I don't know quite how I got to the point where I can say this, but after 4 and a half months, this will be my last letter from Palestine this year. This week has been full of olive picking, coordination, strange travels, and goodbyes.
We've had three different delegations here to help with the olive harvest (one from Boston, one from the UK, and one from Austria). Now only the Austrian group is still here, and has been picking in the north of the city of Salfit near the southern fence of Ariel settlement. Moving the group there from Marda took us about 2 hours instead of the half hour it should take. The flying checkpoint I've come to expect under the bridge at Iskaka was nowhere to be seen, but construction workers were paving the only road to Salfit (the only Palestinian road, that is - the army has their own ways of getting there), and it was completely closed. I asked why they didn't do the paving at night. "Do you think the army would let us do that?" one of the workers responded. We switched cars many times and walked several hundred meters right next to the burning tar. At one point we ran into a whole group of 10-15 year old boys. I asked where they were from. Turmus Aya. What are they doing here? They've come to visit their teacher in Yasuf who was beaten up by settlers a few days earlier. I knew the incident. I had spoken with 25-year-old Tariq, who had been attacked on the main road on his way home from work. A settler sprayed gas in his face and a group of settlers kicked and punched him until he was unconscious. A Palestinian car noticed him on the road, picked him up, and took him to the hospital. He suffered injuries to his thigh, ribs, shoulder/back, and nose.
So these kids from Turmus Aya were on their way to visit Tariq. They seemed unconcerned by the delay, and were delighted to have the chance to whip out their American passports and talk to me about Chicago. I've heard that Turmus Aya is a town with large houses and no people, because all the people live outside Palestine. I told the kids this. "Nos nos," they responded (half, half). Some of these children split their time between the US and Palestine, others have never been to the US, but it seems most have family there.
We arrived in Salfit just before iftar (the evening meal to break the fast of Ramadan each day). The farmers were tired, hungry, and thirsty, but not quite as irritable as I would have expected for that time of day. We sat around a table trying to split up which internationals would stay (and therefore pick the following day) with which families. After it was all finished, the mayor took me aside and told me I would be staying with him. "Everyone wanted you at first," he told me, "but then you said you were American, and then you said you wouldn't be picking tomorrow, and now nobody wants you." He said it with his typical joking smile, but I can't help but think there's some truth in it. Wait until they find out I'm Jewish, I thought. Incidentally, one of the coordinators later asked me, "Are you Muslim or Christian?" "No," I responded. "Nothing?" he asked. "Jewish," I responded, and then quickly added, "but not Israeli." "Why do you say that?" he asked. "It doesn't matter. We like you because you are a human being. Jewish, Israeli, it doesn't matter." This is the most common response I get when I tell people I'm Jewish. The other day I met a woman on the bus who, in the midst of telling me that there's no difference between Jews and Israelis, that all participate in an oppressive system, and that Islam is the best religion because it is all-encompassing, also stated that someday we'll realize that we all believe in the same one God, and that we just have different messengers.
The more I find out about Islam, the more I want to know. Someday soon I'll sit down and read the Koran, but until then, I hope to have many more conversations with people and many more experiences like I had that night in Salfit. After dinner in the public gardens the Sheikh gave a speech, which was followed by what I can only call an "Ask the Sheikh" session. Women, men, and children were there, and all were asking him questions about fasting. "How old should children be when they begin to fast?" "Lots of people say they're fasting but they're not. What do you say about that?" "Why are we using plastic plates?" (this was my favorite question). The whole evening seemed very democratic to me. Interaction, interruption, camaraderie. I like seeing democracy in action, especially in religious institutions.
I stayed with the mayor's family, and was excited to get up at 3:30 am to eat the morning meal before sunrise, which I'd never done. I set my alarm, and was up and ready at 3:30. I waited around for a few minutes and didn't see or hear any movement, so I went back to sleep. In the morning, they asked, "Why didn't you wake us up?" They had slept through their alarm.
After a few more errands, I managed to get home and left the next morning for a short 'break' before leaving for good. I had heard from my friend George about a youth center in a building that used to be a prison in Fara refugee camp, in the Tubas region (between Nablus and Jenin, but also on the edge of the Jordan Valley). Kate and I were determined to get there, if only because it seemed like an adventure. And it certainly was. Everything we thought would be difficult about the travels was easy, and everything we thought would be easy was difficult. We snuck around Huwara checkpoint outside of Nablus with absolutely no problem, actually walking with complete confidence in full view of the soldiers, who probably assumed we were settlers or at least walking to the nearby settlement (which was feasible, since it was Saturday and there wouldn't be any settler cars driving). Getting from Nablus to Fara, though, proved to be the real adventure. One driver said he could take us, but after stopping at a broken down amusement park for at least a half hour trying to figure out if his car was strong enough to drive over the roadblock ahead of us, he decided to take us back to Nablus. So we left Palestinian style - that is, over the mountains in a jeep, desperately trying to hold on to our seats as we bounced all over the place, the car speeding over rocks to try to avoid being seen by police or army. We arrived in Fara to a confused crowd of people who kept asking us why we were there (not in an unfriendly way, but they certainly don't get many foreign visitors and were curious, to say the least).
We toured the center, went to the city of Tubas for a few minutes, and then left for Jericho. No, Jericho is nowhere near Tubas, but both are east. Besides, neither Kate nor I had been to Jericho, and we figured we might as well see the oldest and lowest city in the world before leaving. We stopped at Hamra checkpoint, where we encountered hostile soldiers who we're sure are ideological settlers in that area. They wouldn't let us through, claiming that we had to get out the way we came in. Get out of where? we wondered. If we had been near the border with Israel, I would understand that, but seeing as we were in the middle of the West Bank, I was utterly confused. If we had been coming from the other direction would they have forbidden us to pass because we hadn't come through this way? Anyway, our Israeli friend Dorothy made several phone calls for us, and after an hour and a half, the soldiers let us through. Apparently one of the reasons they were worried about it was that if we go through, we might be going to Jericho, which is closed to internationals without special permission. Hamra is nowhere near Jericho, but it is on the same road.
By the time we passed through the checkpoint, it was almost iftar (dark, no cars, etc.). We hitched a ride with a nice settler for a couple minutes, but she was turning off the road, so we got out and began to walk. Kate insisted it was impossible to walk to Jericho, which of course I knew, but at least I needed to feel like I was going somewhere. A couple minutes later, a Palestinian man came out of his house, and we said hello to him in Arabic. He asked where we were going, we told him, and he told us we'd have to come eat with them and spend the night, because there wouldn't be any cars until the morning. I have to say this was a very welcome invitation. And I also have to say that I wasn't surprised. I have come to expect this almost incomprehensible hospitality and trust among Palestinians. Two strange foreigners wandering past his house as it was getting dark - and really, we could have been settlers. How was he to know? Anyway, we stayed, we played with the kids, we talked with the men and women in the house, we slept, and in the morning we got a car to Jericho.
At the checkpoint into Jericho, where we were afraid we'd be asked for our 'permits,' the soldiers just looked at our passports and gave them back to the driver of our car, letting us through with no problem. Jericho is a beautiful city, although it's one of the places where the suffering economy (lack of tourists) is most apparent. The streets were pretty empty, and the cable car operators on the Mt. of Temptation seemed to open up just for us. An article from 1999 hanging in the building said they were expecting the project to pay for itself with Jericho's 500,000 tourists each year. That's over 1,000 a day. I doubt they had many more than 2 the day we were there.
I returned to Hares to the news that Angie, one of our founding team members and a prominent activist in the UK, had been denied entry and was being held at Ben Gurion airport until they could find her a flight back to Britain. We wrote to the press, and I even had a discussion with Abu Rabia last night about an idea that Kate had: Let's get the Palestinian Authority to issue her a visa, to make a statement that if Israel doesn't want Angie in their territory, fine, Palestine wants her in theirs. We'll see where that goes.
I am aware that most of this probably reads more like a travel journal than anything else. I'm not feeling so poetic right now, and I'm a bit overwhelmed with the fact that I'm leaving. I had some wonderful goodbyes yesterday, and realized that people really are going to miss me, and I'm really going to miss them.
What more to say? Perhaps I'll write again sometime next week, from the comfort of my parents' home in Pennsylvania. In case I don't, I'll say my thank yous now, to all of you have been reading and writing and passing my messages along and thinking and reconsidering and apprecicating the realities that are so important to face here. Please remember to contact me if you have ideas of where I can present. Boston: Nov. 7, 2:30, Christ Church.
In the spirit of peace, justice, and truth,
Hannah
Monday, October 25, 2004
Friday, October 15, 2004
These Are My People
“Welcome to the most democratic country in the world.”
The man, probably in his 50s or 60s, stopped us in the street to say this. Immediately we knew why. Kate and I were heading back towards the Damascus Gate of Jerusalem’s Old City, but a half hour before we had come from that direction and had seen the massive police force that Israel utilizes every Friday. I do not think the situation was more extreme today than most Fridays, just slightly more offensive. On the first day of Ramadan, hundreds come from the West Bank to pray at the Al Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem. Most of them have succumbed to the system and have obtained a permit from their occupiers to pray at the holiest Muslim site in the country, but the Israeli police still seemed to prohibit men under the age of 50 from entering the Old City this morning. When we asked why, one police officer called her commander over and told him we were interfering with her work.
So when the Palestinian man walking up the street stopped us to say, “Welcome to the most democratic country in the world,” we understood exactly what he meant. “Were you turned away?” I asked. No, he lives in Jerusalem. It’s just the sight of all the people waiting, hoping to access their holy site to pray, being turned away by Israeli authorities. “It makes you crazy,” he said. “It makes you wonder why there aren’t more suicide bombings.” We agreed, and all shrugged our shoulders somewhat helplessly and walked away.
I’ve grown up hearing Jews talk about the importance of the Western Wall in the Old City, about how the holiest site was forbidden to Jews for centuries. I wonder if any of the police officers or soldiers think about this as they guard the gates of the Old City preventing Palestinian Muslims from entering. It seems they have no awareness of the parallels, no empathy for the people, no understanding of themselves. And of course, it makes me feel I need to take on the burden of shame even more, on behalf of all of my people, be they ignorant or heartless or both.
The Israeli army’s massacre of Palestinians in Gaza continues as I write, with at least 136 dead and several hundred more injured. The settlers also seem to be getting more and more vicious these days. A few weeks ago a Palestinian taxi driver stopped to help a Jewish settler who he thought was having car trouble. The settler shot and killed him. Attacks on Palestinian farmers are increasing in number and severity. One was killed harvesting last week. Others have been beaten, their olives stolen, their groves set on fire. Very few settlers are arrested for any of these attacks. I wonder if the settlers would think it fair for the perpetrators of these acts to be assassinated without trial, their settlements closed off, their other residents arrested, their houses demolished. Or alternatively, I wonder if they would think it fair for every Palestinian attack on an Israeli to be met with a smile and something between a pat on the back and a slap on the wrist.
We picked olives and almonds last week with a family whose land lies on a hill that is now completely surrounded by settlements. The ownership of their land is the only thing separating the Gush Etzion bloc (halfway between Bethlehem and Hebron) from connecting completely to Jerusalem. They have papers dating back to 1924 from every occupying power that has been in the area, including the Israelis. Still, the settlers show up every once in a while with bulldozers and begin uprooting trees and constructing roads. Occasionally they attack people in the house, or attack the water tower or generator – structures that denote presence and sustainability. The battle over this piece of land has been in the courts since 1991.
We picked olives with a different family in a different area last week, whose trees are dying because the sewage from the settlement of Elkana runs right through Azzawiya’s land. I picked olives all day trying not to breathe through my nose, wondering if the donkey that was grazing in the area would get sick, wondering if the children breathing in this waste would get sick. On the way back from the land to the village (a walk that used to take 15 minutes but now takes over an hour because of restricted roads and paths), we saw two settler children on the hill next to us. The older one, who looked about 13, was carrying a handgun. He immediately started to fondle it when he saw us. “How are you?” the Palestinians we were with yelled up to the kids in Hebrew. They didn’t respond, but started walking away. “Don’t be afraid of us,” yelled the Palestinian. The settlers turned around, and the child with the gun yelled, “I’m not afraid! I love problems!” The man we were with seemed visibly disturbed, which surprised me. This type of interaction seems relatively normal to me, but the Palestinian turned to me and said, “It’s really not good that they teach their children to hate like this. They say we cause the problems, but then when I try to say hello they say they love problems. It’s not good that such small children have weapons.”
Perhaps because of the settlers’ ability to get away with anything, they have begun targeting internationals as well. Chris and Kim of the Christian Peacemakers’ Team (CPT) in Hebron were attacked while accompanying children to school two weeks ago. A gang of English-speaking (probably American) settlers in black masks ambushed the group and beat Chris and Kim with chains and bats. Chris suffered a punctured lung and bruised ribs, Kim a broken arm and injured knee. Last week settlers again attacked a group of 5 internationals accompanying the children. The army has responded by saying that if the internationals leave, the problem will stop. CPT points out that violence against the children existed far before the international presence (hence the reason for the presence). The ‘problem’ that the army refers to is clearly the public relations difficulty they might face trying to explain to foreign governments why their citizens are being attacked by citizens of Israel.
I thought of this incident as I was being chased down the street by a settler last night. We had gone to a large pro-settlement demonstration in Jerusalem, partly to join the counter-demonstration and partly just to see what one of these demos was like. The experience reminded me that there is no place I feel less safe and more threatened as a Jew than in Israel, by Israelis. Anger, fear, disgust, and sorrow overcame me all at once, and I walked away from the crowd sobbing. Later I wrote the short piece below. I don’t think it adequately expresses all that I was or am feeling, but it’s a start, and, for now, an end:
These are my people
These are my people
who gather in thousands to support the settlements
whose children plaster Gush Katif bumper stickers on their shirts
and cheer at the mention of a Jewish Israel from the river to the sea.
These are my people
who proudly don their hippie skirts and sandals
who look like everyone I went to summer camp with
who look like everyone I know now
who only by accident of birth are greeting each other with hugs at a settler demonstration and not a peace march.
These are my people
who jump out of the crowd to yell at Kate for wearing a shirt with “Jews for a free Palestine”
who violently push her and scream “Get the fuck out of here, murderer!”
who, upon seeing my camera, raise a fist and begin to chase me down the street, hissing
“Keep moving, you dirty bitch!”
These are my people.
These are my people
who stand around watching
at least a dozen policemen
who chuckle as the settler attacks us
who, as a response, form a line across the street and push us down, down, further and further…
These are my people
who push me away.
The man, probably in his 50s or 60s, stopped us in the street to say this. Immediately we knew why. Kate and I were heading back towards the Damascus Gate of Jerusalem’s Old City, but a half hour before we had come from that direction and had seen the massive police force that Israel utilizes every Friday. I do not think the situation was more extreme today than most Fridays, just slightly more offensive. On the first day of Ramadan, hundreds come from the West Bank to pray at the Al Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem. Most of them have succumbed to the system and have obtained a permit from their occupiers to pray at the holiest Muslim site in the country, but the Israeli police still seemed to prohibit men under the age of 50 from entering the Old City this morning. When we asked why, one police officer called her commander over and told him we were interfering with her work.
So when the Palestinian man walking up the street stopped us to say, “Welcome to the most democratic country in the world,” we understood exactly what he meant. “Were you turned away?” I asked. No, he lives in Jerusalem. It’s just the sight of all the people waiting, hoping to access their holy site to pray, being turned away by Israeli authorities. “It makes you crazy,” he said. “It makes you wonder why there aren’t more suicide bombings.” We agreed, and all shrugged our shoulders somewhat helplessly and walked away.
I’ve grown up hearing Jews talk about the importance of the Western Wall in the Old City, about how the holiest site was forbidden to Jews for centuries. I wonder if any of the police officers or soldiers think about this as they guard the gates of the Old City preventing Palestinian Muslims from entering. It seems they have no awareness of the parallels, no empathy for the people, no understanding of themselves. And of course, it makes me feel I need to take on the burden of shame even more, on behalf of all of my people, be they ignorant or heartless or both.
The Israeli army’s massacre of Palestinians in Gaza continues as I write, with at least 136 dead and several hundred more injured. The settlers also seem to be getting more and more vicious these days. A few weeks ago a Palestinian taxi driver stopped to help a Jewish settler who he thought was having car trouble. The settler shot and killed him. Attacks on Palestinian farmers are increasing in number and severity. One was killed harvesting last week. Others have been beaten, their olives stolen, their groves set on fire. Very few settlers are arrested for any of these attacks. I wonder if the settlers would think it fair for the perpetrators of these acts to be assassinated without trial, their settlements closed off, their other residents arrested, their houses demolished. Or alternatively, I wonder if they would think it fair for every Palestinian attack on an Israeli to be met with a smile and something between a pat on the back and a slap on the wrist.
We picked olives and almonds last week with a family whose land lies on a hill that is now completely surrounded by settlements. The ownership of their land is the only thing separating the Gush Etzion bloc (halfway between Bethlehem and Hebron) from connecting completely to Jerusalem. They have papers dating back to 1924 from every occupying power that has been in the area, including the Israelis. Still, the settlers show up every once in a while with bulldozers and begin uprooting trees and constructing roads. Occasionally they attack people in the house, or attack the water tower or generator – structures that denote presence and sustainability. The battle over this piece of land has been in the courts since 1991.
We picked olives with a different family in a different area last week, whose trees are dying because the sewage from the settlement of Elkana runs right through Azzawiya’s land. I picked olives all day trying not to breathe through my nose, wondering if the donkey that was grazing in the area would get sick, wondering if the children breathing in this waste would get sick. On the way back from the land to the village (a walk that used to take 15 minutes but now takes over an hour because of restricted roads and paths), we saw two settler children on the hill next to us. The older one, who looked about 13, was carrying a handgun. He immediately started to fondle it when he saw us. “How are you?” the Palestinians we were with yelled up to the kids in Hebrew. They didn’t respond, but started walking away. “Don’t be afraid of us,” yelled the Palestinian. The settlers turned around, and the child with the gun yelled, “I’m not afraid! I love problems!” The man we were with seemed visibly disturbed, which surprised me. This type of interaction seems relatively normal to me, but the Palestinian turned to me and said, “It’s really not good that they teach their children to hate like this. They say we cause the problems, but then when I try to say hello they say they love problems. It’s not good that such small children have weapons.”
