Mary, Mary

Downtown in front of the Waverley Library each December a large nativity scene is set up. This is Mary, mother of Jesus, with one of the wise men  and a sheep behind her. Her hands look awfully big for her face, which looks childlike.While the male figurine is brown-skinned, Mary is not. Western Christians have re-imaged the mother of Jesus, making her more European-looking -- and sounding. Jesus's mother's name was Miriam, but that was changed to Mary in English.

Here is what the nativity scene looks like. Joseph on the right, the Three Wise Men in the back and the cows and sheep scattered about. The empty space in the straw bed is for the baby Jesus, who is put there either on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day. If Jesus is not there yet, shouldn't Mary's stomach be heavily pregnant? Or is her body also miraculously un-womanly looking even while she was pregnant? Strange. This nativity scene is quite traditional.

This, however, is more what the nativity scene would look like if we envisioned Bethlehem beyond the myth -- to the reality of occupation. Today, if Jesus were to come to earth and be born in a manger in Bethlehem, Mary and Joseph and the three wise men and the animals would have to deal with the Apartheid Wall. Now, Mary and Joseph, being Jewish, would be able to pass through the Wall without permits. I'm not sure about the Three Wise Men, though, as they would be arriving from Iran, Arabia, and India. Maybe they were all Jews, too? Not sure. Would the IDF let them through?

The olive wood nativity scene above is made by a Palestinian Christian artist from Beit Sahour, trans. the Shepherd's Field. (The nativity scene is for sale; click on the link below): 

In 2007 as an act of quiet resistance, he made a "walled nativity set" - a nativity scene where the wall stopped the wise men from getting through to the Holy Family. He said “I made these sets as a protest at what is happening to the local community of Bethlehem and Beit Sahour”. Beit Sahour - is in the Bethlehem area, where 87% of the land has been taken by the Israelis. "We are surrounded by the wall and our freedom of movement is denied".

 

Christmas in the looking glass

image source
It's the beginning of December, and I'm already getting irritated by the glee of Christmas that I find everywhere I turn. People all around me, folks on Facebook, work colleagues, and people who should know better are all falling into the well of simulacra, Baudrillard's idea that what is false is more believable and desirable than actual reality.

The more untrue, the more we believe it to be true. The bigger the illusion, the happier our delusion.


When are Western Christians today going to move beyond the myth that they have created about the Holy Land? Believing in the story about Bethlehem in the Bible as if it were alive today? When are the majority of Christians going to wake up to what is really happening in Bethlehem today? Do they know there is an Apartheid Wall built by the Israelis and policed by the IDF that restricts the movement of the residents of Bethlehem? Do they know that the people of Bethlehem need passes and permits? Do they care?

It's this living in the looking-glass world where everything is childishly innocent and joyful that I find so irritating.

Oh Come All Ye Faithful, indeed. Get ye head out of the Christmas card and look hard at the wall.

The Child is Not Dead

The other day, talking with a woman who I had not met before, we got into a discussion of poetry. She told me that she recently watched a movie about a South African poet called Black Butterflies; it is fictionalized history about the life of Ingrid Jonker, a white South African writer. Jonker, like a number of other white female poets of the 60s and 70s such as Sylvia Plath and Ann Sexton, committed suicide. Like Plath and Sexton, her words could not save her. Jonkers, like Virginia Woolf and the fictional Edna Pontellier of Kate Chopin's The Awakening, walks into the waves and drowns herself.  

The woman I met told me that Jonker struggled with her racist father who supported apartheid. She said that Nelson Mandela had used lines from a poem by Jonker when he gave the first address to the first African Congress. The story goes, Jonker had written the poem for her father, to help him move beyond his apartheid thinking; instead, after she read it to him, he tore the poem in two. I guess she must  have expected that as he had a high-ranking position in the National Party as a censure of writing.

When I looked up her poem and read it, I immediately thought of how her narrative thread leads to Palestine and resonates with other poems written by other women who are also writing about children who live--and are killed--within racist apartheid violence. I thought of poems by Ibtisam Barakat, Naomi Shihab Nye, and Lisa Suheir Majaj. The lines of hope with which Jonker ends her poem, hopefully, will one day come true for Palestinians as they have for black South Africans: no more passes. The demonstration in Sharpeville in 1960 was an anti-pass rally; 169 black people were killed by the Afrikaners police; today we commemorate this massacre on March 21, the International Day Against Racial Discrimination. 

Al-Dalu children killed by Israeli missiles in Gaza this November 18. There names and ages: Jamal Mohammed Jamal 6; Yousef Mohammed Jamal 4; Sarah Mohammed Jamal 7; and Ibrahim Mohammed Jamal 1. You can find the names of the 33 children killed by Israel this November on the Palestinian Centre for Human Rightswebsite.

