Keeping Up the Battle So Far Away

Palestinians' Plight Is One Man's Passion

David Neunuebel - Documentary filmmaker working to tell Americans what's really going on in Palestine-Israel. Executive Director of Americans for a Just Peace in the Middle East. This feature written for Santa Barbara News Press by Rhonda Parks Manville, July 2001, before the creation of BEYOND THE MIRAGE: THE FACE OF THE OCCUPATION. David has been visiting, filming, and documenting the conflict annually prior to and since this feature was written.

During his day job, David Neunuebel wears a tie and works downtown, advising clients on their financial investments.

But his passion outside of work is drawing attention to the plight of Palestinians and documenting their struggle for self-determination and freedom.

He became gripped by the Palestinian cause four years ago -- before the current violent conflict with Israel began 10 months ago -- when he traveled to the West Bank with a group of college students and a professor friend from Cairo to study the Middle East.

Mr. Neunuebel was appalled by what he witnessed. Once back home in Santa Barbara, he couldn't stop thinking of the Palestinian people.

"The stark reality of what is happening there really hit me," he said, referring to the curfews, roadblocks and other restrictions on Palestinians living in the occupied territories. "It was stuff no one would ever put up with in the U.S., and yet it was happening in the only so-called democracy in the Middle East."

During his first trip, "We all looked at each other and said, 'Does anybody in the world know what is going on here?' The oppression was amazing. And this was before the intifada."

Mr. Neunuebel, 54, has made four trips to the occupied territories since then, two of them in the past year.

During the current conflict, more than 200 people have been killed, most of them Palestinians.

The violence in Israel has escalated in recent weeks, with killings reported on a daily basis. In June, a Hamas suicide bomber killed 21 teen-age Jewish immigrants at a Tel Aviv nightclub. Last week three Palestinians, including a 3-month-old baby, were killed in a drive-by shooting carried out by militant Jewish settlers.

The volatility in Israel prompted a group of world leaders meeting in Rome last week to propose international monitors in the region to help stem the violence. The proposal was rejected by Israel, but applauded by Palestinian leaders.

Mr. Neunuebel is videotaping the living conditions of Palestinians for a documentary. He wants to use the footage as an educational tool for an organization he founded last year, called Americans for a Just Peace in the Middle East.

He takes out ads in local newspapers, which frequently contain provocative quotes from Jews who are troubled by the treatment of Palestinians in Israel, such as this from San Francisco Rabbi Michael Lerner, which appeared in the Jewish journal TIKKUN: "Palestinians are as valued by God as Jews. Palestinians are created as equal in God's image as Jews."

He shares his message with college students and church groups and he's voiced his opinions as a guest of local talk radio and television programs. He set up a booth at last year's conference of the Arab American Anti Discrimination Committee in Washington, D.C.

"People always want to know what a nice Polish guy like me is doing," he said. "No, I am not a Jew or an Arab. But if you're against slavery and against apartheid, its pretty hard to see this as any different. It's immoral and it's intolerable. I think the American people need to know who the Palestinians are, about the apartheid conditions they live under, and be infuriated."

One of Mr. Neunuebel's mottoes is, "It's the Occupation, Stupid."

He believes that an end to the occupation would solve 90 percent of the problems associated with the current conflict, including the daily killings.

For peace to occur, the Palestinians must be granted an independent, democratic state with East Jerusalem as the capital, and they must be allowed the basic human right of freedom of movement, he believes.

There is, of course, an opposing view.

"Most Israelis will tell you that the occupation is bad also," said Zvi Vapni, the deputy consul general of Israel, based in Los Angeles. "Most of the talks we have had in the past 10 years focused on an end to the occupation. But in the midst of this, when we were close to an agreement, the Palestinians left the table and went back to the same kinds of violence that they had used in the 1980s.

"Our assumption is that Yasir Arafat made the decision that he will not get what he wants through negotiation, but through forcing Israel to get what he wants. But without negotiation, there is no way to settle this issue."

Mr. Vapni said the violence carried out by the Palestinians is counterproductive: "The violence will never get them what they want. It does not make them happier or richer. It's a very sad thing, because it might take 10 to 15 years for responsible Palestinian leadership to bring the Palestinians back to the negotiating table," he said.

To compare the status of Palestinians in Israel to blacks under apartheid in South Africa is an inappropriate comparison, Mr. Vapni added. "This is a dispute between two nations. It is not a race-based or religious-based dispute."

Shelly Katz, the director of Santa Barbara's Jewish Federation, said the difficulties among the people living amid the conflict are undisputed. But the problem is complex and volatile and not likely to be solved simply. The federation's board members have written letters to local newspapers protesting the violence and condemning the killing -- of Jews and non-Jews.

While Mr. Neunuebel condemns violence on both sides, he believes that most Americans have received a biased view of the conflict. This "Zionized" view portrays the Palestinians as rock-throwing terrorists with suicide bombs and the democratic Israelis as under constant threat.

One day, while trying to get from Hebron to East Jerusalem, "It took me five taxis to go the distance equal to going from Goleta to Santa Barbara," because of blockades and roadblocks on the routes that Palestinians must travel, often on foot because cars can't get through. Meanwhile, he said, the Israelis were whizzing by in their cars on a parallel four-lane highway.

The inequities are astounding, he said.

"Imagine that a Hispanic person in Ventura perpetuated a crime, and then all the Hispanics in the tricounties were placed under curfew, and couldn't go to work, or school, to the movies, or shopping. Imagine that. If a Palestinian does something, fires a shot for example, the whole population is shut down. If a Jew does something, the population is free to move about. And we are financing these human-rights violations."

Mr. Neunuebel says his concern for the human rights of Palestinians stems from his upbringing during the 1960s in St. Louis, Mo.

"I was brought up that all people are equal -- red and yellow black and white -- you know, that Jesus loves all the little children," said Mr. Neunuebel.

"When I was in seventh grade, I brought my best friend home for lunch, and the next day the neighbors called me a 'nigger lover'," he said. "My mother said, 'That's OK. We don't worry about what they say. You bring him home tomorrow, and you can bring the whole family if you want.'

Earlier in Mr. Neunuebel's life, when the family traveled through the segregated South on vacation, he insisted upon using the bathrooms and water fountains marked for "coloreds." His mother would pat him on the back, he said.

"Some small part of me just couldn't accept that," he said. "It was an instinct I just grew up with."

Mr. Neunuebel uses the racist term for blacks to describe the way Palestinians are treated in Israel. He realizes many Americans don't agree with his views. But he believes that presented with the facts, their minds can be changed.

"Human rights are not a favor that the Israelis give to the Palestinians if they behave well," he said. "People are always saying, 'The violence has to stop before the peace negotiations can resume.' But that is a stupid thing to say. If that were the case, we'd still be in Vietnam."

From The Santa Barbara News Press - 7/23/2001