Perhaps because of the settlers’ ability to get away with anything, they have begun targeting internationals as well. Chris and Kim of the Christian Peacemakers’ Team (CPT) in Hebron were attacked while accompanying children to school two weeks ago. A gang of English-speaking (probably American) settlers in black masks ambushed the group and beat Chris and Kim with chains and bats. Chris suffered a punctured lung and bruised ribs, Kim a broken arm and injured knee. Last week settlers again attacked a group of 5 internationals accompanying the children. The army has responded by saying that if the internationals leave, the problem will stop. CPT points out that violence against the children existed far before the international presence (hence the reason for the presence). The ‘problem’ that the army refers to is clearly the public relations difficulty they might face trying to explain to foreign governments why their citizens are being attacked by citizens of Israel.
I thought of this incident as I was being chased down the street by a settler last night. We had gone to a large pro-settlement demonstration in Jerusalem, partly to join the counter-demonstration and partly just to see what one of these demos was like. The experience reminded me that there is no place I feel less safe and more threatened as a Jew than in Israel, by Israelis. Anger, fear, disgust, and sorrow overcame me all at once, and I walked away from the crowd sobbing. Later I wrote the short piece below. I don’t think it adequately expresses all that I was or am feeling, but it’s a start, and, for now, an end:
These are my people
These are my people
who gather in thousands to support the settlements
whose children plaster Gush Katif bumper stickers on their shirts
and cheer at the mention of a Jewish Israel from the river to the sea.
These are my people
who proudly don their hippie skirts and sandals
who look like everyone I went to summer camp with
who look like everyone I know now
who only by accident of birth are greeting each other with hugs at a settler demonstration and not a peace march.
These are my people
who jump out of the crowd to yell at Kate for wearing a shirt with “Jews for a free Palestine”
who violently push her and scream “Get the fuck out of here, murderer!”
who, upon seeing my camera, raise a fist and begin to chase me down the street, hissing
“Keep moving, you dirty bitch!”
These are my people.
These are my people
who stand around watching
at least a dozen policemen
who chuckle as the settler attacks us
who, as a response, form a line across the street and push us down, down, further and further…
These are my people
who push me away.
Friday, October 08, 2004
All About Land
Dear friends,
I feel like my mind is already halfway back home, which I suppose would put it somewhere in the middle of the Atlantic, but I’ll try to keep you posted on my next few weeks nonetheless. Before beginning this report, I want to ask you a favor. I’m wondering what questions and topics you’d most like to see addressed in a presentation from me about Palestine. I’ve started to think about what I’d like to share with people, and I want to make sure I have the right pictures, stories, and information with me before I go. So if you have any thoughts, please respond to this e-mail and let me know.
I picked my first olives of the season last week. It was nice to be out there again, to think about where I was last year at this time (only physically in the same place). I wonder if Palestinians use the harvest as that kind of marker for them – a time to reflect on the year as they bond with their land. Although I suppose they have an almost constant connection to the land, not only during the time of olive harvest… that is, when they can access their land.
So many physical, legal and mental barriers exist in this place that I think every olive picked by a Palestinian farmer (and not stolen by a settler or left to sit on the branches until dead) is an act of resistance. On Monday I picked olives with a family from Azzawiya who has land inside the settlement of Shaarei Tikvah. What I should say is that the settlement of Shaarei Tikvah has been built on land stolen from families of Azzawiya. Ah, the difficulties of language. In any case, the family was attempting to enter through a gate in the Wall (which is fence in this area) that has not been open in almost a year. The army opened it for the first time on Sunday, but only for people with permits. The people in Azzawiya do not have permits, so Ismail and his family did not get through on Sunday, but on Monday the border police who opened the gate in the morning decided to do the farmers a ‘favor’ and let them harvest their olives. The family entered the settlement with no problem, only to find that a new road had been built and the settlement parking lot had been expanded – destroying at least 20 of their olive trees. Additionally, a new fence had been constructed, blocking the family from reaching half of the trees that remained, and also confiscating a working water well. Perhaps the most offensive destruction, however, was the new landscaping along the main entrance road. The settlement had cut down Palestinian olive trees in order to plant imported palm trees along the sidewalk. The olive trees are native to this land; the palm trees have come from outside to replace them, they stand taller and look down at the remaining olive trees, and they’re a bit prickly. Draw your own parallels.
The reason internationals accompany farmers to their groves is to stand in solidarity and possibly to intervene or document abuses by settlers and soldiers. About an hour after we began picking on Monday, we noticed a settler and Ismail having a conversation. The settler’s wife came out to her porch as well. I walked a little closer, only to find that the settler was offering Ismail the olives from the 3 olive trees in his yard. He didn’t need them, he said, so Ismail was welcome to pick them and take the fruit. Ismail said thank you, but we have our own olives to harvest. I asked the man how long he had lived there. Twenty years. How old is the settlement? About twenty-five years. All of the land was bought, he insisted, and not stolen. Ismail said differently. Some of the land was bought, he admitted, but certainly not all of it, and not his family’s land. The woman then offered us water. Ismail accepted, and she brought a pitcher of cold water with cups. Ismail’s wife was approaching at this point, and turned to me to comment, “They take our land and give us a glass of water.” What to do? Many of the individual settlers are fine human beings, as Ismail was so intent on reiterating to me all day, but what good does it do when they’re part of a system that steals tree after tree, life after life? I think of the American parallel of a white person trying to disassociate her/himself from institutional racism by claiming, “I’m not racist; I have a black friend.”
Monday was actually a wonderful picking day. For the first time in the olive groves, I was able to have full and deep conversations in Arabic and to translate for a non-Arabic speaker. The family asked me what my work is in the US, which is even a more complicated question these days than “where are you from” or “where do you live”. I told them about the afterschool program I worked with last year, and that this time when I return I hope not to need much money and to speak about Palestine as much as possible to as many people as possible. They were curious about this, but their question was different than the first question I usually get from people. Usually people ask me, “What do you say about Palestine?” Perhaps this family trusted me enough not to ask that question, and instead asked, “What do people in America say when you tell them about Palestine?” I explained that there are activists and others who understand the situation, and they appreciate hearing more information. I also explained that I’m Jewish, and that I think it’s very important for me to talk to American Jews, but that it’s difficult. They immediately began giving suggestions: “You have to show them photographs and videos so they can really understand.” I responded that this is exactly what I do, and that certain people thank me and tell me they’ve never known anything about Palestine before, while others call me a self-hating Jew. [For those of you who speak Arabic – I was quite proud of myself for thinking of the following: ‘Inti yahudiyye, bass inti dud ilyahuud. Inti maa bithuubi nafsik.’]
David, the other international picking with us that day, commented that he had travelled through Israel about 20 years ago, before knowing too much about the situation. He could have sworn he was in the West Bank, he said, but he didn’t remember any checkpoints. I asked the family. No, they said, 20 years ago there weren’t any checkpoints. They could go to the beach in Tel Aviv and come back home at 1:00 am. They could go wherever they wanted, whenever they wanted, and easily make friends in Israel. The permit system was first introduced during the first Gulf War, they said. Early 1990s. The end of the first Intifada, the beginning of the Oslo process that turned out to be so disastrous for the Palestinian people. I’ve heard people talk about going to the beach late at night, even in the late 1990s. I suppose they had to have permits at that time, but the point is that they felt at least a bit more free than they do now. Abu Rabia told me recently that he doesn’t feel any differently now than he did when he was in prison for 13 years.
Often I wish I would have come to Palestine earlier, or had some of the awareness I now have when I spent a year in Israel in 1997-1998. I want to understand how things have changed in a way I can’t quite understand by reading and talking to people, or even by seeing pictures. What does it mean to have your land constantly disappearing before your eyes? I think often of Munira and Hani Amer, who live with their 6 children in the house in Mas’ha that is enclosed on all four sides by fences and walls not of their making. Recently I’ve looked through their photo albums at some incredible pictures taken just 5 years ago of the greenhouses in front of their house. There are no longer any traces of these greenhouses, and a monstrous concrete wall stands in their place. My favorite picture is one of Munira lying on a hill posing for the picture amongst flowers and grass. The picture was taken during her first week of marriage, about 20 years ago. Now the houses of Elkana, a settlement established in 1986, sit on that land.
There’s one amazing Israeli organization I know that goes back even further in history and confronts its nation’s own birth – Zochrot. Their brochure explains the name: “In Hebrew, ‘Zochrot’ is the plural feminine form for the words ‘remembering’ or ‘rememberers.’ Although Zochrot activists are men and women, we chose the feminine form of this word to represent an alternative, less militaristic, and more humanly inclusive conception of collective remembering.” Zochrot (www.nakbainhebrew.org) works to raise awareness of Al Nakba (‘the catastrophe’ – referring to 1948) by visiting and marking destroyed Palestinian villages within the current boundaries of Israel (although I can’t quite say ‘boundaries,’ since Israel is still the only country in the world that has not declared its borders).
A few of us in IWPS went with Zochrot to the village of Al Lajun on Tuesday. Megiddo kibbutz now sits on some of Al Lajun’s land, and the rest of the land remains unoccupied. We were joined by over 100 Jewish and Palestinian Israeli citizens, several of whom were born before Israel and remember being kicked out of their homes in 1948. They didn’t even know about the war until it came to them, the Palestinians told us. They had little awareness of Europe’s plans for the area, and simply lived their lives. They were mostly farmers, but were also quite ‘advanced’ for their time, running a bus company that travelled to all parts of Palestine – Jenin, Tulkarem, Haifa, Yaffa, Jerusalem, etc. Hearing about pre-1948 life in Palestine is a simple act, but one that remains so important for me. I still remember the Zionist education that taught me that no people, no towns, no civilization was here before the Jews came. I looked around at all the trees that had been planted on this ‘state land’ in the last 56 years in order to ensure that the Palestinians can never return. I wonder if any of my tzedakah money given to the JNF (Jewish National Fund) years ago planted any of these trees, or whether that money went to the theft of a different piece of land. (Over 90% of Israel’s land is considered ‘state land’ and is mostly owned by the JNF. Non-Jews are not allowed to purchase or build on this land.) I looked into the eyes of the men from the village who live only a few kilometers away now, but who still remember their childhood in Al Lajun and still have dreams of returning. And hope. Something I noticed among the Palestinian population of Israel that day, at least among the folks that joined us, was a true hope, and even a certainty, that things will change and that Palestinians and Jewish Israelis will live in peace someday. Perhaps the urgency isn’t as great as in the West Bank, perhaps there’s another explanation, but for whatever reason, a certain calmness (even if a little sad, even if a little eerie) filled the air of Al Lajun as we planted signs of recognition in the ground and listened to traditional Palestinian music. Zochrot has published an account of the day with pictures on their website: http://www.nakbainhebrew.org/index.php?id=168.
So what’s my conclusion? It’s all about land. Um Rabia asked me the other day if I can find her a copy of the Torah in Arabic. She wants to understand how much of this conflict is religious, to know whether the Jewish scriptures really tell Jews that this land is theirs and only theirs, and that removal of Palestinians by any means necessary is a religious mandate. I told her that people use religion in different ways, but that at its roots I think this conflict is more about land than religion. And goddamn, this land is precious.
I feel like my mind is already halfway back home, which I suppose would put it somewhere in the middle of the Atlantic, but I’ll try to keep you posted on my next few weeks nonetheless. Before beginning this report, I want to ask you a favor. I’m wondering what questions and topics you’d most like to see addressed in a presentation from me about Palestine. I’ve started to think about what I’d like to share with people, and I want to make sure I have the right pictures, stories, and information with me before I go. So if you have any thoughts, please respond to this e-mail and let me know.
I picked my first olives of the season last week. It was nice to be out there again, to think about where I was last year at this time (only physically in the same place). I wonder if Palestinians use the harvest as that kind of marker for them – a time to reflect on the year as they bond with their land. Although I suppose they have an almost constant connection to the land, not only during the time of olive harvest… that is, when they can access their land.
So many physical, legal and mental barriers exist in this place that I think every olive picked by a Palestinian farmer (and not stolen by a settler or left to sit on the branches until dead) is an act of resistance. On Monday I picked olives with a family from Azzawiya who has land inside the settlement of Shaarei Tikvah. What I should say is that the settlement of Shaarei Tikvah has been built on land stolen from families of Azzawiya. Ah, the difficulties of language. In any case, the family was attempting to enter through a gate in the Wall (which is fence in this area) that has not been open in almost a year. The army opened it for the first time on Sunday, but only for people with permits. The people in Azzawiya do not have permits, so Ismail and his family did not get through on Sunday, but on Monday the border police who opened the gate in the morning decided to do the farmers a ‘favor’ and let them harvest their olives. The family entered the settlement with no problem, only to find that a new road had been built and the settlement parking lot had been expanded – destroying at least 20 of their olive trees. Additionally, a new fence had been constructed, blocking the family from reaching half of the trees that remained, and also confiscating a working water well. Perhaps the most offensive destruction, however, was the new landscaping along the main entrance road. The settlement had cut down Palestinian olive trees in order to plant imported palm trees along the sidewalk. The olive trees are native to this land; the palm trees have come from outside to replace them, they stand taller and look down at the remaining olive trees, and they’re a bit prickly. Draw your own parallels.
The reason internationals accompany farmers to their groves is to stand in solidarity and possibly to intervene or document abuses by settlers and soldiers. About an hour after we began picking on Monday, we noticed a settler and Ismail having a conversation. The settler’s wife came out to her porch as well. I walked a little closer, only to find that the settler was offering Ismail the olives from the 3 olive trees in his yard. He didn’t need them, he said, so Ismail was welcome to pick them and take the fruit. Ismail said thank you, but we have our own olives to harvest. I asked the man how long he had lived there. Twenty years. How old is the settlement? About twenty-five years. All of the land was bought, he insisted, and not stolen. Ismail said differently. Some of the land was bought, he admitted, but certainly not all of it, and not his family’s land. The woman then offered us water. Ismail accepted, and she brought a pitcher of cold water with cups. Ismail’s wife was approaching at this point, and turned to me to comment, “They take our land and give us a glass of water.” What to do? Many of the individual settlers are fine human beings, as Ismail was so intent on reiterating to me all day, but what good does it do when they’re part of a system that steals tree after tree, life after life? I think of the American parallel of a white person trying to disassociate her/himself from institutional racism by claiming, “I’m not racist; I have a black friend.”
Monday was actually a wonderful picking day. For the first time in the olive groves, I was able to have full and deep conversations in Arabic and to translate for a non-Arabic speaker. The family asked me what my work is in the US, which is even a more complicated question these days than “where are you from” or “where do you live”. I told them about the afterschool program I worked with last year, and that this time when I return I hope not to need much money and to speak about Palestine as much as possible to as many people as possible. They were curious about this, but their question was different than the first question I usually get from people. Usually people ask me, “What do you say about Palestine?” Perhaps this family trusted me enough not to ask that question, and instead asked, “What do people in America say when you tell them about Palestine?” I explained that there are activists and others who understand the situation, and they appreciate hearing more information. I also explained that I’m Jewish, and that I think it’s very important for me to talk to American Jews, but that it’s difficult. They immediately began giving suggestions: “You have to show them photographs and videos so they can really understand.” I responded that this is exactly what I do, and that certain people thank me and tell me they’ve never known anything about Palestine before, while others call me a self-hating Jew. [For those of you who speak Arabic – I was quite proud of myself for thinking of the following: ‘Inti yahudiyye, bass inti dud ilyahuud. Inti maa bithuubi nafsik.’]
David, the other international picking with us that day, commented that he had travelled through Israel about 20 years ago, before knowing too much about the situation. He could have sworn he was in the West Bank, he said, but he didn’t remember any checkpoints. I asked the family. No, they said, 20 years ago there weren’t any checkpoints. They could go to the beach in Tel Aviv and come back home at 1:00 am. They could go wherever they wanted, whenever they wanted, and easily make friends in Israel. The permit system was first introduced during the first Gulf War, they said. Early 1990s. The end of the first Intifada, the beginning of the Oslo process that turned out to be so disastrous for the Palestinian people. I’ve heard people talk about going to the beach late at night, even in the late 1990s. I suppose they had to have permits at that time, but the point is that they felt at least a bit more free than they do now. Abu Rabia told me recently that he doesn’t feel any differently now than he did when he was in prison for 13 years.
Often I wish I would have come to Palestine earlier, or had some of the awareness I now have when I spent a year in Israel in 1997-1998. I want to understand how things have changed in a way I can’t quite understand by reading and talking to people, or even by seeing pictures. What does it mean to have your land constantly disappearing before your eyes? I think often of Munira and Hani Amer, who live with their 6 children in the house in Mas’ha that is enclosed on all four sides by fences and walls not of their making. Recently I’ve looked through their photo albums at some incredible pictures taken just 5 years ago of the greenhouses in front of their house. There are no longer any traces of these greenhouses, and a monstrous concrete wall stands in their place. My favorite picture is one of Munira lying on a hill posing for the picture amongst flowers and grass. The picture was taken during her first week of marriage, about 20 years ago. Now the houses of Elkana, a settlement established in 1986, sit on that land.
There’s one amazing Israeli organization I know that goes back even further in history and confronts its nation’s own birth – Zochrot. Their brochure explains the name: “In Hebrew, ‘Zochrot’ is the plural feminine form for the words ‘remembering’ or ‘rememberers.’ Although Zochrot activists are men and women, we chose the feminine form of this word to represent an alternative, less militaristic, and more humanly inclusive conception of collective remembering.” Zochrot (www.nakbainhebrew.org) works to raise awareness of Al Nakba (‘the catastrophe’ – referring to 1948) by visiting and marking destroyed Palestinian villages within the current boundaries of Israel (although I can’t quite say ‘boundaries,’ since Israel is still the only country in the world that has not declared its borders).
