 Hello, I'm Tim Paradis, a Portland resident and occasional host at the Portland Media Center of interviews on topics of international politics and social justice. Today, I'm pleased to welcome Bob Scheibel and Sally Bodin Scheibel to talk about their recent trip to the West Bank of Palestine. Bob is professor emeritus of Arts and Humanities at the University of Southern Maine and He's also the chair of Maine Voices for Palestinian Rights and Sally is a clinical professional counselor in Portland and founder of the Buddhist Alliance for Nonviolence and Human Rights in Israel and Palestine. I'd like to start with a general question. In a world of much injustice and many causes, why the Palestinians? Well, her daughter years ago when she was going to Suffolk University, she was taking a course in the Middle East and she came home one weekend saying things about what she was learning and I remember we said to her, Jamie, you're starting to sound anti-Semitic and you know that doesn't fly in this house and she said no, no, no, it's not and she told us some things. So we immediately went to the library after she left because we didn't want her to be led astray. We wanted to know some things and we downloaded a bunch of articles, printed them, took them home and started reading and the more we read the more we said oh my goodness, there's another whole story here. We've never heard. So that was the beginning. Jamie continued her interest and then she from Brandeis, her last semester there, she went to West Jerusalem to do an internship and in a Jewish-Israeli foundation, Sally and I decided, well, this would be a good chance for us to go visit. We went over there at the end of 2009, was it? And then from 2009, when we went there, you know, it was looking, seeing things with our own eyes. And we were there for two weeks and she took us up and down the West Bank. We met many, many, many different people of all levels of society and that's how we got engaged and we decided, hmm, this is something we want to work on. The reason we, when people say, why not this, why not something else, part of it is that our government is so much behind the injustices that are being done, so much behind it and we feel a obligation. We also feel an obligation to our many Jewish friends who are very upset about what Israel and Israeli state Zionism is doing to Judaism. They know it's really different. And I think it goes beyond. I mean, I think this is the the holy land. This is where the center of the Abrahamic traditions and what happens there affects all the world. And so it's not just about human rights, from my perspective, about human rights for Israelis and Palestinians. It's about human rights for all people and the effects on all people. One other general question. Based on your different roles as chair of main voices for Palestinian rights and the Buddhist Alliance, do you think there are any differences in the way you approach the issue in terms of how you advocate and how you even think about the issue? Do you want to speak to that, Sally? Sure. Well, I think part of what frames my approach as related to the Buddhist Alliance for Nonviolence and Human Rights is the Buddhist perspective, the Buddhist philosophy, Buddhist psychology, Buddhist ethics. And I feel like there are so many interface organizations that are involved in promoting just peace and advocating for human rights in this region. And I think that Buddhism has something to offer as a compliment. It goes deeper. It goes to the roots of suffering. So greed, hatred or aversion, delusion, not seeing clearly. And I think these pieces and all of the various intricacies and manifestations of these pieces of truth can inform and perhaps provide a complimentary perspective. Thanks. And Bobby, you like to speak about it? I don't feel that there's any really significant difference, certainly no conflict. I think they compliment each other pretty well. I am more likely to work primarily from the framework of international law of human rights, of what I know and what I've seen and what's going on. But I find that having Sally at my side and at my ear and as I witness her interactions with people, I find that helpful to help me to stay calmer and more and steadier as I'm working in this. So it's a really good duo. I neglected to say in my introduction that you've been happily married for 32 years. 32 years. Congratulations. Well, happily. I don't think there's any marriage where it's just a smooth thing. It's been work, but we both say to each other we're so glad that we made it through the rough times and we're still together. And we are very committed as a couple. It's one of the real strengths, I think, of our relationship. I agree. So turning to your recent trip to the West Bank and your experiences there, the West Bank has been occupied by Israel since 1967, the 1967 war. Tell me about the purpose of your trip, where you went, and we'll just start with that overview. We have a very good friend named Yasser Abadiah, whom we met some years ago when he came to the States as part of the teacher's role in the Seeds of Peace. And is that Otis Filming? Yeah. Anyway, in Otis Field. And he stayed with us for about a week while he was here, and we really came to love him. He invited us to come to his home in the West Bank in a little town of Al Ram the next year, and we went. And so we've been back to see him before. He's come here and visited us. So he is a person that we love through him. We've met, of course, his family. We've met