Glendale native and Israeli citizen Bryan Atinsky said that he grew up with “one foot in America” and “one foot in a fantasy” of what he believed Israel to be.
Atinsky said he was raised in a “liberal household — except when it came to Israel. Everything Israel did was right.”
Today Atinsky is a peace activist dedicated to ending Israel’s occupation of the territories it captured in the 1967 Six Day War.
He and Palestinian Mansour Aziz Mansour, a farmer who resides in the village of Biddu northwest of Jerusalem, spoke on May 12 at the Friends Meeting House as part of a “Peace Activist’s Perspective” series organized by the Middle East Committee of Peace Action Wisconsin.
Atinsky attended Nicolet High School, went to Hebrew school and went to synagogue twice a week, where he said he became “so tied to Israel as a place. Israel has been a part of my life since I was a child.”
In 1989, during the first intifada, Atinsky spent three months on a kibbutz with his sister, who was already living there. During his stay, he worked at a Palestinian refugee camp.
The experience “totally opened my eyes,” he said. When he saw “people’s homes with gunshots in the windows,” he said he realized Israel’s history was “not as black and white as I thought it was.”
Atinsky returned to the U.S., but went back to Israel to attend The Hebrew University, and officially made aliyah in 1997, with part of the purpose to work for peace between the Israelis and Palestinians.
Atinsky is the co-editor of “News from Within,” a joint Israeli/Palestinian English journal, published by the Alternative Information Center in Jerusalem and Beit Sahour.
He was previously a co-founder and editor of the Independent Media Center of Israel, which was shut down after its Web site, on which readers could freely post articles, cartoons, or announcements, showed a caricature drawn by a Brazilian cartoonist of Ariel Sharon kissing Adolf Hitler.
Israeli law enforcement officials interrogated Atinsky at length because of the cartoon. Before that happened, “I was highly active as a media activist,” but he eventually “couldn’t do anything because of the investigation.”
Atinsky added that “creating investigations” is one way that the Israeli government “tries to keep Israelis and Palestinians separate.” Other methods include preventing joint demonstrations whenever possible, he said.
Mansour discussed his work as a member of the Popular Committee Against the Wall in Biddu. Biddu is one of the villages to become cut off from the West Bank by the construction of the separation wall.
Mansour participates in meetings with people throughout the area to discuss strategies for nonviolent resistance to the occupation. He serves as liaison between Biddu and regional committees and international supporters, and coordinates the visits of all Israelis and internationals to Biddu.
Mansour said that he works not only for the benefit of his own people. “I am not fighting for the Palestinian farmers. I am resisting for two peoples,” he said.
He emphasized that his village was not interested in “resisting the Israeli people,” Mansour said. “We are resisting the Israeli government.”
“We can co-exist with each other,” he said. “Forget our religions, forget our citizenship.”
Atinsky ageed. “There is cooperation” between the two sides, he said. “There is a possibility of peace. But there needs to be an immediate end to the occupation.”
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