A few of us in IWPS went with Zochrot to the village of Al Lajun on Tuesday. Megiddo kibbutz now sits on some of Al Lajun’s land, and the rest of the land remains unoccupied. We were joined by over 100 Jewish and Palestinian Israeli citizens, several of whom were born before Israel and remember being kicked out of their homes in 1948. They didn’t even know about the war until it came to them, the Palestinians told us. They had little awareness of Europe’s plans for the area, and simply lived their lives. They were mostly farmers, but were also quite ‘advanced’ for their time, running a bus company that travelled to all parts of Palestine – Jenin, Tulkarem, Haifa, Yaffa, Jerusalem, etc. Hearing about pre-1948 life in Palestine is a simple act, but one that remains so important for me. I still remember the Zionist education that taught me that no people, no towns, no civilization was here before the Jews came. I looked around at all the trees that had been planted on this ‘state land’ in the last 56 years in order to ensure that the Palestinians can never return. I wonder if any of my tzedakah money given to the JNF (Jewish National Fund) years ago planted any of these trees, or whether that money went to the theft of a different piece of land. (Over 90% of Israel’s land is considered ‘state land’ and is mostly owned by the JNF. Non-Jews are not allowed to purchase or build on this land.) I looked into the eyes of the men from the village who live only a few kilometers away now, but who still remember their childhood in Al Lajun and still have dreams of returning. And hope. Something I noticed among the Palestinian population of Israel that day, at least among the folks that joined us, was a true hope, and even a certainty, that things will change and that Palestinians and Jewish Israelis will live in peace someday. Perhaps the urgency isn’t as great as in the West Bank, perhaps there’s another explanation, but for whatever reason, a certain calmness (even if a little sad, even if a little eerie) filled the air of Al Lajun as we planted signs of recognition in the ground and listened to traditional Palestinian music. Zochrot has published an account of the day with pictures on their website: http://www.nakbainhebrew.org/index.php?id=168.
So what’s my conclusion? It’s all about land. Um Rabia asked me the other day if I can find her a copy of the Torah in Arabic. She wants to understand how much of this conflict is religious, to know whether the Jewish scriptures really tell Jews that this land is theirs and only theirs, and that removal of Palestinians by any means necessary is a religious mandate. I told her that people use religion in different ways, but that at its roots I think this conflict is more about land than religion. And goddamn, this land is precious.
Friday, October 01, 2004
Haikus from Palestine
Dear friends,
I can’t believe it’s October already, the month that I come back to the US. I’ve started to think about my presentation, so you’re welcome to start thinking about where and when you’d like me to present. :)
I think I’ve been boring myself with articles, but from boredom springs creativity, right? So for this e-mail, I’ve composed 17 haikus (they’re 17 syllables each, so it seemed an apt number). I’m afraid they’ll be quite incomprehensible to those of you who are not here with me, but hopefully you’ll understand and/or appreciate some of them. There are a few Arabic words in them. “Alhamdulilah” means “Praise God” and is said all the time here. “Nos nos” literally means “half half” but can be translated as “so-so.”
On a more serious note, I’ve included at the end only a few of the names and ages of those killed in Gaza in the past 48 hours. I just heard that Israeli security forces have dubbed the operation “Days of Penitence,” as they supposedly try to force militants to repent. I find this gross misuse of the Jewish tradition absolutely disgusting.
Enjoy the haikus, and please don’t ignore the growing list of victims of this war and occupation.
Child in Jayyus
She sings for us in English
“We Shall Overcome”
Demo in Budrus
All arrestees get released
Alhamdulilah
Does the donkey have
a name, I ask. “No,” she says.
He: “His name is Bush.”
Fatima comes in
Sheds her hijab and her coat
Sprawls out on our couch
Settler women
Called by soldiers at checkpoint
Come to harrass us
Bus stopped for hours
Why? I ask the soldier there
“Bureaucratia”
“Hamil.” Lovely word.
Pregnant. Used both for women
And the olive trees
Zajid sweeps the floor
Three years old, he’s almost four
Hope in Palestine
Border policeman
“How my English?” he asks me.
“Nos nos,” I respond.
Killing in Gaza
The army shoots randomly
Forty, forty-one…
On the birth of our friends’ twins:
Ward’s two new siblings
Cousin Zajid wants to share
“No, they’re both for me.”
Faisa brings home twins
Says to me about the girl
“Heba looks like you”
On Sounds:
Vehicle blares sound
In the village, jeep or truck?
Curfew or veggies?
Gunshots in Hares
A wedding or invasion?
Laughter. A relief.
On Yom Kippur:
Waiting for nightfall
Our landlord searches for stars
Asks, “Does the moon count?”
Houses demolished
Kate: “Did the soldiers repent
Before or after?”
Writing my haikus
Lesson in being concise
Palestine in brief
The following is a list of 18 people killed yesterday in Gaza. Overnight last night and throughout the day today, the toll has risen to 40-something dead and at least 130 wounded:
“The Ministry of health released the following list of residents killed in the military raid conducted on Thursday; the ministry said that the list is not final yet;
1. Tawfiq, Al-Sharafi, 24, Jabalia.
2. Saed Mohammad Abu Al-Eish, 14, Jabalia.
3. Mos'ab al-Barade'ey, 21, Jabalia.
4. Fathi Al-Sawaween, 23, Jabalia.
5. Khalil Abu Naji, 23, Jabalia.
6. Ahmad Madhi. 16 Jabalia.
7. Usama Al-Barsh, 21 Jabalia.
8. Abdul-Hai Al-Najjar, 21, Jabalia
9. Rafat Jadallah, 23, Jabalia.
10. Sofian Abu Al-Jedyan, 40, Jabalia.
11. Mohammad Al-Habal, 60, Beit Lahia.
12. Hamza Ahmad, 24, Jabalia.
13. Mohammad Al-Jabeer, 17, Jabalia.
14. Mohammad Al-Hilo, 60, Jablia.
15. Mohammad Al-Masrey.
16. Rami Thaher. Jablia.
17. Atef al-Ashqar, Jablia.
18. Sofian Abu Al-Jidyan, 33, Jablia.”
I can’t believe it’s October already, the month that I come back to the US. I’ve started to think about my presentation, so you’re welcome to start thinking about where and when you’d like me to present. :)
I think I’ve been boring myself with articles, but from boredom springs creativity, right? So for this e-mail, I’ve composed 17 haikus (they’re 17 syllables each, so it seemed an apt number). I’m afraid they’ll be quite incomprehensible to those of you who are not here with me, but hopefully you’ll understand and/or appreciate some of them. There are a few Arabic words in them. “Alhamdulilah” means “Praise God” and is said all the time here. “Nos nos” literally means “half half” but can be translated as “so-so.”
On a more serious note, I’ve included at the end only a few of the names and ages of those killed in Gaza in the past 48 hours. I just heard that Israeli security forces have dubbed the operation “Days of Penitence,” as they supposedly try to force militants to repent. I find this gross misuse of the Jewish tradition absolutely disgusting.
Enjoy the haikus, and please don’t ignore the growing list of victims of this war and occupation.
Child in Jayyus
She sings for us in English
“We Shall Overcome”
Demo in Budrus
All arrestees get released
Alhamdulilah
Does the donkey have
a name, I ask. “No,” she says.
He: “His name is Bush.”
Fatima comes in
Sheds her hijab and her coat
Sprawls out on our couch
Settler women
Called by soldiers at checkpoint
Come to harrass us
Bus stopped for hours
Why? I ask the soldier there
“Bureaucratia”
“Hamil.” Lovely word.
Pregnant. Used both for women
And the olive trees
Zajid sweeps the floor
Three years old, he’s almost four
Hope in Palestine
Border policeman
“How my English?” he asks me.
“Nos nos,” I respond.
Killing in Gaza
The army shoots randomly
Forty, forty-one…
On the birth of our friends’ twins:
Ward’s two new siblings
Cousin Zajid wants to share
“No, they’re both for me.”
Faisa brings home twins
Says to me about the girl
“Heba looks like you”
On Sounds:
Vehicle blares sound
In the village, jeep or truck?
Curfew or veggies?
Gunshots in Hares
A wedding or invasion?
Laughter. A relief.
On Yom Kippur:
Waiting for nightfall
Our landlord searches for stars
Asks, “Does the moon count?”
Houses demolished
Kate: “Did the soldiers repent
Before or after?”
Writing my haikus
Lesson in being concise
Palestine in brief
The following is a list of 18 people killed yesterday in Gaza. Overnight last night and throughout the day today, the toll has risen to 40-something dead and at least 130 wounded:
“The Ministry of health released the following list of residents killed in the military raid conducted on Thursday; the ministry said that the list is not final yet;
1. Tawfiq, Al-Sharafi, 24, Jabalia.
2. Saed Mohammad Abu Al-Eish, 14, Jabalia.
3. Mos'ab al-Barade'ey, 21, Jabalia.
4. Fathi Al-Sawaween, 23, Jabalia.
5. Khalil Abu Naji, 23, Jabalia.
6. Ahmad Madhi. 16 Jabalia.
7. Usama Al-Barsh, 21 Jabalia.
8. Abdul-Hai Al-Najjar, 21, Jabalia
9. Rafat Jadallah, 23, Jabalia.
10. Sofian Abu Al-Jedyan, 40, Jabalia.
11. Mohammad Al-Habal, 60, Beit Lahia.
12. Hamza Ahmad, 24, Jabalia.
13. Mohammad Al-Jabeer, 17, Jabalia.
14. Mohammad Al-Hilo, 60, Jablia.
15. Mohammad Al-Masrey.
16. Rami Thaher. Jablia.
17. Atef al-Ashqar, Jablia.
18. Sofian Abu Al-Jidyan, 33, Jablia.”
Friday, September 24, 2004
Yom Kippur message/action
Dear friends,
I won't be going to synagogue this year on Yom Kippur, but this morning I participated in what I think is the most powerful thing I could have done for the holiday. Please read below and share the prayer with friends, colleagues, rabbis, and congregations. (Make sure you read it all - my favorite part is the TAPUACH part, which comes at the end).
Hannah
24 September, 2004
IWPS brings message of repentance to settlers
On Friday morning, September 24, 2004, Jewish IWPS activists offered the settlers of Ariel and Tapuach a new penitential prayer for Yom Kippur.
The women posted copies of an alternative « Vidui » inside Ariel and in areas around Tapuach, naming for each letter of the English and Hebrew alphabet a sin committed by settlers in the name of the Jewish people. With this revision of the traditional prayer, the activists hoped to communicate to the settlers that their continued residence in the West Bank is an obstacle to peace.
Please find the text of the new prayer in English below. Visit our website at http://www.iwps.info/en/articles/article.php?id=143 for the complete flyer in English and Hebrew, along with photographs.
Ashamnu for Ariel and Tapuach – Yom Kippur 5765
We have Appropriated land
We have Burned olive trees
We have Constructed Apartheid walls
We have Dumped our trash on the village of Marda
We have Erased history of Palestinians
We have Falsified the teachings of the Torah
We have Generalized about Arab people
We have Hated people because of their race
We have Ignored the suffering of our neighbors
We have ‘Judaized’ Palestinian areas
We have Killed children
We have Lied about our history
We have Manipulated public opinion
We have Neglected our responsibility to work for justice
We have Obstructed the right of refugees to return home
We have Punished collectively
We have Quietly transferred Palestinians from their homeland
We have Restricted free movement of Palestinians
We have Stolen olives from Palestinian farmers
We have Thwarted peace initiatives
We have Unfairly accused people of anti-Semitism
We have Vandalized
We have Wrongly educated our children
We have eXpunged Arabic from road signs
We have Yelled racist epithets
We have promoted Zionism
We have Acquiesced in things we know are wrong
We have Refused to compromise
We have Initiated false beliefs
We have Encouraged home demolitions
We have Lost our humanity
We have Terrorized the Palestinian population in the name of G-d
We have Aggressively prevented Palestinians from working on their land in the name of G-d
We have Persecuted others in the name of our own persecution and in the name of G-d
We have Used guns and laws to facilitate ethnic cleansing in the name of G-d
We have Assaulted in the name of G-d
We have Colonized in the name of G-d
We have Harmed the Jewish people in the name of G-d
For all these sins we have committed against G-d and our Palestinian neighbors, forgive us, pardon us, grant us atonement.
I won't be going to synagogue this year on Yom Kippur, but this morning I participated in what I think is the most powerful thing I could have done for the holiday. Please read below and share the prayer with friends, colleagues, rabbis, and congregations. (Make sure you read it all - my favorite part is the TAPUACH part, which comes at the end).
Hannah
24 September, 2004
IWPS brings message of repentance to settlers
On Friday morning, September 24, 2004, Jewish IWPS activists offered the settlers of Ariel and Tapuach a new penitential prayer for Yom Kippur.
The women posted copies of an alternative « Vidui » inside Ariel and in areas around Tapuach, naming for each letter of the English and Hebrew alphabet a sin committed by settlers in the name of the Jewish people. With this revision of the traditional prayer, the activists hoped to communicate to the settlers that their continued residence in the West Bank is an obstacle to peace.
Please find the text of the new prayer in English below. Visit our website at http://www.iwps.info/en/articles/article.php?id=143 for the complete flyer in English and Hebrew, along with photographs.
Ashamnu for Ariel and Tapuach – Yom Kippur 5765
We have Appropriated land
We have Burned olive trees
We have Constructed Apartheid walls
We have Dumped our trash on the village of Marda
We have Erased history of Palestinians
We have Falsified the teachings of the Torah
We have Generalized about Arab people
We have Hated people because of their race
We have Ignored the suffering of our neighbors
We have ‘Judaized’ Palestinian areas
We have Killed children
We have Lied about our history
We have Manipulated public opinion
We have Neglected our responsibility to work for justice
We have Obstructed the right of refugees to return home
We have Punished collectively
We have Quietly transferred Palestinians from their homeland
We have Restricted free movement of Palestinians
We have Stolen olives from Palestinian farmers
We have Thwarted peace initiatives
We have Unfairly accused people of anti-Semitism
We have Vandalized
We have Wrongly educated our children
We have eXpunged Arabic from road signs
We have Yelled racist epithets
We have promoted Zionism
We have Acquiesced in things we know are wrong
We have Refused to compromise
We have Initiated false beliefs
We have Encouraged home demolitions
We have Lost our humanity
We have Terrorized the Palestinian population in the name of G-d
We have Aggressively prevented Palestinians from working on their land in the name of G-d
We have Persecuted others in the name of our own persecution and in the name of G-d
We have Used guns and laws to facilitate ethnic cleansing in the name of G-d
We have Assaulted in the name of G-d
We have Colonized in the name of G-d
We have Harmed the Jewish people in the name of G-d
For all these sins we have committed against G-d and our Palestinian neighbors, forgive us, pardon us, grant us atonement.
Thursday, September 23, 2004
Reflections on Democracy
A few days ago we met with Meydad Ashkenazi of the DCL (District Coordinating Liaison), one of the higher-ups in the military around here. Actually, he claimed that the DCL was more of a civilian body and that he had little to do directly with the military, which made us wonder why he wore an army uniform and carried a gun. Before 2000, there were two bodies : the DCO (District Coordination Office) dealt with the military, and the DCL dealt with the civilian population. People still refer to the DCO today, but in fact they both merged into the DCL in 2000, blurring the distinction even more between military and civilian.
The most interesting, honest, and disturbing thing Meydad told us is that the Israeli army’s official policy is collective punishment. He didn’t use these words, of course. We had asked him why there have been so many army incursions into Hares and Marda in the past few weeks, and his response was the following: The army strategy is to make our presence known in all of the villages in the area. We try to throw as many sounds bombs and as much tear gas as possible, because 98% of the people want peace and oppose stone-throwing, and we want those 98% to encourage all the children not to throw stones. Kate asked if he realized that he just said the army’s official policy was to violate international law by using collective punishment. ‘It’s not exactly collective punishment,’ he responded. ‘It’s more like pressure on the population.’
‘This is democracy,’ I thought, repeating the phrase I’ve heard so many Palestinians say in the same sarcastic tone every time the army throws tear gas and sound bombs, destroys homes, beats people at checkpoints, opens fire on peaceful demonstrations, and arrests and detains people indefinitely with no charges.
Today I went with our friend and landlord to the northern part of Jenin where his son Rabia was to appear in court. Rabia was taken by Israel’s secret police two months ago and his parents hadn’t seen him since. Today was the day the court was to present charges. The drive was absolutely beautiful, and the amount of bright green, in addition to the olive green of the rest of Palestine, surprised me. We had some good conversation on our way, and arrived at the gate of the military base around 9 :30 Palestine time, 8 :30 Israeli time (Israelis changed their clocks on Tuesday night, but Palestinians have not yet done so, causing much confusion in meetings that have both Palestinians and Israelis). The gate of the military base is also the gate of the Wall, which is a series of fences and roads in this part of Jenin. Women were passing through first, so I went to the front of the line to try to get through, though it is strict policy only to let family members into the court sessions. I talked my way through the first checkpoint using my new fancy IWPS ID (we decided that if we pretend to be official, the soldiers might not know the difference, so an Israeli anarchist friend of ours designed IDs for us). At the second security check, the soldiers didn’t ask me anything or take my ID for about 5 minutes, and then suddenly an officer handed me a phone. ‘Hello ?’ I said. ‘Hello ?’ the man on the other line replied. This went on for a minute until I said, ‘I don’t know why I’m on the phone with you.’ ‘Why are you here ?’ he asked. ‘For the court,’ I replied. ‘Oh, for the court ? Give me the soldier.’ I handed the phone back. Apparently the soldier didn’t think to ask me why I was there but assumed it wasn’t for the court (even though everyone else was there for this reason). There was a bit more hassle when they found out I wasn’t family, but finally let me through because Rabia’s mother was not visiting, only his father.
We all went to a new waiting area outside a small building we could only assume was the court. Several of the women were crying. Abu Rabia listened to people’s conversations and occasionally translated for me. One couple talked about how one of their sons had been in prison, and another son went to see him. When that son arrived, he was arrested. The family was now here to see this second son.
The soldiers finally started bringing the prisoners into the room, and a few people stood up to see if they could find their sons or husbands. ‘Sit down !’ the soldiers would yell in Arabic. The whole day was full of random commands that made me wonder if the soldiers had really lost all their humanity or if they were simply practicing the rude phrases they knew in Arabic. ‘Shut up’ was another big one, which one soldier barked at a woman who said to her son, ‘Alla maak’ (God is with you) on his way out of the courtroom.
The most frustrating aspect of the day was the setup of the courtroom and the placement of the prisoners and their families. The prisoners were all brought into a tiny pen in the corner of the front of the room. The judge (a military officer) and other soldiers and lawyers sat in the front. In the opposite back corner, the families were forced to squish together on benches. If someone tried to move to one of the empty benches that was closer to his or her relative, the soldiers would yell and threaten to kick the person out of the courtroom. Completely arbitrary.
