Passover - and the Palestinians?

According to this author, freedom of the Jews is tied
to the freedom of the Palestinians.  Passover should
be remembered as a symbol of the oppressed, fighting
for the cause of justice.  Liberation and Passover -- these
two words are synonymous.  He uses this theme to
discuss the present situation in the "Promised Land."

Khaldoun
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THE LAST PASSOVER
Marc H. Ellis

This weeks all over the world Jews celebrate Passover, the
ancient festival commemorating the exodus of the Israelites
from Egypt.  The narrative of liberation is read within the
context of food and fellowship.  As Jews we are commanded
to place ourselves in the original struggle to be free, to experience
the suffering and hope of the ancient Israelites as they did, to
see this ancient liberation as our own.  Despite the plagues
and death, the wanderings in the desert and admonishments of
God, Passover is a festive holiday.  Food and wine is plentiful.
Family and friends come together.

How we celebrate our freedom in the past with the complexities
of the present is always a challenge.  Over time as Jews became
free, struggles of other peoples were mentioned in the Seder meal.  
As a child being raised in the 1950's and 60's, at Passover we
incorporated the civil rights struggle into our narrative.  In the 1980's
and 90's there were specific Passover narratives featuring the
struggle of women, freedom movements in Central America and
elsewhere.  And in some Jewish homes and synagogues,
Palestinians were featured as a people struggling for liberation.    
There is hope in remembrance applied to the present.  If we are
there in Egypt demanding our freedom, the Passover story
accompanies us as we demand freedom now.  Freedom
is interdependent, across time and community boundaries.  
No one is truly free if others are not also free.

Today with Israeli gunships daily firing rockets into defenseless
Palestinian towns, cities and refugee camps, it is difficult to accept
the Passover narrative in its deepest implications.  We as Jews
are free, are "in Jerusalem, "but is that freedom at the expense
of others?  If Palestinians are being taught the "lesson" of opposing
Israeli power and standing up for their rights and dignity, if the
message from the Israeli government to the Palestinian people
is surrender or die - a message not unfamiliar to Jews - do we
repeat this story at the Passover table?

Most Jews will be silent about the helicopter gunships at Passover.  
Since the beginning of the most recent Palestinian uprising in
November, Jewish organizations have placed full-page paid
statements in newspapers around the country.  They trumpet
Israel's desire for peace, call for Jewish unity and castigate
Palestinian terrorism and the deficiencies of Palestinian
leadership. These statements will continue to be published
during the Passover season.

The call for Jewish unity is a caution against Jewish
dissent and the dissent of others who see the Passover
story as embodying their own struggle today.  Should we
as Jews celebrate our own liberation while being silent
about or even denigrating the Palestinian struggle?  Are
the helicopter gunships guarding Jews in Israel and Jews
around the world on these Passover nights?  Or are these
gunships a symbol of our own need to reconsider the road
we as Jews are traveling?

War is war, and in the midst of war few rules of civility are
left unbroken.  But is the expansion of Israel through
settlements, land confiscations, assassination squads
and the terror of exploding rockets, a war Jews want to
fight, should fight or can be silent about under the guise
of unity?  Can we recall the ancient struggle for freedom
as our own and praise the violence of Israel as justified?  
As our own?  Or are we, while speaking of our liberation
struggle, undermining its essential meaning, that we and
all peoples should be free?

During these days of celebration I will remember my first
Palestinian friend, Nyaela Ayed, who was murdered in
Jerusalem in 1999.  A health advocate and planner who
studied in the United States and was known by all as a
gentle and principled person,  I last saw Nyaela in
Jerusalem in 1998 and spent many hours speaking
to her about her life and the future of her people.  I also
visited the land her family owned in Jerusalem that Jewish
settlers coveted.  These settlers were willing to pay large
sums of money for a small piece of land that would then
forever be removed from Nyaela's family and from her people.  
The Ayed's refused to sell the land.  A short time later,
Nyaela was murdered, a single stab wound to the heart,
a professional execution.

It was during Passover last year that I learned of her death
and visited her mother and sisters one morning in the same
home where I had previously visited with Nyaela.  In the
afternoon, I went to Nyaela's grave just outside of the walls
of the old city.  In ancient understandings of Islam, those
buried there are to be among the first resurrected in the last
days, in contemporary Palestinian life Nyaela was designated
a martyr, her grave sealed with the love of a grateful
people.

This Passover I remember Nyaela and all those Palestinians
known and unknown to me.  As helicopter gunships reign
terror on a defenseless people, I remember the faces and
cries of a people whose freedom is integral to my own and
to that of my people.

Is this the last Passover that I will celebrate?   My heart is
not in the celebration this year.  And it can never be again
until freedom for Jews is also freedom for Palestinians.

What do I answer my children when they ask the simple
and difficult questions they are commanded to ask as we
gather to tell the story of our origins thousands of years ago?  
That helicopter gunships are like the parting of the sea?  That
Ariel Sharon is like Moses leading us through the difficult times
of desert and rebellion?

I no longer have the answers to their questions.  But I will respond
as a Jew in the only way possible today.  That the Palestinians
are part of our story of liberation and until they are free, we are not.


* Marc H. Ellis is University Professor of American and Jewish
Studies and Director of the Center for American and Jewish
Studies at Baylor University in Waco, Texas. The author can
be reached at Marc@MiddleEast.Org