Teeksa Photography
Photography of
Skip Schiel
Israel, Palestine, Kaleidoscope
A memoir of my involvement with the issues of Israel-Palestine(revised May 8, 2007)
by Skip Schiel
© All text copyright Skip Schiel, 2006-2007
Look deeply: every second I am arriving
to be a bud on a Spring branch,
to be a tiny bird, with still-fragile wings,
learning to sing in my new nest,
to be a caterpillar in the heart of a flower,
to be a jewel hiding itself in a stone.I still arrive, in order to laugh and to cry,
to fear and to hope.The rhythm of my heart is the birth and death
of all that is alive......Please call me by my true names,
so I can hear all my cries and my laughter at once,
so I can see that my joy and pain are one.Please call me by my true names,
so I can wake up,
and so the door of my heart
can be left open,
the door of compassion.—Thich Nhat Hanh, from "Please Call Me By My True Names"
MAIMONIDES
September 1967, 26 years old, a four-month-old daughter, Vietnam raging, quit graduate school, unemployed with skills in mathematics. And so I found a job teaching math and science at an orthodox Jewish school in Brookline, Maimonides. Rabbi Cohen, jolly and willing to risk hiring someone with virtually no teaching experience, welcomed me to the school. He gave me free range in what I taught and how. The students, tho at times rambunctious, were mostly attentive and dedicated. I taught a calculus class to 12 th graders. During the year, the school held programs educating students about Israel and encouraging support of the state. More than 50 percent of the school's graduating seniors defer their college matriculation so they can spend at least one year learning in Israeli institutions. To date more than 150 graduates have become Israeli residents. Near the end of the year a major war erupted in Israel, ending in 6 days with the total defeat of the combined armies of Jordan, Egypt, Iraq and Syria. My students and fellow staff were elated--I shared that feeling, buoyed by the prospect of a safe and secure Israel. Later my views were to change. How caulk I have foreseen then that 36 years later I would undertake a photojournalist project about Israel and Palestine, living there for extended periods of time to make photographs elucidating aspects of the troubles.
WORLD WAR 2
I was born one year and a few days before the United States entered the war after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor--1940, as President Roosevelt declared, a day of infamy. World War 2 effectively ended the depression, brought Blacks and women into the work force, fostered a short lived spirit of sacrifice (Victory Gardens inspired me later to become a vegetable gardener), created unusual alliances such as the US and Soviet Union, and simultaneously initiated the Cold War. The War set the stage for the emergence of the US as the sole superpower.
On the day of my birth, December 4, Jews were being rounded up throughout the regions controlled by Germany. The Nazis were concocting and soon implementing The Final Solution, the extermination of all Jews in all the regions they controlled, potentially the entire world. Not only was I, as might be expected at my age, oblivious to events across the Atlantic, my parents, neighbors, and much of the country were also. As stories slowly leaked out about the Shoah or Holocaust, most people in the US and much of the world chose not to pay attention.
This is especially surprising since my sister and I have long wondered if my mother with her features and family name, Sage, changed to Zage when her family immigrated to the US, was Jewish. Asking her about this always elicited a strong denial, as if she were embarrassed even to be asked. I felt simply curious about this possibility, neither proud nor ashamed, neither desirous of being Jewish or embarrassed by the prospect.
When WW2 ended with the defeat of the Nazis and the full revelation of the horrors Jews and others like the Roma and Soviet prisoners of war experienced, I was fearful. My heritage is German and Austrian. I tried to conceal my background, feeling that if discovered, I could be ostracized or banished by even my closest friends. For a short period, I lived in terror, the only time in my life I've felt threatened because of elements of my personal history beyond my control. Germans had been the enemy, Germans were now vanquished, the "Mad Man", Hitler, was Austrian. The 1940s were a volatile time--the beginning of the modern civil rights movement, the anxiety about communism, and the aftermath of profiling Japanese people, Asians generally, during the War.
I grew up with images of young Jewish pioneers settling the newly founded state of Israel. I was 7 years old when Israel became a state, I was entering my own pioneer period. I visualized young tanned bodies, male and female sharing equally in cultivating the land and building communities. They wore shorts and short-sleeved shirts that revealed muscled limbs. Narrow brimmed caps blocked out the intense sun. They all smiled, a few carried rifles, they seemed inordinately happy. I was attracted.