Three of the prisoners were women, and the soldiers escorted them to a different part of the room. I have to say that even though I knew there were women prisoners, it was slightly jarring for me to see people who looked like ‘typical’ Palestinian Muslim women, hijab and all, in handcuffs and shackles. The number of female soldiers surprised me less, although when I saw that most were wearing sandals instead of boots, I wondered if these were the ‘cushy jobs’ that I hear women so often get in the army. The judge was also a woman, and she looked more like a movie star than anything. Come to think of it, she looked a little like Amy Brenneman of Judging Amy.
As expected, we learned very little in court today. Rabia’s lawyer was presented with papers in Hebrew ; presumably these are Rabia’s charges. His next court date is November 24. This means he’ll be in prison for more than 4 months before even being able to argue his case in a court. He has it better than the hundreds in administrative detention, but he’s certainly a victim and not a beneficiary of Israel’s supposed democracy.
Meanwhile, Palestine is attempting to prepare for its first general election since 1996, and Israel is doing everything it can to prevent democracy from taking hold here. Two of us met with an election commissioner in Ramallah a couple weeks ago, and I must admit I was more excited by the meeting than I had expected to be. I don’t usually have much faith in electoral processes, but this seemed very hopeful and forward-thinking to me. I take our system for granted in the US and have never quite realized what it takes to set up an electoral democracy. He explained all the issues to us, and ways they’ll accomodate people who don’t have Palestinian ID. Many Palestinians came back during the Oslo years from Venezuela, for example, and now have only their Venezuelan passports and expired visas. They can’t leave their villages for fear of being caught and deported by Israeli authorities, but they will be taken into account by this election process if they can prove residency. Abu Rabia also told me that prisoners will be able to vote by proxy. I explained to him that prisoners in the US cannot vote, and that even when people are freed, some of them are never allowed to vote again (convicted felons in many states). Democracy, eh?
The registration process is happening this month and is being heavily monitored by international observers. The list of eligible voters will be revised and elections will be held sometime next year (if Arafat ever gets around to setting a date for them).
Israeli authorities have raided several registration offices in the West Bank, and have specifically gone out of their way to break into and shut down centers all over the Jerusalem area, so as to deny Jerusalemites their Palestinian identity and intimidate them into not registering. Another excellent example of democracy.
I’ll end on a positive note with a story that exemplifies the democracy I truly believe in : citizen participation in society. A group of Israelis from Shalom Achshav (Peace Now) dismantled a settlement outpost last week. They used a crane to take a few containers in order to ‘demonstrate to the Israeli public that it is possible to dismantle outposts.’ Good for them !
Below I’m including an excerpt from a daily e-mail we get called ‘Today in Palestine,’ a compilation of articles from various media sources. To subscribe, e-mail Shadi at f_shadi@yahoo.com.
Today in Palestine (Sept 21):
U.S. to sell Israel 5,000 smart bombs The Pentagon told Congress that the bombs are mea! nt to maintain Israel's qualitative advantage, and advance U.S. strategic and tactical interests. Among the bombs the air force will get are 500 one-ton bunker busters that can penetrate two-meter-thick cement walls; 2,500 regular one-ton bombs; 1,000 half-ton bombs; and 500 quarter-ton bombs. http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/479587.html
Three Palestinains shot in Anti Wall Protest in Budrus Three Palestinians were wounded in the village of Budrus in clashes with soldiers on Tuesday morning during a protest against the construction of the West Bank separation wall. Five left-wing Israeli activists were also arrested in the protest. Israel resumed construction on Monday, after a long halt forced by the High Court order to re-route the wall section http://www.imemc.org/headlines/2004/September/week3/092104/budrus.htm
Rasmi Sweity from Beit Awa/Um Khashrom: "This is Our Third Expulsion" Apartheid Wall which is being built by the Occupation steels land and property, and has taken all of ! my lands and leaves me nothing, not for my brothers nor for my family. This is the land that we live off of, our main source of income and we do not have another source. Where do we go? They expelled us one time (1948), and a second time (1967), and this is the third http://stopthewall.org/communityvoices/757.shtml
Six Palestinian Women Arrested by Israeli Troops in Nablus The Israeli occupation forces arrested in less than a month six Palestinian women from the West Bank city of Nablus, IPC correspondent reported. According to data collected by IPC, the Israeli troops arrested the women between August 26 and September 16, in separate incidents. http://www.ipc.gov.ps/ipc_e/ipc_e-1/e_News/news2004/2004_09/123.html
Syria says it supports intra-Palestinian dialogue "Syria wishes the Palestinian dialogue to be successful, because any dialogue would lead to unifying our positions, consequently, to achieve the natural aspirations of the Palestinian people," al-Abrash said. http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=479646&contrassID=1&subContrassID=1&sbSubContrassID=0&listSrc=Y
Egypt asks PNA to unite Fatah movement Palestinian sources said Tuesday Egypt had asked the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) to unite Fatah movement led by Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat before starting any expanded Palestinian dialogue. http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2004-09/21/content_2004350.htm
The most interesting, honest, and disturbing thing Meydad told us is that the Israeli army’s official policy is collective punishment. He didn’t use these words, of course. We had asked him why there have been so many army incursions into Hares and Marda in the past few weeks, and his response was the following: The army strategy is to make our presence known in all of the villages in the area. We try to throw as many sounds bombs and as much tear gas as possible, because 98% of the people want peace and oppose stone-throwing, and we want those 98% to encourage all the children not to throw stones. Kate asked if he realized that he just said the army’s official policy was to violate international law by using collective punishment. ‘It’s not exactly collective punishment,’ he responded. ‘It’s more like pressure on the population.’
‘This is democracy,’ I thought, repeating the phrase I’ve heard so many Palestinians say in the same sarcastic tone every time the army throws tear gas and sound bombs, destroys homes, beats people at checkpoints, opens fire on peaceful demonstrations, and arrests and detains people indefinitely with no charges.
Today I went with our friend and landlord to the northern part of Jenin where his son Rabia was to appear in court. Rabia was taken by Israel’s secret police two months ago and his parents hadn’t seen him since. Today was the day the court was to present charges. The drive was absolutely beautiful, and the amount of bright green, in addition to the olive green of the rest of Palestine, surprised me. We had some good conversation on our way, and arrived at the gate of the military base around 9 :30 Palestine time, 8 :30 Israeli time (Israelis changed their clocks on Tuesday night, but Palestinians have not yet done so, causing much confusion in meetings that have both Palestinians and Israelis). The gate of the military base is also the gate of the Wall, which is a series of fences and roads in this part of Jenin. Women were passing through first, so I went to the front of the line to try to get through, though it is strict policy only to let family members into the court sessions. I talked my way through the first checkpoint using my new fancy IWPS ID (we decided that if we pretend to be official, the soldiers might not know the difference, so an Israeli anarchist friend of ours designed IDs for us). At the second security check, the soldiers didn’t ask me anything or take my ID for about 5 minutes, and then suddenly an officer handed me a phone. ‘Hello ?’ I said. ‘Hello ?’ the man on the other line replied. This went on for a minute until I said, ‘I don’t know why I’m on the phone with you.’ ‘Why are you here ?’ he asked. ‘For the court,’ I replied. ‘Oh, for the court ? Give me the soldier.’ I handed the phone back. Apparently the soldier didn’t think to ask me why I was there but assumed it wasn’t for the court (even though everyone else was there for this reason). There was a bit more hassle when they found out I wasn’t family, but finally let me through because Rabia’s mother was not visiting, only his father.
We all went to a new waiting area outside a small building we could only assume was the court. Several of the women were crying. Abu Rabia listened to people’s conversations and occasionally translated for me. One couple talked about how one of their sons had been in prison, and another son went to see him. When that son arrived, he was arrested. The family was now here to see this second son.
The soldiers finally started bringing the prisoners into the room, and a few people stood up to see if they could find their sons or husbands. ‘Sit down !’ the soldiers would yell in Arabic. The whole day was full of random commands that made me wonder if the soldiers had really lost all their humanity or if they were simply practicing the rude phrases they knew in Arabic. ‘Shut up’ was another big one, which one soldier barked at a woman who said to her son, ‘Alla maak’ (God is with you) on his way out of the courtroom.
The most frustrating aspect of the day was the setup of the courtroom and the placement of the prisoners and their families. The prisoners were all brought into a tiny pen in the corner of the front of the room. The judge (a military officer) and other soldiers and lawyers sat in the front. In the opposite back corner, the families were forced to squish together on benches. If someone tried to move to one of the empty benches that was closer to his or her relative, the soldiers would yell and threaten to kick the person out of the courtroom. Completely arbitrary.
Three of the prisoners were women, and the soldiers escorted them to a different part of the room. I have to say that even though I knew there were women prisoners, it was slightly jarring for me to see people who looked like ‘typical’ Palestinian Muslim women, hijab and all, in handcuffs and shackles. The number of female soldiers surprised me less, although when I saw that most were wearing sandals instead of boots, I wondered if these were the ‘cushy jobs’ that I hear women so often get in the army. The judge was also a woman, and she looked more like a movie star than anything. Come to think of it, she looked a little like Amy Brenneman of Judging Amy.
As expected, we learned very little in court today. Rabia’s lawyer was presented with papers in Hebrew ; presumably these are Rabia’s charges. His next court date is November 24. This means he’ll be in prison for more than 4 months before even being able to argue his case in a court. He has it better than the hundreds in administrative detention, but he’s certainly a victim and not a beneficiary of Israel’s supposed democracy.
Meanwhile, Palestine is attempting to prepare for its first general election since 1996, and Israel is doing everything it can to prevent democracy from taking hold here. Two of us met with an election commissioner in Ramallah a couple weeks ago, and I must admit I was more excited by the meeting than I had expected to be. I don’t usually have much faith in electoral processes, but this seemed very hopeful and forward-thinking to me. I take our system for granted in the US and have never quite realized what it takes to set up an electoral democracy. He explained all the issues to us, and ways they’ll accomodate people who don’t have Palestinian ID. Many Palestinians came back during the Oslo years from Venezuela, for example, and now have only their Venezuelan passports and expired visas. They can’t leave their villages for fear of being caught and deported by Israeli authorities, but they will be taken into account by this election process if they can prove residency. Abu Rabia also told me that prisoners will be able to vote by proxy. I explained to him that prisoners in the US cannot vote, and that even when people are freed, some of them are never allowed to vote again (convicted felons in many states). Democracy, eh?
The registration process is happening this month and is being heavily monitored by international observers. The list of eligible voters will be revised and elections will be held sometime next year (if Arafat ever gets around to setting a date for them).
Israeli authorities have raided several registration offices in the West Bank, and have specifically gone out of their way to break into and shut down centers all over the Jerusalem area, so as to deny Jerusalemites their Palestinian identity and intimidate them into not registering. Another excellent example of democracy.
I’ll end on a positive note with a story that exemplifies the democracy I truly believe in : citizen participation in society. A group of Israelis from Shalom Achshav (Peace Now) dismantled a settlement outpost last week. They used a crane to take a few containers in order to ‘demonstrate to the Israeli public that it is possible to dismantle outposts.’ Good for them !
Below I’m including an excerpt from a daily e-mail we get called ‘Today in Palestine,’ a compilation of articles from various media sources. To subscribe, e-mail Shadi at f_shadi@yahoo.com.
Today in Palestine (Sept 21):
U.S. to sell Israel 5,000 smart bombs The Pentagon told Congress that the bombs are mea! nt to maintain Israel's qualitative advantage, and advance U.S. strategic and tactical interests. Among the bombs the air force will get are 500 one-ton bunker busters that can penetrate two-meter-thick cement walls; 2,500 regular one-ton bombs; 1,000 half-ton bombs; and 500 quarter-ton bombs. http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/479587.html
Three Palestinains shot in Anti Wall Protest in Budrus Three Palestinians were wounded in the village of Budrus in clashes with soldiers on Tuesday morning during a protest against the construction of the West Bank separation wall. Five left-wing Israeli activists were also arrested in the protest. Israel resumed construction on Monday, after a long halt forced by the High Court order to re-route the wall section http://www.imemc.org/headlines/2004/September/week3/092104/budrus.htm
Rasmi Sweity from Beit Awa/Um Khashrom: "This is Our Third Expulsion" Apartheid Wall which is being built by the Occupation steels land and property, and has taken all of ! my lands and leaves me nothing, not for my brothers nor for my family. This is the land that we live off of, our main source of income and we do not have another source. Where do we go? They expelled us one time (1948), and a second time (1967), and this is the third http://stopthewall.org/communityvoices/757.shtml
Six Palestinian Women Arrested by Israeli Troops in Nablus The Israeli occupation forces arrested in less than a month six Palestinian women from the West Bank city of Nablus, IPC correspondent reported. According to data collected by IPC, the Israeli troops arrested the women between August 26 and September 16, in separate incidents. http://www.ipc.gov.ps/ipc_e/ipc_e-1/e_News/news2004/2004_09/123.html
Syria says it supports intra-Palestinian dialogue "Syria wishes the Palestinian dialogue to be successful, because any dialogue would lead to unifying our positions, consequently, to achieve the natural aspirations of the Palestinian people," al-Abrash said. http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=479646&contrassID=1&subContrassID=1&sbSubContrassID=0&listSrc=Y
Egypt asks PNA to unite Fatah movement Palestinian sources said Tuesday Egypt had asked the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) to unite Fatah movement led by Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat before starting any expanded Palestinian dialogue. http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2004-09/21/content_2004350.htm
Thursday, September 16, 2004
Peace Begins at Home
I began thinking about a New Year’s message this week as Rosh Hashana approached. Last year during this time, the West Bank was under closure for the entire month of Jewish holidays, starting with Rosh Hashana. This year, closure has again been announced, although it does not seem to be as severely enforced yet. More flying checkpoints dot the roads, but Palestinian cars still seem to be able to drive on them.
Last year I sent a message calling for a collective New Year’s resolution to stop the Wall. I asked you to call your American officials to try to influence an upcoming vote. Since then, Bush has come out in full support of the Wall, pushed in part by Kerry to do so. The international community is playing around with opposition to the Wall, and even discussing sanctions against Israel, although I’m not sure anyone will have the courage to do it while the US continues its position. The International Court of Justice ruled that the Wall is illegal and needs to be dismantled. Meanwhile, the Israeli Supreme Court just ruled that the section in the town of Aram can begin again, and in no time, the Wall was erected in the middle of the road, separating Palestinians on one side of the street in Aram from those on the other.
So we haven’t stopped the Wall yet, we haven’t ended the occupation, and I’m not so sure what kind of New Year’s resolution to make at this time. What I do know is that we probably had the only Rosh Hashana dinner in a West Bank Palestinian village last night. We made eggplant parmesan. Dorothy, an Israeli friend, brought lasagna and grape juice (an acceptable substitute for wine considering we live in a Muslim village). And of course, we had plenty of apples and honey and other desserts. Fatima, the main Palestinian organizer who we work with, came over with her 5 kids, who all thought the food was quite strange but ate it anyway. That is, except for 9-year-old Baraa’, the youngest one. She liked the grape juice and the cookies, but didn’t eat much else.
We sat around eating, talking, playing a few games with the kids (actually, helping the boys connect to the internet games they wanted to play). The older girls have beautiful voices and sang a couple songs for us. The evening was simple and sweet. 6 Palestinians, 2 Israelis, 3 Jewish internationals, and 4 other internationals shared a beautiful meal together in Hares in honor of the New Year. Certainly peace begins at home.
A healthy, happy, inspiring, peaceful and just New Year to you all,
Hannah
P.S. Last year I sent you an Arabic phrase of the week in each report. I haven’t been doing it this time, but there’s one I want to share. On Rosh Hashana, Jews traditionally say, “Shana tova” to each other, meaning “A good year” in Hebrew. Fatima adapted a traditional Arabic phrase for the occasion, saying, “Kull sane w’inti taybe.” You can use it liberally this week.
Last year I sent a message calling for a collective New Year’s resolution to stop the Wall. I asked you to call your American officials to try to influence an upcoming vote. Since then, Bush has come out in full support of the Wall, pushed in part by Kerry to do so. The international community is playing around with opposition to the Wall, and even discussing sanctions against Israel, although I’m not sure anyone will have the courage to do it while the US continues its position. The International Court of Justice ruled that the Wall is illegal and needs to be dismantled. Meanwhile, the Israeli Supreme Court just ruled that the section in the town of Aram can begin again, and in no time, the Wall was erected in the middle of the road, separating Palestinians on one side of the street in Aram from those on the other.
So we haven’t stopped the Wall yet, we haven’t ended the occupation, and I’m not so sure what kind of New Year’s resolution to make at this time. What I do know is that we probably had the only Rosh Hashana dinner in a West Bank Palestinian village last night. We made eggplant parmesan. Dorothy, an Israeli friend, brought lasagna and grape juice (an acceptable substitute for wine considering we live in a Muslim village). And of course, we had plenty of apples and honey and other desserts. Fatima, the main Palestinian organizer who we work with, came over with her 5 kids, who all thought the food was quite strange but ate it anyway. That is, except for 9-year-old Baraa’, the youngest one. She liked the grape juice and the cookies, but didn’t eat much else.
We sat around eating, talking, playing a few games with the kids (actually, helping the boys connect to the internet games they wanted to play). The older girls have beautiful voices and sang a couple songs for us. The evening was simple and sweet. 6 Palestinians, 2 Israelis, 3 Jewish internationals, and 4 other internationals shared a beautiful meal together in Hares in honor of the New Year. Certainly peace begins at home.
A healthy, happy, inspiring, peaceful and just New Year to you all,
Hannah
P.S. Last year I sent you an Arabic phrase of the week in each report. I haven’t been doing it this time, but there’s one I want to share. On Rosh Hashana, Jews traditionally say, “Shana tova” to each other, meaning “A good year” in Hebrew. Fatima adapted a traditional Arabic phrase for the occasion, saying, “Kull sane w’inti taybe.” You can use it liberally this week.
Thursday, September 09, 2004
Too Much Death
Dear Friends,
I have a dilemma.
