Serenity in the ancient olive grove of Hebron, a city often called a microcosm of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Photo courtesy Louis Bockner for Community Peacemaker Team

Kibbutz 101

“The kibbutz way of life is not for everyone. It is meant for people who are not in the business of working harder than they should in order to make more money than they need, in order to buy things they don’t really want, in order to impress people they don’t really like.” — Amos Oz

In the past weeks you’ve no doubt heard about kibbutz this and kibbutz that… Because the worst Hamas violence occurred in communal villages near the Gaza border — Kibbutz Be’eri, Nahal Oz, Magen, Kfar Aza, Nir Oz, Reim, and others — will indelibly be remembered as having taken the brunt of the massacre, atrocities and hostage-taking. One in four Kibbutz Nir Oz residents — infants, children, parents, elderly — were slaughtered in their homes and gardens, or taken captive to Gaza. Among them were Carmela Dan (born on my kibbutz) and her 13-year-old autistic granddaughter Noya, whom were buried on my kibbutz last Friday. After the funeral we hosted about 60 Nir Oz survivors (they were evacuated to Eilat hotels, and flown to us on a military plane), each harboring a trauma that will never fully heal. I was grateful to keep busy serving them drinks and ice cream.

I live on Kibbutz Ein Hashofet located an hour north of Tel Aviv in the gentle hills of Ramot Menashe. Looking north from the kibbutz entrance is Muhraka Monastery perched on the craggy tip of Mt. Carmel; to the east a panoramic view of Mt. Tavor and Mt. Gilboa jutting from the Jezerel Valley; to the south Palestinian villages crest over the hills in Wadi Aara; and beyond the rolling fields to the west shimmers the Mediterranean Sea. Placid and tranquil, this area is dubbed (aspirational perhaps) by some “The Tuscany of Israel.” In the winter it is gorgeous and lush, blooming with wildflowers.

Kibbutz family and the author (glasses) dancing the Debka folk dance. Author’s personal photo.

Kibbutzim are unique to Israel, the first collective being Deganya Aleph, founded in 1910, south of the Sea of Galilee. Based on Socialist and Marxist principals, kibbutzim were exercises in radical democracy, probably the world’s most successful experiment in voluntary socialism. No matter what your job, each member (chaver) received the same benefits. In the 1930s and 1940s, as the creation of a Jewish state became likely, kibbutzim were often founded in regions bordering Jordan, Syria, Lebanon and Gaza for defense. That dual purpose of farmer and fighter solidified the image and myth of the hard-working, stoic kibbutznik. Initially agrarian-based, in later years factories were created to employ the aging populations. At the peak in the 1970s about 270 kibbutzim — most secular, some religious — ranging from 200 to 1500 residents were scattered throughout Israel.

All kibbutzim share similar layouts: a dining room and cultural building at the center, administrative offices, kindergartens and former children’s homes protectively clustered nearby, modest homes arcing on one side, on the other side agricultural facilities and factories. Most have swimming pools, perhaps tennis and basketball courts. Everyone walks or rides bicycles, the elderly in golf carts.

My kibbutz was founded in 1937 by a Zionist youth group from Poland and another from the USA, later joined by Holocaust survivors, then people passing through the Hebrew school. (Members hail from 30-35 countries) Children lived, learned and slept in collective homes attended by caretakers, though spending the hours of 4:00pm to 8:00pm with their parents. All meals were eaten in the dining hall and decisions made at weekly meetings. Ideological disputes could be fierce — would private radios or electric cake pans denigrate the social fabric? Looking back, it was a strict, secular religion, cult-like with little room for deviation. (When Stalin died in 1956, the Purim Party was cancelled!)

Kibbutz Ein Hashofet ariel view 1948. Photo courtesy Z.Klugrer-M

Planned as a starting point for a year of international travel, when I arrived in 1975 as a volunteer, Kibbutz Ein Hashofet was home to about 380 people; it’s now about 750. Food, clothing, household needs, furniture, medical care, etc., were all “free.” The few vehicles were shared, and each family received one-week holiday per year.  Except for the rare foray into town — Tel Aviv or Haifa — money was never seen. There were no TVs, phones in peoples’ homes were still a decade away. If you happened to get a call on the dining room phone, the person who answered would enter and yell your name. Besides three (spare-ish) meals a day (plus tea and cake at 4:00), snacks were a rarity. (I was constantly hungry.) Jobs were periodically rotated (administrative jobs every four years), but after stints in the kitchen, dining room, orange orchards (hated that — the thorns, the snakes), sending chickens off to market (also horrible), taking care of kids, I became part of the gardening crew and lifeguarded in summers (loved that!). Life was spartan but I never felt lacking for anything.

