Hearing Bob Dylan in the Naqab

When our Eyewitness Palestine delegation reached the Negev desert (inside the official borders of Israel), we were greeted by gorgeous blue skies beneath which straight rows of lush green barley were growing and solitary Bedouin shepherds were peacefully herding their sheep while being buffeted by a wondrous wind.

I am a Midwesterner from Nebraska. At last I was seeing an area of ancient Palestine where I felt at home and at peace. Palestinian Bedouins herders and farmers felt that way about this desert area, their Naqab, for centuries before 1948 when they became caught up in the formation of the new state of Israel with no voice to protest!

Now the Palestinian Bedouins are under siege by the Israel government, the very government of which they are citizens. Unfortunately, because they are not Jewish and because Israel has passed a series of laws (most recently, the so-called “Nation-State Law”) which officially treat them as second-class citizens. There are 60 some ethnically discriminatory laws they must obey. They pay taxes like all Israeli citizens but do not receive services equivalent to those received by Jewish citizens whose housing we could see moving closer to Bedouin villages.

Bedouin villages are left without paved roads, electricity, water, and educational services. Today their modest homes (where we witnessed them having developed solar systems to make up for the lack of state services) are being demolished. They are then charged a fee for that demolition! They are not allowed permits to build again.

Worse yet, Palestinian Bedouins are being pushed from their farmland to areas where the government of Israel says there will be urban centers for them to learn to be “civilized” city dwellers. Jewish farmers will be entitled to the land the Bedouins have been forced to leave and they will have all the modern roads and services added.

As we stood there being buffeted by the wind the1960’s lyrics to Bob Dylan's “Blowin’ in The Wind” from the US Civil Rights Movement filled my head ... “Yes, and how many ears must one man have before he can hear people cry?”

Although I knew some of these horrific details before standing on this Palestinian Bedouin land, being in their homes and hearing their voices makes me determined to work more diligently against the evils of an apartheid state that my country supports with over $10 million a day in military aid.