 Hello, I'm Tim Paradis, a resident of Portland. I occasionally host at the Portland Media Center interviews on international topics of politics and social justice. Today I'm happy to welcome three guests who will be talking about their recent trip to the West Bank of Palestine to help Palestinian farmers with their olive harvest. Three guests, I don't know if it's my left or right, but Abby Fuller closest to me is a professor in the sociology department at the University of Southern Maine, Becky Hitchcock in the middle, a retired nurse from Portland, and Abby Fuller, I'm sorry, and Cynthia Howard at the end is a retired architect from Bitterford Pool. Prior to talking about your recent trip to Palestine, can you talk about your own personal journey to interest in the Palestinian people? Maybe we can start with you. Sure. We taught college for many years at a small college in Indiana called Manchester College, and for some, Manchester has a strong focus on peace and justice, and because of some sort of historical quirk, we often had a number of Palestinian students at Manchester College. We had a pretty large contingent of international students and a bunch of Palestinian students. So knowing them very personally got me interested in just learning about the conflict between Israel and Palestine. Was this your first trip to that part of the world? No, it wasn't. Fifteen years ago I went with a faculty trip from Manchester College to Israel and Palestine. I see. Not my first. And Becky? I have had the opportunity and the luxury of traveling to many different places and many of those trips have included trips with college level students. And I had never been to the Middle East. I had some ideas, some rough ideas of some of the conflicts going on there, but I'd never traveled there. So when my friends talked about their travel there and how they had enjoyed it and then started talking about the olive picking, that idea appealed to me and I thought I'd like to do that. Thanks. And Abby? Cynthia. Cynthia. Well, two things motivated me to want to go there. One is just being an American and looking at this sort of strange statistic as Israel being the, Israel and Saudi Arabia being the two countries that our government gives the most money to. And I said, I really want to know more about that. What is the backstory of that? And the little I started learning about what was happening in Palestine and the Israeli situation, it made me think very much about what had happened in South Africa. And I'm the mother of black children, adopted children to a former Ethiopian. And so, you know, I had picked up on the news over the years of how the Ethiopian Jews who are just as legitimate Jews as Israeli Jews were being so poorly treated by Israel. They had to escape Ethiopia because they were, this was probably a couple of decades ago, they were being very badly persecuted and I had a dentist who was a Jewish man in Cambridge Massachusetts who was contributing money for this effort to help Ethiopian Jews go to what was supposed to be their homeland and then to find out how poorly treated they were. I wanted to know more and the only way I think you can really sometimes know for sure in a way that you can speak forcefully to others about what your beliefs are is to go and see for yourself. I have been to Cuba quite a few times and as an architect and preservation planner, I absolutely fell in love with the architecture. But I also fell in love with the people and made me realize that there's so much more to know about our world than we hear in our media here in this country. And so that was the motivation for me to go in. I also knew that I'd be meeting a bunch of amazing people because when you go on trips, you know, service trips, you find that it's a select group of people that are pretty terrific comrades. My understanding is that the Olive Harvest Tour brought together people from a number of nations and several other states among whom the 15 who came from Maine were the largest contingent. Can you say something about why you think there's such a high level of interest in Palestine in Maine and did you have conversations with some of the folks from overseas from other countries and what some of their perspectives were? We stayed in a hotel in Bethlehem and the group that we were all part of and Maine was a rather large contingent, there were about 100 of us all in all. And some of those people, they were from several European countries, a large group from England, but Poland, Switzerland, France, Germany, Holland. Some people go every year. They go as couples, they go as friends, they go as humanitarian groups. They're quite devoted to that. So they had friends that they'd seen from year to year. They had friends that they saw again in the olive fields. So we had a lot of opportunities to talk with them and amongst ourselves. We also had a lot of opportunities to have different presentations, films and lectures from a number of different groups, and we were all a part of that. So I feel that gave us opportunities to learn a great deal both about the kind of people who are interested in helping the farmers make their olive harvest, but also interested in what are we doing here in Maine or where is Maine and what kinds of things are you interested in? What are your goals? What are your objectives? Why are you here? Did you get a sense of the level of understanding of the Palestinian cause and the type of solidarity that goes on in some of those other countries? Did they speak to that at all? I think that depending on the size of their group or how involved they were in a group in their own communities, certainly we had opportunity to learn so much about political ideas, social ideas, civil rights issues from the speakers that we had. And other people would talk about their experience and highlight what was being offered to us as presentations. OK. And Abby, what was your daily experience there? I mean, olive picking sounds either grueling or exotic, but what was that experience? And what was a typical daily schedule? So typically we would go out and pick olives in the morning. Our group, since the group was so large, would usually split into and go to two different fields. We would meet the family that owned the fields. They would usually pick with us. They