‘We are not the Israelites in the current reality’

SAM STEIN joins a highly political Seder and Iftar meal in the West Bank town of Hebron.

If anyone came to the joint Freedom Seder-Iftar meal in Hebron at the end of Pesach expecting an apolitical co-existence event, they were quickly disillusioned.

In his opening speech, organiser Issa Amro told participants that even in setting up, he had encountered the oppression of the occupation. Due to settler complaints, an Israeli soldier had just ordered him to stop erecting a rain cover for the event. He went ahead with the cover anyway, which was for the best as it was a cold and rainy evening.

About 100 people gathered in the highly-contested West Bank town for the unusual Seder-Iftar, organised by several grassroots organisations: Youth Against Settlements, All That’s Left: Anti-Occupation Collective, and Bnei Avraham.

For the Palestinians who participated, the story of oppression was personal. Amro said he has spent his entire life under Israeli military occupation. “We need to make the occupation costly … it’s the beginning of our movement against apartheid, occupation, racism, and against supremacy,” he said.

For the Jewish participants, the experience was the opposite, a Seder where they were to understand themselves as part of the oppressors, not the victims.

Rabbi Lexie Botzum told the night’s Jewish participants, “It may not be easy to consider, but I urge you all to grapple with the fact that we are not the Israelites in the current reality.”