Mennonite Weekly Review

I only got 10 minutes of church in this morning.
I was late because soldiers told me and a bewildered German girl, who was visiting Bethlehem from a kibbutz near Eilat,
that people like us could no longer ride with Palestinians on Bus 21.
We had to go to another checkpoint, but he could not tell us how to get there.

Kathleen Kern, of Rochester, N.Y., serves with Christian Peacemaker Teams.

“This is nothing like Apartheid,”
I told her.

We walked back and flagged a taxi, which took us to the checkpoint for people like us.
Last time I was here, I saw green rocky slopes and crimson poppies and sheep and olive trees.
But a monstrous, many-chambered nautilus
had since devoured them all.
From its concrete towers
eyes peered,
baleful and triumphant,
worshipful of the separation it had accomplished.

We walked a quarter kilometer through cattle chutes and turnstiles.
“Moo,” I said, and the German girl smiled uncertainly.
I wondered if German cows said something else.
We produced our passports three times, to prove that we were indeed people like us.

But it was nothing like Apartheid.

Our apartment in Hebron
is in what used to be the city’s busiest market.
But in the last decade, cages and concrete blocks have cut it off from Shuhada Street,
and its people have fled the slow strangulation of razor wire.
The Israeli military calls Shuhada a “sterile zone,”
meaning that only Jews who do not fraternize with Palestinians
are allowed to walk there.

But it is nothing like Apartheid.

When I leave this land that is not South Africa,
I will fly out of Ben Gurion airport.
The gods of airport security will divide all those leaving
into good people
and Palestinians
and people who fraternize with Palestinians
and people who look as though they might be sympathetic to Palestinians if they ever met any.
A “1” or “2” sticker means you glide through to the duty-free shops.
A “5” or “6” sticker means you are interrogated (“Did you talk to any Arabs?”),
scrutinized,
your baggage pawed through
and objects taken into a mysterious inner sanctum for analysis.

But it is nothing like Apartheid.

All the South Africans I have ever met,
two of whom have Israeli citizenship,
have told me what they have seen in the West Bank
is like Apartheid or worse.

But I know they are wrong,
because I need only say “South Afr-” or “Apar-”
to partisans of Israel
and it inflicts catastrophic emotional wounds.
My government and other systems of domination
have taught me
that the feelings of these partisans are of incomparable value —
more precious than Palestinian feelings
and Palestinian lives.

People with feelings that precious
must know better
what is and is not Apartheid.

Kathleen Kern, of Rochester, N.Y., serves with Christian Peacemaker Teams.