I know you’re all busy and can’t read several reports a day, but I’m afraid that nobody knows how many people are dying in Palestine every day. It saddens me and angers me to know that the Israeli army is literally getting away with murder day after day, hour after hour, and most people don’t pay attention. There are too few journalists and internationals in the area, but the ones who are here are carefully documenting the events, and I receive many accounts each day of little girls shot dead while sitting at their desks in school, boys dead because they’re on the wrong street at the wrong time, indiscriminate shooting and shelling of neighborhoods, and more. I read these reports and I think, “I can’t send them all, nobody will read them.” But then I know there still exists the myth that the Israeli army only kills ‘militants’ (whatever that means). The girl sitting at her desk was an accident, I suppose they’d say, but how many thousands of accidents must there be before we change our language and our consciousness? The old woman shot in Hares last month was ‘an accident’ also, and besides, says the army, it hasn’t even been proven that we’re the ones who shot her. How much history, or present reality, can be written and re-written before the world wakes up?
So I worry that if I only send one report every once in a while, or if I only send what I see with my own eyes, you’ll think, “Oh, that’s the exception.” After all, you do receive news of every Israeli killed. So maybe you assume that you also receive news of all the Palestinians killed, or at least the big invasions. In this past 6 months between the suicide bombing in March and the one in Beer Sheva last week, which the media is referring to as a ‘lull’ in violence, approximately 400 Palestinian civilians were killed by the Israeli army. 400! But of course I can’t send reports of them all. The truth is too much to accept, I think. Unfortunately, Palestinians are forced into acceptance every day.
Why am I writing this today? It hits me harder, I suppose, on a day when the army has invaded our village twice: the first time, breaking the door of the school’s courtyard and throwing tear gas and sound bombs at the children, and the second time throwing sound bombs and shooting live ammunition on the streets of Hares. How many times can we chase the army through the village trying to take pictures and get them to stop what they’re doing? How many times can we call our Israeli friends and ask them to call army officials to inquire about the army’s terrorism of these small villages?
I think it’s possible that our presence here still does something, that if the army sees us, it will mean the difference between shooting to kill and the simple everyday terrorism that they’re so fond of. The problem is that there are too few of us, and we’re in too few places. Palestine needs several thousand human rights observers, at the very least to try to reduce the number of deaths until the rest of the world wakes up to this craziness.
Many Palestinians have told me that if the rest of the world simply backed off, Israelis and Palestinians would be forced to solve this on their own. And even that they could. Of course, the power differential between them is still huge, but if the backing off of the rest of the world meant an end to US funding to Israel ($15 million per day, mostly to the military), there’s no way Israel could continue what it’s doing. This doesn’t seem to be forthcoming, however, so it’s our responsibility as US citizens to engage.
What else can I say? I have no hope to offer you today, but if you have any for me, feel free to send it. And for those of you who are older and wiser and have lived and worked through more human-caused disasters, I welcome any lessons in patience or effectiveness. All I can think of to do now is to make sure the people I know will never be able to say, “I didn’t know.”
Love to all,
Hannah
I have a dilemma.
I know you’re all busy and can’t read several reports a day, but I’m afraid that nobody knows how many people are dying in Palestine every day. It saddens me and angers me to know that the Israeli army is literally getting away with murder day after day, hour after hour, and most people don’t pay attention. There are too few journalists and internationals in the area, but the ones who are here are carefully documenting the events, and I receive many accounts each day of little girls shot dead while sitting at their desks in school, boys dead because they’re on the wrong street at the wrong time, indiscriminate shooting and shelling of neighborhoods, and more. I read these reports and I think, “I can’t send them all, nobody will read them.” But then I know there still exists the myth that the Israeli army only kills ‘militants’ (whatever that means). The girl sitting at her desk was an accident, I suppose they’d say, but how many thousands of accidents must there be before we change our language and our consciousness? The old woman shot in Hares last month was ‘an accident’ also, and besides, says the army, it hasn’t even been proven that we’re the ones who shot her. How much history, or present reality, can be written and re-written before the world wakes up?
So I worry that if I only send one report every once in a while, or if I only send what I see with my own eyes, you’ll think, “Oh, that’s the exception.” After all, you do receive news of every Israeli killed. So maybe you assume that you also receive news of all the Palestinians killed, or at least the big invasions. In this past 6 months between the suicide bombing in March and the one in Beer Sheva last week, which the media is referring to as a ‘lull’ in violence, approximately 400 Palestinian civilians were killed by the Israeli army. 400! But of course I can’t send reports of them all. The truth is too much to accept, I think. Unfortunately, Palestinians are forced into acceptance every day.
Why am I writing this today? It hits me harder, I suppose, on a day when the army has invaded our village twice: the first time, breaking the door of the school’s courtyard and throwing tear gas and sound bombs at the children, and the second time throwing sound bombs and shooting live ammunition on the streets of Hares. How many times can we chase the army through the village trying to take pictures and get them to stop what they’re doing? How many times can we call our Israeli friends and ask them to call army officials to inquire about the army’s terrorism of these small villages?
I think it’s possible that our presence here still does something, that if the army sees us, it will mean the difference between shooting to kill and the simple everyday terrorism that they’re so fond of. The problem is that there are too few of us, and we’re in too few places. Palestine needs several thousand human rights observers, at the very least to try to reduce the number of deaths until the rest of the world wakes up to this craziness.
Many Palestinians have told me that if the rest of the world simply backed off, Israelis and Palestinians would be forced to solve this on their own. And even that they could. Of course, the power differential between them is still huge, but if the backing off of the rest of the world meant an end to US funding to Israel ($15 million per day, mostly to the military), there’s no way Israel could continue what it’s doing. This doesn’t seem to be forthcoming, however, so it’s our responsibility as US citizens to engage.
What else can I say? I have no hope to offer you today, but if you have any for me, feel free to send it. And for those of you who are older and wiser and have lived and worked through more human-caused disasters, I welcome any lessons in patience or effectiveness. All I can think of to do now is to make sure the people I know will never be able to say, “I didn’t know.”
Love to all,
Hannah
Sunday, September 05, 2004
Simple Thoughts
Sometimes my thoughts are so simple that I think there may actually be some truth to them. Last night I went up to the roof of our house to try to make a phone call, and I stood for a couple minutes feeling the nice breeze, watching the stars and the moon, seeing the cars and lights on the road. Of course, I know the lights line only the Israeli-built bypass roads and the perimeters of the settlements, but in the split second before the politics entered my mind, I felt peaceful. And then sad. Wondering why we can’t all get along, why we can’t all agree to value justice and freedom and let the rest take care of itself.
We had gotten a call about a half hour earlier from a friend in Marda, who told us that the army had entered the village and was randomly throwing sound bombs. After the call we talked briefly in the house: do we go or not? This happens several times a week, we can’t always respond everytime the army enters a village. But what if they’re targeting somebody? What if there’s something we can do? We called an Israeli friend and asked him to call the army to check on it. Our phone rang again. Now the army had taken a 15-year-old boy from his home and left the village. Another house discussion. This also happens quite often, and what can we really do at this point anyway? Last time they took a 12-year-old boy from Marda, drove him around for a few hours, and brought him back. The family was happy to have IWPS in the village, as the mother was understandably freaking out. But did we do anything? What’s the measure of effectiveness? Tonight, they’re likely to drive the 15-year-old around, beat him up a little, and bring him back. We could go meet the family, let them know we’re working on it, that if he’s not back in the morning we’ll get a lawyer on it right away. Maybe a few phone calls now can alleviate some of the beating he might get later. We ended up calling the family and deciding not to go. Another 20 minutes passed, and another phone call: They haven’t brought the boy back, but now the army is back with bulldozers and they’re cutting down trees. We called a driver, and a few of us got dressed and went to spend the night.
When does it end? I think at times like these. The daily offenses, the measure of what becomes acceptable, or at least accepted. Yesterday we were driving on the road to Qalqilya, and I noticed a street sign for a settlement. In Hebrew and English was the name of the settlement. In Arabic the name had been crossed out and written instead, in Hebrew, was “Death to Arabs.” What struck me was not the blatant racism, but the fact that I see it so often and usually don’t even think twice about it. It may not be acceptable, but it’s certainly accepted. I think about it in other contexts, and I can’t imagine all this racist graffiti going unmentioned in the newspapers, uninvestigated by human rights groups, unnoticed by a society. It’s called hate speech in the US, incitement to violence, something I would associate with the Klan. But here it’s accepted, here it’s expected.
By the time our IWPS members arrived in Marda last night, the army had left. The tree-cutting operation was quick, as random tree-cutting at night tends to be (unless whole areas of land are being destroyed for construction of the Wall, which is not the case – yet – in Marda). One can only imagine that the army’s justification for cutting the trees, if they had felt inspired to give one, would have been that trees provide cover for boys throwing stones. The army’s arguments are becoming more and more circular these days.
IWPS: Why are you in this village?
Soldier: A boy threw a stone at us.
IWPS: If you weren’t here, he couldn’t throw a stone at you.
Soldier: We’re protecting our citizens.
IWPS: Your citizens shouldn’t be occupying other people’s land.
Soldier: Israel doesn’t recognize this as other people’s land. etc.
Everything is circular. As my colleague Kate has pointed out, their presence justifies their presence. Remove them from the situation and things would improve 100-fold. Many of the soldiers know this. These are the ones who use a different argument: “I’m just following orders, my boss told me to do this, don’t blame me, blame my government…”
I think about the stone-throwing. It’s probably true that kids in Marda occasionally throw stones towards the settler road that has been built next to their village, through their land. But has it really been happening any more in the past couple months than ever before? I doubt it. I think political motives are behind the targeting of Marda. It’s a village stuck between the settlement of Ariel and the road that was built to connect Ariel to Israel and bisect the West Bank into north and south. Nobody knows if the Wall will be built above or below Marda, if they’ll be in or out. Colleagues and I think they’re warning Marda (‘resistance is futile’), testing Marda (how much will they take, what will be their response?), and provoking Marda (if they can get the Israeli or international public to believe there’s a danger coming from the area, they’ll be able to justify the Wall much more easily).
But that’s neither here nor there. The real issue to me is how stone-throwing can be seen to justify sound bombs, tear gas, shooting, uprooting of trees, arrest, and torture. It’s one more reminder to me that the oppressed are always held to a higher standard than the oppressor, because they’ve already been dehumanized and thus have to prove they’re perfect in order to regain human status in the oppressor’s eyes. And in world opinion.
I’m tired of the politics. I have little patience for them these days. Instead, I find myself thinking my simple thoughts: Why can’t we all get along? Why can’t the settlers and soldiers just leave, and let these societies begin to heal? Why the hell haven’t we found a way to stop this crazy thing we call war?
We had gotten a call about a half hour earlier from a friend in Marda, who told us that the army had entered the village and was randomly throwing sound bombs. After the call we talked briefly in the house: do we go or not? This happens several times a week, we can’t always respond everytime the army enters a village. But what if they’re targeting somebody? What if there’s something we can do? We called an Israeli friend and asked him to call the army to check on it. Our phone rang again. Now the army had taken a 15-year-old boy from his home and left the village. Another house discussion. This also happens quite often, and what can we really do at this point anyway? Last time they took a 12-year-old boy from Marda, drove him around for a few hours, and brought him back. The family was happy to have IWPS in the village, as the mother was understandably freaking out. But did we do anything? What’s the measure of effectiveness? Tonight, they’re likely to drive the 15-year-old around, beat him up a little, and bring him back. We could go meet the family, let them know we’re working on it, that if he’s not back in the morning we’ll get a lawyer on it right away. Maybe a few phone calls now can alleviate some of the beating he might get later. We ended up calling the family and deciding not to go. Another 20 minutes passed, and another phone call: They haven’t brought the boy back, but now the army is back with bulldozers and they’re cutting down trees. We called a driver, and a few of us got dressed and went to spend the night.
When does it end? I think at times like these. The daily offenses, the measure of what becomes acceptable, or at least accepted. Yesterday we were driving on the road to Qalqilya, and I noticed a street sign for a settlement. In Hebrew and English was the name of the settlement. In Arabic the name had been crossed out and written instead, in Hebrew, was “Death to Arabs.” What struck me was not the blatant racism, but the fact that I see it so often and usually don’t even think twice about it. It may not be acceptable, but it’s certainly accepted. I think about it in other contexts, and I can’t imagine all this racist graffiti going unmentioned in the newspapers, uninvestigated by human rights groups, unnoticed by a society. It’s called hate speech in the US, incitement to violence, something I would associate with the Klan. But here it’s accepted, here it’s expected.
By the time our IWPS members arrived in Marda last night, the army had left. The tree-cutting operation was quick, as random tree-cutting at night tends to be (unless whole areas of land are being destroyed for construction of the Wall, which is not the case – yet – in Marda). One can only imagine that the army’s justification for cutting the trees, if they had felt inspired to give one, would have been that trees provide cover for boys throwing stones. The army’s arguments are becoming more and more circular these days.
IWPS: Why are you in this village?
Soldier: A boy threw a stone at us.
IWPS: If you weren’t here, he couldn’t throw a stone at you.
Soldier: We’re protecting our citizens.
IWPS: Your citizens shouldn’t be occupying other people’s land.
Soldier: Israel doesn’t recognize this as other people’s land. etc.
Everything is circular. As my colleague Kate has pointed out, their presence justifies their presence. Remove them from the situation and things would improve 100-fold. Many of the soldiers know this. These are the ones who use a different argument: “I’m just following orders, my boss told me to do this, don’t blame me, blame my government…”
I think about the stone-throwing. It’s probably true that kids in Marda occasionally throw stones towards the settler road that has been built next to their village, through their land. But has it really been happening any more in the past couple months than ever before? I doubt it. I think political motives are behind the targeting of Marda. It’s a village stuck between the settlement of Ariel and the road that was built to connect Ariel to Israel and bisect the West Bank into north and south. Nobody knows if the Wall will be built above or below Marda, if they’ll be in or out. Colleagues and I think they’re warning Marda (‘resistance is futile’), testing Marda (how much will they take, what will be their response?), and provoking Marda (if they can get the Israeli or international public to believe there’s a danger coming from the area, they’ll be able to justify the Wall much more easily).
But that’s neither here nor there. The real issue to me is how stone-throwing can be seen to justify sound bombs, tear gas, shooting, uprooting of trees, arrest, and torture. It’s one more reminder to me that the oppressed are always held to a higher standard than the oppressor, because they’ve already been dehumanized and thus have to prove they’re perfect in order to regain human status in the oppressor’s eyes. And in world opinion.
I’m tired of the politics. I have little patience for them these days. Instead, I find myself thinking my simple thoughts: Why can’t we all get along? Why can’t the settlers and soldiers just leave, and let these societies begin to heal? Why the hell haven’t we found a way to stop this crazy thing we call war?
Sunday, August 29, 2004
Hunger Strikes and More
Dear friends,
The Boston delegation has left and I have a couple days off before going back to work in Hares, so I guess there’s no excuse not to write. These two weeks have been stressful but truly incredible. The stress comes from helping to plan and lead a group of people around a place in which it is impossible to plan ahead or know how long it might take to get from place to place on any given day. I feel really blessed to have been able to do this, though, both to share my knowledge, experiences, and relationships with the folks from Boston and also to meet new people and see new places.
I think the condensed West Bank experience helps elucidate the real issues of occupation. Almost every place we went has been or will be severely affected by the Wall. In rural areas the loss of land is by far the most significant issue. Israel continues to operate with a policy of “maximum land, minimum people,” meaning that the Wall is often built between villages’ lands and their buildings, effectively annexing the land into Israel while leaving the people in the West Bank. Already farmers question the monetary value of harvesting their crops, in part because the system of roadblocks and checkpoints make it virtually impossible to transport Palestinian goods from place to place. Israeli trucks pass with no problem and Israeli goods flood the Palestinian market. Now, with the Wall separating Palestinians from their land and requiring them to get permits to pass through at designated times (which are not always respected) and with designated people (who are not always respected), farmers are almost positive that working their land will provide them with a net loss. The problem: if they don’t harvest their land for three years, Israel can “legally” claim it as state land, meaning Jewish-only land. Perhaps you can begin to see how the system works.
Urban areas face similar issues, although we hear the word “unemployment” far more often. The Wall is just one more obstruction to freedom of movement and thus access to employment, one more blow to a population who has received far too many blows already.
And of course, in both urban and rural areas, both Muslim and Christian areas, the prison issue is never far from people’s minds. Between 650,000 and 700,000 Palestinians have been imprisoned since the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip in 1967. This comprises about 20% of the population, and since a vast majority of them are men, this means that about 40% of Palestinian men have been in prison. Very few of them have had civil trials. Military tribunals are the rule of law here. The judges and lawyers are military officers who, until recently, were not required to have had any legal training to assume these posts. The defense lawyers are often not allowed to communicate with their clients and neither the lawyer nor the accused is allowed to attend the proceedings or see any of the evidence (if there is any) against the accused. In fact, no evidence is needed if two witnesses testify against someone. So if a 14 year old boy is arrested and the army can convince two of his friends to testify that he threw a stone at a jeep, the boy could spend a few years in prison. Then there’s administrative detention, where any Palestinian can be held without charges for a period of 6 months, and that 6-month period is indefinitely renewable. Sound familiar to any Americans out there? It seems like the US has been learning a little something from Israel (many people said this after the Abu Ghraib story broke, since the methods of torture used there were so similar to the methods of torture Israel has used against Palestinians for years).
The military orders themselves, upon which all of this is based, are constantly updated and not often publicized. For example, the military keeps a list of banned books for which Palestinians can be imprisoned for possessing. One of them is a list of UN resolutions on the issue of Palestine. No commentary, no analysis, just the list.
I’m writing so much about the prisoner issue here not only because it is one near and dear to my heart, but because the 7,500 Palestinian prisoners who are currently being held in Israeli jails are on their 15th day of a hunger strike. It overwhelms me when I really think about it, and makes me incredibly upset when I realize that the mainstream world press has virtually ignored this and I’m not even sure that most of you know about the strike.
The hunger strike is different than previous ones of years past. They have no political demands (for instance, their release), but instead a whole list of humanitarian demands. They want adequate food and water, they want the Israeli guards to stop throwing tear gas into their prison cells, they want medical care, they want their families to be able to visit them. Israel’s response has been, “Let them die.” The guards have taken to barbecuing meat in front of the fasting prisoners, and, more significantly, refusing to give them salt. Apparently a little bit of salt in water can prevent the human stomach from deteriorating completely. Many prisoners have been taken to the hospital already, and every day I wait to hear news of prisoner deaths. I don’t think there have been any so far, but it’s only a matter of time.
