GREENSBORO – The Hardwick Peace Coalition sponsored the showing of a powerful documentary film entitled “Where the Olive trees Weep” on Friday evening, August 29, at the Fellowship Hall in the United Church of Christ. Most of the filming was done in the West Bank territories in 2022 and focuses on the stories of Palestinians living under the Israeli occupation, as well as interviews with Jewish people who have been working to find peaceful solutions to this tragic conflict. The movie has won numerous awards.
The footage is very immediate, alternating between beautiful scenes of the landscapes and towns in the West Bank, with the sheep and goats of the Bedoins, children playing. The film shows people in their homes and out in the markets in the streets, others singing and dancing, as well as those praying in mosques and in the open air. These scenes are juxtaposed with reoccurring images of Palestinian homes being bulldozed and brutal attacks by Israeli soldiers on peaceful Palestinian demonstrators. There is a constant reminder of the concrete walls and high wire fences that winds its way over the hills, separating the two peoples into a virtual apartheid state. Popping up repeatedly on the horizons are islands of the new buildings of Israeli settlements, constructed on land that originally belonged to Palestinians, all carefully protected by the Israeli military. These scattered settlements have the obvious intention of eventually taking over all of the West Bank.
The accumulative effect of this film is to feel of actually being there and experienced something of the immense daily suffering of the Palestinian people. The film creates an empathy that makes us realize that they want exactly the same thins that we do: such as peace, economic prosperity, education, getting married, having children, enjoying a good job, a home in a place we love, healthy communities, justice and freedom. Through this film we can transcend the negative stereotypes, the mutual demonization, the fear and dehumanization of the Other, to discover that what we share in common is far greater than any differences.
The many people who speak, tell harrowing accounts of being forced off the land their ancestors had farmed for innumerable generations, following the influx of Jewish immigrants after World War II. As a result, 80% of Palestinians now live in exile in other countries such as Jordan and Lebanon. The establishment of the State of Israel meant the deportation of most of the original inhabitants and colonialization of those that remained within its borders.
There have been widespread and repeated arrests of Palestinians by Israeli soldiers breaking up protests for self-determination over the years, with people taken to notorious Israeli prisons and tortured physically and psychologically, often held indefinitely without trials. Countless families have had relatives and neighbors seriously injured or killed by periodic raids by Israeli forces into the West Bank, with no accountability. Immunity equals impunity, and Israel has long violated international law, the Geneva Convention and many United Nations condemnations of its treatment of the Palestinians since 1947. In Israel’s obsessive priority of security they have abandoned morality. But the United States and some European countries continue to support Israel uncritically, becoming enablers to these crimes against humanity.
Too often we try to reduce complex situations to an oversimplified matter of predators and victims, bad guys and good guys. On October 7, 2023, Hamas soldiers murdered 1,200 Israelis, almost all innocent civilians, and in consequence lost any moral high ground they might have had if they had only attacked Israeli military forces. This has unleashed a horrifying war on Hamas in Gaza in which some 40,000 Palestinians (mostly civilians) have been killed in what is rationalized as Israel’s “right to defend itself” but is really indiscriminate collective punishment, in the all too common confusion between revenge and justice. Previously Palestinians who killed Israeli civilians in terrorist attacks on buses and in the streets likewise were self-defeating by undermining any world sympathy for their cause. But such incidents have been reported much more frequently than Israeli violence against Palestinians.
There is no learning curve here to break this vicious cycle of traumatic violence. Any knowledge of history and human psychology will tell us that we cannot suppress and humiliate people year after year without, sooner or later, terrible consequences. No country can be called a democracy when millions of people within its borders have no rights. One of the fundamental principles of a functional democracy is its ability to resolve problems without violence. So this chronic us-them division has become a tragedy for Israelis as well as Palestinians, with those on both sides who want an enduring peace marginalized.
What can be done to end this misery. First, the United States must follow many long-standing precedents of previous administrations and threaten in no uncertain terms to cut off all military aid and support to Israel if it does not end the war in Gaza with a ceasefire. The ceasefire would allow humanitarian supplies into that area to relieve the intolerable shortages of food, water, fuel, shelters and medicines that is killing innocent children, women and men. Second, there must be negotiations for the establishment of an independent Palestinian state, with generous international aid to rebuild the massive destruction of homes, schools, businesses, hospitals and infrastructure in Gaza. Without such measures, Israel will continue on a suicidal course that will result in endless warfare n the region, involving the West Bank, Lebanon and other countries.
Some towns such as Thetford are proposing divesting pension funds involving companies that do business with Israel, to be put on town meeting agendas. For more information, go online to the Vermont Coalition for Palestinian Liberation.
David K. Rodgers
David K. Rodgers is a writer, mason and card carrying dilettante, who dabbles and babbles in art. He has lived in East Craftsbury for the past 40 years.