Joining the Cub Scouts, later very active in Boy Scouting, I fantasized that my life as a Scout might resemble a possible life as a kibbutznik . The world was beginning to learn about the communal spirit of the Israeli founders. I was excited by the word kibbutz , striking me as some sort of idealized home shared by many families. With my rebellious spirit I thought if I lived on a kibbutz, I'd have multiple parents and many more friends to play with. Later in college, meeting Bruno Bettleheim, the renowned Israeli psychologist, I gained a more mature view of benefits and pitfalls of life on the kibbutz. Indeed, the kibbutz inculcated strong moral values, but over time experienced a gradual erosion of communal spirit.
CATHOLICS & PALESTINIANS
I knew nothing about Palestinians: they were invisible, absent, ciphers. I reflected the ignorance of most of my peers, I had some confused notion of everyone in the region once being Palestinian, but now no one was. Where did they all go? They had mysteriously vanished, like American Indians. I knew nothing of the consequences they'd experienced as a result of the founding of Israel. There was no Palestine, except in biblical picture books that depicted the ancient and supposed life of Jesus.
My parents were Catholic. They dragged me to church on most Sundays. I viewed pictures, either photos or drawings and paintings, depicting a hot dry dusty Palestine. Our church sent delegations of church members--pilgrims--to what we called the Holy Land. During this period a desire to journey to special places--pilgrimage--grew in me. For years, whenever the prospect arose of actually visiting Israel (never Palestine as we were taught to call it) I felt a major blockage, a huge stop sign--a barrier, ditch, checkpoint--in the middle of my path. In my mind, the place was as unreachable as the middle of the earth or the rim of the Milky Way. How would I ever manage to make such a long arduous trip? Yet inwardly a yearning grew.
Christ on the cross, the suffering Christ, the eternally suffering Christ, is emblazoned on my internal screen. I imagined Jesus as a young boy questioning the priests in the temple. I visualized him later during his last days of teaching sweeping his arms across the moneylenders' tables in the temple, metal shekel pieces thudding on the smooth white limestone floor. I envisaged Christ entering Jerusalem on a donkey, his followers strewing palm fronds on his path. He was heading heroically to the Last Supper and his final agony. With my Catholic peers, I learned to make the Stations of the Cross, that symbolic pilgrimage with Christ along the Via Dolorosa, The Way of Sorrows. His feet were indelibly imprinted in the limestone--contrary to reality, but foot prints that I would later seek on my various journeys to the region. I learned to honor the man's teachings--to the point of considering myself one of his acolytes--and even as a youth doubted the more mystical and probably fictitious elements of his story. Not until I was much older would I begin to question the teaching about Jews that emanated from my Catholic background, some subtle like sculpting a non Jewish Jesus and disciples, and some blatant like the passages that ascribe his murder solely to the Jewish priests and mob. And only later would I more fully explore the Hebrew Testament, slowly gaining insights into the archetypal story of the Abrahamic tradition. As I learned some of the stories of the family of Abraham, Sarah, and Hagar, of Ishmael and Isaac, of Joseph, I also slowly shifted perspectives about the Israeli state and the Palestinian struggles.
WHO IS JEWISH?
Who was Jewish in my childhood and what relations did I have with them? Of course no one was Palestinian, no one was even Muslim or Arabic on the Southside of Chicago in the 1940 and 50s. I remember two Jewish boys in my school class, Charles Bernstein, living about 5 houses down the street from me, a short kid, but agile and eager to play sandlot football and baseball with our informal neighborhood teams. We weren't close, but we were often teammates. I knew he was Jewish but I don't recall it making a difference about friendship. Howard Hoffman, with buckteeth, a remote, mysterious character, was another Jewish classmate, never a friend, never an enemy. My sister, Elaine, however, had many Jewish friends, as did my parents. Occasionally she attended Jewish events such as bar mitzvahs. But never a religious service. Our church prohibited all participation in other religions' services. For me Jewishness was a mark ranging in importance between hair color and sports ability. It might be an insignificant attribute, or it might persuade me to wish to be teammate.
Later in high school and university, Jewishness submerged--it disappeared as a distinctive mark. I did not notice whether someone was Jewish except when the context disclosed people's cultural or religious orientation. However, in later life, my current life, I am very aware when someone seems Jewish. One of my best friends, Stan, is Jewish, tho not practicing his faith. With his daughters, he often celebrates some of the holidays. One daughter told me after she'd traveled to Israel that this is the first time she's felt safe.
Stan is an artist and feels deeply, he is quick to express his emotions. He short, walks with a severe limp from a car accident, and works as a theater director and visual artist. He and I endlessly discuss Jews, Israel, and Palestine. he has strong opinions and is trying to formulate a way to peace and justice in Israel-Palestine. In 2003 we traveled together on a delegation to Israel and Palestine, my first of three journeys. He was terrified that he'd be identified as a Jew when visiting a Palestinian village. He thought he might be stoned. On the long plane ride home, during a quiet moment when most of us were sleeping, Stan noticed an empty seat next to Scott, one of the co-leaders of our delegation. Scott had asked for reflections about our experiences, he preferred them in writing. Stan took that empty seat, said he wanted to express his feelings from the trip. "I am so ashamed," he cried, "of what Jews are doing to Palestinians."
