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
Sunday, August 29, 2004
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
Friday, July 23, 2004
My Life in Bethlehem
Hello friends. I've been in Bethlehem for a week and a half now, and time is moving quickly. I'm busy with many projects and I'm exhausted, but it's a welcome exhaustion borne of concrete and tangible work and not simply the general emotional exhaustion of living in Palestine.
I want to modify a statement I made in my last report. I called Bethlehem one of the "deadest cities I've seen". I think instead that life is more concentrated here. In the outskirts of the city few shops are open and I don't see many people on the streets, but the marketplace is thriving and there seems to be a bit of a night life. Or at least enough of a night life to draw a lively crowd at a hip hop show I attended last weekend. The group is called Dam, meaning 'eternity' in Arabic, and their signature song is 'Who's a terrorist?' I wish I could have understood more of their lyrics, but it was nice simply to be in a room with politically charged music and to witness the young Palestinian hip hop scene (young both in the sense that it's just beginning to develop and also literally the age of the crowd (mostly pre-teens and teenagers). Dam is from Lod, a town within the current borders of Israel (quite close to the airport) that is split between Palestinians and poor Jewish immigrants. There's apparently a wall between the Palestinians and the Jews in Lod, similar to the wall being built through the West Bank. I hear that people are shocked when they go there, which I plan to do with a delegation from Boston at the end of August.
Preparing for this Boston delegation has been one of my time-consuming projects, but one that I'm most excited about. The more I work in Palestine, the more convinced I become that people need to come here and see for themselves what is happening. To get acquainted with Palestinian life to some degree, and to experience what it means to live under occupation. Of course I will never feel exactly the way a Palestinian feels, but the closer I can get, the more effective I think I am in my work for justice. [Anyone who's interested in coming here, please contact me. I'd love to give you suggestions or help plan an itinerary for a group.]
I've been practicing for the delegation by playing tour guide a few times in the past couple days. A friend of mine from college just participated in the Birthright Israel trip (a free trip to Israel for young people who haven't been to Israel before). She and another participant were exhausted from the Israeli propaganda they received over the past week, and wanted to come see a bit from the other side. I showed them around Bethlehem (to the best of my ability), and told them a bit about the Wall and the settlements. Last night the other folks in the Palestine Summer Encounter program came to Dheisheh to take a tour with my host father. I didn't do all that much work beyond arranging the trip, but tomorrow I'll take the group to the Salfit region and really will act as a tour guide for the day.
I'm working with two Palestinian organizations here. Shiraa, the Laborers' Association for Studies and Development, is entirely run by volunteers and has no money, but does excellent work (Abu Rabia, my host father and director of Shiraa, actually attributes Shiraa's effectiveness to its lack of money, although at this point he'd be happy to have a bit of funding for some of the projects). Shiraa has taken a lead role in supporting the municipality workers in the Bethlehem area, who have been on strike for a couple weeks because they have not been paid in several months. The organization supports families as well, through English classes, a women's embroidery cooperative, a dabke troupe and other youth activities, etc. I plan to help with the embroidery cooperative for the short time that I'm here, specifically in regards to worldwide distribution (so if you have ideas, please let me know!).
The other organization I'm working with, the Arab Educational Institute (AEI), focuses on nonviolent education with both Christian and Muslim Palestinians. Their 'summer school' (a week of presentations and workshops about nonviolent change, cooperation, and more) is coming up next week, and I'm charged with preparing the icebreaking activities for the week. It's been interesting trying to convey my ideas to people from a different culture and in a different context than I'm used to. After the summer school ends, I hope to work on another project: conducting interviews with some of the young people from AEI who have traveled abroad to attend conferences or speak. I'll pose tough questions to them to see how they each choose to 'communicate Palestine,' and possibly offer some of my own thoughts at the end.
