The Trees

"The trees are killing us,"

The man said.

The Rabbi has escorted us here

To this village in the desert,

Or what's left of it,

So we can see for ourselves.

We are a few European Christians, 

One Harvard Divinity student.

And mostly Jews:

American and Australian and Canadian 

And a couple of Israelis.

We are there to 

To meet the Bedouin, 

Israeli citizens all. 

They have lived in this village for a long time

With houses and fields

But officially unregistered

As far as the Israeli government is concerned.

The paperwork is not properly filled out

Someone can't find a deed from before World War One

When such things didn't exist

for the Bedouin

Or something like that.

I admit my knowledge is fuzzy

And there may be room for interpretation,

Though what is crystal clear is that

Someone wanted that land

And the land of 18 other such places.

The State of Israel wanted it,

Developers wanted it,

Large municipalities wanted it,

And they passed a law so they could  "legally" take it.

The man, son of a Bedouin sheik, speaks.

We are seated in a trailer in this village in the Negev

and he tells us,

"The trees are killing us".

The Rabbi had brought us here in a mini-bus from Jerusalem

To witness the grab

And he asks us to tell others what we see.

Okay.  
So this is what I saw:

One of nineteen villages

Now ramshackle sheds and trailers

But there used to be houses and fields and livestock:

They showed us a movie of happier times.

Then the army came and tore it down with bulldozers:

They showed us this movie as well.

Someone wants the lands

On which sit the nineteen villages.

In one location the powers that be want to build factories,

In another, suburbs for Beersheva,

It's a done deal, there are larger needs,

There is Long Term Planning

And the Bedouin are not part of that Plan. 

So what is the plan for the Bedouin?

Take them off the land

But do it "legally".

This is going to happen

Whether they like it or not,

Whether it's legal or not.

At least this way they will get compensation

Of a sort,

And some support 

Of a sort,

As their way of life is destroyed

And they are forced into ersatz towns,

Reservations really,

And into the cities

And what may be lives of

Crime

Alcoholism

Drugs

Despair,

All the terrible things that happen when you take people out of their context

And force them into yours.

Those of us on the mini-bus are all the children of immigrants,

No one's history entirely clean:

The Europeans think about the Gypsies, or the Jews;

The Americans, the Native Americans;

The Canadians, the First Nations;

The Australians, the Aborigines.

An Israeli professor I meet later will boast, "as land grabs go, this one is pretty civilized."

Now maybe I don't have all the information,

Maybe there are wheels within wheels

And probably not all Bedouin motives are pure,

Not all Bedouin are victims,

But still...

In this village, the Jewish National Fund wants to plant trees.  

Yay, trees are wonderful!

I love trees!

When I was a kid and did well in Hebrew School?

Or graduated from something

What did get?  A tree!

A tree was planted in Israel in my name,

What could be better?

What could be more ecological?

In the empty Negev,

They planted your tree,

A Jewish tree!

Screw the Nazis and plant a tree!

And you got a certificate

And imagined that someday when you went to Israel

You would look up your tree

And it would have your name on it.

God forbid any of these trees have my name on them,

These killer trees

Planted on top of

The not so empty Negev.

Planted in an ecology where they don't belong

Stealing water they shouldn't have

On land that isn't theirs.

In this village the JNF planted only about half the trees that were planned

And then they got stopped.

By lawyers.

Now the people of the village are poor

They say they can't leave to get work

Because if they leave the village unwatched

The Army will come and finish the job.

The village will be dead.

"The trees are killing us."

On the way home

The Rabbi asks us how we feel.

Most of us despair.

One Israeli is defensive and grabs the mic on the bus to harangue us:

“You just can't let people move anywhere they want!”

We let him talk longer than we should,

We can see how much it hurts him that the accusation of state-sanctioned thievery may be true.

The Rabbi has seen all our reactions many times

And he lets us feel or think whatever we will.

After the defensive Israeli puts down the mic

We are quiet for some time

On the mini-bus taking us back to Jerusalem.

Then someone asks the Rabbi,

How is it you are not burnt out?   

How can you keep doing this,

Year after year

With so few victories?

And the Rabbi says,

"I believe in Jews

And I know that eventually they will do what is right,"

Let us hope so, 
Because

The trees are killing us, too.

For more info:  http://rhr.org.il