would serve us a wonderful lunch in the fields. And then the afternoons were, by and large, devoted to touring different places. We went to Jerusalem. We went to Bethlehem. There was a couple times when we picked olives in the afternoon, I think. And then the evenings would go back and have a wonderful dinner at this hotel. And then the evenings there would be a speaker or a film at the hotel that we would watch. So the days were pretty packed, which was great. We I think we all feel like we learned an enormous amount. And it was a really good mix of doing manual work, actually helping the farmers pick the olives and being a sort of presence to protect them from possible harassment by settlers who lived around the olives fields. A good mix of that and then also hearing from other people and learning things. Now you talked about harassment from settlers. Perhaps Cynthia, you could talk a bit about signs of the Israeli occupation that you witnessed on this trip. Well, just to back up a second. The fields that we went to, the grows that we went to were specifically chosen because they were suffering harassment from the settlers who are these communities that are on stolen Palestinian land. And they set up barricades around it. And very often, in some cases, prevent Palestinians to go to their own lands where their their growths are. And this is their source of income. So they limit them to with Israeli permission. They are graciously allowing them maybe two times a year to go on to their lands to care for their olives, which pretty much restricts them from doing the kind of care of their own resource that they would under normal circumstances because the olive trees do need more than two times a year care. So they get weedy and stuff. But it gives them a little bit of a measure of safety because international presence of people who will go back and talk about what's happening to the Palestinians would be less likely to be assaulted by settlers. But these are the most vulnerable grows that we've been assigned to. And on the way, we could see many demolished homes because we're moving through Area C, which is Palestinian, but is completely controlled by Israel. And it's pretty depressing and very, very powerful to see upfront. And personally, the community and the constraints that the Palestinian families have to live with, and if they own their own house and they're living in their own house and if it needs a toilet repaired, they have to appeal to the Israeli government for a permit to do anything at all to their own property. And only 1% or maximum 3% of Palestinian permits for building improvements are ever approved by the Israelis, whereas Israeli improvements are like that. And the settlers who are usually squatting on the land, which is stolen Palestinian land, turn around and ask the Israelis for permits to extend it and make it a permanent, recognized settlement, and they get permits all the time. So the injustice is really stark and overwhelming. And to just take a little switch here, one of the things I think we were all stepping back from the experience I know sharing with other members of the group. One of the most amazing things is when you realize the constraint on normal life that they live with daily, they are the most generous, most welcoming, very, very well educated because if you consider all the ways they're limited in living a full life, they treasure their children and they treasure education and they also treasure their heritage. I mean, Palestine is an architectural preservationist. One of the things that just blew me away and broke my heart in reading more deeply prior to this trip was that in 48, the Nakba, which is the name of the disaster when the Israelis basically attacked the Palestinians, took their land, there were 583 Palestinian villages that were ultimately obliterated, gone. Every remnant of that history, that culture, their heritage has been totally obliterated and even names of places have been changed to make them respond to the Jewish biblical story that they have for themselves in Israel. But they've wiped the Palestinians' heritage off the map. And when I go to other places, one of the things as an architect and a preservationist and loves old buildings is to just go see the physical evidence of a culture because it tells you so much about the diversity of our planet and our people and it's gone, it's completely gone. I mean, there's a little bit left in East Jerusalem. I mean, there's some older houses, but it's just tragic and for them to somehow remain strong and go on, it just makes you wanna do something to make their story more widely known because it's such an injustice and I'm hogging the conversation, but... Well, opening up all sorts of routes for further conversation. In what ways did you see the Palestinian culture and identity still being nurtured? Well, my day always started. My roommate and I didn't use the air conditioning in our hotel room. We had the windows open. It was lovely having the breeze come in and every morning as the sun was coming up, we could hear the call to prayer throughout the town of Bethlehem and it was beautiful and some mornings we would just get up and look out the window so the sun was just rising over the tops of those houses that she was describing and it was really very peaceful and very beautiful and you notice that the things are congested and close together, but you start to hear the people coming out and you hear them singing and talking and you can hear the birds and you look out and some of them have gardens with greenery, so it was just such a peaceful way to start the day. Then we'd go and have breakfast, which was somewhat different from the kinds of traditional breakfast foods that we would have here and we talked with those people we were talking about earlier and then we'd gather the ladders, we'd gather the blankets that go under the trees and I just was thinking that's how they've picked olives for thousands of years and our hotel was just about two blocks away from a place called Shepherd's Field where the angel appears before the shepherds telling them of the birth of Christ. So you're just thinking this place is ancient and so much history is here, so much has happened to all of these people. The people, the Palestinian people that we