Some of my Jewish former friends, like Linda, have abandoned me because of my attitudes about the conflicts in Palestine and Israel. In my Quaker circle, other Friends, both Jews and strong supporters of Israel, are sorely tested by my views, as I usually am by theirs. Some think the photos I show from my experiences are partisan, unfair to Israel and Jews, and harming rather than aiding the cause of peace, freedom, and justice. My perspectives, some feel, border on or reveal anti Semitism, that dreaded accusation that can lead to self-silencing.
One of my primary adversaries is another Stan, Jewish, with family connections to Israel. He is short, sturdy, ebullient, vociferous, and like me, a photographer and teacher of photography. But this Stan is a strong supporter of Israel. He once brought a tape recorder to one of my presentations, taping without permission Jeff Halper, an Israeli Jew, a fierce critic of Israel. Jeff was testifying in favor of my project at one of my fundraisers. Stan and I had coffee one evening to talk over our differences. He sternly admonished me for what he felt was my one sided approach, claiming I knew nothing of Israeli and Jewish suffering, was merely spouting ignorant propaganda, and would do a greater service if I abandoned my project. I'm on his email list, which I consider a great gift, because he frequently sends me materials from the most conservative Jewish groups. In this manner, I learned better the arguments and evidence of some of my opponents.
Partially as a survival mechanism I rigorously tune to who is Jewish because this will effect how and what I express concerning the Middle East, the Israeli lobby, Zionism, and related topics. Rightly or wrongly, it also allows me to anticipate some of their perspectives. But most importantly, it reminds me that this human being that I'm now engaged with might feel wounded by history, the stark fact of the holocaust, the millennia of suffering that led to that diabolical act, and felt no one would protect Jews if they were again threatened with annihilation. I am struggling to comprehend that this is an enduring wound that color present experience.
MUNICH, 1972
1967, the elation at victory of the Israeli army and then five years later, Munich, the Olympic games, 1972. The abduction of Israeli athletes added to an unfolding picture of horror, complicating my picture. Who is the victim, who the aggressor? As might have been true for others, I was horrified when all eleven athletes died before and during a failed rescue attempt. The context for this act of aggression on civilians was a wave of airplane hijackings beginning in the 1960s. Palestinian militants--often young men masked and carrying rifles and grenades, an enduring image leading to a dangerous stereotype--committed many of these attacks, with Israelis or the Israeli national airline, El Al, the primary target. These attacks might have heightened sympathy for Israel--it did in my case.
I didn't follow closely the various attempts at bringing peace, justice, and security to the region. Only recently, with my passion for the region and its troubles, have I explored the details of these flawed attempts. I was only dimly aware of President Carter's Camp David initiatives and signing the peace treat between Israel and Egypt in 1978. I had no idea then that Carter would go on to continue his deep involvement with the issues, try to broker agreements, monitor elections in Palestine, and finally in 2006 publish a seminal book, Palestine--Peace or Apartheid? This book would help open the debate in the US about next steps to resolve the conflict.
LEBANON
But I was aware of Lebanon in 1982. I saw photos and TV images of the destruction of Beirut. Osama Bin Laden, the alleged architect of the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, apparently claimed that watching Israel destroy the downtown towers of Beirut planted the idea of attacking tall buildings in the US. I heard about the Israeli-sanctioned massacre of Palestinians in refugee camps , Shatila and Sabra. I observed from afar the flight of the Palestinian liberation organization into exile in Tunisia, and with it the rise of Yasser Arafat.
Closer to home, an Armenian family from Lebanon owned a Middle Eastern produce store in Watertown Massachusetts where I lived at the time. Altho I never spoke with them about Lebanon, I imagined the suffering of their relatives trapped in that besieged nation. Thru my imagination the family focused my attention on the unfolding catastrophe. I learned later that I was not alone in coming to the issue of the Middle East thru Lebanon. Leap forward 24 years to 2006--the second invasion of Lebanon. By now, with my 3 years of direct experience in Israel and the occupied territories, the renewed suffering traumatized me, as I expect happened in much of the world. During the summer of the 2006 Israeli-Israeli war, Hezbollah missiles landing on civilians in northern Israel, cluster bombs and white phosphorus killing over 1000 Lebanon's civilians, I wept and bashed my fists into the table, angry and hurt that the massive killing continues.