It seems I've written a full e-mail about work, but I'm learning just as much from my wonderful host family as I am from all the projects I'm trying to coordinate. The oldest kid, Rabia, is a good language study partner, and I've played card games and chess with the other three (although the youngest, Yazzin, is a 10-year-old clown who never misses an opportunity to cheat). I attended my first Muslim wedding a few nights ago, and while I didn't always appreciate being in a small room with about 75 women while the men were dancing outside, I did notice that the teenage girls danced freely with the older women, and the self-consciousness level was considerably lower than I've seen in mixed gender groups (in Palestine, the US, and everywhere else I've been).
More next week, but for now, that's my update from the holy land.
-Hannah
I want to modify a statement I made in my last report. I called Bethlehem one of the "deadest cities I've seen". I think instead that life is more concentrated here. In the outskirts of the city few shops are open and I don't see many people on the streets, but the marketplace is thriving and there seems to be a bit of a night life. Or at least enough of a night life to draw a lively crowd at a hip hop show I attended last weekend. The group is called Dam, meaning 'eternity' in Arabic, and their signature song is 'Who's a terrorist?' I wish I could have understood more of their lyrics, but it was nice simply to be in a room with politically charged music and to witness the young Palestinian hip hop scene (young both in the sense that it's just beginning to develop and also literally the age of the crowd (mostly pre-teens and teenagers). Dam is from Lod, a town within the current borders of Israel (quite close to the airport) that is split between Palestinians and poor Jewish immigrants. There's apparently a wall between the Palestinians and the Jews in Lod, similar to the wall being built through the West Bank. I hear that people are shocked when they go there, which I plan to do with a delegation from Boston at the end of August.
Preparing for this Boston delegation has been one of my time-consuming projects, but one that I'm most excited about. The more I work in Palestine, the more convinced I become that people need to come here and see for themselves what is happening. To get acquainted with Palestinian life to some degree, and to experience what it means to live under occupation. Of course I will never feel exactly the way a Palestinian feels, but the closer I can get, the more effective I think I am in my work for justice. [Anyone who's interested in coming here, please contact me. I'd love to give you suggestions or help plan an itinerary for a group.]
I've been practicing for the delegation by playing tour guide a few times in the past couple days. A friend of mine from college just participated in the Birthright Israel trip (a free trip to Israel for young people who haven't been to Israel before). She and another participant were exhausted from the Israeli propaganda they received over the past week, and wanted to come see a bit from the other side. I showed them around Bethlehem (to the best of my ability), and told them a bit about the Wall and the settlements. Last night the other folks in the Palestine Summer Encounter program came to Dheisheh to take a tour with my host father. I didn't do all that much work beyond arranging the trip, but tomorrow I'll take the group to the Salfit region and really will act as a tour guide for the day.
I'm working with two Palestinian organizations here. Shiraa, the Laborers' Association for Studies and Development, is entirely run by volunteers and has no money, but does excellent work (Abu Rabia, my host father and director of Shiraa, actually attributes Shiraa's effectiveness to its lack of money, although at this point he'd be happy to have a bit of funding for some of the projects). Shiraa has taken a lead role in supporting the municipality workers in the Bethlehem area, who have been on strike for a couple weeks because they have not been paid in several months. The organization supports families as well, through English classes, a women's embroidery cooperative, a dabke troupe and other youth activities, etc. I plan to help with the embroidery cooperative for the short time that I'm here, specifically in regards to worldwide distribution (so if you have ideas, please let me know!).
The other organization I'm working with, the Arab Educational Institute (AEI), focuses on nonviolent education with both Christian and Muslim Palestinians. Their 'summer school' (a week of presentations and workshops about nonviolent change, cooperation, and more) is coming up next week, and I'm charged with preparing the icebreaking activities for the week. It's been interesting trying to convey my ideas to people from a different culture and in a different context than I'm used to. After the summer school ends, I hope to work on another project: conducting interviews with some of the young people from AEI who have traveled abroad to attend conferences or speak. I'll pose tough questions to them to see how they each choose to 'communicate Palestine,' and possibly offer some of my own thoughts at the end.
