I was invited to recite poetry in Tel Aviv, Israel over this past Thanksgiving weekend. I had never been and decided it would be a perfect opportunity to see for myself the realities of the situation that I have held very hard opinions on, while still feeling somewhat uninformed: the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the unrest of the Middle East, and the greater War on Terror.
I knew that the Israeli government, through its notorious army, had set boundaries between their people and the Palestinians.
I knew that Israel, over the years, has remained the U.S.’s number one ally in most foreign affairs, especially war, and those that revolve around our, and their, War on Terror.
I knew that much of the unrest surrounding Israel had to do with the millions of people displaced, forced to emigrate, or live in camps after the 1948 U.N. decision that created Israel and shipped thousands of European holocaust survivors into the Middle East giving them their own state in the middle of what was then Palestine.
I knew that those of the Jewish faith felt common binds to the land as it is openly documented in the Old Testament and history books that the land once belonged to them over three thousand years ago, and that it is their belief that this land was promised to them by God in his covenant with his chosen people.
And I was frightened.
I was frightened because, despite the countless young, hip Israeli kids I had met over the years, their tales of teaching my poems in classes in workshops or of hearing my music and words blasted at parties, I couldn’t help but feel the fear the media had instilled in me, that this was not a safe place, that bombs might explode in my hotel lobby or at the market place. And there was also another fear: the fear that came from my friends, mostly Palestinian, and their encounters with Israeli soldiers. I’d heard of interrupted poetry readings, closely monitored gatherings, illegal walls, murdered men and boys, I’d heard comparisons to Apartheid…I didn’t know what to expect.
My reception was very similar to how I have been received by students across the world in places like South Africa, Australia, Brazil, throughout Europe and North America. They came bearing gifts, thank you notes, demo tapes, and poems. They thanked me for coming. Some voiced their surprise that I would come given Israel’s political situation, along with the call to boycott Israel by many Palestinian organizations. I told them I was familiar with the boycott and had been a willing participant my entire life, even as a teenager in the Apartheid days, and it seemed that things had only gotten worse. My thoughts were that if things were going to change, Israeli kids were gonna have to be part of the movement and that they needed to be inspired to think for themselves and question all that they were born into; and that I could no more successfully boycott the students and youth of Israel than I could those of America; how our government has quite openly condoned or endorsed Israel’s behavior over the years, seemingly frightened of the ramifications if we acted otherwise. It has at times felt impossible to criticize the governmental policies of Israel without being labeled anti-Semitic: a brand no American wishes to wear, ‘though criticizing a countries policy and treatment of it’s neighbors is separate and distinct from judging their religious faith and doctrine.
I’ve read at over 200 universities in the U.S., red states and the confederacy included, and I would no more boycott the youth of those territories than I would the youth of Israel. Most of us become apathetic- feel powerless in the face of making real change. The policies that we are born into we perpetuate without much thought until we are somehow inspired to begin the process of thinking for ourselves, to question all that we are told; all that we are told we are; to question our beliefs, the religions, institutions, and social groups we silently “belong” to, and all that we must one day decide whether to instill into our children or not.
It is an act that takes great discernment. I, for instance, would love my kids to learn some of the great songs and spirit of my religious upbringing, but I also know the amount of hard-thinking and alienation I suffered through in order to break away from that religion, closer to it’s principles of disciplined compassion, and open up to the harmonious truths I saw beyond religion and the crutches we use to help us stand upright in our understanding of each other, love, community, nature, and the universe at large. And it is my compassion for all who suffer, whether under suppressive rule or the silent rule of tradition and militant sheepishness, those who feel powerless in the face of change, who wish things would be different but have no idea how to go at it alone; those who feel alone, who feel compelled to “think different” beyond the trademark of their times, who only need a single spark to be the light that outshines history, those who dare not be shrouded by religious mystery; it is because of my belief in the power of art to act like a B vitamin: flush the system and dislodge the fat and disease from the tissue surrounding the heart and brain; because I want my shot at the virus, and because I think apathy is a plague and want to rid the slow of progress from it’s time-consuming glitches…. I could go on for days running on this Arabian coffee…. I feel like a generator and want to charge a generation. I feel that we must seize the moment and inspire our peers and maybe even our parents to save us from the future that awaits us, like an arranged marriage, if we do not find the courage to get over ourselves and the past, which haunts us…. for all these reasons and more, I had to come.
The reading, for about 1000, mostly Israeli, kids went as expected: they stood in silence, recited passages by heart, some with tear-filled eyes. The highlight of the reading (for me) was when I read a passage from ,said the shotgun to the head. which I had written to criticize the role that religion and patriarchy play in the American system of war, particularly in response to 9/11. I had written this poem with American soldiers, businessmen, our then president Bush, Christian fundamentalists and other religious leaders in mind. Yet, as I read it was clear that the words rang even more powerfully in Israeli ears and that they clearly, or perhaps, even better understood the religious symbolism and references I used to question when leaders use God as an excuse for war.
