This Much Is True

About twenty-five years ago, when I performed Dickens’ Women at the Jerusalem Festival, I went to Gaza. When I left the safety of the UN vehicle, I was stoned by the children in the streets. I wasn’t hurt and I wasn’t angry. I understood that to them I was part of the reason they lived in squalor in this overcrowded prison. I have met many wonderful people in Israel then and since, who work hard to try and make things better, but in Gaza I saw the terrible fate of the Palestinians who live there. The poverty is shocking. I was told that Israeli settlers come down from their concrete houses up in the hills into the valley where the Palestinian farmers were working their land and throw dirt in their water system. I saw the results of their deliberate vandalism. The brutality of their attitude towards the Palestinians was appalling. I didn’t think Jews could treat others in this way, but sadly the abused have become the abusers.

When I left the country, I was interrogated unpleasantly by Israeli security. It was a frightening experience — they wanted me to name my Palestinian friends. Of course, they have a right to protect their country, but those methods are unacceptable.

In 2012, I went back to Palestine for ten days with Karl Sabbagh, a half-Palestinian friend from my Cambridge days. On the West Bank, we went to Birzeit University near Ramallah, where I met students in a faculty room with their professor. It was a strange experience because, of course, Palestinians nearly always guess that I’m Jewish, so automatically think of me as Israeli. They seldom get the chance to see an ordinary Jew, because the only Israelis they encounter are armed and wearing a helmet, a visor or some sort of uniform. A student looked at me and said, ‘You are Jew?’ I said, ‘Yes.’ She said, ‘And you are here? Are you not afraid?’ I told her that I wasn’t frightened. ‘I am sympathetic. I am somebody who is pro-Palestinian and trying to help. I don’t believe you would attack me just because I’m a Jew.’ The students looked at me with amazement.

Hebron was a sad place. The Jews who live in the houses above the market throw rubbish down onto the Palestinians below, so they’d had to rig up a kind of net above the market stalls. It was a Jewish holiday when I was being shown around, and the ultra-Orthodox males — decked out with their shtreimels (fur hats) and their side curls, and those old-fashioned black satiny overcoats with a belt — were strutting like peacocks down the middle of the pavement. They walked right through any Palestinian who was coming their way, pushing them off the pavement and into the gutter. I saw this with my own eyes.

My hope is that if I can get Jewish people, my people, to see the Palestinians as human beings, people with longings and disappointments, and fears and joys, maybe they can cross that divide. It’s about understanding how you would feel if soldiers came and pushed you out of your home, destroyed your orchard and the farm that your family had owned for hundreds of years, and made you feel like vermin in your own country. I keep saying to British Zionists: ‘Please — just go and look for yourself.’

Compassion has always been a Jewish tradition. We are urged to be a compassionate people, but when it comes to the Palestinians, all our compassion evaporates. Jews are taught, like Christians, to love your neighbour as yourself, to treat the stranger with respect and kindness, and yet, here, the opposite is true.

The appalling acts of Palestinian and Arab terrorism are not ignored by me. I loathe them and will never defend such things. Their cruelty, insanity and continual murder are facts. But ask yourselves: Why? I don’t acknowledge the claims of history. I care about now, the present. That land must be shared, people must be treated equally. It is possible, if the will is there; if the Diaspora Jews brought pressure to bear on the Israeli government, attitudes could change. Jews in Europe and America are beginning to realise what is going on. Slowly, too slowly, the tide is turning. Israel must change, or it will destroy itself.

It would be much easier not to speak out. My support for Palestine has brought me great heartache, but I can only speak my truth. Whenever I raise money for Jewish causes, which I do frequently, people say to me, ‘Now, Miriam, don’t be controversial.’ How can I not be controversial? It’s like my parents not wanting me to be a lesbian: they’re asking me to be another Miriam. I can’t accept that something wrong is being done in my name. I am a proud Jew, I fight antisemitism wherever I see it. I’m not a believer, but I adore the culture I spring from, and honour it.

I believe people can change; Truth is not hard to see if you open your eyes.

A Right Royal Reception