Gazette-Times reporter

A normal day at work for Jeff Halper might mean chaining himself to a house, facing down a bulldozer or being shoved into a police van.

Halper is a co-founder of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD.) His job is to impede and protest the destruction of Palestinian homes in the Israeli occupied West Bank. And if the homes get destroyed anyway, Halper and his colleagues rebuild them.

Halper was in Corvallis on Friday to talk about what he sees as Israeli apartheid - the isolation and domination of Palestinians inside the West Bank, even in areas where they are supposed to be autonomous. The talk was sponsored by the Friends of Middle East Peace, and held at the Corvallis-Benton County Public Library. About 100 people attended.

Halper, now in his 50s, was born in Hibbing, Minn. After attending Macalester College in St. Paul, Minn., and the University of Wisconsin in Milwaukee, he moved to Israel in 1973. An anthropologist, he taught at Ben Gurion University and now lives with his family in Jerusalem.

"Since 1967," Halper said, "18,000 Palestinian homes within the occupied territories have been demolished."

He believes the Israeli government has chosen a policy towards Palestinians, which he likens to the South African system of apartheid, in order to eventually make impossible the idea of a viable independent Palestinian state.

"The Israelis just don't get it," Halper said.

He thinks Israelis feel the need to cast themselves in the role of victims. Since the state of Israel was founded in the aftermath of the Holocaust, it is a role that is familiar for Jews everywhere, not just in Israel. But Halper says in the conflict with Palestinians, Israel is much more powerful. By portraying themselves as victims, Israelis can avoid taking responsibility for their actions.

"We can't break through to the Israeli people," Halper said wryly. "That's why I'm here - got to talk to somebody."

Halper showed the audience a series of photographs of the demolition of a Palestinian home in a village outside of Jerusalem. Selim and his wife, Arabia, both Palestinians, applied several times for a permit to build a home, according to Halper, at the cost of $5,000 per application. Every time they were denied permission. The reason? All of the land in the occupied territories has been zoned agricultural. Israeli settlers can get land rezoned for their own housing, but Palestinians cannot.

When Selim and Arabia built a house anyway, it was bulldozed - four times. Each time, Halper and his colleagues from ICAHD helped rebuild.

Ironically, many Israelis come from families who were terrorized in a very similar way during the Nazi regime and even before that in the 19 century when Russian troops and police would raid Jewish villages and burn homes and attack the people. Halper said his family found a diary written by his great-grandfather in which he described the horror of one such raid, or pogrom.

"It was in Russian," Halper said. "We had it translated and the translator couldn't finish because he said it was too terrible."

Halper hopes international civil society will get the message that what the Israeli government is doing to Palestinians is very similar and will insist that it stop.

"Israel could not sustain the occupation for a month without the support of the United States," he said.

He hopes to raise awareness of how the American government is aiding in the repression of Palestinians. Groups that champion human rights are starting to speak out and to get together, like a band of hobbits gathering to fight the overwhelming power of Mordor in "The Lord of the Rings."

"Arrayed against that is us - the little Frodos," Halper said.