It seems I've written a full e-mail about work, but I'm learning just as much from my wonderful host family as I am from all the projects I'm trying to coordinate. The oldest kid, Rabia, is a good language study partner, and I've played card games and chess with the other three (although the youngest, Yazzin, is a 10-year-old clown who never misses an opportunity to cheat). I attended my first Muslim wedding a few nights ago, and while I didn't always appreciate being in a small room with about 75 women while the men were dancing outside, I did notice that the teenage girls danced freely with the older women, and the self-consciousness level was considerably lower than I've seen in mixed gender groups (in Palestine, the US, and everywhere else I've been).
More next week, but for now, that's my update from the holy land.
-Hannah
Thursday, July 15, 2004
Bethlehem: First Impressions
Dear friends,
I write to you from the Dheisheh refugee camp in Bethlehem, where I’ll be spending my next month. I’ve been here for two nights and three days now, and I’ve already learned how to play new card games, roll grape leaves, and say “Go jump in a lake” in Arabic (who said Arabic classes aren’t useful?).
Before talking about my first impressions here, though, I’ll briefly address a question several of you have asked me: What impact did/will the International Court of Justice (ICJ) decision have in Palestine? For those of you who don’t know, the ICJ ruled on Friday that Israel’s construction of the Wall must immediately stop, that all sections already built must be dismantled, and that Israel must pay reparations to the Palestinians who have lost land and incurred damages. The vote was 14-1. Guess which country’s judge voted against it. I’ll give you a hint: the Marshall Islands didn’t have a judge.
So, what impact will it have? Well, I think it gave a bit of a boost to Palestinian activists and politicians with an awareness of international politics. Many of the villages have been working through the Israeli courts, so they’re probably paying attention to this as well. Do I think the UN will try to enforce the decision? Not at all. A few internationals and Israelis may try to enforce it in our own way, but I’ll save that for another e-mail. I do think that every bit of international pressure helps, and I’m guessing it’s no coincidence that the Israeli courts have granted temporary injunctions against Wall-building in many villages recently. I don’t know how long it will last, and the US certainly isn’t helping with its new resolution to condemn the court and support Israel’s continued building of the Wall, but the ICJ decision was a step in the right direction nonetheless.
But back to Bethlehem. I arrived on Tuesday and was greeted by a huge concrete wall with a Caterpillar bulldozer sitting in front of it. I asked the man who was trying to sell me a stuffed camel about the path of the Wall, and he pointed in every direction. Small sections have been built everywhere, and Bethlehem is completely surrounded by settlements, which doesn’t bode well for the rest of the Wall’s construction. On the other hand, there are already so many walls and restrictions in the area that people are unsure whether the Wall will even have much of an impact. My host father took me around Dheisheh my first day here, and every few minutes he’d point to the left or the right and say, “forest of concrete.” The paths are narrow, the walls are high, and there’s very little green. My family has a beautiful garden, though. The only problem is the lack of water (although it does keep the mosquitos away!).
Dheisheh is only 1 square kilometer in size, but over 13,000 people live here. They represent 49 different villages from pre-1948 Palestine. The camp was established in 1948 as a temporary camp (like in most refugee situations, they thought they’d be able to return soon). The tents turned into small shacks around 1956, and sometime in the 1980s the shacks became houses. Slightly more room inside now, but less room outside. There seem to be very few places in the camp where cars can drive.
On our way home, Abu Rabia (my host father – yes, he has the same name as IWPS’s landlord in Hares) stopped at a house that had been demolished the night before. At least 20 or 30 people were sitting outside, presumably all people who lived there or members of the family. Some young women and men were carrying furniture out from inside the demolished house, tiptoeing around the broken glass. I asked Abu Rabia why the house had been demolished. So many times I’ve asked ‘why’ in Palestine and simply been laughed at, but the privileged and naïve American in me still can’t accept that all of this happens for no reason, or at least with no justification. But often it does. Abu Rabia simply shrugged his shoulders and said, “Their son is in prison.”