In those early months two kibbutz families “adopted” me. Chanan Cohen, a Red Diaper Baby from New York, who met and married Eda from South Africa, while in the kibbutz Hebrew school. They had four children, and now nine grandchildren, two of the young women currently in the army. The second family was Danny Dekel (the head gardener), among the first children born on the kibbutz, and his wife Ruti from Kibbutz Merhavia (Golda’s home), and their four children. That clan now has 11 grandchildren — three of the young men now serving in the army (heightening our anxiety), one great grandchild and another on the way! I’m still very much a part of both families.

After Menachem Begin was elected the first non-Labor party Prime Minister in 1978, I remember walking into the dining room for breakfast and it felt like a morgue. Kibbutzim fell out of favor, lost subsidies, and with the economic crash of the 1980s many kibbutzim collapsed. The trend since is to privatization, with only several dozen communities still socialist (ironically the wealthiest ones, Kibbutz Be’eri among them). Though we still maintain some communal roots and practices, for good and for worse, my kibbutz privatized in 2017. Children live/sleep at home, people keep their own income (though taxes are paid for shared services), most people own private cars, etc.

A respected elite, kibbutzniks never comprised more than about 4% of Israel’s population but always exerted an outsized cultural and political influence, a disproportionate number of politicians, military leaders, intellectuals and artists hailing from kibbutzim. With only about 300,000 kibbutzniks in Israel’s history they (daresay, we) share an immediate affinity — a common ethos, a particular casual style, and insider jokes. While I wouldn’t ever boast of something I was simply born as — an American, being gay, or being tall — I am proud to be a kibbutznik, part of a collective community. Most people convert to Judaism to marry someone, but I jokingly say that I converted to marry a whole kibbutz.

Despite challenges, disputes and petty annoyances — I propose “Survivor” kibbutz style where every year we get to vote someone off the kibbutz island — there’s something powerful and comforting about living in a place where, when push comes to shove the community has your back. Covid was an example of that. And now during this devastating time, I feel as protected as anyone can be.

Kibbutzim are still bastions of leftist, progressive politics at the forefront of the anti-Bibi protests, as well as the anti-Occupation movement. Ironically, the paths of tiny Nahal Oz and Be’eri were filled with the bodies of ardent defenders of Palestinian rights. One of the still missing is Vivian Silver, 74, a woman who spent her whole life trying to improve the lives of her neighbor Gazans; not that Hamas would have cared. I’m sure Vivian, and many others murdered or captive would be horrified that their suffering is now being used to inflict more death and grief on the innocent civilians in Gaza.

If you believe in prayer — frankly I don’t much anymore — pray that the captives are returned home; that the heart of a Hamas man feeding a hostage toddler will melt with compassion when looking into the baby’s eyes; that The Powers That Be — Egypt, America, Israel, Qatar, Europe, Hamas, etc. — will open the god-damned gates and let the food, water and medical supplies into Gaza to help those poor people. And that this bloody nightmare will finally be the impetus for political change required to create a safe and equitable solution in this tiny piece of real estate between the River and the Sea. May there be peace on Earth.

Gaza Strip 101

“If there is a hell on Earth, it’s the lives of children in Gaza.” – António Guterres, Secretary General of the UN, in 2021.

The Handala cartoon, a symbol for Palestinian resistance comes alive on the streets of Palestine. Photo courtesy Community Peacemaker Team

(I’ve only passed through Gaza once by bus in the 1980s, so take everything below with an educated, well-intentioned grain of salt.)