Our delegation visited the prisoner solidarity tents in many cities and villages, and found women, men, and children sitting and fasting from dawn to dusk as they held framed pictures of their loved ones in prison. Most of them want to tell us their stories. They tell us how the soldiers barged into their houses at night, beat them and/or their children, threw their food on the floor and stamped on it, poured water on their furniture, and, most importantly, took their sons away. Most have not been able to visit. The Red Cross is the only organization that can obtain visitor permits for relatives, and, in my opinion, they could be a bit more effective in this task.
I don’t know if all this information will be too matter-of-fact to affect you or if it will overwhelm you on a human level the same way it does for me everytime I hear a woman tell me her family’s story. Often I think of a Holly Near song in which she sings about a Latin American friend who had been disappeared and tortured. The only line I remember now is, “I cannot bear to hear your story.” (If anyone knows this song will you send me the lyrics?)
I had planned to discuss more people, places, and issues in this report, but I think instead I’ll try to get all my pictures up on my online photo album when I get back to Hares and then send you the link. Until then, please give a few moments of your time to think of those living under occupation here, and specifically those in prison and their families. And don’t forget those in the US – the thousands of people who have been in prison since September 11, 2001 or shortly thereafter simply for being from Arab countries, and the thousands of other political prisoners in our own midst (including 250 bicyclists arrested in New York yesterday and, I’m sure, many more to come in the next few days).
Love Hannah
The Boston delegation has left and I have a couple days off before going back to work in Hares, so I guess there’s no excuse not to write. These two weeks have been stressful but truly incredible. The stress comes from helping to plan and lead a group of people around a place in which it is impossible to plan ahead or know how long it might take to get from place to place on any given day. I feel really blessed to have been able to do this, though, both to share my knowledge, experiences, and relationships with the folks from Boston and also to meet new people and see new places.
I think the condensed West Bank experience helps elucidate the real issues of occupation. Almost every place we went has been or will be severely affected by the Wall. In rural areas the loss of land is by far the most significant issue. Israel continues to operate with a policy of “maximum land, minimum people,” meaning that the Wall is often built between villages’ lands and their buildings, effectively annexing the land into Israel while leaving the people in the West Bank. Already farmers question the monetary value of harvesting their crops, in part because the system of roadblocks and checkpoints make it virtually impossible to transport Palestinian goods from place to place. Israeli trucks pass with no problem and Israeli goods flood the Palestinian market. Now, with the Wall separating Palestinians from their land and requiring them to get permits to pass through at designated times (which are not always respected) and with designated people (who are not always respected), farmers are almost positive that working their land will provide them with a net loss. The problem: if they don’t harvest their land for three years, Israel can “legally” claim it as state land, meaning Jewish-only land. Perhaps you can begin to see how the system works.
Urban areas face similar issues, although we hear the word “unemployment” far more often. The Wall is just one more obstruction to freedom of movement and thus access to employment, one more blow to a population who has received far too many blows already.
And of course, in both urban and rural areas, both Muslim and Christian areas, the prison issue is never far from people’s minds. Between 650,000 and 700,000 Palestinians have been imprisoned since the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip in 1967. This comprises about 20% of the population, and since a vast majority of them are men, this means that about 40% of Palestinian men have been in prison. Very few of them have had civil trials. Military tribunals are the rule of law here. The judges and lawyers are military officers who, until recently, were not required to have had any legal training to assume these posts. The defense lawyers are often not allowed to communicate with their clients and neither the lawyer nor the accused is allowed to attend the proceedings or see any of the evidence (if there is any) against the accused. In fact, no evidence is needed if two witnesses testify against someone. So if a 14 year old boy is arrested and the army can convince two of his friends to testify that he threw a stone at a jeep, the boy could spend a few years in prison. Then there’s administrative detention, where any Palestinian can be held without charges for a period of 6 months, and that 6-month period is indefinitely renewable. Sound familiar to any Americans out there? It seems like the US has been learning a little something from Israel (many people said this after the Abu Ghraib story broke, since the methods of torture used there were so similar to the methods of torture Israel has used against Palestinians for years).
The military orders themselves, upon which all of this is based, are constantly updated and not often publicized. For example, the military keeps a list of banned books for which Palestinians can be imprisoned for possessing. One of them is a list of UN resolutions on the issue of Palestine. No commentary, no analysis, just the list.
I’m writing so much about the prisoner issue here not only because it is one near and dear to my heart, but because the 7,500 Palestinian prisoners who are currently being held in Israeli jails are on their 15th day of a hunger strike. It overwhelms me when I really think about it, and makes me incredibly upset when I realize that the mainstream world press has virtually ignored this and I’m not even sure that most of you know about the strike.
The hunger strike is different than previous ones of years past. They have no political demands (for instance, their release), but instead a whole list of humanitarian demands. They want adequate food and water, they want the Israeli guards to stop throwing tear gas into their prison cells, they want medical care, they want their families to be able to visit them. Israel’s response has been, “Let them die.” The guards have taken to barbecuing meat in front of the fasting prisoners, and, more significantly, refusing to give them salt. Apparently a little bit of salt in water can prevent the human stomach from deteriorating completely. Many prisoners have been taken to the hospital already, and every day I wait to hear news of prisoner deaths. I don’t think there have been any so far, but it’s only a matter of time.
Our delegation visited the prisoner solidarity tents in many cities and villages, and found women, men, and children sitting and fasting from dawn to dusk as they held framed pictures of their loved ones in prison. Most of them want to tell us their stories. They tell us how the soldiers barged into their houses at night, beat them and/or their children, threw their food on the floor and stamped on it, poured water on their furniture, and, most importantly, took their sons away. Most have not been able to visit. The Red Cross is the only organization that can obtain visitor permits for relatives, and, in my opinion, they could be a bit more effective in this task.
I don’t know if all this information will be too matter-of-fact to affect you or if it will overwhelm you on a human level the same way it does for me everytime I hear a woman tell me her family’s story. Often I think of a Holly Near song in which she sings about a Latin American friend who had been disappeared and tortured. The only line I remember now is, “I cannot bear to hear your story.” (If anyone knows this song will you send me the lyrics?)
I had planned to discuss more people, places, and issues in this report, but I think instead I’ll try to get all my pictures up on my online photo album when I get back to Hares and then send you the link. Until then, please give a few moments of your time to think of those living under occupation here, and specifically those in prison and their families. And don’t forget those in the US – the thousands of people who have been in prison since September 11, 2001 or shortly thereafter simply for being from Arab countries, and the thousands of other political prisoners in our own midst (including 250 bicyclists arrested in New York yesterday and, I’m sure, many more to come in the next few days).
Love Hannah
Friday, August 20, 2004
From Pain Comes Poetry
I've been with this delegation from Boston for almost a week now, and it's been incredibly intense, incredibly stressful, and incredibly wonderful. We're taking a day off in Jerusalem today to catch up on sleep and gather our thoughts together. The group is a fascinating mix of people with a high level of creative energy, and I've felt my emotions open and my creative juices flow more in the past couple days than in a long time. And so, I will share with you two poems that I've written, and hope that you can read them out loud (I wrote them with this intention).
The first is called "Khalil," the Arabic name for the city that in Hebrew and English is usually called "Hebron." The second is a response to a very painful (for me) visit to the settlement of Bat Ayin, a right-wing ideological settlement strategically placed in the Gush Etzion block between Bethlehem and Hebron (and still referred to as 'the Jerusalem area'). One of our delegates has family living there because her cousin's husband is studying at the yeshiva on the settlement. We met with the rabbi of the yeshiva, and my poem is a response to him. In the third poem, I refer to Yad Vashem, which is Israel's Holocaust museum, and to Al Naqba, meaning 'the catastrophe' in Arabic and referring to the killing and displacement of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians during the war of 1948 (what to Israel is the 'war of independence'). And I think that's all you need to know.
Khalil
"What's the difference between an Arab and a trampoline?"
the question, the set up, the joke begins
in Hebrew, on the wall of a Palestinian home
or a Palestinian store
where once there were people
where once there was life
and how can the people not hate in response?
but somehow they don't
somehow the Arabic words on the walls say instead
"Congratulations to you on your pilgrimage to Mecca"
and "My store has moved to the market outside"
sometimes the truth is so clear that it hurts
sometimes no response is necessary
the answer, the punch line, the joke ends
"On a trampoline you jump without shoes."
To Rabbi Natan Greenberg of Bat Ayin settlement
Why do you think there are armed guards outside our kindergartens?
you asked it rhetorically, Rabbi
you asked it so you could answer it
so you, who have never set foot in your Palestinian neighbor's village, could tell me that if you did, you would be dead in an hour
so you could tell me that if a Palestinian came to your colony, he would be fine, and in the next breath tell me that if a Palestinian came to your door, you would have to assume he was there to kill you and thus take appropriate action
Why do I think there are armed guards outside your kindergartens?
I think there are armed guards outside your kindergartens
because it helps to feed your myth of fear
because it helps to feed your fear of reality
Do you feel safer with the guns?
Do you tell me Jews are not a warlike people?
Do you tell me you hope you have never killed an innocent person but you can't be sure?
Do you believe there are innocent people?
Do you believe there are any other kind?
Why do I think there are armed guards outside your kindergartens?
I think there are armed guards outside your kindergartens
because it is easier to demonize the victims than to stop victimizing them
because you feel more powerful with an illusion of control than a reality of trust
because you cannot see beyond the walls of your own ghetto and the limitations of your own understanding
because "never again" means only one thing to you and you've copyrighted the phrase and stolen the experience of suffering from every other group of people on this earth
in your mind
because you don't know quite what to do with power but you're damn glad you have it and you have no intention of sharing it
or dismantling it
because myth creates privilege
and privilege creates blindness
and blindness creates you
because when myth becomes reality
it is that much more difficult to disarm
Why do I think there are armed guards outside your kindergartens?
because the view from Bat Ayin is beautiful
and you don't know your neighbor's name.
A poem with no name
street signs marking settlements
Hebrew, English, and
when not crossed out or faded,
Arabic
crossed out or faded
crossed out or faded
whitewashing street signs
whitewashing history
a mockery of the land
a mockery of the people
i'm starting to understand the importance of naming
i'm starting to understand why every refugee can tell me the name of her family's prior village and why this is often the answer to "where are you from?"
i'm starting to understand why every mother of every prisoner wants to tell me her son's name, his age, the details of his arrest, the prison where he is being held
the prison where he is being held
the prison that she most likely does not have permission to visit
i'm starting to understand why every martyr has a poster in his name, with his photograph, on the walls of every city, village and camp
the same cities, villages, and camps that the street signs forget
the same cities, villages, and camps that have been erased from the Israeli consciousness as quickly as you can say 1948
the same cities, villages, and camps that have been forgotten by history because thus far, history has been written by the winners
and thus far, justice has not won
i imagine a new permanent exhibit at Yad Vashem like the one they have now
the room of mirrors and candles
(or is it one candle reflected hundreds, thousands, six million, twelve million times?)
the room where, as you walk through, you hear the reciting of names
victims of the Nazi holocaust
names that are so many that the tape has yet to repeat itself
i imagine a room a bit like this
but a room instead in which every destroyed village is named
and every victim of Al Naqba is named
and every refugee is named
and every prisoner is named
and every prison is named
and every uprooted tree is named
and every demolished home is named
and every town trapped behind the Wall is named
and every victim of the Jewish psychosis of fear and particularism is named
including ourselves
and i imagine every Israeli, every Zionist, every Jew walking through that room
and seeing herself
and seeing himself
reflected in the mirrors, in the names, in the light of the candle
reflected in hundreds, thousands, millions
as many times as it takes
until there is not one more rabbi who can look me in the eye and say
"this settlement was built on empty land"
The first is called "Khalil," the Arabic name for the city that in Hebrew and English is usually called "Hebron." The second is a response to a very painful (for me) visit to the settlement of Bat Ayin, a right-wing ideological settlement strategically placed in the Gush Etzion block between Bethlehem and Hebron (and still referred to as 'the Jerusalem area'). One of our delegates has family living there because her cousin's husband is studying at the yeshiva on the settlement. We met with the rabbi of the yeshiva, and my poem is a response to him. In the third poem, I refer to Yad Vashem, which is Israel's Holocaust museum, and to Al Naqba, meaning 'the catastrophe' in Arabic and referring to the killing and displacement of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians during the war of 1948 (what to Israel is the 'war of independence'). And I think that's all you need to know.
Khalil
"What's the difference between an Arab and a trampoline?"
the question, the set up, the joke begins
in Hebrew, on the wall of a Palestinian home
or a Palestinian store
where once there were people
where once there was life
and how can the people not hate in response?
but somehow they don't
somehow the Arabic words on the walls say instead
"Congratulations to you on your pilgrimage to Mecca"
and "My store has moved to the market outside"
sometimes the truth is so clear that it hurts
sometimes no response is necessary
the answer, the punch line, the joke ends
"On a trampoline you jump without shoes."
To Rabbi Natan Greenberg of Bat Ayin settlement
Why do you think there are armed guards outside our kindergartens?
you asked it rhetorically, Rabbi
you asked it so you could answer it
so you, who have never set foot in your Palestinian neighbor's village, could tell me that if you did, you would be dead in an hour
so you could tell me that if a Palestinian came to your colony, he would be fine, and in the next breath tell me that if a Palestinian came to your door, you would have to assume he was there to kill you and thus take appropriate action
Why do I think there are armed guards outside your kindergartens?
I think there are armed guards outside your kindergartens
because it helps to feed your myth of fear
because it helps to feed your fear of reality
Do you feel safer with the guns?
Do you tell me Jews are not a warlike people?
Do you tell me you hope you have never killed an innocent person but you can't be sure?
Do you believe there are innocent people?
Do you believe there are any other kind?
Why do I think there are armed guards outside your kindergartens?
I think there are armed guards outside your kindergartens
because it is easier to demonize the victims than to stop victimizing them
because you feel more powerful with an illusion of control than a reality of trust
because you cannot see beyond the walls of your own ghetto and the limitations of your own understanding
because "never again" means only one thing to you and you've copyrighted the phrase and stolen the experience of suffering from every other group of people on this earth
in your mind
because you don't know quite what to do with power but you're damn glad you have it and you have no intention of sharing it
or dismantling it
because myth creates privilege
and privilege creates blindness
and blindness creates you
because when myth becomes reality
it is that much more difficult to disarm
Why do I think there are armed guards outside your kindergartens?
because the view from Bat Ayin is beautiful
and you don't know your neighbor's name.
A poem with no name
street signs marking settlements
Hebrew, English, and
when not crossed out or faded,
Arabic
crossed out or faded
crossed out or faded
whitewashing street signs
whitewashing history
a mockery of the land
a mockery of the people
i'm starting to understand the importance of naming
i'm starting to understand why every refugee can tell me the name of her family's prior village and why this is often the answer to "where are you from?"
i'm starting to understand why every mother of every prisoner wants to tell me her son's name, his age, the details of his arrest, the prison where he is being held
the prison where he is being held
the prison that she most likely does not have permission to visit
i'm starting to understand why every martyr has a poster in his name, with his photograph, on the walls of every city, village and camp
the same cities, villages, and camps that the street signs forget
the same cities, villages, and camps that have been erased from the Israeli consciousness as quickly as you can say 1948
the same cities, villages, and camps that have been forgotten by history because thus far, history has been written by the winners
and thus far, justice has not won
i imagine a new permanent exhibit at Yad Vashem like the one they have now
the room of mirrors and candles
(or is it one candle reflected hundreds, thousands, six million, twelve million times?)
the room where, as you walk through, you hear the reciting of names
victims of the Nazi holocaust
names that are so many that the tape has yet to repeat itself
i imagine a room a bit like this
but a room instead in which every destroyed village is named
and every victim of Al Naqba is named
and every refugee is named
and every prisoner is named
and every prison is named
and every uprooted tree is named
and every demolished home is named
and every town trapped behind the Wall is named
and every victim of the Jewish psychosis of fear and particularism is named
including ourselves
and i imagine every Israeli, every Zionist, every Jew walking through that room
and seeing herself
and seeing himself
reflected in the mirrors, in the names, in the light of the candle
reflected in hundreds, thousands, millions
as many times as it takes
until there is not one more rabbi who can look me in the eye and say
"this settlement was built on empty land"
Friday, August 06, 2004
A People Like Any Other People
The AEI (Arab Educational Institute) "summer school" is over, and the most important idea I’ve walked away with is that people really are the same everywhere, specifically when it comes to group dynamics and individual personalities. As I said in my last report, my job for the week was to keep the kids busy during parts of the morning and to run icebreaking activities for the larger group. The kids were adorable, and acted like every other group of children I’ve ever worked with - some of them latched on to me, others were too cool, some habitually helped others out of the goodness of their own hearts, others caused trouble.
I was a little nervous about the icebreakers with the larger group, even slightly more nervous than I usually am when I try to get a group of teenagers and adults to play silly games. And like in any group, there were people who participated unabashedly and others who stayed a bit quiet. Overall the activities went splendidly, and even the teenage boys got into the games (and started running them at times).
I’ve participated in four meetings in the past week that reinforce for me the thought that Palestinians are a people like any other people, wrought with all the complexities and variety that would be expected.
1) Ghassan
Ghassan, one of the Palestinian founders of ISM (International Solidarity Movement), spoke at AEI’s summer school about the meaning of international solidarity with Palestinian nonviolent resistance. He started by saying that anybody who comes here to ‘liberate Palestine’ or to ‘help Palestinians’ is coming from a colonialist perspective that implies superiority. We must work as partners, he said, with internationals taking the same risks as Palestinians. It was this last part that challenged me, and that I always find difficult to reconcile with the fact that internationals do still have some privilege as internationals. Part of what it means to be here, part of the power of witness, relies on this privilege. What is our role, then? It is the old question of how to use one’s privilege to dismantle it. And dismantling is exactly what Ghassan stresses. He talks about ISM as one of the few organizations that attempts to dismantle the Israeli systems of control, rather than providing services that serve as band-aid solutions at best. He goes so far as to say that most Palestinian NGOs and foreign government offices are simply doing the work that Israel is legally obliged to do as an occupying power: they are taking care of some of the basic human needs of Palestinians. This is not a new thought, but one that hits home after working with and seeing so many NGOs in operation this past month in Bethlehem. Are they an indication of a healthy civil society? Or are they simply reinforcing the occupation? Hard to tell.
