On July 21, I embarked on a life-changing journey to the West Bank, Palestine as a paricipant in the 2010 Bus Stop Hip-Hop Tour, organized by Existence Is Resistance. The week and a half long tour consisted of six concerts and several workshops with youth in refugee camps, and featured artists such as M1 of Dead Prez, Shadia Mansour, Lowkey, Mazzi, DJ Vega Benetton and myself. It also featured two breakdancers and an MC from the University of Hip-Hop in Chicago.
The situation became intense as soon as our delegation started arriving in so-called Israel at Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion Airport. Most participants were detained by Israeli customs for thorough questioning. Some were held for up to 9 hours. The outright racism of Israeli society was already clearly visible at this point. Although myself and one of the key organizers both have U.S. passports, he was detained due to his Arab background, while I got through without issue. All of us were eventually cleared to enter “Israel”, or what the Palestinians call “48” in reference to the year they began to be ethnically cleansed from that portion of their land.
My first destination was Haifa, about an hour and a half train ride from Tel Aviv. Looking around the train and out of the windows, it was hard for me to imagine I was in the middle east. Everybody looked as if they were European, and I felt awkward about the fact that I so easily fit in amongst the people. Most of the young people were dressed in military uniforms, and some actually boarded the train carrying rifles. That night, I saw the beauty of the Mediterranean Sea, but it was so easily offset by the old stone homes that are boarded up, as these are signs of the Palestinian “transfer” to the West Bank, Gaza, and beyond.
The next day, we headed for the West Bank in a taxi operated by a Palestinian man living in “48”. The state refers to people like him as “Israeli Arabs”. They make up about 20 percent of the population and are treated as second-class citizens or worse. As we neared the checkpoint of Kalandia, the scenery was again stunning, as natural beauty came into conflict with the reality of oppression, as fences, barbed wire, and pieces of the wall made me feel deeply depressed.
Walking through the checkpoint was perhaps the saddest I’ve ever felt in my life. I couldn’t envision having to do it every single day. Our first stop was Ramallah, a city that might give you the impression that Palestinians aren’t so bad off if you stick to the downtown area. That night, however, we got another dose of reality, as we arrived at the largest refugee camp in the West Bank and the most densely populated place on earth, the Balata Camp in Nablus. For the next eight nights, we would call the Yafa Cultural Center in the camp our home.
Because we had arrived so late at night, it was hard to get a feeling for Balata until the next morning. Walking around the camp was truly surreal, as pictures of youth who died fighting the occupation were plastered everywhere like movie posters are in New York. This was even more common when we visited Jenin that afternoon. Our first show was there, and the energy of the youth was incredible. Their enthusiasm for us was so overwhelming I felt guilty to have to leave.
After a show in Nablus the next evening, we took a drive to a pool in order to celebrate M1’s birthday with some sense of normalcy. While there, we received word that Israeli troops had just entered Nablus. We debated what to do, and decided to hit the road, where makeshift checkpoints were everywhere. The 20 minute drive seemed to last for hours. At one of the standard checkpoints, we observed a tour bus full of settlers, fully guarded by the IDF. That night, from the roof of the Yafa Center, we observed the IDF guide these settlers into Palestian towns. The next day, we found out they had burned down several olive trees and killed two Palestians in the process.
The intensity didn’t diminish when we visited Jerusalem. M1 of Dead Prez was called a racial slur by an Israeli soldier while walking in the Old City. We witnessed the intense stares of the settlers toward the Arab shop keepers. Again, feelings of anguish came over me. Those emotions increased even more when we went to the city of Hebron, which is Israel’s most blatant incursion into the West Bank. From the moment we arrived, I felt as if I had been transported to the Warsaw Ghetto. I really began to feel as if the Nazi government has just been moved to Israel. Hebron is divided into two districts, H1 and H2. Checkpoints are everywhere.
The man who gave us a tour reported how his wife lost two pregancies when settlers beat her. His house, one of the few Arab ones in the so-called “Jewish” side, is surrounded by barbed wire. Settlers throw their garbage into his yard. Every month, his house is checked by the IDF. If he is caught with a kitchen knife, he could face 10 years in prison. However, we witnessed settlers jogging casually with rifles dangling from their necks. Walking down the main street on the Palestian side was even more haunting. Above the street is a horizontal fence.
Settlers throw bags of urine down at shopkeepers from the settlements. After passing through what seemed like the twentieth checkpoint, we were able to go to a Palestian coffee shop that’s situated on the “Jewish” side. The store owner has been threatened routinely to leave, and a young child hanging out in front of the store reported how he had been run over by settlers on motorbikes. We found out later that as soon as we left, the shop was attacked and left in ruins.
I may have been foolish to think that the worst was indeed over. We visited the village of Bilin the next day to participate and perform at a weekly protest against the Israeli state’s incursion into the West Bank. As the protest intensified, the IDF began to fire teargas and stun grenades. At one point, I looked up to see a teargas canister coming directly for me. I was able to avoid it hitting me, but the gas itself burned immensely and I had breathing problems for some time. Still, just minutes later, I performed in what was the most awkward, but also most memorable, show of my career.
The next day, we crossed over to “48” and bid our farewell to the hospitable people of the West Bank. That evening, we had our final show in Um al-Fahem, an almost fully Arab town. By this point, I was mentally, physically, and spiritually drained. The last few days, which we spent in Haifa, should have been cause for relaxation and reflection. There was to be little relaxing, however. I felt repulsed and ashamed to be in a place where everyone looked like me, and nobody looked indigenous.
I couldn’t wait to get to the airport and board my flight for New York. When I did two days later, I sat on the plane thinking of this incredible experience. I thought about the resilient and humane spirit of the people I had met. I recalled the five children who all wrote raps with their favorite word, “hurriyah” (freedom). I remembered the young man of 20 years who has been shot eleven seperate times in his life. More than anything else, I thought about the essence of the problem, and the solution.
I knew that capitalism’s highest stage, imperialism, gave rise to the creation of a supremacist colonial state like Israel. I became more convinced than ever that the solution is the the dismembering of the wall, the right of return for Palestian refugees to their homes and land, and the eradication of racist Zionist ideology. Only a single democratic state in all of Israel and Palestine, for all people to live in full equality, will eradicate the tragedy. I’m more convinced than ever that Palestine will never die, and that one day the situation on the ground will go hand in hand with the breathtaking natural beauty that’s characteristic of that region of the world.
