We spent today in the neighborhood of the most famous descendant of the Holy Land. You may have heard of him: Jesus of Nazareth. We were part of a large flock of tourists who come to Nazareth to see the Church of the Anunciation and dozens of other Christian sites, but we were able to see a different side of the city, which is considered the “Arab capital of Israel” due to its Palestinian majority. The complexity of caste continued to unfold to us as we talked about this dynamic with Sally Azzam-Cook and her husband, journalist Jonathan Cook about their time in Nazareth.
Sally is Palestinian and an Israeli citizen and enjoys more privilege in the West Bank than many others, despite still being governed by a military occupier. She shared with us in the opening of her presentation that she “…[is] not a refugee, and every day I feel the privilege of that.”. Her resume is an impressive list of programs run and participated in, including the one we were taking part in: Dine with a Family. Hamam opened up her house to us and served up a home made Palestinian meal on the back garden patio. The common thread of Azzam-Cook’s work is the connection of everyday people on each side of the conflict, working at the human level to promote understanding.
One of these programs is “Encounters”, a program bringing together Israeli and Palestinian high school students face to face, often for the first time due to the intense segregation of society. Her experience there shows some promise, but she was honest with us in sharing that there is much work to be undone before reconciliation can be possible.
“Talking to the convinced people is lovely, but what about the Israeli schoolchildren who say, ‘I want to be a soldier and kill the first Palestinian I see.’?…The program gets some Jewish kids saying, ‘We want to know you [Palestinian kids] for a headstart into the Army.’…then the Palestinian children discover that they are the ones with ‘no party’ for peace. We have to deal with that so I put a question mark in their head. Not convince, just question.”
-Sally Azzam-Cook
She also shared other anecdotes about the difficulty of reconciling realities for the normal people coming from the broad categories of “oppressed” and “oppressor”. On a trip to Rhodes meant to connect Jewish Israeli women with Palestinian women, she saw the juxtaposition of women who have never been allowed to see the sea but who have seen kidnap, arrest of their children, and other horrors, with women who were having a genuine and eye-opening experience but had the luxury to go back home to comfort and forget about what they had learned. Her goal is to open people’s eyes to the inequality happening in front of them and she says, “You have no excuse to be blind with the internet. [Americans should] blog and boycott because the international pressure will really help.”
I appreciated Sally’s honest and unflinching look at the situation in her region and her willingness to accept that maybe what she and others are doing is not enough. She offered critique of her own attempts to restore justice and some of other projects but ended by saying, “I like all the projects because doing something is always better than doing nothing.”. The work that she and her husband are doing in Nazareth is one of many examples of dedication in the face of uncertainty. Our walking tour of Nazareth Illit, the state’s attempt to “Judaize” Nazareth in order to capitalize on Christian tourism was also eye-opening. You can read my account of that here and Jonathan Cook’s Nazareth blog here.
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