friends of his, colleagues. He teaches history in a school for junior high, high school students in East Jerusalem. And so it's really a pleasure to go just to see him, but also through him we get to go and meet people there, see things on the ground, and experience things that you don't ordinarily experience even when you go on a tour into the West Bank. I think we get a deeper view. For example, I'll give you a couple of four examples. We experienced daily life with Yasser, with his cousin Lama and her family. So like, for example, I was invited to go to a wedding. So I think it was a second time. We've been there five times. And the second time I think it was, I went to a wedding, a Palestinian wedding, and it was such a privilege that it was just beautiful. We've also gone to schools. We've experienced a high school graduation. We've gone to... Sally had a chance to talk to a group of high school female students about Buddhism, and they were so interested. They were very interested. I think like any classroom, there are a couple in the back who were whispering in, not interested, but I don't think it was about what I was presenting. I think they're just typical teenagers. But the level of curiosity and interest, intelligence, questions and patience and attentiveness, it was a wonderful experience. So we've seen so many things, and we've experienced... Maybe this is a good time to talk a little bit about our... This last trip, we decided we wanted to go to Jerusalem on a day that Yasser was teaching. From El Ram. It's about six miles to Jerusalem from his home. It took us two hours to get to Jerusalem because of the various obstacles to passage. So we had to negotiate our way, first of all, to the checkpoint. Well, let me just interject. When we go with Yasser, we can go in his car. That still takes a while because of the wall. He used to be able to get to his place of working about five minutes. The wall now takes him an hour. But Sally said, let's go the way the local people go. So we decided to walk from his condo up on this hill down to the town, and then you take it from there. Well, and one of the experiences that was particularly powerful for me was how confused we were when we were approaching the checkpoint. There's a checkpoint passage for vehicles, and then there's a whole other area for pedestrians that is off to the left side. We got confused. So we're walking towards the checkpoint for vehicles, and a soldier is beckoning to us and yelling at us. And then whistled. In Hebrew. Didn't whistle in Hebrew, but yelling. Whistled and started to point with great fervor. And so we realized then that we were supposed to go in a different direction. And it was not easy. We had to cross over some barriers and whatever. In September of this year, there was a young woman, Muslim woman who was in hijab and such. And she was shot while attempting the same thing. And it gave me a whole different perspective too of what that must have been like. I was confused. I think she probably was confused. After she was shot, the Israeli security would not allow the emergency vehicles to come in to assist her. And she died. So, you know, this was one of those examples of something that in reflecting back upon, I thought, this is life. This is the daily life of people. We were white privileged people. And so I think we got a little more leeway. I'd like to explore a little more some signs of the occupation as they impact the daily lives of Palestinians. But I want to ask, life for Palestinians is their experience, one of fear, anxiety, anger. How did you experience them on your trip? I think it's more frustration, several levels. As part of that story Sally was telling, once we got through the various gates to the pedestrians, we went to a bus to go in. The bus quickly filled up. So then we had to go wait in line for another bus. It quickly filled up. We went to a third bus. Finally we got on. So for those people too, there was this frustration of getting on to crowded buses. It took two hours to get there. I think there was also, there's also anxiety. People don't know when they might be stopped. And I witnessed that when I was driving with my friend Lama and she had forgotten her ID. And as we were coming, approaching the checkpoint, she was going through her purse and she couldn't find it and I just saw the anxiety beginning to increase. Luckily we had a very accommodating person who said, go ahead. But there's daily anxiety, especially for parents of young boys I would say in particular. But there's daily anxiety when they're trying to get from one place to another place. I want to speak to the frustration. One night I was with Yasser in his car and we were on the only highway that goes north to south in the West Bank. And we were going through the towns of Aram and Colundia. The streets were so packed, so packed with cars parked up on sidewalks on the sides. And an ambulance was coming behind us. There was hardly any place for these cars to get out of the way so the ambulance could get through. So it took quite a while for that ambulance to get through. This was irritating and annoying to me to be in this traffic. And I found myself thinking, boy, if I had to deal with this track every time this time of day, I just wouldn't go out. So I asked Yasser, Yasser, why are these people even on the road? He said, well, Bob, they're on the road the same reason all people are on the road. Some of them are coming home from work in East Jerusalem. Some of them are going out to