Boycot Israel 6

'Benny Tziper
We Deserve the British Academic Boycott! by Benny Tziper - June 4th 2007 Translated Rann Bar-On - original Hebrew at http://www.haaretz.co.il/hasite/spages/866785.html

Last Friday morning I drove to the Palestinian village of Bil'in. Bil'in, the village that has turned into a symbol of the struggle against the Apartheid Wall and against the confiscation of Palestinian land by fraudulent Jewish real-estate sharks who hide behind fake patriotism. Bil'in, a Palestinian village geographically close to Tel Aviv and central Israel and to all the fake leftists who inhabit Tel Aviv's coffee shops. It's easiest to cry over the occupation from afar, without ever seeing a Palestinian close up. I believe that there may not be a solution to the Palestinian issue, but that's nothing to do with the fact that one can act like a human being and to show Palestinians, who are imprisoned behind fences and walls only a few kilometers from us, that we share their pain and sadness. This time I went to Bil'in with my daughter Talila, whose idealism and love of others never stops amazing me and that is expressed in so many different ways. I am so very lucky that none of my children are among those vile conformists who attempt to show how interesting they are by traveling to India and South America! My mother's cousin Lillian also joined us. She came from Paris for her first visit in Israel after many years of doubts. Lillian, professor of Spanish literature, translator and author, was a communist in her youth. She married a Moroccan Muslim, went to live in Morrocco and had two boys, one of whom I know well. His name is Rashid and he's about my age. He's a nuclear engineer living in Toulouse with his wife and three wonderful children. Because of all this, Lillian was afraid to come to Israel. She was scared that if she comes, she'll have to undergo an invasive interrogation in the airport. This indeed happened in the El Al section of De Gaulle airport in Paris. She was made to stand on her feet for thirty minutes, attempting to answer questions asked by a woman who spoke very poor French and who had difficulty understanding her answers. She felt pretty humiliated, considering she'd done nothing wrong, and was shocked by the intimacy of the questions. But she wanted to board the flight, so she suffered it all in silence. Despite all this, Lillian fell in love with Israel, was astounded by everything she encountered and praised the openness of Israelis, the beauty of the vistas in the Galilee and Jerusalem. But her most powerful experience she had here - in my opinion - was our visit to Bil'in. There she saw close up what many Israelis don't want to see. She saw together with me and with my daughter the brute force with which the Israeli soldiers - whom I have nothing against personally, of course, my complaints lie at the door of those who sent them - dispersed the tiny and non-violent demonstration that proceeded, as it does every Friday, from the mosque in Bil'in to the Apartheid Wall.'

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