met were so gracious, they were so happy to see us and one of the things that you learn right away when you go to the olive groves is well, they receive you so warmly, they're so welcoming and happy to see you and I always thought you just kind of plucked olives off a branch, but you don't, they kind of hang down in a stream and you just like pull them down very gently and the rest of the place is dry, it's arid so your eyes are dry, your nose is dry but your hands are all moist from picking the olives and the farmers and their families were so gracious to us, we'd be picking many of them, most of them don't speak English but they knew three or four words like thank you or welcome or happy you're here and they would bring us little cups of coffee as we were picking the olives. So it was just very, very gracious, they were very kind to us, they were very compassionate and that atmosphere that you feel among the Palestinian people is so different from what you could feel if you saw only the walls or only the fences and people, my own family was very concerned about me going, some of my family members didn't want me to go because they said you're gonna be in danger and I didn't feel in danger any time, not for one second, not for one minute, any time of the day or night when we were doing things amongst ourselves, out on the streets and with the Palestinian people. So that's kind of another side from some of the political strife but within and among the people, they're always faced with the boundaries and what they can't do and what they're limited in doing, what's imposed on them they're still so very gracious and they're hopeful and they're kind and they were kind to us, they were eager to see us, eager to talk with us. Now Cynthia talked about, or you both have destruction of Palestinian culture, harassment and land theft by the settlers, who are the settlers and what is motivating them? The settlers are Jews, usually who have come from other countries, we learned that there were a lot of immigrants from Russia, for example, who were coming in and are attracted to the settlements because they're highly subsidized by the Israeli government. So if you don't have a lot of resources, you can go and live in one of these settlements and have a pretty nice apartment, a good education, good amenities like playgrounds and pools and things like that. So my understanding is that there are more often Jews who are coming from other parts of the world, there are a lot of American Jews as well, who partly for religious reasons and partly just for economic reasons are going to live in these settlements and to populate the settlements. And one thing that I found very interesting was the size and number of the settlements this time compared to when I was there 15 years ago. When I was there 15 years ago, they sort of dotted the hillside and now they're like these huge sort of suburban developments that you see, they're just enormous and growing. And this is all on Palestinian land. We actually saw the beginnings of a settlement one day when we were picking in an olive field next to what's called an outpost. Oftentimes the settlements begin by a Jewish family or a couple of families maybe going in and taking a piece of land. Again, it's Palestinian land and just erecting kind of a temporary shelter there. This one was almost like covered with plastic. There wasn't very much there. They just start building and that's illegal even under Israeli law. But eventually enough people go that a settlement begins and it becomes sort of a de facto recognized by Israel and then starts to get subsidized by the government. So it was interesting to see that process start and the Palestinians can't do anything about it. It's on their land. It's right next to their olive fields and there's nothing that they can do to stop it. And did you see examples of collaboration between the Israeli army and the settlements in terms of permitting and moving those settlements forward to final recognition? Well, the settlements always were fenced in and heavily guarded. There was always a military presence around the settlements, protecting the settlers. I mean, there was really, you couldn't just drive in there certainly if you were Palestinian. So they're heavily protected. That was I think the main thing that we saw. So it's Palestinian territory becomes more and more limited with settlement increased. It's a purposeful effort on the Israeli government's part to, it's a method for them to steal the landing, make it impossible to reverse the situation. And did you get a sense from the Palestinians that you talked to that there is a hopelessness about the prospects for an independent Palestinian state? And if not that, what in their view? Well, that's I think what it was kind of alluding to earlier about the astonishing humanity and graciousness and sense of peace in some way, despite. I think for one thing, there's nothing they can do. And if you went around with rage about that all the time, it would undo your own humanity. That's basically the way I see the way they have created this sense of, not completely despair that nothing can happen, but they know that they're doing what they can do and that they're in the right and they have no control over what's going to come down the pike and basically our voices, people who are outside who can put pressure on our government, after all, we give them 10 million to 15 million dollars every day of our money. And what are they doing with it? Well, as an American, it makes me outraged. They're building these beautiful new road systems, but they connect settlement to illegal settlement and they cut Palestinians off sometimes from their own farmlands, but it make it difficult for them, in many cases, to go see relatives even because they're not allowed to use these roads. In Israel, you have different license plates for Palestinians and Israelis. And so they're really, it's like bantus in South Africa. They're kind of drawing in restrictions around individual, small Palestinian land and mystacit, mystacitizing. And I think because of that, there seem to be a pretty widespread recognition that a two-state solution isn't feasible anymore. They've made it infeasible. That it's gotta be one state, but the problem is if it's one state with equality for