The greatest Americans
have not been born yet.
They are waiting patiently
for the past to die.
Please give blood
Those crumbled tablets were to share a story with a burning Bush.
Where is that voice from nowhere to remind us that the holy ground we walk on
purified by native blood, has rooted trees whose fallen leaves
now color-code a sacred list of demands?
Who among us can give translation of autumn hues to morning news?
The anchorman
thrown overboard
has simply rooted us
in histories repeating cycle:
A nation in its Saturn years
that won’t acknowledge karma.
Where is that voice from nowhere?
-the ones your prophets spoke of?
For I hear voices of fear disconnected from their diaphragms
dangling from coffee covered teeth- that spill into our laps
and scorch our privates.
There are voices from the sides of necks, some already noosed
dangling participles pronouns running for sentence, serving life
in corner offices and ghetto corners. Their voices are the same
dead to themselves, numb to the possibility of truth existing beyond that
which they can palm in their hands, period.
There are voices of elders
which seem to do no more
than damn us to our childish ways
for, in many households, wisdom
no longer comes with age.
So where is that voice from nowhere?
-that burning bush?
-that passing dove?
I hear the voices of generals calling for ammunition
presidents calling for arms and women calling for help.
Where is that voice from nowhere?
-that god of Abraham?
Can He be heard over the gunfire?
-the whiz of passing missiles?
-the crash of buildings?
-the cries of children?
-the crack of bones?
-the shriek of sirens?
Or is that his mighty voice?
Your angry god craving the sacrifice of early generations sons degenerate.
Your holy books written in red ink on burning sands.
Your prayers between rounds do no more than fasten the fate of your children
to the hammered truth of your trigger.
A truth that mushrooms its darkened cloud over the rest of us
so that we too bear witness to the short lived fate of a civilization
that worships a male god.
Your weapons are phallic, all of them.
That dummy that sits on your lap is no longer a worthwhile spectacle.
His shrunken pale face leaves little room for imagination.
We have spotted your moving lips and have pinned the voice to its proper source:
it is a source of madness
it is a source of hunger for power
a source of weakness
a source of evil.
We are exiting your coliseum and are encircling your box-office
demanding our families back, our cultures back, our rituals back, our gods back
so that we may return them to their proper source: the source of life
the source of creation: our mothers’ womb; the Great Goddess.
We will cut through the barbwire hangers and chastity belts.
We will climb in and incubate our spirits to the winter.
We will wait through the degenerate course of your repeated history.
We will wait
for the past
to die.
I watched their faces as I recited this poem by heart and it appeared that they were having the same experience as the Face Book group I came across one day, that cracked me up, something like “People who think Saul Williams is speaking directly to them when they read or hear his poetry”. After reading the poem, I informed the audience that although it may have seemed like those words were directly pointed at them, I had written the poem primarily with America and Americans in mind, yet let it serve as a testament of how closely linked our governments and established policy and beliefs are linked.
I met a lot of people that night, including the famous Israeli poet/song-writer Yaakov Rotblit who invited me to return to his home with him in Jerusalem that night. I told him that I would not be able to as I had plans to visit Palestinian territories in the West Bank the next day. I hadn’t yet confirmed how I would get there, but that was my intent and I planned to make it happen, by any means.
It didn’t take much effort to make arrangements and the following day four anarchist activists came to pick me up and drive me to Bilin: a small Palestinian village outside of Tel Aviv, famous for it’s weekly peaceful protests against the Israeli government and army. Before reaching the “invisible green line” that separates Israel from Palestine, they informed me that the “freeway” we were driving on was Jewish or Israeli Only, and that Palestinians had to travel separate and roundabout routes to reach their destinations. When we turned off the freeway and passed through the tank and machine gun patrolled security checkpoint, composed of the mandatory service men and women (all Israeli boys must serve 3 years in the military and all girls must serve two) I felt and saw a drastic shift from the American Apparel, Coffee Bean, KFC, and McDonald filled streets of Tel Aviv into the white stoned hills and olive trees of a fabled land. As we approached the village of Bilin, it seemed we twisted and curved from 1st world to 3rd in a matter of minutes. Barefoot children in Islamic garb, covered women… You’ve seen the pictures. We pulled up in front of the community center and were greeted by many Palestinian boys and men, and a few international activists, who were intent on making their American artist guest feel welcome, but first they wanted to show me the wall (already declared illegal by the Israeli parliament but still heavily patrolled and standing) that the Israeli Army had built separating them over 60 percent of their land and farms: their livelihood. So we walked on foot over rubble and dirt, kicking what I first thought were stones, until a young boy picked one up and showed me what a tear gas rocket looked like. Like the wall, the rocket had also been deemed illegal by the Israeli parliament, but it didn’t seem to stop the army from shooting them. They took off their hats to show me scars left by the tear gas rockets and rubber bullets, lifted up their shirts, pulled up pant legs and within minutes we stood about 30 feet from a