Often portrayed as a giant, open-air prison, Gaza is about 25 miles long and 7.5 miles at its widest point, or 141 square miles. Home to 2.2 million people, it’s among the most densely populated places on Earth. 99% of inhabitants are Sunni Arabs, a tiny minority of Christians — in decline since Islamist Hamas took control in 2007 — and many thousands of foreigners, including about 1000 Americans, are also currently trapped in Gaza. Over 45% of the population are under the age 15; an estimated 40% of the 10,000 deaths from Israel’s airstrikes are children.

Jumping back in time…Since 3000 BCE roughly 30 powers — among them Cannanites, Philistines, ancient Israel, ancient Egypt, Babylon, Greece, Rome, Byzantine, Arab Caliphate, Knights Templar, England, and Mongols — have ruled this sandy stretch of coast, a harbor in the necklace of Mediterranean maritime routes.

Gaza meant “treasure” in Greek; pronounced aza in Arabic and Hebrew it means “strength.” Gaza is also mentioned in the Bible where Samson met his death. Incidentally the word Palestine derives from Philistia, the name the Greeks gave to the coastal enclave of the 12^th century BCE Philistines. In addition to some Philistine, ancient Jewish and Samaritan blood, modern-day Palestinians are primarily descendants of Arab tribes from the 7^th-century Islamic conquest of the Levant.

At the end of WWI, the Ottoman Levant was divvied between France (Syria/Lebanon) and Britain (Palestine — including Jordan and Gaza, as well as Iraq). During those years, Jews fleeing pogroms and Nazis in Europe immigrated to Palestine, increasing tensions between Arabs and Jews.

After WWII, in 1948, the United Nations voted to approve a two-state plan, roundly rejected by Arab leaders who immediately attacked the new state. Israel won the war, which the Palestinians commemorate as Nakba, or “the Destruction.”

Gaza’s main towns are Gaza City in the north, Khan Yunis in the middle, and Rafah in the south, but after the Arab defeat in 1948, tens of thousands of Palestinians, driven or fleeing from — depending on which side you ask — their villages, established refugee camps in Gaza (as well as in Jordan, Syria, Egypt, Lebanon and further abroad); Beit Hanoun, Beit Lahia, Shati, Jabalia, Nuseirat, Deir al Balah, Al Qarara, etc. More displaced Palestinians swelled those camps after the Six-Day War in 1967. In ensuing decades, the tents became makeshift huts, then became cinderblock rooms, small homes, eventually torn down and replaced with apartment buildings, but each still retains the names of the initial refugee camp, confusing when the news refers to what looks like a city. Despite being crowded, interspersed between the towns and camps are stretches of open sandy/scrub and agricultural fields.

The inhabitants are now the grandchildren and great-grandchildren of the original refugees, many of whom when asked where they’re from reply with the name of the Arab village that was the home of their great-grandparents within Israel. (On the outskirts of my kibbutz are the grown-over rubble of Kafrin, Rehania, and Daliyat El-Ruha, etc.)

After 1967, the Israeli military oversaw the coastal strip and in more peaceful times some Gazans worked in Egypt, some in Israel, mostly manual labor in nearby kibbutzim — those that were attacked on Oct. 7. Within Israel much of the hard labor, such as construction (still true on my kibbutz), was/is performed by Palestinians from Gaza, the West Bank, or from within Israel.

Civil unrest in Gaza boiled over in 1987 after an Israeli Defense Forces truck struck a civilian car, killing four Palestinian workers, which Gazans viewed as a premeditated attack. Capitalizing on the ensuing strikes and rock-throwing demonstrations, the Muslim Brotherhood, an Egyptian Sunni Islamist organization, created the spin-off militant HAMAS — acronym for Harakat al-Muqawama al-Islamiya (Islamic Resistance Movement) — backed by Shi’ite Iran, along with its military wing Al Qassam Brigade. According to retired Israeli official Avner Cohen, who worked in Gaza in the 1990s, initially Israel discretely supported Hamas’ ascendancy as a counterweight to break the PLO’s hold. (Jeez, they seem like ancient history; more about them below)

Vying with Hamas for power is the Palestine Islamic Jihad (PIJ), another militant Sunni off-shoot supported by Iran and Hezbollah. The ever-shifting, Byzantine relationships between Hamas, PIJ, Fatah, PLO, PA and a half dozen other lesser Islamicist groups — Popular Resistance Committee, Army of Islam, Nidal Al Amoudi Battalion, Al-Nassar Brigade, ISIS/ISIL — is far beyond my ken and perhaps even that of the most astute Middle East specialists.

