Israeli occupation. They have taught their youth to crave liberation – to expect it – and to see themselves not as victims, but as empowered freedom fighters. Their land may be occupied, but their spirits are free.

Bassem Tamimi is the impetus behind the movement. He is a leader and an inspiration. And he is surrounded by a clan of articulate, tenacious men and women.

As we sat with Bassem and some of his extended family last week November 2019), they spoke about the resistance. There was a sense of urgency in their speech and certainty in their voices. The Tamimis painted for us a picture that was compelling and inspiring. They reframed the whole Palestinian issue, making it simple and clear, and giving us a vocabulary of hope.

These women and men described a different kind of occupation.

Zionism

“People’s minds are colonized,” Bassem said. “If you can’t address Palestinian human rights, you are colonized by Zionism.” Zionism inhabits the mind, disguised as a noble enterprise that is plagued by many enemies. Those who stand in the way of this enterprise must be eliminated (as some Israel supporters have said, “if you want to make an omelette, you have to break some eggs”).

Zionism enables otherwise good, rational people to hold loathing in a corner of their minds: all people should be free, but… But Palestinians hate. But Palestinians are irrational. They are the exception to the rules of justice and equality and human rights.

The typical Israeli Jew actually believes this, and his life is structured around it. Zionism says, “I must have this land, no matter what the cost – to the Palestinians who are here.” Zionism says, “They hate me for who I am.”

It is necessary to see Palestinians as intrinsically savage: intelligent beings resist injustice, savages deserve it.

(We have always said that the occupation controls every aspect of Palestinian life – but truth be told, it controls the Israeli soul.)

Zionism thinks that when the walls around Palestinians are high enough, Israelis will be safe. The concrete wall, and the Israeli-only buses and roads and neighborhoods, perpetuate the illusion that there is something dangerous that must be kept at bay.

And so Israelis choose to live behind barriers, and lock themselves in open-air prisons of their own making.

Palestinians understand this. They know that Israelis are not the enemy; Jews are not the enemy – the colonized Zionist mind is. That mindset builds walls, shoots bullets, and polices children. That mindset keeps Palestinians in ghettos and behind bars. Palestinians know it’s the Zionist mindset that has to go – not Jews.

One of Bassem’s relatives, a soft-spoken child psychologist, recalled an incident in which a settler woman pointed to him and told her young son, “this is what a terrorist looks like.” She can not see a person (and now, neither can her son). She can only see a threat.

And it’s the Palestinians who teach their children to hate?

I think the people of Nabi Saleh are fighting for the freedom of their Jewish Israeli neighbors.

First Person: the other occupation - Zionism

Zionism