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Freedom is, among other things: Riding the bus and looking at the sea or reading a book, totally at ease. Walking the land and knowing each part of it, without knowing fear. Meeting new people of all sorts and becoming friends. Finding a job I like and which pays a living wage. Studying what I want to without having to pay a fortune. Being glad in Israel's human variety without worrying about so-called demographic or economic threats. Walking down the street, or waiting for the light to change, or standing in line at the supermarket, without being drowned in commercials. Hearing the news without hearing about innocent people getting killed.
A place without freedom is a prison.
Israel today is a prison.
The worst kind of prison is the invisible kind. We cannot see our prison, not because it's bewitched but because we are blind. Our capacity to sense suffering has been blinded. First we were blinded to the suffering of people who look very different from us: they live up in the mountains, they wear mustaches and veils, and they apparently hate us because we are more beautiful and intelligent than they are. Then we were blinded to the suffering of people who look more like us, and even talk our language, albeit in strange accents. But I guess they're not as able as us, and that's why they have no jobs and their children have no food. Lastly, we have been blinded to our own suffering. We've been convinced that we don't really suffer - what doesn't kill you makes you stronger, and hey, we're not dead yet. We've been blinded to think that our agony is pleasure, and that depression is fun.
The most suffocating kind of prison is made of glass.
Today I'll be going to another kind of prison, a kind made of cement and tent canvas, of barbed wire fences and the uniforms of prison guards. It's called Military Prison No. 4. I'm glad to be going because, finally, my prison will be visible. I'll do my time in this visible prison for a few months for refusing to enlist to Israel's academy for prison guards: the IDF, Israel's "Defense Forces" which have been imprisoning an entire people for thirty-five years.
In Military Prison No. 4 I may develop a miraculous sense of sight. From staring at the fabric of my tent I might gain the ability to see fabrics of deceit. Looking at cement walls may teach me to recognize the walls separating human beings. Seeing barbed wires may bring me understanding of the wiring by which people are controlled.
Hope and experience both show that sight is an infectious trait. My goal is an epidemic of seeing people who will tear down the walls of separation with their sense of sight. They will use their vision to rip away the canvasses of lies, and cut the wires of exploitation with their eyes. Military Prison No. 4 already holds a few people who are trying to see, sitting and looking and waiting for me to join. In the schools and on the buses, in the refugee camps and the factories, on the streets and at the roadblocks and in the offices, thousands of seeing people are already infecting their neighbors with the seeing virus.
Soon a critical mass of seeing people will have collected. All of a sudden, everyone will be able to see the prison. Even the guards will realize that they, too, are prisoners.
And the prison will be gone.