shop. Some are going to visit neighbors. Some are going to the drug store. And he said, this is the way it is. And I said, well, why doesn't the PA, could they build a road? PA being the Palestinian Authority. Yes. Can they build another road away from this one that doesn't go right through these towns so it would be faster? He said, no. And I said, why? He said, because Israel won't allow it. Now another time we were with him, we were coming along this road and suddenly said we were coming up to a roundabout. And Sally and I both smelled something pretty foul and we saw water up ahead. And I said, what are we smelling? He said, it's a broken sewage pipe. And I said, or Sally said, well, why is it still broken? Why is it fixing you? Why is it fixed? He said, that's a sewage pipe that runs from Hebron or Jericho into Jerusalem. I mean into Israel where they take it to a water treatment plant and then they use the water to sell at a lower price to the settlements or colonies as we like to call them. And a higher price to Palestinians. Now the settlements are not at any loss for water, as you can tell by their swimming pools and their lush gardens. The Palestinians are. And I said, well, still, why don't they fix it? He said, I don't know. And I thought, okay, it's because this is another way that they have of simply making life difficult and miserable for Palestinians. And I said, what? Well, to get them I think eventually to leave. They want them to go away. To Jordan. To wherever. But to go away to all those sands that they talk about, which are not the Palestinian home. And so the, I said to him, well, why don't the Palestinians, why don't they fix it? And he said, they won't allow us to fix it. I said, why? He said, well, they say that if we fixed it, we would redirect the water elsewhere. And I said, is that true? And he said, we're not allowed to have a water treatment plant over here to do anything with the water. If we started to do that, they surveilled everything, they would know it immediately and stop us. Now I want to just clarify, the way that you're referring to is Israel. Is Israel. And I asked him at one point, I said, oh, I said, this just makes me furious at Israel. And he said, you know, I'm not angry at Israel. He said, I'm angry at the Palestinian Authority for not standing up for us more. I want to say, just to give a little bit of description to this area. This is part of that road, this roundabout that Bob's referring to. It's part of the road that people have to go through in order to get from north to south, vice versa. And it was flooded. So it's not just a little bit of water, it was a flooded area. So pedestrians have to walk through it and cars have to maneuver through it. It's a health hazard. It's just very disturbing to see that kind of thing happening. Bob mentioned, yes, there's frustration with the Palestinian Authority for not standing up for the interests of the people. Did you get a sense of the general view of Americans or Jews, other Israelis, of the Israelis by the average person on your trip? I can't speak to the average person, but I will speak to a couple of friends. We stayed with a couple of friends that are Israeli friends before coming back to the States. And they're appalled. They're doing what they can do. But even they experience quite significant restrictions in terms of what they're able to do. For example, one of them, the female of the couple, wanted to join us in the Olive Harvest, and that will be talked about later today. And she really wanted to come to be part of that and was told that she could not. And first of all, there are these huge signs that say, warning, Israeli citizens do not pass, your lives are in danger. Those signs are at the junctures of what is called Area A. The West Bank was divided into three areas by Oslo. Area A is in control of the Palestinian Authority. And so, you know, so this woman hasn't been able even to be in these areas. Well, Israeli law forbids an Israeli from going in there. I want to add, though, something. And this would be a deliberate F policy to keep the people separate. The first time we went in 2010, we really anticipated finding quite a few people going around with guns, with automatic weapons, with real distaste and hatred of Jews. We never experienced that, not once. And this, every time we've been, we've never experienced that. When we ask people, they'll say, we can live with them. No problem. We have lots of Jews that come over and they help us take our products back into Israel and sell them for us. We've never saw anti-Semitic graffiti on any of the walls. Some of it's written in English, especially on the big wall, but on smaller walls. And I would ask Yasser what these things say, no anti-Semitism, no Jew hatred. It's amazing if there's anybody who has a reason to really dislike Jews as these people. And we need to work to correct a very, I think it's a deliberately crafted persona for Palestinians created by Israel supporters. That they are bloodthirsty, that they are hateful, that they're Jew haters. None of that is true. We experienced the Palestinians to be very, for the most part, gentle. They don't like violence. They're not violent people. But anybody will do some violent things if their children are arrested and shot and tortured, if their homes are bulldozed, if their land is confiscated, if they're denied a permit to dig a well. Yes, there'll be people who will get real angry. But in general, we found that they could so easily live in peace with the