About two years ago, Sari Bashi was on her way to a family memorial with her two children. It was supposed to be a short drive to Jerusalem from her home in Ramallah in the West Bank, but on the way, near the settlement of Kfar Dolev, Israeli troops had set up a roadblock after a terrorist attack. To get around it, Bashi would have to take a detour that would add 45 minutes to the trip, a soldier said.
Bashi’s little daughter wanted to know what happened. Her mother, adapting to a 5-year-old’s sensibilities, replied that the soldiers didn’t want to share the road, as sometimes happens when daddy isn’t allowed to pass through.
>>> The full list of Umm Forat (real name Sari Bashi) columns from Ramallah
“She replied, ‘But mom, we’re Jews,’” Bashi says. “I mean, she realized without anyone telling her that Jews can pass through and Palestinians can’t, so she was confused why now Jews were being sent back too. I think this was maybe the clearest proof of apartheid. A 5-year-old girl who doesn’t know what apartheid is – and we’ve never explained to her what it is – just lives this reality. She understands that Jews can and Palestinians can’t.
“This is the essence of apartheid. Why are there settlements? There is a desire to secure maximum territory with a minimum of Palestinians. There is a desire for Jewish demographic superiority. This policy is implemented by violent means. The occupation is also apartheid.”
Unlike most of us, the everyday life of 45-year-old Bashi combines politics, meaningful history and a painful present. The four walls of her home are inextricably linked politically, diplomatically and personally. What happens outside affects the home. What happens at home is directly affected by what happens outside.
'For me, military service for children is unbearable. You can’t prevent your children from serving and you can’t prevent anything they do once they’re serving'
Her stories about her relationship and family are full of emotion both in our conversation and in her new Hebrew-language book “Maqluba: Upside-Down Love.” There, she describes her unique situation via her relationship with her partner of 11 years, a Palestinian academic living in Ramallah.
In the book, written from two perspectives, his and hers, he’s called Osama, though that’s not his real name. Even an issue like that is a matter requiring plenty of study, thought and caution. Her husband is also called Osama in her pieces for Haaretz, where she uses the pen name Umm Forat.
“I can put it this way: One of the things that stands out in our relationship is that I have privileges that he doesn’t. It starts with the fact that I can travel more or less where I want, and he can’t. I can get excellent medical care and he can’t,” Bashi says in our Zoom chat.
“In other respects, too, I enjoy freedoms that he’s not entitled to. As a citizen of Israel, I’m in a position of power. It’s harder to harm me. As a Palestinian resident, he has no power, it’s easy to harm him, so we want to protect him, not expose him by name – in general so that he and the children are out of the public eye.”
But you still chose to include him and them as protagonists in the book.
“I wrote the book to communicate with the Israeli public. It’s my responsibility, not his. I feel the need to try to expose Israeli readers to the situation in the West Bank, including the normal, everyday situation, to unimportant things like what to eat, how to dress, the way the military regime affects people’s lives.
'If I had stayed in Tel Aviv, I would have lived a quiet life, but my son would go into the army and participate in apartheid from another angle'
“It’s hard work,” she laughs. “I do it as a lawyer, as a human-rights activist, and I try to do it by revealing my own personal story. It’s my choice and my responsibility as an Israeli, as a Jew."
Long-distance runaround
Sari Bashi is an extraordinary woman. She was born in the United States; Polish-Jewish on one side, Iraqi-Jewish on the other. As a child, she attended Orthodox Jewish schools and later earned a law degree at Yale. Despite her bright professional future, she decided to immigrate to Israel. She interned at the Supreme Court with Justice Edmond Levy and worked alongside Aharon Barak, the court's president from 1995 to 2006, on projects including the translation of his 2005 book “Purposive Interpretation in Law.”
In 2005, when she was a 29-year-old brilliant young lawyer, she co-founded with Prof. Kenneth Mann the rights group Gisha that strives to protect Palestinians' freedom of movement. She was executive director until 2014, when she had 22 employees, an annual budget of about 5 million shekels ($1.5 million), and a record of policy change that benefited thousands.
Since the end of last year she has been working as a consultant for the group Dawn, Democracy for the Arab World Now, founded by Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi before his murder in 2018. Bashi has been working out of Raleigh, North Carolina, where her family is currently living.
And then there’s her hobby, long-distance running. She’s the Israeli champion for 216 kilometers (134 miles). In fact, she’s the only Israeli to complete such a monstrous race.
Her book ends with a description of their lives in Ramallah. Because of the restrictions on her husband’s movement, the couple must live in Ramallah, save for an academic sabbatical every few years. Now, from the United States, she’s trying to regulate his status.