Several attempts for a solution to the broader Israel/Palestinian conflict — including the West Bank/Occupied Territories and East Jerusalem, each with a slightly different governing history than Gaza — have been attempted. The first Camp David Peace Accords orchestrated by Jimmy Carter between Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat were a start. In 1978, in the kibbutz dining room we watched on TV Sadat’s surprise visit to Jerusalem, many older kibbutzniks with silent tears. Of course, peacemaker Sadat was quickly assassinated by terror group Islamic Jihad.

Al-Sheikh Jarrah Palestinian neighborhood in East Jerusalem. Photo courtesy Wikipedia.

In 1993, Israel and the PLO agreed to the Oslo Accords promising future statehood, establishing the Palestinian Authority (PA) with limited ruling authority in the West Bank and Gaza, and allowing exiled Yassar Arafat to return to Gaza, but the plan quickly fell through. The last great hope for peace from Israel’s side was snuffed out when Itzhak Rabin was murdered (just as was Sadat) in 1995 by a religious, Jewish nationalist, goaded by the provocations of Bibi Netanyahu. (With Bibi’s favorability rating plummeting to 20% there is NO WAY he will survive this debacle.)

The Camp David Summit agreements in 2000 were summarily rejected by Arafat who held out for more concessions. Since then, Jewish settlers continue to infiltrate the West Bank, de facto apartheid has worsened, and the massive separation wall was built. This did curtail most terror attacks, although my kibbutz friend Yanni Weis was blown to pieces outside a Tel Aviv nightclub in 2011, his niece blown up a year later on a bus. Hamas suicide bombings and shooting sprees in 2000 were met with curfews, checkpoints, and shutting down of Gaza’s hallmark fishing industry, because Hamas was smuggling in weapons used in terrorist attacks.

By August 2005, in a land-for-peace deal the Israeli army fully withdrew from Gaza, and evacuated several Israeli farming settlements, which Gazans summarily destroyed. Surrounded by barbed-wire fences and shut off from employment within Israel, smugglers hauled goods through underground tunnels to Egypt. For security reasons, Egypt placed tight restrictions on its border and destroyed the ever-burgeoning network of tunnels, where hostages are now being held.

After Arafat’s death in 2004, the Fatah-controlled PLO merged with the Palestinian Authority (PA, with Mahmoud Abbas as its head), recognized by the UN as the official representatives of the Palestinian people, giving them limited civil control over the West Bank and Gaza. Long-simmering confrontation erupted between Fatah and Hamas, and in an election upset due to many Palestinians being fed up with Fatah/PA corruption, Hamas emerged the victor in 2006 (with Ismail Haniyeh at its head), and ruled Gaza, sometimes in cooperation with rival Islamic Jihad.

The differences between Hamas and Fatah: Radical Islamicist Hamas believes in armed resistance, does not recognize Israel, but will accept a Palestinian State based on pre-1967 borders. Secular Fatah is willing to create a Palestinian State based on pre-1967 borders. In a poll after the 2006 elections, a majority of voters wanted Hamas to adopt a more reconciliatory approach of a two-state solution with mutual recognition of Israel in exchange for recognition of a State of Palestine. Just as I loathed Bush/Cheney and their murderous wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, it’s a mistake to conflate brutal leaders with the citizenry; Gazans daring to speak against Hamas are quickly liquidated.

Over the decades, tens of billions of dollars in international aid has been funneled to Gaza, with huge sums siphoned off by Hamas for weapons, missiles, digging miles of deep tunnels, etc. (while nary a civilian bomb shelter has been built.) The United Nations has criticized Israel’s longstanding blockade/restrictions as “causing devastation,” but Israel argues that Hamas strengthens itself by acquiring more lethal weapons, which of course it did. After Hamas missile launches into Israel, the poor infrastructure is repeatedly damaged by retaliatory Israeli airstrikes in an endless cycle. Gazans are trapped from without, and also from within: Hamas is primarily a theocratic military organization with little interest in caring for or governing the Gazan people. Gaza was a tinderbox waiting to ignite, and unless lives are improved, it will explode again; it’s only a matter of time.