I’ve noticed, to my surprise, that social norms are less conservative in Dheisheh than in Hares and the other villages I know up north. I’m guessing this is because of its proximity to the city of Bethlehem. The whole camp is Muslim, but many women don’t wear the hijab, and I’ve seen more young women outside than I do in Hares. Many of them probably work in the city – either Bethlehem or another one. My host mother, Najah, works in an elderly home in West Jerusalem. She’s been working there for 8 years, and before the Intifada she could get there in 15 minutes and had a permit to work. Now she’s technically working illegally and it takes her 4 hours to sneak around checkpoints and climb fences to get there. She gets up at 3 in the morning and leaves at 4 to get there at 8. She works until 1, and is home by 2 (it’s much easier to come out of Jerusalem than to go in). I honestly don’t know how she does it. Like most women in the world, her work doesn’t end when she leaves her paying job. I’m grateful that she lets me wash dishes and help her roll grape leaves, both because it makes her work a tiny bit easier and it because it makes me feel like this really is my home.
Yesterday the Holy Land Trust folks took us on a tour of Bethlehem. [The program I’m doing, Palestine Summer Encounter, is through the Holy Land Trust.] Bethlehem is one of the deadest cities I’ve seen in Palestine, and apparently this has been the case since the Intifada began, and specifically since the Israeli army siege of Bethlehem in 2002. Our tour guide took us to the Church of Nativity, where Jesus is said to have been born. On our way out, he pointed to the bullet holes left over from the siege, when a couple hundred people – militants and others – had taken refuge in the church. The blend of sacred history with current reality seems to be a constant here in Bethlehem. When our guide showed us the taxi routes on the map, he pointed to Rachel’s tomb. This holy site for Jews, Christians, and Muslims is now part of a military base, and Israel apparently plans to annex it with the Wall. The taxis currently go near Rachel’s tomb, and from there it is about a 7 minute walk to the checkpoint.
I’m still getting settled and still learning, but already I can tell how different this place is to where I’ve been before. I called IWPS today just to check in, and found out that the whole area has been closed for at least 2 days, that people have been stopped at flying checkpoints all day, and that the army was shooting in Mas’ha last night. Part of me felt a pang of guilt that I wasn’t there, but I also know there’s probably not much I could do if I were there, other than to tell you all a different story than what I’m telling now. So many stories to be told…
In the spirit of talking and listening,
Hannah
I write to you from the Dheisheh refugee camp in Bethlehem, where I’ll be spending my next month. I’ve been here for two nights and three days now, and I’ve already learned how to play new card games, roll grape leaves, and say “Go jump in a lake” in Arabic (who said Arabic classes aren’t useful?).
Before talking about my first impressions here, though, I’ll briefly address a question several of you have asked me: What impact did/will the International Court of Justice (ICJ) decision have in Palestine? For those of you who don’t know, the ICJ ruled on Friday that Israel’s construction of the Wall must immediately stop, that all sections already built must be dismantled, and that Israel must pay reparations to the Palestinians who have lost land and incurred damages. The vote was 14-1. Guess which country’s judge voted against it. I’ll give you a hint: the Marshall Islands didn’t have a judge.
So, what impact will it have? Well, I think it gave a bit of a boost to Palestinian activists and politicians with an awareness of international politics. Many of the villages have been working through the Israeli courts, so they’re probably paying attention to this as well. Do I think the UN will try to enforce the decision? Not at all. A few internationals and Israelis may try to enforce it in our own way, but I’ll save that for another e-mail. I do think that every bit of international pressure helps, and I’m guessing it’s no coincidence that the Israeli courts have granted temporary injunctions against Wall-building in many villages recently. I don’t know how long it will last, and the US certainly isn’t helping with its new resolution to condemn the court and support Israel’s continued building of the Wall, but the ICJ decision was a step in the right direction nonetheless.
But back to Bethlehem. I arrived on Tuesday and was greeted by a huge concrete wall with a Caterpillar bulldozer sitting in front of it. I asked the man who was trying to sell me a stuffed camel about the path of the Wall, and he pointed in every direction. Small sections have been built everywhere, and Bethlehem is completely surrounded by settlements, which doesn’t bode well for the rest of the Wall’s construction. On the other hand, there are already so many walls and restrictions in the area that people are unsure whether the Wall will even have much of an impact. My host father took me around Dheisheh my first day here, and every few minutes he’d point to the left or the right and say, “forest of concrete.” The paths are narrow, the walls are high, and there’s very little green. My family has a beautiful garden, though. The only problem is the lack of water (although it does keep the mosquitos away!).
