Walls

     I am beginning to feel like I have grown up with a skewed representation of the conflict between Israel and Palestine.  To me, Israel has always been the victim.  Jews are God's chosen people.  Jews were horribly persecuted during the Holocaust.  Jews need a homeland.  Jews do not have a recognized state.  Jews are the victims. 
     Up to this point in class, each group involved in the conflict, has done equally horrible acts and had equally horrible acts done to them.  The readings by Manachem Klein and Julie Peteet, though, paint a very different picture of the Israelis.  Peteet, particularly, shows Israelis, who during the antifada, acted like Communist Russians.  Censorship was present.  Violent killings occurred.  Public cultural, religious, and political expressions were denied.  Walls were built. 

    Peteet's article concentrates specifically on the Palestinians' response to the overbearing Israeli occupation through the use of graffiti on the walls.  Graffiti became "an intervention in a relationship of power," a way for the Palestinians to bypass censorship and expound ideas, remember martyrs, mark territory, and call for an end to the walls of separation.