Within any given population there’s a certain percentage, perhaps 10%-20%, that eschew compromise: fanatic, religious settler Israelis who believe that God — She must be so sick of humans by now — granted them a Greater Israel; uncompromising radical Islamicists, such as ISIS, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Al Qaeda, etc., who believe not only that Israel must be eradicated but Jihad must continue until the whole world is a Muslim caliphate; White Nationalist Christians in America who would happily install a theocracy; even Hindutva fascists call for the eradication of Muslims in India.

I’ve always liked this axiom: “The opposite of faith is not doubt, but certainty…” There’s always an uncompromising minority willing to commit atrocities on the behalf of their religious certainty, creating endless hell for the peaceful majority.

Ever an optimistic, knee-jerk liberal, died-in-the-wool peacenik over the decades, it’s near impossible for me to now imagine an amenable, solution with Israelis and Palestinians living side-by-side, even in a two-state solution, not to mention in one state. Yet when I despair, as I do now, I remind myself that the intractable Irish Conflict dating back 300 years, peaking with The Troubles in the 1970s (over 3500 people were slaughtered), has now receded into the past.

After WWII, the genius — a miracle really — of the Marshall Plan transformed within several decades two brutal powers — Japan and Germany — into peaceful, productive and humane countries. While South Africa still faces poverty and inequality, the racist apartheid system officially did come to an end. Even the Hutus and Tutsis in Rwanda seem to have reestablished a viable society.

With enough goodwill, money and thinking outside the box, peace, or a semblance thereof, is possible, but The Powers That Be always have agendas to ensure that conflicts continue. What compromises and concessions would Israel and Palestinians be willing to make for a safe (Israel’s main concern) and more equitable (Palestinians main concern) outcome?

Considering that they’re already dumping billions into this endless conflict, how much money would wealthy Western (Europe, USA) and Arab (UAE, Saudi Arabia, Qatar) countries put towards building a new vision of peace? It is a failure of will and imagination, and of men — yet again, it is the male species of the human race — willing to sacrifice everyone and everything, afraid of losing face, money, and power.

And it must never be a betrayal, as many would portray, to weep for the suffering of civilians/children on either side of the fence/wall. Because I’m more familiar with those massacred in Israel do I shed personal tears, but my sorrow (and anger) for those thousands of innocents (collateral damage, what a vile term) dying in Gaza is not diminished. Most Israelis who’ve lost family members would NEVER condone the deaths in Gaza to avenge their grief, and indeed some have bravely publicly spoken out.

PS – A more personal note: The first week following October 7 was one of shock. The second week grief and sorrow. The third week a somber reckoning. This week facing the grind of the hard reality ahead of ground troops ferreting out Hamas leaders, trying to rescue hostages, and helplessly agonizing over the thousands now dying in Gaza. This week I cried only once; a vast improvement over 2-3 times a day. I try to keep busy doing crafts with the out-of-school kids, have stints as guard at the kibbutz gate (in my pink shirt and floppy cowboy hat, I’m not sure I instill much confidence); I was recruited to help set up and organize an emergency infirmary inside a bomb shelter, should the worst begin with Iran and Hezbollah; and such a woo-woo cliché, but remembering to breathe. Wherever I go on the kibbutz now — dining room, walking pathways, at friends’ homes — I find myself reflexively scanning for places to run to and hide, something I inexplicably (and secretly) did growing up in Palo Alto. Then it was evading imagined Nazis, now from terrorists. I asked several friends here, and they said they do the same…so, I feel a little less crazy.

Author, journalist, photographer and world traveler Bill Strubbe was brought up Catholic in California, volunteered on a kibbutz in 1975, eventually converted to Judaism. He is now a dual Israeli/American citizen.

YOUR HELP IS NEEDED NOW

Doctors Without Borders  https://www.doctorswithoutborders.org

Palestinians Children’s Relief Fund  https://www.pcrf.net

IsraAid  https://www.israaid.org

World Food Program  https://www.wfp.org

Middle East Children’s Alliance  http://www.mecaforpeace.org

American Near East Refugee Aid https://www.anera.org

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