Israeli Jews. They say, we just want them to give us our human rights and let us get on with living our lives. And that's been, again, we've been there five times. And without exception, that's been the case. One person said to us, one Palestinian man said to us, don't romanticize us, though. People are people. And so, as Bob was saying, you're going to have people like anywhere else that may have feelings of hostility. But predominantly, the cultural, what's the word, the milieu, is one of gentleness, hospitality, generosity, welcoming. Even towards Jews. Yes. I mean, Bob's walking down the street and he's very quickly surrounded by these teenage boys. I was going down to this little store to get some food while we were staying in Yashir. All these boys, these teenage boys would follow me in there, welcome, welcome, they would say, what can we help you find? Eventually, when they learned his name, Bob, Bob. When we were in Ramallah, we were probably the only two tourists don't go to Ramallah. But Sally and I went to Ramallah one day by ourselves and we were walking through the streets and people would see us and they'd say, welcome, welcome. You partially address this, but what then do you see as the key obstacles to a resolution, to a just resolution to this situation? Let me say something that it'll sound extreme because the opposite of this has been said for so long. Up until about six or eight years ago, the Israeli side controlled the narrative in our media. That's no longer true. And that's why we see since a certain franticness on their part, all this legislation going into Congress, try to shut down criticism of Israel. They don't like the Palestinian narrative getting out there. So the here's the truth that I want to tell. Unlike the statement with Ehud Barak put out with Clinton support. He being the prime minister of Israel at the time that 2000 so called dream message that the dream offer that Israel was offering was made. And I wish we had time to talk about it because a lot of people who were there and in the know realize that was not a dream offer at all. But anyway, after that, he said, Israel has no partner for peace. You hear that repeated all the time. I've studied this extensively and I have detailed it in a 20 page well research fact based document. The Palestinians have been far more the Palestinians have negotiated in faith far more than the Israelis have. And I would love an opportunity to sit down calmly, quietly with anybody from the other side here in Maine. Sit down with a cup of coffee and let us talk about in calm civil voices the facts, the real history. And I think they will understand, whoa, the Palestinians have been good partners for peace. Why aren't our Jewish leaders in Israel taking opportunities, accepting these opportunities? Now this will seem like an outrageous lie to many people, but that's because they have been inculcated with and brought up on another outrageous lie, which is that the Palestinians are violent people, evil people, they'd rather have violence than a state of their own. All of that is a narrative, a myth, which is a historical, meaning the historical facts do not support it. Could I say something? I think we're looking also at racism that needs to be seen for what it is. There's racism and to understand that it is Israeli policies that are problematic, Israeli policies that are extremely discriminatory and make life very, very difficult for the Palestinians. And I assume on questioning you a support for Israel militarily, diplomatically. We could keep talking about this for several more hours, but for those interested who are viewing, could you each provide some contact information for main voices and for the Buddhist Alliance? Do you want to start Bob? Yeah, if people want more information, they can go to our website, www.mainvoicesforpalestinianright.org or maybe it's mvpr.org. They can go, they can search Google us and find us on Facebook. They can also email us at mvprights at gmail.com. And for the Buddhist Alliance for Non-Violence in Human Rights in Israel, Palestine is www.bamvahr.org. Thank you. Both of you have been engaged in this struggle for many decades. Are you more optimistic or pessimistic than you were 20 years ago? The way I feel is I feel more optimistic here and I feel really sad for what's happening on the ground there. We're optimistic because the attitudes of people are shifting rapidly. Two-thirds of Democratic voters today are in favor of cutting off military aid to Israel. That's a huge shift. I am very optimistic that this is going to be resolved peacefully and there will be a secular state like America's a secular state where all ethnicities and religions in that state will have equal human rights. And how could people who care step up? I would say get in touch with main voices for Palestinian rights if you're here in Maine and the organization can provide guidance in terms of how to become more involved. We do. We do regular advocacy with our congressional people. We have rallies once a month. We have letter writing campaigns. There are many ways we sell Palestinian olive oil so if they'll get in touch with us there are many ways we can provide that people can be active. Bob and Sally, thank you for joining us. It's been a really interesting conversation. We've scratched the surface but you've made clear how people can become better informed and become active if they want to help move forward to a resolution to this great injustice in the world. Thank you, Tim. Thank you.