In 2012, I joined twenty activists, including individuals from Zochrot, at an academic seminar in South Africa. One day, we visited Robben Island, used in the apartheid era as a “security” prison that held political prisoners, and now stands as a museum commemorating the crimes of apartheid. The guides on site are former prisoners themselves. Since the facility remained intact, we could walk through the prison corridors, cells and courtyards, all the while hearing from the guide about his own experiences there, on the struggle against apartheid, and the importance of commemorating that terrible period today, that way.

Nelson Mandela was imprisoned in Robben Island for 18 years, out of a total of 27, until the downfall of apartheid. He was finally released in 1990, and only four years later became the country’s first democratically-elected president. Two other former political prisoners held in Robben Island became presidents after him. 

At a certain point in the tour, I realized that one of the Palestinians who was with us in the group had been imprisoned in an Israeli jail. Using my camera, I interviewed him about this experience while we were still on the island, and the tour suddenly gained a new aspect. The “serious” offense for which he was imprisoned for four years was hoisting the Palestinian flag, which was forbidden under Israeli law prior to the 1993 Oslo Accords.  

As an Israeli, talking to a former Palestinian political prisoner about his jail time, while both of us were in a former political prison turned into a museum guided by a former South African political prisoner, was a formative experience for me. It rendered the path paved exclusively in my imagination suddenly real, tangible and concrete. The path away from the reality of occupation and colonization and oppression suddenly made practical sense. After all, it happened right (t)here. 

Can we imagine an Israeli political prison becoming a museum? Can I imagine my Palestinian friend leading a group of Israelis and Palestinians in the corridors and cells and courtyards of that prison, guiding a tour where he shares his experience in prisons, retelling the story of the occupation, its demise and the subsequent transitional justice process? 

Granted, this may seem otherworldly and very far removed from where we are today. But why do we so easily give up on imagining it? 

As Israeli Jews, and even as leftwing activist ones, we are trapped within the assumption that “what was shall be”. This is how we were raised and this is how we became accustomed to think: the image of the past produces that of the future. Even when we fight the occupation, the oppression, the silencing, the separation between us and the constant incitement – it is not with ease that we fight for our desirable future image. Usually, it feels less urgent, or it feels we don’t have energy left. It may even seem completely detached from reality.

Countless times, when I told people about the groups in which I participated to think about the return of the Palestinian refugees – groups that imagined the return in detail, which started creating the tools and the language and to provide concrete solutions for a future return – I was told that I was “detached from reality”.

Well, the more our reality is one of oppression, racial supremacism, institutional discrimination and militarism, I certainly prefer detaching myself from it. I’m not imprisoned by colonialism nor am I bound by the control of a different people. In my imagination, I lay the foundations for an alternative reality, one that does justice with the victims of injustice, one where the uprooting of the Palestinians finds its redress in their return to their homeland, where everyone lives together equally, securely, and even dare I say, happily. 

Our imagination has power. Imagining a different reality is political power. The activists fighting apartheid were also considered detached from reality and even delirious. It’s funny to say so, but so was Theodore Herzl. 

Political imagination is not synonymous with daydreaming, nor is it the act of a single individual. Practicing political imagination means practicing active, collective resistance to oppression. They try to befuddle our minds into thinking that things cannot be different here. But that is a blatant lie. 

Political imagination is a collective action that has a real impact on reality. Groups of Palestinian refugees and internally displaced persons have been meeting for several decades, imagining their return, drawing maps, building models, producing films and writing texts to imagine their return. In several cases they have even staged an actual return to their community (Miske, Ikrit, Al-Araqib, and others). 

I have been fortunate to be part of several groups that included Zochrot members and that welcomed Jews to take part in this imagination process. I participate in imagining the return because I want to promote it as a redress for the injustice of uprooting the Palestinians from this country, and because I too want to imagine – and plan – life after return. When the horizon is clear, it is easier to reach even if the road to it is not yet paved. 

The groups I attended produced texts that you can find in Zochrot’s new website. For me, these texts represent activism because they are some of the tools in a toolbox we will be able to use in the day after – the day we decide to stop occupying and oppressing others and instead take responsibility, do justice, redress the wrongs we have caused, and become partners in the Palestinians’ return to their home. 

In the meantime, we train our imagination, our minds, to think differently, to see things differently, to live in a different reality. In other words, we also lay the emotional and mental groundwork for living in the reality that we desire. 

Political imagination is a process. These texts have not been written in a day. They are the product of prolonged efforts, in-depth study of the issues, emotional upheavals, the deconstruction and reconstruction of all we have believed hitherto. Hence the importance of persistence – like training a muscle, like a physical exercise program. You don’t give up every time you encounter difficulty, you persist.

On that same tour to South Africa, we met the late Archbishop Desmond Tutu. Words fail to describe our excitement and fascination. During that meeting, he shared his thoughts with us. One of these thoughts became etched in my heart, grounding all my activism in terms of political imagination, hope and persistence:

It might look like you are hitting your head against a wall

You're not

It's going to happen!

And one day they are going to ask each other:

"Why were we so stupid for so long?" Like here!

"Why were we so stupid for so long, causing people unhappiness?"

You too, you are… Amen

"Why? Why did we do these silly things? Why did we build a wall?"

"Look at the money we spent, and now the money we are going to spend to break it down!"

Long live the breaking down of all walls, including those that imprison our imagination.

 

Moran Barir is a video-activist and group facilitator, chair of Zochrot’s board.