barbed wire fence. The man beside me showed me the place where his brother, a peace seeking activist had been shot to death, only six months earlier, for touching the wall during a protest. They told me of the thought and creativity they put into their weekly protests: building long snakes out of paper and canvas to symbolize the snake like wall slithering through their territories, tying themselves to together and to self-made walls that the army must disassemble (symbolically) in order to arrest them, tying themselves to olive trees and reciting poems…. but we are too many gathered by this fence right now, our voices are growing too loud and the soldiers have started gathering on the other side. I can see them standing on top of vehicles with binoculars, guns slung over their shoulders, I can see the cameras on long poles pointing to face us, I can hear them talking into their walkie-talkies, and one of the Palestinian men walking with us, the one who has been doing most of the talking as he explains their current situation says, “We should move from here. They will fire shortly. There are too many of us gathered. They will think this is a protest”. So we head back to the makeshift community center, about twenty of us, and they gather in a circle to tell me of their hardship. They explain how they have been unable to sleep for weeks because of nine army raids in the past nine nights; how hard it is to comfort frightened children when soldiers break through doors with sound grenades and tear gas and gather the men and boys. Sixteen young boys are being held from this small village for supposedly throwing stones at soldiers, held for months without trial. They explained how they must apply for a day pass to enter nearby Tel Aviv for employment and how most of them have been denied passes (even the one whose six year old son has cancer and can only find treatment in a Tel Aviv hospital). They ask me if I will write about their struggle in my poems and songs. They tell me how they fear a two state agreement would only escalate conflict as the boundaries have not been agreed upon and that they dream of one shared state, peaceful and tolerant. They tell me stories of Bassam, the peaceful Palestinian young man who was killed six months ago, and the videos they have of him trying to talk to soldiers, of his creative ideas for their weekly peaceful march to the wall. They tell me of what it’s like to live in fear, surrounded by soldiers and tanks. I imagine myself as a little boy and how my simple inclination would be to throw stones, because that’s what I did. I threw stones and pine cones (which I made believe were grenades) at imagined army targets. But these realities were not imagined, they were real, and in very real ways we were surrounded.
Of course, for me, this reality was only temporarily. I was accompanied by Israeli students whose license plates insured that we’d be let back into Tel Aviv. And that’s exactly what we did. We drove back into town and after a few hours of deep dialogue and processing of the experience together they dropped me off at the bar where the promoters that brought me were DJ-ing. Israeli kids know how to party.
But most at the party that I spoke to had never been into Palestinian territories. They felt deeply for the Palestinian people, but seemed as if they felt little power to change the situation. They hoped for the best.
The next morning (Sunday) I went to Jerusalem. We took the freeway that was for Israeli’s only. As I approached the old city I couldn’t help but think of how it’s white stoned walls reminded me of Beverly Hills. People of all faiths and religions walked together. Soldiers with machine guns walked between them. Vendors sold very Jesus-like sandals, beads with crosses, the teachings of famous rabbis, rugs, photographs and paintings of religious leaders, etc. I froze in front of a t-shirt that was being sold beside a painting of Jesus meticulously made to look ancient and distressed. The t-shirt had a picture of a fighter jet and said in red letters over the top, “ Don’t Worry America”, and then beneath the jet, “Israel’s got your back.” Suddenly I thought of that scene in the Bible where Jesus disrupts the bazaar being held within the gates of the temple, over-turning tables and kicking people out. This is one of my favorite ways of remembering Jesus; rebellious and hardcore. I over-hear American accents. One group is being reminded that they are to meet at 6pm for a worship service.
Everyone I had met had told me that I would feel something beautiful and ancient when I reached Jerusalem, something mystical. Mostly, I felt angry. I was still choked up on yesterdays journey. I couldn’t believe that so many had found it impossible to climb over the walls of old cities and testaments and embrace a faith in humanity beyond the self-imposed boundaries of man and his misinterpretations and misuses of power through government and tradition. Here I was in a city where woman were still supposed to clear the sidewalks and pathways when men were leaving the temple, a city that history had been built up and destroyed again and again, by empire after empire, and we still seemed intent on building new walls, waging new wars, with God used again and again as an excuse.
Unfortunately, my time in Jerusalem was cut short, as it was time for me to head to the airport and back home. We walked out of the gates of the old city, twisted and turned through a few roads, stopped at an amazing record store/café, and then towards the car. As we waited for the parking attendant to bring the car, three Arab teenagers passed, taking a moment to marvel at my wild hair and seemingly foreign get up. One of them looked out of his tilted visor and said, “Wassup”, full swagger intact. I smiled back and returned, “Wassup”. He looked at me, smiled, put his hand over his heart and winked as he said, “Peace, my nigga.” Wow. Thank you, Jerusalem. You made me feel at home.