APARTHEID
Some observers of the conflict in the Middle East are comparing separation between Israelis and Palestinians to south African apartheid. In the mid 1980s I became intensely aware of apartheid in South Africa. This was a period of the worst of the worst, the most repressive period of apartheid. New and highly restrictive laws, censorship, house arrests, banning orders, detentions, torture, states of emergency, along with a growing international movement thru educational campaigns, boycotts, and divestment, brought the issues to my attention. My first trip to south Africa was in 1990, during the demise of apartheid, a few weeks before the government released Nelson Mandela who would later be elected the first president of a free South Africa.
I was part of a Quaker delegation. To visit Quakers in Soweto, the notorious township, we had to circumvent a restriction denying entrance to whites. I learned later while in the Occupied Territories that Israelis are prohibited from entering Palestine, unless of course, they are Israeli settlers. Similarly, South African blacks could not enter white South Africa unless they had passes--leading to the famous anti pass campaigns of the 1950s. Palestinians from the West Bank or Gaza can pass into Israel only with permits, very hard to obtain.
AUSCHWITZ
Jews suffered the Holocaust, and before that, millennia long persecution. What might Auschwitz evoke if I were to visit? With my Germanic background, how would I respond to a killing field designed and implemented by some of my ancestors? In 1995 a Japanese Buddhist order I'm affiliated with, Nipponzan Myohoji, organized a pilgrimage commemorating the 50 th anniversary of the end of World War 2. As much as possible we would walk from Auschwitz to Hiroshima, praying, observing, hearing stories and bringing them to others in World War 2 zones of suffering, such as the death camps, bombed cities, and occupied regions--Poland, Austria, Czech Republic, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Philippines, Vietnam, Japan, and Palestine and Israel. I'd yearned to visit Auschwitz and Hiroshima, but when I learned we'd go thru large parts of Israel & Palestine--that long wish long denied--I was delighted and understood that this was an opportunity I could not pass up.
At Auschwitz I soon realized that had I been raised in Germany or Austria at that time, as had many of my ancestors, I could have gassed and burned the Jews. I might have been a willing executioner, intoxicated with Nazism.
After 4 months of travel, I ran out of money and returned home to find a way to rejoin the pilgrimage. I would not enter Israel or Palestine. I was devastated. The seed planted when I first discovered the pilgrimage's plan went dormant, but did not die. After the pilgrimage ended I helped edit a book about our journey, Ashes and Light . The chapter about the region explored the theme of the Abrahamic tradition, Jews, Muslims, Christians all descended from the forefather Abraham and the two mothers, Hagar and Sarah. This common root was a new discovery for me, one I work with to this day in an attempt to comprehend the paradox of a family conflict--both the Abrahamic family and the wider family of all of creation--that flames nearly out of control in Palestine and Israel. I gazed longingly at the photos made by my colleagues showing the pilgrims passing thru a Gaza checkpoint. I vowed to somehow find a way to make photos like this myself. If not with a pilgrimage, maybe a delegation, maybe eventually as a solo agent in a broader context. I was disappointed, unsure, confused, yearning: the seed in me slowly grew.
"WHAT IS YOUR NEXT PHOTO PROJECT?"
The 1995 pilgrimage began to concentrate my attention more directly on Palestine-Israel. I learned about the first intifada, shaking off or rebelling in Arabic, that began in 1987, and with others I was hopeful that this largely nonviolent resistance might resolve the conflict. Then the Oslo years, surprise after surprise, again building hope. But I was only marginally knowledgeable about these events, spottily read and not fuzzily focused. In 2000 I had a conversation with my elder daughter, Joey, who like me was growing more upset at events in Palestine-Israel after the obvious failures of Oslo and subsequent peace initiatives. She told me about Edward Said's book, The Question of Palestine . Reading its graceful phrasing and passionate articulation began to ground me in the tortured and many faceted perspectives about the region. Later I was to read Israeli Jewish authors like David Goodman and Benny Morris to widen my perspective.
I met a Palestinian activist in Boston, Amer, outspoken about the injustice in his homeland. While driving home one evening, he was stopped on the highway by police who discovered political posters about an event supporting Palestinians in his car. He was arrested on a traffic charge and eventually deported to Jordan by an alleged visa infraction. In my mind, not only was he a human being from the area rapidly growing in my consciousness but also a person badly treated by US authorities.