2) Dawud
On Wednesday some of the folks in my program went to pick almonds with Palestinians on land south of Bethlehem near the village of Nehalin. The land is absolutely gorgeous, and the variety of crops impressive. If not for the settlements surrounding the area (on every hilltop and in half the valleys), the scene would be perfectly idyllic. Dawud, the man who met us, showed us the cave where his grandfather and even his uncle lived until their deaths (his uncle in 1987). By Israeli law, they are not allowed to build on their land, so Dawud’s family has been renovating caves and other underground areas that remain undetected by passing helicopters sent to survey the area. The family members mostly live in the city, but take turns staying on their land as they continue a thirteen year court battle to protect it. They have ownership papers from the Ottomans, the Brits, and even the Israelis, but settlement expansion threatens them nonetheless. In recent years, Dawud has made contact with the international community, and recently ran the first "Tent of Nations" (www.tentofnations.org) project whereby internationals came to live on and learn about the land for a few weeks.
Dawud mentioned that some of his Israeli friends in various peace groups have offered to bring hundreds of Israelis and organize a large protest on the land. Dawud’s response: why? He prefers to resist by the simple act of cultivating the land (creating facts on the ground), and not to draw too much army attention to the area while the court case is progressing. "Our problem as Palestinians," Dawud told me, "is that we react instead of acting." I agree with that general statement, but wonder about the strategy and its application to other situations. In his case, I think it’s probably true that this method of resistance is the most effective. When he told me that internationals should not be attending demonstrations at all, though, I had to challenge him. There are many kinds of nonviolent resistance, I said. When people march against the stealing of their land, it’s true that they’re reacting, but at this point, what else is there to do? I hoped he could really answer this, because the question is not rhetorical, and is something I’ve been wondering since I arrived this time. What proactive steps can we take? Ghassan says we can’t plan for the future in this situation, and that we must simply act in ways that are effective and just right now. Dawud says we must think of long-term results. They live with somewhat different realities, and their opinions are responses to their situations. I have seen both, and I am searching for the best way to bridge the experiences, the thoughts, and the methods of resistance.
Dawud continues to work his land, even though it’s not profitable to do so. Many of the farmers have stopped working their land altogether, which is extremely dangerous in this atmosphere of rapid land annexation. Under Israeli law (taken from Ottoman law), people who don’t work their land for 3 years lose ownership of it. But when people can’t live off their land, what are they to do? "We have no infrastructure," said Dawud. "Our leaders who tell us we’re close to the creation of a state are crazy." Let the Israelis annex us, said Dawud, and resume the responsibility of taking care of the population and the infrastructure that they’ve destroyed.
3) Yassir Arafat
Speaking of leaders and the creation of a state, our group took a trip to Ramallah last week which included, among other things, a visit with President Arafat in his compound. My first and very simple impressions: he is small (really, his size does not come through in pictures), old, and friendly. He asked at the very beginning if we had questions, which surprised us. Not only have I heard that he doesn’t usually take questions, but we had just been told by the Palestinian who accompanied us that if we have the opportunity to ask questions, we should be polite and not challenge him. So what to ask? We had plenty in our heads, of course, but it seemed Arafat himself would have to break the ice. He started pulling pictures and articles out of a folder to show us "the tragedies of the Palestinian people." The stories were from different places and about different topics, with no specific connection between them. Pictures of the statue of the Virgin Mary shot up with bullets during the army siege of Bethlehem in 2002; articles about the Israeli use of depleted uranium weapons against Palestinians; stories about the Wall. He kept asking, "Who can believe this?" and "Who can imagine this?" It seemed as though he was trying to convince himself of these tragedies as much as he was trying to convince us. And then it hit me: he has never seen the Wall! Imprisoned in his compound for the past 3 years, Arafat has not seen the new methods of occupation, land confiscation and displacement. He has seen pictures, read articles, and talked with people, but he has never seen these things with his own eyes. How can he help but be out of touch with his people?
Two thoughts occur to me that I cannot ignore. First, I’m not sure leaders who do have complete freedom of movement are really in touch with the people they represent either (I wonder if Bush has ever walked around the corner and visited the large tent city of homeless people just a neighborhood away). Secondly, it’s quite possible that even if Arafat were given the opportunity to be a real president, he would not do so (it’s not as though he’s completely without resources now, and his government is no less corrupt than any other government). But it did strike me that I have probably seen more of the Wall and its real effects on the Palestinian people than the Palestinian president himself.
I came home from the meeting and told my host family where I’d been. They were amused. Comments I heard from Palestinians I know well include, "I hope he dies this year" and "He doesn’t want to see us, only you." There’s definitely a healthy amount of criticism, as well as a healthy amount of support for him (I just don’t happen to be friends with the hardcore Fateh people here in Bethlehem).
4) Shereen and Mohammed
In my opinion, the most important people I met in the past week are Shereen and Mohammed. They approached me in the middle of the AEI summer school to thank me for leading the games - they had enjoyed them. "We like to talk to internationals and practice our English," they said. The conversation continued from there. Shereen (16) and Mohammed (15) are sister and brother and live in the Arroub refugee camp in the Hebron region. Shereen is the number one girl in her class, and Mohammed is the number one boy in his school. Both want to go to university in the US, Shereen to be a doctor and Mohammed to be a software engineer. Both want to be famous and help their people. Their English is incredible and the first word that came to me in our conversation was "superhuman."
We continued to spend time together throughout the week, and at the end they invited me to their house. Yesterday I went for lunch. The taxi dropped me next to an army watchtower and pointed across the street to the entrance of the camp. Mohammed came to meet me and took me in to meet the rest of the family. They have three other younger brothers and a sister (6 kids in total). Their mother is an English teacher and father is a civic engineer, so the whole family has an excellent command of English.
I don’t know how to describe how incredible these kids are. First of all, they both seem older than their years. They’re extremely precise with language, Shereen in particular. I’ve noticed often that Palestinians do the same thing in English that I do in Arabic - simplify their thoughts for the purpose of simplifying communication. Shereen does not do this. She communicates complete and complex thoughts, and is patient enough with herself to find the words she needs to do so.
Not surprisingly, their parents are tremendously proud of them. They explained that recently both kids had taken an exam to qualify to participate in an English program in Hebron. They had taken the exam in the beginning of June and as of last week hadn’t received the results, so Dad called up to find out what was going on. Apparently, both Shereen and Mohammed scored exceptionally high - too high, it turns out. There weren’t enough students to form a group at their level. Essentially, the organization said to the parents, "Your children are too smart to be in our program." Shereen was delighted, Mohammed disappointed.
We sat down for lunch. Shereen’s and Mohammed’s mother had made a plate of vegetarian food just for me, and it was delicious. I was sad not to be able to share with them - to eat from the same huge plate everyone else ate from - but it was a lovely meal and I stuffed myself enough to appreciate the walk afterwards. They showed me around the camp, starting with the bullet holes in the curtains and walls of their own house (from an army invasion of the camp 2 years ago, although there have been many since then). We walked outside and I noticed most of the walls on the main street had brightly colored murals. Mohammed told me they had been done by kids in the camp in coordination with a club. The murals were to beautify the camp, to cover up graffiti from various political parties and militant groups. Dad made sure to emphasize that most people are not involved in militant groups, that the graffiti saying, "Those who want peace are cowards" is not representative of the people.
We crossed the settler road in front of the camp and entered the farm on the other side of the street. The farm is owned by the Palestinian Authority, they said, and there’s an agricultural college located there. It was one of the few open green spaces I’ve seen in Palestine (other than the thousands of dunums of olive groves that is the landscape of this place). A kid rode his bike past us, we strolled through, and the cows seemed happy hanging out in the dirt designated for them.
On our tour of the camp, we stopped at the neighbor’s sculpting workshop across the street from Shereen’s and Mohammed’s house. At first I saw only stone bowls and vases, but when Abu Mohammed asked the man to show me something, he pulled a different piece off a shelf. I didn’t recognize the shape at first. "It’s a Palestinian woman," he told me. I saw it then: a pregnant Palestinian woman holding a basket on her head, with the sun on top. "She’s pregnant with peace," said the sculptor. He turned the piece around, and on the back was the same woman with a moon shape carved out of her stomach. "On this side she’s not pregnant," he said, "and there’s no sun." The meaning of the piece, he said, is that different people can see the same situation in different ways. As I stood on the main road in Arroub with a view of the kids in the camp, the farm, the settler road, and the army watchtower, I thought, "This couldn’t be more true."
I was a little nervous about the icebreakers with the larger group, even slightly more nervous than I usually am when I try to get a group of teenagers and adults to play silly games. And like in any group, there were people who participated unabashedly and others who stayed a bit quiet. Overall the activities went splendidly, and even the teenage boys got into the games (and started running them at times).
I’ve participated in four meetings in the past week that reinforce for me the thought that Palestinians are a people like any other people, wrought with all the complexities and variety that would be expected.
1) Ghassan
Ghassan, one of the Palestinian founders of ISM (International Solidarity Movement), spoke at AEI’s summer school about the meaning of international solidarity with Palestinian nonviolent resistance. He started by saying that anybody who comes here to ‘liberate Palestine’ or to ‘help Palestinians’ is coming from a colonialist perspective that implies superiority. We must work as partners, he said, with internationals taking the same risks as Palestinians. It was this last part that challenged me, and that I always find difficult to reconcile with the fact that internationals do still have some privilege as internationals. Part of what it means to be here, part of the power of witness, relies on this privilege. What is our role, then? It is the old question of how to use one’s privilege to dismantle it. And dismantling is exactly what Ghassan stresses. He talks about ISM as one of the few organizations that attempts to dismantle the Israeli systems of control, rather than providing services that serve as band-aid solutions at best. He goes so far as to say that most Palestinian NGOs and foreign government offices are simply doing the work that Israel is legally obliged to do as an occupying power: they are taking care of some of the basic human needs of Palestinians. This is not a new thought, but one that hits home after working with and seeing so many NGOs in operation this past month in Bethlehem. Are they an indication of a healthy civil society? Or are they simply reinforcing the occupation? Hard to tell.
2) Dawud
On Wednesday some of the folks in my program went to pick almonds with Palestinians on land south of Bethlehem near the village of Nehalin. The land is absolutely gorgeous, and the variety of crops impressive. If not for the settlements surrounding the area (on every hilltop and in half the valleys), the scene would be perfectly idyllic. Dawud, the man who met us, showed us the cave where his grandfather and even his uncle lived until their deaths (his uncle in 1987). By Israeli law, they are not allowed to build on their land, so Dawud’s family has been renovating caves and other underground areas that remain undetected by passing helicopters sent to survey the area. The family members mostly live in the city, but take turns staying on their land as they continue a thirteen year court battle to protect it. They have ownership papers from the Ottomans, the Brits, and even the Israelis, but settlement expansion threatens them nonetheless. In recent years, Dawud has made contact with the international community, and recently ran the first "Tent of Nations" (www.tentofnations.org) project whereby internationals came to live on and learn about the land for a few weeks.
Dawud mentioned that some of his Israeli friends in various peace groups have offered to bring hundreds of Israelis and organize a large protest on the land. Dawud’s response: why? He prefers to resist by the simple act of cultivating the land (creating facts on the ground), and not to draw too much army attention to the area while the court case is progressing. "Our problem as Palestinians," Dawud told me, "is that we react instead of acting." I agree with that general statement, but wonder about the strategy and its application to other situations. In his case, I think it’s probably true that this method of resistance is the most effective. When he told me that internationals should not be attending demonstrations at all, though, I had to challenge him. There are many kinds of nonviolent resistance, I said. When people march against the stealing of their land, it’s true that they’re reacting, but at this point, what else is there to do? I hoped he could really answer this, because the question is not rhetorical, and is something I’ve been wondering since I arrived this time. What proactive steps can we take? Ghassan says we can’t plan for the future in this situation, and that we must simply act in ways that are effective and just right now. Dawud says we must think of long-term results. They live with somewhat different realities, and their opinions are responses to their situations. I have seen both, and I am searching for the best way to bridge the experiences, the thoughts, and the methods of resistance.
Dawud continues to work his land, even though it’s not profitable to do so. Many of the farmers have stopped working their land altogether, which is extremely dangerous in this atmosphere of rapid land annexation. Under Israeli law (taken from Ottoman law), people who don’t work their land for 3 years lose ownership of it. But when people can’t live off their land, what are they to do? "We have no infrastructure," said Dawud. "Our leaders who tell us we’re close to the creation of a state are crazy." Let the Israelis annex us, said Dawud, and resume the responsibility of taking care of the population and the infrastructure that they’ve destroyed.
3) Yassir Arafat
Speaking of leaders and the creation of a state, our group took a trip to Ramallah last week which included, among other things, a visit with President Arafat in his compound. My first and very simple impressions: he is small (really, his size does not come through in pictures), old, and friendly. He asked at the very beginning if we had questions, which surprised us. Not only have I heard that he doesn’t usually take questions, but we had just been told by the Palestinian who accompanied us that if we have the opportunity to ask questions, we should be polite and not challenge him. So what to ask? We had plenty in our heads, of course, but it seemed Arafat himself would have to break the ice. He started pulling pictures and articles out of a folder to show us "the tragedies of the Palestinian people." The stories were from different places and about different topics, with no specific connection between them. Pictures of the statue of the Virgin Mary shot up with bullets during the army siege of Bethlehem in 2002; articles about the Israeli use of depleted uranium weapons against Palestinians; stories about the Wall. He kept asking, "Who can believe this?" and "Who can imagine this?" It seemed as though he was trying to convince himself of these tragedies as much as he was trying to convince us. And then it hit me: he has never seen the Wall! Imprisoned in his compound for the past 3 years, Arafat has not seen the new methods of occupation, land confiscation and displacement. He has seen pictures, read articles, and talked with people, but he has never seen these things with his own eyes. How can he help but be out of touch with his people?
Two thoughts occur to me that I cannot ignore. First, I’m not sure leaders who do have complete freedom of movement are really in touch with the people they represent either (I wonder if Bush has ever walked around the corner and visited the large tent city of homeless people just a neighborhood away). Secondly, it’s quite possible that even if Arafat were given the opportunity to be a real president, he would not do so (it’s not as though he’s completely without resources now, and his government is no less corrupt than any other government). But it did strike me that I have probably seen more of the Wall and its real effects on the Palestinian people than the Palestinian president himself.
I came home from the meeting and told my host family where I’d been. They were amused. Comments I heard from Palestinians I know well include, "I hope he dies this year" and "He doesn’t want to see us, only you." There’s definitely a healthy amount of criticism, as well as a healthy amount of support for him (I just don’t happen to be friends with the hardcore Fateh people here in Bethlehem).
4) Shereen and Mohammed
In my opinion, the most important people I met in the past week are Shereen and Mohammed. They approached me in the middle of the AEI summer school to thank me for leading the games - they had enjoyed them. "We like to talk to internationals and practice our English," they said. The conversation continued from there. Shereen (16) and Mohammed (15) are sister and brother and live in the Arroub refugee camp in the Hebron region. Shereen is the number one girl in her class, and Mohammed is the number one boy in his school. Both want to go to university in the US, Shereen to be a doctor and Mohammed to be a software engineer. Both want to be famous and help their people. Their English is incredible and the first word that came to me in our conversation was "superhuman."
We continued to spend time together throughout the week, and at the end they invited me to their house. Yesterday I went for lunch. The taxi dropped me next to an army watchtower and pointed across the street to the entrance of the camp. Mohammed came to meet me and took me in to meet the rest of the family. They have three other younger brothers and a sister (6 kids in total). Their mother is an English teacher and father is a civic engineer, so the whole family has an excellent command of English.
I don’t know how to describe how incredible these kids are. First of all, they both seem older than their years. They’re extremely precise with language, Shereen in particular. I’ve noticed often that Palestinians do the same thing in English that I do in Arabic - simplify their thoughts for the purpose of simplifying communication. Shereen does not do this. She communicates complete and complex thoughts, and is patient enough with herself to find the words she needs to do so.
Not surprisingly, their parents are tremendously proud of them. They explained that recently both kids had taken an exam to qualify to participate in an English program in Hebron. They had taken the exam in the beginning of June and as of last week hadn’t received the results, so Dad called up to find out what was going on. Apparently, both Shereen and Mohammed scored exceptionally high - too high, it turns out. There weren’t enough students to form a group at their level. Essentially, the organization said to the parents, "Your children are too smart to be in our program." Shereen was delighted, Mohammed disappointed.
We sat down for lunch. Shereen’s and Mohammed’s mother had made a plate of vegetarian food just for me, and it was delicious. I was sad not to be able to share with them - to eat from the same huge plate everyone else ate from - but it was a lovely meal and I stuffed myself enough to appreciate the walk afterwards. They showed me around the camp, starting with the bullet holes in the curtains and walls of their own house (from an army invasion of the camp 2 years ago, although there have been many since then). We walked outside and I noticed most of the walls on the main street had brightly colored murals. Mohammed told me they had been done by kids in the camp in coordination with a club. The murals were to beautify the camp, to cover up graffiti from various political parties and militant groups. Dad made sure to emphasize that most people are not involved in militant groups, that the graffiti saying, "Those who want peace are cowards" is not representative of the people.
We crossed the settler road in front of the camp and entered the farm on the other side of the street. The farm is owned by the Palestinian Authority, they said, and there’s an agricultural college located there. It was one of the few open green spaces I’ve seen in Palestine (other than the thousands of dunums of olive groves that is the landscape of this place). A kid rode his bike past us, we strolled through, and the cows seemed happy hanging out in the dirt designated for them.
On our tour of the camp, we stopped at the neighbor’s sculpting workshop across the street from Shereen’s and Mohammed’s house. At first I saw only stone bowls and vases, but when Abu Mohammed asked the man to show me something, he pulled a different piece off a shelf. I didn’t recognize the shape at first. "It’s a Palestinian woman," he told me. I saw it then: a pregnant Palestinian woman holding a basket on her head, with the sun on top. "She’s pregnant with peace," said the sculptor. He turned the piece around, and on the back was the same woman with a moon shape carved out of her stomach. "On this side she’s not pregnant," he said, "and there’s no sun." The meaning of the piece, he said, is that different people can see the same situation in different ways. As I stood on the main road in Arroub with a view of the kids in the camp, the farm, the settler road, and the army watchtower, I thought, "This couldn’t be more true."