both Arabs and Jews, then it's no longer a Jewish state. So who knows what's gonna happen for now on? Someone said to me, or maybe was said to the group, it's illegal to be angry. So it's hard for them to show signs of anger, such as with a peaceful demonstration because they can be further oppressed or they could be targeted. So it's difficult for them to express their views perhaps publicly or in a way that a television station, for example, would pick up and send to other parts of the world. So they have to be very, very careful. I think within those constraints, there's also a strong will to carry on life. We went to a place out in the desert and met some Badoen nomads. And they live very, very simply. And their wealth is measured in terms of the number of goats that they have. And historically, they've gone from place to place in the desert and grazed with their goats. They have a more permanent settlement where they are now which is literally on the edge of a very beautiful Israeli Jewish settlement. They're quite limited in what they can do. Their children had to walk on a major highway for miles to go to school. So, and some of the children had been injured. So they decided to build their own school. And they built it because they were also limited in the tools they could use or the supplies that they could have access to to build what you would think of as a usual school building. So they built it out of tires. They stacked tires. They filled the centers of those tires with sand and then they made sand and baked it in the sun as the outside walls. And the children walk there every day to school. It's just a matter of a very short distance. But that really impressed me because I thought they want what people would call a normal life, a place to live, to feel secure, to have their children be safe, to have their children to have access to a school. They had playground material donated for the children at that school. And they weren't allowed to assemble the playground because they weren't again allowed access to some of the nuts and screws and bolts that would be required to put those things together because those could be potentially used as weapons. So I think it's difficult for them in many ways. And it's a daily confrontation. We met at one of the Olive Grove's farmer who this particular grove was the largest that we had access to. And all hundred of us went there to pick that day. And this farmer through our interpreter said that those groves have been in his family for five generations. He doesn't have a land title like we would have a written proof title of that land. So he's afraid of it always being taken away or him being blocked from going to his Olive Grove when it's time to harvest. The trees in that grove have been verified to be 2,000 years old. One of those trees is a huge tree. I never saw a tree that big in my whole life. It's been verified by three experts from three countries to be 5,000 years old. That man loves that tree and that grove. Every night he sits in a chair under it to protect it. Doesn't have any weapon, doesn't have anything except his presence to protect that tree. But that's how close he feels to his land and that's how much he loves it. We've only got a couple minutes left. So to bring it to the US as the strategic ally of Israel, what needs to change here and what do you think the prospects for change are without change here, status quo? Well, the US, activists in the US need to get the US government to stop giving so much money to Israel or to condition aid to Israel on stopping the settlements, dismantling the settlements, all that sort of thing. Israel couldn't do what it's doing without US funding. So that's a really important point of leverage. And we, as citizens, we feel have a responsibility for how our government spends money. So that's sort of, I think, the main thing that Americans can do. Well, another thing that's really important right now is BDS, because all of the... BDS being boycott, divest, and sanction. Which is a movement similar to what changed the situation in South Africa. Right, and you hear about it in the news only in terms of the government and individual states trying to, well, basically the Republican legislators wanting to write rules that say that you can be, we as Americans can be sanctioned and hurt for supporting it. Students in college that are part of our effort that are supporting BDS have been received backlash because there are efforts to prevent students from being able to receive federal loans for their education if they happen to voice a concern about what's happening in Palestine and support this peaceful effort. It's an economic peaceful effort. So we need to speak against that and try to keep our right to participate and discuss it. I mean, that's free speech. We believe in free speech. So to claim that BDS is not just free speech and nonviolent, we've got to address that. And also that it's not anti-Semitic, right? One of the main ways that BDS has been targeted by opponents is by claiming that it's anti-Semitic. If, essentially, if you criticize Israel, you're criticizing Jews. And we, none of us feel that way. The state of Israel is different than the Jewish people and it's perfectly legitimate to criticize a state government for what it's doing. And I think where there's conflict, there needs to be change. And change can be difficult and there can be a lot of barricades to change. But I was thinking the other day, sometimes one of the barriers to change are our own ideas or what we believe. So I think it's important to be able to know where your ideas come from, to know facts about and information about an issue, to listen to other people, to talk to other people. And I was reminded of something yesterday at the Martin Luther King breakfast. There was a young African-American student from Deering High School and he was reminding us to involve youth. They are our next generation and we need to talk and to listen to them, include them as well. So on that positive note, I haven't quite mastered the hand signals from the cameraman yet. I think we're out of time. I really appreciate the spirit of discussion here. You actually led yourselves and answered questions I hadn't thought of asking. So very much appreciated. Sure, thank you. Thank you, Tim.