I attended a report meeting about a delegation from my city Cambridge that had recently returned from Israel and Palestine. One of the participants, a portly genial fellow, Marty Federman, wearing a kippah, began his message with words to the point that some in the audience will probably object to what he's saying. Indeed, after a few more sentences someone yelled out at him, "liar, self-hating Jew, you should be ashamed!" This was Hillel Stavis, legendary local supporter of Israel. This interchange--Marty remained calm--alerted me to the volatility of the issue and the need to engage with it. Rather than turn back, this evening affirmed my growing direction.
Drawn to deeper awareness of this region, the issues were frightening and caused me severe pain. Simultaneously I was attracted and repelled. One outcome may have been to numb myself, to silence my heart, fid some other issue, and walk away. How could I ever manage to be useful, learn with an open heart, bypass narrow thinking and all the preconceptions that had accreted to me over my 63 years? Wasn't I a little old to begin this new adventure?
Often people asked me what my next photo project would be. I'd competed a series about water, Bread and Puppet Theater, poverty, African Americans, and American Indians. I was musing about what next. I'd photographed in a prison and for three years visited a young black man in a maximum-security prison. I'd delved mildly into the Middle East topic. There were only two possibilities: prisons and Israel-Palestine.
SEPTEMBER 11, 2001
On the morning of September 11, 2001, I was writing in my journal about this dilemma--which project to pursue?--when my younger daughter Katy and my sister Elaine visiting us from Alaska rushed into the house. They shouted, "You won't believe this, an airplane has just crashed into the World Trade Center."
The explosions in the Towers and the Pentagon coincided with potential explosions in myself. I was very angry about the violence and intractability exhibited by all parties of the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians. So explosive that I felt myself becoming a bomb. This led to the realization that unless I found a way to work with this anger, to transform it into fuel for a long struggle, one that would benefit rather than destroy, I would become self-destructive. I would not be a useful player. But what to do?
If verification of my urgency were needed, Operation Defensive Shield, the Israeli invasion and reoccupation of most Palestinian cities in 2002 as a purported response to increased suicide attacks on Israel, sealed my direction. I recall awakening with thanks on my lips that I was alive, my home was intact, my family had survived. Yet had I been living in Ramallah, for instance, I might awaken abruptly in the rubble of my home--if awakening at all, lucky to be alive.
Drawing on my experience with South Africa and Wounded Knee, I decided to engage thru photography, but this would require I travel to the region, see with my own eyes and sense with my own heart the various realities people are forced to endure. I could become a Jewish high school student on a bus that is blown up by a Palestinian suicide bomber. I might assume the role of the bomber. I might be an Israeli Knesset (legislative body) member who calls for the forced removal of all Arabs. I might be in the Palestinian presidential party, seeking weapons from Arab countries. I could play many roles--in my imagination. I could meet real people, hear their stories, make photos of them. But only if I were present in the region. And this would require undergoing some danger. Am I willing to pay the ultimate price? And are my skills and personality suitable for the challenge?
I knew I would not rely solely on books, videos, speeches, slide shows, print exhibits, websites, or first hand accounts by recent travelers. Nothing so second hand. My path had to be on the ground--be there soon.
What might be the most suitable method? Not solo. Definitely not a tour organized by a Jewish or Israeli group. Ah, a reality tour or alternative tour like those offered by the Fellowship of Reconciliation, Global Exchange, and Boston to Palestine. Maybe join with the olive harvest as some friends have done.
During the summer of 2003, I attended a talk by an Israeli Jew who was initiating a housing project called Mosaic that would serve both Jews and Palestinians. He was the first Israeli Jew I'd met. I also met someone in the audience, the only dark skinned man present, Tarek, originally from Egypt, a handsome deep voiced, impressive fellow who I learned later was part of the Muslim Peace Fellowship of FOR. He was to co lead a FOR delegation in the fall. After much hesitation and confusion, I'd made a decision: travel with the delegation for two weeks thru Israel and Palestine, learn what I could and decide my next steps.
CURRENTLY
I've been three times to the region, nine months during the past three years. In the fall of 2007, enrolled in a writing workshop at the Cambridge Center for Adult Education where I teach photography, I soon realized I was the only male among 15 students. I tried reading one of my stories from my recent visit to the Middle East, about roadblocks and threats from Israeli soldiers. Some of my fellow students seemed to wince. Maybe I'd made the wrong choice of story to read. During the next few weeks, hearing names of people and listening to their written stories, I soon guessed that more than half of my colleagues were probably Jewish. Perhaps I should choose different materials to work on and read. Discussing this with my good friend Louise, herself a writer and writing teacher and knowing my photographic work in Israel-Palestine, I decided to try to tell the story of how I arrived at the issue that now absorbs me.schiel@ccae.org
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