“Since we got together, we’ve lived in Johannesburg for nearly two years, a year in Connecticut and now a year in North Carolina. I hope his status and immigration issues work out because it’s been very difficult. They make it difficult for us to live in the West Bank and we’re not allowed to live together in Israel. We don’t want to leave, but it’s important that we have the opportunity. We need a safe place, even if we want to stay in the West Bank.”
You lived in Tel Aviv for years. If you had the chance, would you live in Israel again?
“I’m a human rights activist and believe that we have a responsibility to fix the world and make sure everyone has rights. If I had stayed in Tel Aviv, I would have lived a quiet life, but my son would go into the army and participate in apartheid from another angle. I know that Israelis live quiet lives for the most part, but this comes at the expense of another people. I know quite a few leftists who find it difficult to live in Israel for this reason. Many have emigrated.
“For me, military service for children is unbearable. You can’t prevent your children from serving and you can’t prevent anything they do once they’re serving. As a parent, putting children on such a path is unbearable. Exposing children to the content of the education system, in part racist involving Jewish superiority that in places becomes Jewish supremacy, is awful. I’m sure of this. My children will not serve in the military. This will make it very hard for them to be racist toward Jews and Palestinians.
'According to Judaism my children are Jews and according to Islam they’re Muslims, so everyone is happy'
“In this sense I protect them more than do my friends who stay in Israel. The word ‘distress’ doesn’t capture what they go through when their children go to the army – concern for their safety and concern for what they do. My children will have to deal with a lot, but not this.”
Bashi’s book uses an innovative technique: a diary by two spouses who at least initially seem to be doing everything in their power to avoid a meaningful romantic bond. Mutual attraction is too fraught, impeded by the societies in which they live, but a powerful bond catches up with them. Bashi is the author, but she says everything in the book is biographical and based on her diary.
Osama and Bashi met in 2006; at Gisha, she helped him arrange his trip with his then-wife and young son to study for a doctorate in London. Osama, who was born in a refugee camp in Gaza, had lived in Ramallah for many years, held an academic position, and had a family and a home. But since he was registered as a Gaza native, his departure from Ramallah could have jeopardized his return. Thus he was trapped in the city, hadn’t seen his mother for years, and his academic and professional future was in danger. Bashi petitioned Israel’s High Court of Justice and his trip was arranged.
Years later, with Osama now divorced, they met again. They talked about his case “and somehow we talked about other things too. It happens in the world, but when it started it was so confusing. Impossible, that’s how it seemed to me. We corresponded by email, and I wanted to see him, to be close to him, and it was scary because it was obvious it was impossible. Maybe I grew up during that time; I decided to trust my feelings, that what I felt was legitimate. I was already 34; I decided to trust what my heart said.
“At first, we kept downplaying the relationship. There were separations and reconciliations because we decided it didn’t really exist. Each with their own emotional baggage, the reality that I could come to him and he couldn’t come to me. My convenience, that I come and go as I please and he can’t, this hasn’t changed. We’re still dealing with the imbalance of power, skewed in my favor.
“Back then when we were a young couple trying to get to know each other, it was burdensome and sometimes came between us, but we both grew up. We learned to be partners. My partner grew up in a refugee camp in Gaza, he’s a secular leftist intellectual, a person loath to belong. Maybe this gave us the freedom to meet. Our families are far away, so maybe that also gave us space.”
You say, “We have a problem.” It has been years of trouble; you can go crazy. When your daughter was born prematurely, he wasn’t allowed to come visit. Even when your son was born there were problems.
“In the past decade my friends have gotten married and had children, and sometimes I compare my situation to theirs. In a sense the difficulties of our relationship are unique. On paper, you can be the right couple, but you have difficulties. On paper we’re not meant to be together, but we really get along. It’s comes down to simple but important things – the way we look at the world and politics.
“We have a common worldview when it comes to raising children, how to spend money, the important things. Day-to-day details work out and this helps keep our love and the family structure intact. There are difficulties, but every couple has difficulties. Ours also have to do with politics, the conflict between our peoples, apartheid, deportation. In the end it translates into tensions, and there are a thousand and one sources of tension between spouses. I’m lucky, we’re in love and our relationship works.
“My maternal grandmother was a Pole who grew up in the United States, a sweet and warm woman but also racist and closed-minded. When I moved in with my partner, I hung her picture on the wall and thought, wow, my grandmother came to Ramallah, who would believe it,” Bashi adds, laughing.
