Apartheid Comes to New Jersey

One of my most vivid memories of growing up underIsraeli apartheid came in the summer of 1993, when ourhouse in Ramallah would receive water only three daysa week. Show Your SupportThe Palestine Chronicle is 100% reader-supported. Ifyou find our publication worthwhile and valuable, weurge you to subscribe to our online edition today.

By Saifedean Ammous

It was a cold Sunday morning in Teaneck, N.J. Some
two-hundred-odd Jewish-Americans were entering the
Orthodox synagogue Congregation B'nai Yeshurun where
they were to hear a sales pitch by the Amana
Settlement Movement aimed at convincing them to buy
homes in illegal Israeli settlements.

America, the land that gave the world the separation
of church and state, is hosting an auction where only
members of one religious group can buy property.

And here I am, a Palestinian who grew up hundreds of
meters away from some of these very settlements. I
cannot buy any of these houses and am not admitted
into the auction room. Literally and figuratively left
out in the cold, I light a cigarette and get over it
immediately; being denied entry is not an entirely
novel experience for a Palestinian.

A group of around 50 pro-peace activists gather
outside to protest the auction. Rabbi Steven Pruzansky
comes out to speak to journalists; he doesn't seem to
understand the controversy. "Everyone can buy land
anywhere. I was in the Bahamas and they were selling
land; in Florida they sell land to anyone, why can't
we buy land in Israel?" When a journalist mentions to
him that these are colonies for Jews only, he says
that he prays hard for peace, and looks forward to the
day when Jews and Arabs can live together, but for now
this is hard because of the "security situation." It
doesn't occur to him that this "security situation"
may itself be the result of these exclusive colonies
being built on stolen Palestinian land.

I ask a middle-aged man leaving the presentation what
he thought of it. He tells me he will definitely move
to Israel one day. I ask him if he knows anything
about the legal status of these settlements; he tells
me it is "unclaimed land." I mention to him a recent
report by Israeli group Peace Now which finds that 40
percent of settlements are built on confiscated
private Palestinian land (as opposed to the other 60
percent that are built on illegally occupied land.)
"Peace Now and B'Tselem are the two most anti-Semitic
organizations in the world," he replies, "Can they
prove it?"

I tell him that this is based on documents from
Israel's "Civil Administration" and that the Israeli
government never denied these reports, but he's having
none of it. I ask him if he thought about asking Amana
about the legality of the land, but he answers with a
stern "No, I don't want to ask them. I don't need to
know."

One of my most vivid memories of growing up under
Israeli apartheid came in the summer of 1993, when our
house in Ramallah would receive water only three days
a week. I remember driving one day near the colony of
Shilo (back in the good old days when we could still
drive between Palestinian cities) and witnessing the
water sprinklers bursting at full blast outside the
settlement to water the surrounding hills, ensuring
the view for the colonialists was a little greener.
Someone today will buy a house in Shilo, and in a few
years, on a hot summer day, she will wake up to this
beautiful green view, while I would wake up praying
there would be enough water to shower.

Settlements receive around 10 times the amount of
water per capita that Palestinian cities and villages
receive. While we had to resort to buying plastic
dishes to cut down on dish-washing, they would spend
their days in swimming pools enjoying the lush green
views afforded to them by their sprinklers.

And today, this colonialism is taken to absurd
lengths. Having helped turn the West Bank into the
world's biggest constellation of ghettoes surrounded
by walls and racially-exclusive colonies and roads,
Amana was still not satisfied. Nor were they satisfied
with the economic and political support that the
American government provides to the Israeli
government's abuses of human rights and international
law. They had to squeeze money from the people of New
Jersey to build more exclusive illegal colonies,
dispossess more Palestinians, and take more water from
my family. All part of "Keeping the Zionist Dream
Alive," as the Amana brochure put it.

Watching the quintessentially American family of a
dad, mom, and three kids emerge enthusiastically from
their blue Ford SUV toward the auction made me think
of all the families I knew whose lands were taken by
Israel; often forcefully displaced and separated,
these families can not even buy these lands back if
they wanted to. In "The Only Democracy in the Middle
East," real estate is run by imaginary ghosts from
3,000 year-old books that displace families from their
only homes to auction them as second and third homes
to Americans.

I wonder what drives this beautiful family to wake up
on a Sunday morning and go find out about joining a
colonial project instead of going to the mall;
contributing to its success with their money by not
knowing and not wanting to know about the reality of
what they are getting into. It sounds too banal to be
true, but a consumerism that willfully and consciously
chooses to be blind to the consequences of its
purchases is helping prop up the world's only
remaining colonial apartheid system.

The night before coming here, this family doubtlessly
weighed the option of joining this project against
skiing, shopping, or visiting relatives. Unfortunately
for my future bathing prospects, they have decided to
join in Amana's quest to "Keep the Zionist Dream
Alive."

- Saifedean Ammous is a PhD student in Sustainable
Development at Columbia University in New York.
(Zmag.org)