Dheisheh is only 1 square kilometer in size, but over 13,000 people live here. They represent 49 different villages from pre-1948 Palestine. The camp was established in 1948 as a temporary camp (like in most refugee situations, they thought they’d be able to return soon). The tents turned into small shacks around 1956, and sometime in the 1980s the shacks became houses. Slightly more room inside now, but less room outside. There seem to be very few places in the camp where cars can drive.
On our way home, Abu Rabia (my host father – yes, he has the same name as IWPS’s landlord in Hares) stopped at a house that had been demolished the night before. At least 20 or 30 people were sitting outside, presumably all people who lived there or members of the family. Some young women and men were carrying furniture out from inside the demolished house, tiptoeing around the broken glass. I asked Abu Rabia why the house had been demolished. So many times I’ve asked ‘why’ in Palestine and simply been laughed at, but the privileged and naïve American in me still can’t accept that all of this happens for no reason, or at least with no justification. But often it does. Abu Rabia simply shrugged his shoulders and said, “Their son is in prison.”
I’ve noticed, to my surprise, that social norms are less conservative in Dheisheh than in Hares and the other villages I know up north. I’m guessing this is because of its proximity to the city of Bethlehem. The whole camp is Muslim, but many women don’t wear the hijab, and I’ve seen more young women outside than I do in Hares. Many of them probably work in the city – either Bethlehem or another one. My host mother, Najah, works in an elderly home in West Jerusalem. She’s been working there for 8 years, and before the Intifada she could get there in 15 minutes and had a permit to work. Now she’s technically working illegally and it takes her 4 hours to sneak around checkpoints and climb fences to get there. She gets up at 3 in the morning and leaves at 4 to get there at 8. She works until 1, and is home by 2 (it’s much easier to come out of Jerusalem than to go in). I honestly don’t know how she does it. Like most women in the world, her work doesn’t end when she leaves her paying job. I’m grateful that she lets me wash dishes and help her roll grape leaves, both because it makes her work a tiny bit easier and it because it makes me feel like this really is my home.
Yesterday the Holy Land Trust folks took us on a tour of Bethlehem. [The program I’m doing, Palestine Summer Encounter, is through the Holy Land Trust.] Bethlehem is one of the deadest cities I’ve seen in Palestine, and apparently this has been the case since the Intifada began, and specifically since the Israeli army siege of Bethlehem in 2002. Our tour guide took us to the Church of Nativity, where Jesus is said to have been born. On our way out, he pointed to the bullet holes left over from the siege, when a couple hundred people – militants and others – had taken refuge in the church. The blend of sacred history with current reality seems to be a constant here in Bethlehem. When our guide showed us the taxi routes on the map, he pointed to Rachel’s tomb. This holy site for Jews, Christians, and Muslims is now part of a military base, and Israel apparently plans to annex it with the Wall. The taxis currently go near Rachel’s tomb, and from there it is about a 7 minute walk to the checkpoint.
I’m still getting settled and still learning, but already I can tell how different this place is to where I’ve been before. I called IWPS today just to check in, and found out that the whole area has been closed for at least 2 days, that people have been stopped at flying checkpoints all day, and that the army was shooting in Mas’ha last night. Part of me felt a pang of guilt that I wasn’t there, but I also know there’s probably not much I could do if I were there, other than to tell you all a different story than what I’m telling now. So many stories to be told…
In the spirit of talking and listening,
Hannah
Monday, July 12, 2004
Farenheit 120
Okay, so maybe it's not quite 120 degrees here (although I hear it's about that in Baghdad right now), but it certainly feels like it at times. Especially in Tel Aviv. That's right, I'm back in Tel Aviv for the day. I don't know how I went two months last time I was here with virtually no break, because now after only a month I'm desperately needing these few days I have before heading to Bethlehem.