Wednesday, July 28, 2004
Northern Exposure
This past Saturday, I organized a trip to the north (Hares and Mas’ha - in the Salfit region) for the people in my Arabic study and volunteering program. It began with a 40 minute wait at the Bethlehem checkpoint - that is, 40 minutes with our bus in the front of the line and the soldiers completely ignoring us as they let people through from the other side. Finally I got out of the bus and slowly walked towards the soldiers until they yelled at me in Arabic to stop. I asked what the problem was and told them we were late for our tour in Jerusalem. I must have spoken enough English to confuse them or make them decide that it was more tiresome than desirable to give me a hard time, so they motioned the bus to come forward. It’s always hard to tell whether something like that will work, whether getting out of a bus or car to complain to the soldiers will get us through quicker or slow down the process for everyone. And of course, it was only my status as an international that allowed me to try at all.
The day went smoother after that, and we moved from place to place with ease and on time. Our last stop was Munira and Hani Amer’s house in Mas’ha, the house that is completely enclosed by the Wall, ‘security’ gates, and the settlement fence. Their prison is a microcosm of the prison of Palestine, and the occupation gets played out in front of their house on a daily basis (soldiers harassing them, settler kids throwing stones at their house on Shabbat, etc.). I don’t know that I can ever visit them and be completely happy with what I see, but it was wonderful to see the mural that their children and children’s friends painted last week on the Wall. [Kate was there and wrote a wonderful report about it, which you can find, along with pictures, on the personal blog page of the IWPS website - www.iwps.info - go to link at bottom.] Saturday was also the first time in a long time that I’ve seen Munira and Hani relatively happy. Munira says everytime she looks at the Wall now, she’ll remember who painted which parts of the mural.
After our visit, the Holy Land Trust folks headed back to Bethlehem and I joined the IWPS women for what I thought would be a relaxing evening in Nablus. They had planned to take the evening off and visit the hammaam (Turkish bath). So we headed to Huwara, the main checkpoint into Nablus, and were told that Nablus is closed to internationals. The soldiers claimed they were just trying to protect us - didn’t we know there was an incursion going on? So often I’ve heard soldiers talk about military operations like they’re simple facts of life that humans cannot control, like they’re saying, "Be careful, it’s slippery over there." This time I’m glad I didn’t talk directly with the soldiers, because I probably would have been tempted to say something like, "There’s an incursion going on because you - the Israeli army - are invading," or at least to ask, "Why are you so concerned about me? Isn’t it also dangerous for Palestinians to be there?" In any case, there was no getting through Huwara, and the taxi drivers (who always have the most reliable up-to-date information about the travel situation in Palestine) suggested that the only way we’d get in is by hiking over the mountain. Call us crazy, but we decided to do it. The trip involved a couple cars at the beginning and the end, and about an hour of hiking in the middle. "We’d better not get shot trying to get to the hammaam," we kept half-joking to each other. Luckily we made it without running into any soldiers, and aside from the few cockroaches in the hammaam (and the fact that the sauna felt a bit too much like all of Palestine this time of year), we managed to have a relatively relaxing evening.
It was getting out of Nablus that was anything but relaxing, and certainly reminded me that checkpoints are perhaps the most blatantly frustrating manifestation of the occupation. I figured I would try to go out through Huwara, because it is far quicker than leaving any other way. Since the army didn’t want me in Nablus to begin with, I thought maybe they would let me out. This turned out to be the case (although it wasn’t the case for other IWPSers later), but the treatment of the Palestinians that I witnessed was enough for me to question the humanity of the Israeli soldiers.
I arrived at Huwara with Um Fadi, a friend from Hares who I randomly ran into on the way out of Nablus. We stood in line together, although we decided it would be best for her if we didn’t try to go through together. About 100 women and 50 men were standing in several lines (4 lines for women, 2 for men) waiting for the soldiers to call them forward to show their IDs. I looked around and on all sides saw watchtowers and army vehicles (jeeps, a tank, a camouflage bulldozer). Much has been written about the architecture of checkpoints, but it’s something that particularly struck me on Sunday.
The soldiers stood in front of the lines alternately blocking one or another with concrete blocks, plastic barriers, tables, and anything else they had lying around. At one point a soldier began moving quickly towards one of the men’s lines, pushing them backwards. "Irjaa’, irjaa’" he kept repeating ("go back, go back" in Arabic). He was looking one man in the eye while pointing his gun directly at the man’s groin. It was as clear a power game as I’ve seen. He was obviously trying to provoke the Palestinian man, and occasionally moved his gun up to the man’s stomach. When they were parallel to me, I turned to the soldier and said, "What’s the problem? Is there a problem?" I knew this might diminish my chances of getting through, but I could not stand there without at least letting him know I was watching. The soldier ignored me as I repeated my question. Finally he turned to me and said, "Uskut!" I wanted to correct his grammar, to tell him the appropriate way to say "shut up" to a female in Arabic is "Uskuti," but I thought better of it. He then repeated himself in Hebrew. I asked again, "What’s the problem?" and finally he told me, in Hebrew, that the men needed to stand behind ‘this line’ (he pointed to a random spot on the ground, and turned around and walked away). For the next half hour or so, he called people only from the other men’s line. One at a time, two at a time, four at a time (he would hold up a certain number of fingers, and that many people would be allowed to advance). I remembered a comment I heard recently from a woman in Machsom Watch (an Israeli women’s organization that monitors checkpoints). She said, "Soldiers are always asking why Palestinians can’t stand in a straight line.... Israelis invented not standing in line!"
Meanwhile, I heard another young soldier shouting at the women’s lines. "Lo lazuz!" he kept yelling in Hebrew ("Don’t move"). Apparently a couple of the women were fidgeting under the hot sun as they tried to calm their young children, some of whom were crying. The soldier stood a few meters away and pointed at whichever woman he decided could advance to the next soldier, who was checking IDs. If the wrong woman stepped forward, he would yell at everyone and threaten to send people back to the beginning of the line.
Most of the women had been shopping in Nablus, and the soldier first made them put their bags on a table and take out their contents. Apparently this was not good enough, though, because he stepped forward at one point, picked up a large plastic bag that one of the women was carrying, and dumped it from a height onto the table. "Kulam roim?!" he yelled condescendingly at the crowd ("Does everyone see?"). "This is what you must do," he told them in Hebrew. He then stepped back a few meters again, but enforced this absurd and humiliating rule that all women must pick up their bags and completely dump out their contents, rather than carefully taking their new clothes, books, and food out to be checked.
I struggled to keep my composure during these 45 minutes, and noticed that Um Fadi was making conversation with people and keeping a bit of distance between the person in front of her and herself. Checkpoints, like most lines, are crowded and frustrating, and often people will begin pushing each other to get through. Um Fadi instead created camaraderie among the women around us.
When I was finally chosen to move forward, I handed my passport to a soldier. Without opening it, he held it up for another soldier to see, and though he didn’t say anything, his eyes were asking her, "Should we give this international/American a hard time or not?" She said something about the visa that I didn’t understand, at which point he opened my passport, looked at the picture and the visa, and slowly closed it. He then gave me a look that said, "Okay, time for the power game." I was both tired and frustrated, and decided the best strategy was to look ahead (away from him) as though I was ready to walk away, and put my hand out. Apparently he decided it wasn’t worth the energy to harass me, and after a slight hesitation he put the passport in my hand. I walked away slowly without looking at him, and he didn’t stop me. No words passed between us at all. This doesn’t always work, but on Sunday it did. Of course, I am again aware that most Palestinians would not feel comfortable trying this, and that if they did, it could cause serious problems for them. The power game is always a delicate balance between confidence and obedience. It’s a moral issue, a strategic issue, a political issue, a human issue.
On our way out, I noted about 10 young men - on their way into Nablus - being held in a small concrete pen. I walked past them at first, not wanting to jeopardize my own luck, but then turned around and decided to give them cards with Hamoked’s phone number (Hamoked is an Israeli organization that speaks Arabic and helps fight human rights abuses at checkpoints, among other things). I managed to talk to the men for about a minute before the army seemed to notice. The Palestinian men were slightly confused (I can only imagine what they think when a random foreigner approaches them, gives them a card of an Israeli organization, and tells them to call the phone number on it), but at the end they seemed to understand at least enough to make the decision about whether to call. As soon as the soldiers noticed and started to yell at me, I walked away and caught up to Um Fadi. The soldiers had opened the boxes of pastries she had just bought for the Salfit girls’ summer camp the next day, but otherwise she exited unscathed. She had kept her composure the whole time we stood in the line, but after showing me her open boxes, she threw her hands in the air and said, "They ask why Palestinians make explosives." I responded with something I had been thinking for the past hour, and in general since I first came to Palestine: I am constantly shocked when I see the restraint of Palestinians. I often truly marvel over the fact that there isn’t more violence towards Israelis.
One of our meetings Saturday was with Issa Suf, a friend in Hares who is a long time peace activist and was an athletic trainer before being shot and paralyzed by a soldier almost 3 years ago. He has recently written a letter to the soldier who shot him, telling him that he feels only pity, and not anger, towards that soldier and all other soldiers. One of the internationals in our group Saturday said he finds that sentiment almost incomprehensible, and asked Issa what he thought of an early Malcolm X quote that went something like this: "To respond to violence with nonviolence is not only wrong, it is criminal." Issa replied: "I know it is much harder to use nonviolence than to use violence, but it’s the right thing to do. Violence is just not what we are taught. It’s not part of our culture or our religion." I think this is ultimately true. Inshalla (God-willing), the world will someday soon realize the simple truth that Palestinians are overwhelmingly a peaceful people. Maybe justice can unfold from there.
Seeking peace, justice, and truth,
Hannah
The day went smoother after that, and we moved from place to place with ease and on time. Our last stop was Munira and Hani Amer’s house in Mas’ha, the house that is completely enclosed by the Wall, ‘security’ gates, and the settlement fence. Their prison is a microcosm of the prison of Palestine, and the occupation gets played out in front of their house on a daily basis (soldiers harassing them, settler kids throwing stones at their house on Shabbat, etc.). I don’t know that I can ever visit them and be completely happy with what I see, but it was wonderful to see the mural that their children and children’s friends painted last week on the Wall. [Kate was there and wrote a wonderful report about it, which you can find, along with pictures, on the personal blog page of the IWPS website - www.iwps.info - go to link at bottom.] Saturday was also the first time in a long time that I’ve seen Munira and Hani relatively happy. Munira says everytime she looks at the Wall now, she’ll remember who painted which parts of the mural.
After our visit, the Holy Land Trust folks headed back to Bethlehem and I joined the IWPS women for what I thought would be a relaxing evening in Nablus. They had planned to take the evening off and visit the hammaam (Turkish bath). So we headed to Huwara, the main checkpoint into Nablus, and were told that Nablus is closed to internationals. The soldiers claimed they were just trying to protect us - didn’t we know there was an incursion going on? So often I’ve heard soldiers talk about military operations like they’re simple facts of life that humans cannot control, like they’re saying, "Be careful, it’s slippery over there." This time I’m glad I didn’t talk directly with the soldiers, because I probably would have been tempted to say something like, "There’s an incursion going on because you - the Israeli army - are invading," or at least to ask, "Why are you so concerned about me? Isn’t it also dangerous for Palestinians to be there?" In any case, there was no getting through Huwara, and the taxi drivers (who always have the most reliable up-to-date information about the travel situation in Palestine) suggested that the only way we’d get in is by hiking over the mountain. Call us crazy, but we decided to do it. The trip involved a couple cars at the beginning and the end, and about an hour of hiking in the middle. "We’d better not get shot trying to get to the hammaam," we kept half-joking to each other. Luckily we made it without running into any soldiers, and aside from the few cockroaches in the hammaam (and the fact that the sauna felt a bit too much like all of Palestine this time of year), we managed to have a relatively relaxing evening.
It was getting out of Nablus that was anything but relaxing, and certainly reminded me that checkpoints are perhaps the most blatantly frustrating manifestation of the occupation. I figured I would try to go out through Huwara, because it is far quicker than leaving any other way. Since the army didn’t want me in Nablus to begin with, I thought maybe they would let me out. This turned out to be the case (although it wasn’t the case for other IWPSers later), but the treatment of the Palestinians that I witnessed was enough for me to question the humanity of the Israeli soldiers.
I arrived at Huwara with Um Fadi, a friend from Hares who I randomly ran into on the way out of Nablus. We stood in line together, although we decided it would be best for her if we didn’t try to go through together. About 100 women and 50 men were standing in several lines (4 lines for women, 2 for men) waiting for the soldiers to call them forward to show their IDs. I looked around and on all sides saw watchtowers and army vehicles (jeeps, a tank, a camouflage bulldozer). Much has been written about the architecture of checkpoints, but it’s something that particularly struck me on Sunday.
The soldiers stood in front of the lines alternately blocking one or another with concrete blocks, plastic barriers, tables, and anything else they had lying around. At one point a soldier began moving quickly towards one of the men’s lines, pushing them backwards. "Irjaa’, irjaa’" he kept repeating ("go back, go back" in Arabic). He was looking one man in the eye while pointing his gun directly at the man’s groin. It was as clear a power game as I’ve seen. He was obviously trying to provoke the Palestinian man, and occasionally moved his gun up to the man’s stomach. When they were parallel to me, I turned to the soldier and said, "What’s the problem? Is there a problem?" I knew this might diminish my chances of getting through, but I could not stand there without at least letting him know I was watching. The soldier ignored me as I repeated my question. Finally he turned to me and said, "Uskut!" I wanted to correct his grammar, to tell him the appropriate way to say "shut up" to a female in Arabic is "Uskuti," but I thought better of it. He then repeated himself in Hebrew. I asked again, "What’s the problem?" and finally he told me, in Hebrew, that the men needed to stand behind ‘this line’ (he pointed to a random spot on the ground, and turned around and walked away). For the next half hour or so, he called people only from the other men’s line. One at a time, two at a time, four at a time (he would hold up a certain number of fingers, and that many people would be allowed to advance). I remembered a comment I heard recently from a woman in Machsom Watch (an Israeli women’s organization that monitors checkpoints). She said, "Soldiers are always asking why Palestinians can’t stand in a straight line.... Israelis invented not standing in line!"
Meanwhile, I heard another young soldier shouting at the women’s lines. "Lo lazuz!" he kept yelling in Hebrew ("Don’t move"). Apparently a couple of the women were fidgeting under the hot sun as they tried to calm their young children, some of whom were crying. The soldier stood a few meters away and pointed at whichever woman he decided could advance to the next soldier, who was checking IDs. If the wrong woman stepped forward, he would yell at everyone and threaten to send people back to the beginning of the line.
Most of the women had been shopping in Nablus, and the soldier first made them put their bags on a table and take out their contents. Apparently this was not good enough, though, because he stepped forward at one point, picked up a large plastic bag that one of the women was carrying, and dumped it from a height onto the table. "Kulam roim?!" he yelled condescendingly at the crowd ("Does everyone see?"). "This is what you must do," he told them in Hebrew. He then stepped back a few meters again, but enforced this absurd and humiliating rule that all women must pick up their bags and completely dump out their contents, rather than carefully taking their new clothes, books, and food out to be checked.
I struggled to keep my composure during these 45 minutes, and noticed that Um Fadi was making conversation with people and keeping a bit of distance between the person in front of her and herself. Checkpoints, like most lines, are crowded and frustrating, and often people will begin pushing each other to get through. Um Fadi instead created camaraderie among the women around us.
When I was finally chosen to move forward, I handed my passport to a soldier. Without opening it, he held it up for another soldier to see, and though he didn’t say anything, his eyes were asking her, "Should we give this international/American a hard time or not?" She said something about the visa that I didn’t understand, at which point he opened my passport, looked at the picture and the visa, and slowly closed it. He then gave me a look that said, "Okay, time for the power game." I was both tired and frustrated, and decided the best strategy was to look ahead (away from him) as though I was ready to walk away, and put my hand out. Apparently he decided it wasn’t worth the energy to harass me, and after a slight hesitation he put the passport in my hand. I walked away slowly without looking at him, and he didn’t stop me. No words passed between us at all. This doesn’t always work, but on Sunday it did. Of course, I am again aware that most Palestinians would not feel comfortable trying this, and that if they did, it could cause serious problems for them. The power game is always a delicate balance between confidence and obedience. It’s a moral issue, a strategic issue, a political issue, a human issue.
On our way out, I noted about 10 young men - on their way into Nablus - being held in a small concrete pen. I walked past them at first, not wanting to jeopardize my own luck, but then turned around and decided to give them cards with Hamoked’s phone number (Hamoked is an Israeli organization that speaks Arabic and helps fight human rights abuses at checkpoints, among other things). I managed to talk to the men for about a minute before the army seemed to notice. The Palestinian men were slightly confused (I can only imagine what they think when a random foreigner approaches them, gives them a card of an Israeli organization, and tells them to call the phone number on it), but at the end they seemed to understand at least enough to make the decision about whether to call. As soon as the soldiers noticed and started to yell at me, I walked away and caught up to Um Fadi. The soldiers had opened the boxes of pastries she had just bought for the Salfit girls’ summer camp the next day, but otherwise she exited unscathed. She had kept her composure the whole time we stood in the line, but after showing me her open boxes, she threw her hands in the air and said, "They ask why Palestinians make explosives." I responded with something I had been thinking for the past hour, and in general since I first came to Palestine: I am constantly shocked when I see the restraint of Palestinians. I often truly marvel over the fact that there isn’t more violence towards Israelis.
One of our meetings Saturday was with Issa Suf, a friend in Hares who is a long time peace activist and was an athletic trainer before being shot and paralyzed by a soldier almost 3 years ago. He has recently written a letter to the soldier who shot him, telling him that he feels only pity, and not anger, towards that soldier and all other soldiers. One of the internationals in our group Saturday said he finds that sentiment almost incomprehensible, and asked Issa what he thought of an early Malcolm X quote that went something like this: "To respond to violence with nonviolence is not only wrong, it is criminal." Issa replied: "I know it is much harder to use nonviolence than to use violence, but it’s the right thing to do. Violence is just not what we are taught. It’s not part of our culture or our religion." I think this is ultimately true. Inshalla (God-willing), the world will someday soon realize the simple truth that Palestinians are overwhelmingly a peaceful people. Maybe justice can unfold from there.
Seeking peace, justice, and truth,
Hannah
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