“Yeah, it’s a blend that does good for our families, too. My mother is so supportive of me, and from the start she loved my partner and supported our choice. I was very worried that she would be disappointed, but my relationship exposes her to a world she wouldn’t have otherwise known, and the same goes for my friends.
“Especially in Israel, when people hear the slogans ‘occupation,’ ‘apartheid’ and ‘Palestinians,’ they get defensive and immediately try to express an ideology. My personal story, the story of the book, tries to encourage people to relate to these powerful slogans from a personal and day-to-day perspective. Maybe this way you can encourage people to think a little differently.”
In the book you write that in petitions you detail the person’s narrative, you write about his or her research and résumé, trying to humanize the person. You talk about the sense of supremacy of the soldiers at checkpoints. You avoid a provocative discussion but you raise a question about Israelis’ attitude on Palestinians.
“I also believed plenty of stereotypes when I started getting to know Palestinians. I was surprised every time I discovered something simple and ordinary. When my partner and I got together, the main issue was that he was Palestinian. It was a huge thing. I talked to a friend and told her I was falling for him, and I remember saying ‘I know it’s impossible, but I’ll keep going until the end,’ and I assumed that the end was a few weeks away, maybe a few months.
‘Now we’ve been together 11 years. In Israeli society we hold many prejudices; many ways we dehumanize the Palestinians, on an individual level. During the war there were quite a few people who looked at what was happening in Gaza and saw it differently from how they saw Israel. They weren’t moved by Palestinian children in the same way.”
There were situations where people rejoiced over Palestinian victims.
“There are people like that. I don’t know how to start trying to talk to them, so for now I don’t try. My dialogue is with those who at least claim to hold universal values, at least consider themselves humane. It seems like a big gap, but I was like that too, there was a gap between me and the Palestinians.
“It’s not that there are differences, they are different cultures, but the level of dehumanization is the result of many years of deliberate government policy that separates and demonizes Palestinian society. Responsible adults in our society don’t behave like responsible adults. Quite a few media outlets echo this dehumanization and speak freely of Palestinians as if they were inferior to Jews.”
Fear on both sides
There are also prejudices from the other side. Bashi tells of friends from Ramallah who were afraid to hear her speak Hebrew, softly and lovingly, to her baby daughter. After their initial shock, they burst out laughing.
“This is a violent place. The Palestinians fear the settlers; we need to act accordingly,” Bashi says. “I’m also afraid. I don’t want someone with power to be afraid of me, I don’t want anyone to hurt me. Israelis are afraid of Palestinians and Palestinians are very afraid of Israelis, and it’s hard for them to accept that I’m Israeli.”
In the book, you mention Juliano Mer-Khamis, the late actor, director and political activist. He also had conflicting identities. Are you afraid of threats from Ramallah, that what happened to him, killed by militants, will happen to you?
“We don’t know who murdered him and why. That doesn’t mean there are no risks, but we don’t know if he was murdered because his mother was Jewish. We don’t know what happened there.
“There are risks, yes. No one, I very much hope, wants to hurt anyone – either us or our children. I try to give myself exposure, on purpose, so people know who I am. In the Muslim tradition there is room for a Muslim man to marry a woman of a monotheistic faith, it’s acceptable. According to Judaism my children are Jews and according to Islam they’re Muslims, so everyone is happy.”
Do you remain optimistic?
“Rapid changes are happening: the extremism of the political situation in Israel and the disintegration of restraining elements – the State Prosecutor’s Office, the police and politicians. I don’t think it will improve soon. There is extremism on the Palestinian side. Gaza has been under a blockade for 14 years, an entire generation of young people have never left the Gaza Strip and only know this situation, poverty, narrowing horizons, severe unemployment. The situation in the West Bank isn’t simple either. I still think there is a future for more substantial change.
“Israeli democracy is losing its democratic character very quickly. The political system is self-destructing and preventing the possibility of reforms. It still leaves an opening for an alternative: a system based on universal values, not on Jewish supremacy, not on Jewish demographic superiority. It will take a long time, but as long as things keep getting uglier and more extreme, even other countries are starting to think twice before supporting government decisions in Israel.
“In the United States, in Europe, people are starting to talk about equal rights and not about political constellations. Young Palestinians are also talking about it. They suffer from three oppressive authorities: Israel, the Palestinian Authority and Hamas. Instead of talking about politics they talk about rights.
“This is hopeful – not an Israel that is strong and violent with a Jewish majority that oppresses others, but equal rights for all who live in the area. It will happen, I believe, but it will take a long time.”
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