When will Palestinian children be able to travel the land without passes? When will Palestinian children be able to step from behind the shadow of an Israeli soldier? Not be dead? When will Palestinians no longer be subjected to a racist and humiliating pass system? Gain the human right of free movement not policed by Israelis? No checkpoints. Without a pass. When will that day come?

The child is not dead 

by Ingrid Jonker

The child is not dead 
The child lifts his fists against his mother
Who shouts Afrika ! shouts the breath
Of freedom and the veld
In the locations of the cordoned heart

The child lifts his fists against his father 
in the march of the generations
who shouts Afrika ! shout the breath
of righteousness and blood
in the streets of his embattled pride

The child is not dead not at Langa nor at Nyanga 
not at Orlando nor at Sharpeville
nor at the police station at Philippi
where he lies with a bullet through his brain

The child is the dark shadow of the soldiers 
on guard with rifles Saracens and batons
the child is present at all assemblies and law-givings
the child peers through the windows of houses and into the hearts of mothers
this child who just wanted to play in the sun at Nyanga is everywhere
the child grown to a man treks through all Africa

the child grown into a giant journeys through the whole world 
Without a pass

from the Black Hills to Gaza and back to Canada then off to Israel

I found this video on Jadaliyya, an English language Arab news and culture website. I agree with them that  TED talks have their problems (the few I have seen are overwhelmingly by white professional guys in suits), but this one by Aaron Huey comes from a decolonizing perspective. Yes, he too is a white male but he actually takes a critical look at that. In their introduction to the video, Jaddaliyya links the practices of colonial settler projects, links what's happening to the Palestinians by Israel with what was done to--and continues to be done to-- the Lakota by the US, and to Indigenous peoples everywhere.

While Huey, a photographer, specifically uses contemporary photographs to inform his narration of the resistance of the Lakota to a long history of settler policies and violence, the hard questions that he raises about the role of 'wasi'chu' , Lakota for both 'non-native' and 'those who take the best part of the meat' (which has been white people and continues to include settlers of all skin colours who benefit from the dominant society's policies and methods) can be extended to Canadian setter society and other settler peoples like Israelis. 

Jadaliyya Reports states that:

Today, three days after “Thanksgiving Day,” it is important to remember that in the United States, settler colonialism has been so complete, and so successful, that the world has forgotten that South Africa, Australia, and Israel are all reproductions, all approximations of the ongoing victory in the Americas. We have forgotten that people learn from each other, and that techniques and lessons of genocide have always travelled in well cut suits, paperwork, and handshakes. We have forgotten that those of us who live today in the United States, are continuing to settle native land, and that even the ability to be a politically progressive—or even radical—citizen of the United States is a wage of genocide. A reservation is a bantustan is a refugee camp is Area A is an allotment is native title is Gaza..

shout out in Israel

This protest was held earlier this month in Tel Aviv during the recent Israeli attack on Gaza which killed 162 Palestinians, including 30 children, and wounded 1000, many severely.

This large fired-up group of Israelis chants to another group of Israelis on the other side of the street. Watch the video (3 m); below is the text in English (as translated on the video above) of what the Israeli group is chanting in Hebrew.

The hatred against not only Palestinians but Israelis who are left-leaning is shocking and sickening. What makes things worse is the man that comes before the camera about halfway through, who is welcomed as 'the next Prime Minister' and who leads this shout out on hate and xenophobia is a member of Israeli parliament, an elected member of the Knesset. He is of Iranian and Afghan descent. Indeed, many of his supporters look like they could be Mizrahi Jews like him, Jews who are indigenous to the Middle East. This man is an archeologist, which is so troubling because one has to wonder what role he plays in erasing Palestinian history from the land to justify the state of Israel as inheritor?

Why do I tell you these things about him? Read his words below which I've placed in blue text.These are the beliefs of a member of the Israeli government? I am used to right wing madness but this crosses all lines; it is venom and clearly hate speech.

It's funny that Israel claims that Arabs want to drive them out of the land and kill them all, but it seems some Israelis not only are architects of a language of extermination but also gloatingly and deliriously so:

The nation wants victory
The nation demands war now
Respect to IDF (Israeli Defense Forces)
The nation demands to expel leftists
Leftists are sons of ****
Your mothers lied [slept with] Arabs
Leftists go to hell
and shall you get cancer soon
Welcome our next Prime Minister [Michael Ben-Ari]

Good evening, good Jews

And to you all leftist traitors

we now demand let the army destroy

let the army exterminate

let's not confuse; No innocents in Gaza

No negotiations anymore

No agreements, we force them to kneel

and beat them

Eradicate Gaza, Eradicate Gaza

What, only 15 killed?

We want 15 plus 2000 bodies

We want all Gaza in graves

all Gaza in graves

Security means to annihilate Gaza

Yes, Eradicate Gaza, eradicate Gaza

People of Israel are alive

It would be interesting to hear what the leftist Israelis on the other side of the street were chanting.