– by Fred Schlomka – 6/11/2024

The Green Olive Collective’s Fred Shlomka reflects on his time traveling in Israel/Palestine and about the political fragmentation and dissonances he encounters in this time of ongoing catastrophe and reckoning.

It’s a challenging journey. Arriving back in Israel/Palestine after some time abroad is always a shift of gears. My route from Shetland took me to Minnesota for a family event, then a 600-mile cycle ride to Saint Louis via Nebraska and Kansas, exploring the back roads of America. There’s nothing quite like a bit of a cycle ride to clear the head.

After a visit with my son and his family for the Rosh Hashana (Jewish New Year) holiday, I fly from Saint Louis to Philadelphia, London, Qatar and Amman. Then following a couple of business meetings I take a car and driver to the Sheikh Hussein/Beit Shean land border, cross into Israel, then another car back home to Jaffa. Fifteen hours in the air plus four hours driving takes its toll. As I rest in the taxi, my Christian driver Michael extols the virtue of love to overcome the present madness. He’s not wrong. We talk politics. Michael is a believer in the one God and speaks the words of Jesus, words that cut to the chase, of forgiveness and love, of human contact and turning the other cheek, and especially that killing and war is not the path to anyone’s righteousness, least of all the state of Israel or the cause of Palestinian freedom.

I arrive in Jaffa a little refreshed by the conversation, hope even, that my first conversation with an Israeli points the way to a better future. My daughter awaits, needing her dad, still traumatized by the recent machine-gun attack on nearby Jerusalem Boulevard, when her client, a new mother, was killed.  I had cut my visit short with my son’s family in St. Louis to be with her. We spend Yom Kippur together, Tel Aviv style, on the beach with my daughter’s friends, within the bubble oasis of Tel Aviv – just 70 kilometers south are the killing fields of Gaza, and a couple of hour’s drive to the north where missiles fall daily. It is a little surreal to bask in the sun of the Mediterranean amid the collective trauma and the daily pain of most of the population, Israeli and Palestinian.

I visit Yosef who is sub-leasing my house in Ajame. He is Druze, a gun-toting IDF veteran and a staunch supporter of Netanyahu. As we drink coffee the conversation drifts to ‘the situation’. “This country has always been at war and always will be”, he states, parroting a common misconception among those who do not study history. I point out that during the Ottoman centuries there was little friction or war between the various religious and ethnic groups. He is dismissive, yet acknowledges that the Druze have survived by giving their loyalty to whatever sovereignty happens to rule their land, whether Lebanon, Syria or in his case, Israel. He even admires Ben Gvir, the authoritarian leader of the hard-right and messianic Jews. A dangerous man I venture but Yosef assures me that Bibi needs Ben Gvir at his right hand in order to impose order and strength, and defeat the enemy.

Despite Yosef’s right wing views, I respect his honesty. His head is not buried in the sand and he knows where he stands. It is much harder to have these conversations with the liberal Zionists, especially those who claim to want peace but stay within the Zionist ethos and the need to maintain Jewish control of the country. Discussions with many of my former friends are fraught with tension when I indicate my support for the Palestinian Right of Return or the BDS movement.

This is well illustrated when a Rabbi family friend, Joanna, invites my daughter to have a meal for the Jewish holiday of Sukkot (Feast of Tabernacles), but pointedly disinvites me due to being hurt and insulted by previous political discussions. While I fully understand Joanna’s need to come together with sympathetic Israeli friends for the holiday, and commiserate their pain and trauma together, the rejection opens wounds that continue to fester. This fully illustrates why the various branches of the disintegrated Israeli ‘Left’ cannot communicate with each other. We all want the war to end and the hostages returned, but the liberal Zionist camp wants a pluralistic but Jewish-controlled state that is nicer to Arabs, and no occupation, while my colleagues and I also support the return of ‘48 refugees, a fully democratic society, and we care less about manifesting our ethnic or religious identity into the fabric of the state.

So it is a bittersweet return to my Jaffa home. Much work remains to end the present catastrophe, then look to a future where all people are equal in this troubled land, when we can return religion and ethnic pride to our communities where they belong, and rebuild one or two (or more) states more fully and democratically for all the people –  as Rabbi Akiva taught:  “the great principle of Torah.” – Leviticus 19:18  “Love our neighbours as we do ourselves”
– So it is.

Mr. Schlomka is a resident of Unst and divides his time between Shetland and Israel/Palestine. He is co-Managing Partner of the Green Olive Collective, which operates educational tours, advocacy activities, and is an organization of Israelis and Palestinians, Arabs and Jews, dedicated to ending the occupation and developing a free and just democratic society in Israel and Palestine.