The Salfit region has been relatively quiet recently, although I'm not sure exactly what I mean when I say that. Maybe it's just that there haven't been as many demonstrations, and most of the work on the Wall has temporarily stopped in our area, so when things do happen, I just don't know about them right away. The IDF invaded the village of Rafat last week, not far from us, but I was sleeping soundly in my bed in Hares. I went to take pictures and talk to families the following day, but by that time it was 'quiet.' Of course, the army came back every night that week to throw sound bombs from 11pm until 5am. Certainly not your typical definition of quiet, but I don't think anyone was injured or killed. Not there, anyway. Nablus and Gaza are a different story, of course. I think there were 17 Palestinians killed in one day last week. But I just read it in the news, like the rest of the world. It's amazing how close we really have to be, how much we really have to see with our own eyes, before true empathy can surface. Sometimes. I guess the pain might overwhelm us if the empathy were present all the time. But it does frustrate me. For myself, and for all of you who are out there reading and who I desperately want to understand aspects of my experience, of Palestinian experience, of Israeli experience.
I've been having more and more conversations with Israelis recently in which they've told me that they're completely depressed, that their country is suffering from a deep and unrecoverable psychosis, that they want to get out of here. These are people who have and haven't served in the army. Especially the ones who have served recently - kids whose political awareness and conviction were not quite strong enough at age 17 or 18 to stand against their families and their countries and refuse to serve. And I think of myself at age 17/18, spending a year in Israel before going to college, believing in peace as an abstract concept but not yet aware that the very things I'd been taught to love most were the things that most obstructed the possibilities of peace in this region. So these women tell me of their roles as commanders, training hundreds of soldiers to use weapons while they themselves are suffering nervous breakdowns and are heavily medicated for depression. One tells me that her brother used to come to all the peace rallies with her when she got out and he was still in high school. Now he's driving a tank in Gaza.
I think it will take longer for deep and lasting change from the Israeli side than from the Palestinian side. From what I've seen, the hatred is both deeper and more ideological. Palestinian hatred for Israelis gets expressed in very concrete and tangible terms of loss - my brother, my son, my house, my land, my job, my freedom of movement, etc. Israeli hatred for Palestinians gets expressed through fear, misconception, paranoia, racism. Not that Israelis have nothing tangible to fear, but I think the hatred comes from a different place and goes beyond reality in a way that I haven't seen as much from Palestinians. It's not easy to express what I'm trying to say. It's not easy to ascertain in the first place. And it's certainly not easy for me as a Jew to accept that the global representation of Judaism has strayed so far from any Jewish values I might want to identify with myself.
I saw Fahrenheit 9/11 last night here in Tel Aviv. Maybe my expectations were too high, but I have to say I wasn't impressed. Or let me say that a different way: I think the movie wasn't made for me. I think it was made for the 'mainstream American public' (whatever that might mean). The film plays on the same fear of terror in general, and Arabs in particular, as it tries to denounce. It could, however, prove to be an extremely useful propaganda tool; if Americans add Bush to their/our list of fears, maybe we really can get him out in November (now we just need a real candidate to run against him...). The point, though, is that Moore is a smart man who knows his audience, and he knows that the best way to affect the most people at this point is through fear. I personally would have preferred compassion - not only for the families of a few American soldiers (which he does quite effectively), but also for Iraqis, Afghanis, Saudis, etc. Compassion for 'the other.' Are we not there yet? When will be at a place where compassion can be as powerful and as effective as fear? Especially in America. Especially in Israel.
Still hoping somewhere deep inside that our creativity can see us through this,
Hannah
The Salfit region has been relatively quiet recently, although I'm not sure exactly what I mean when I say that. Maybe it's just that there haven't been as many demonstrations, and most of the work on the Wall has temporarily stopped in our area, so when things do happen, I just don't know about them right away. The IDF invaded the village of Rafat last week, not far from us, but I was sleeping soundly in my bed in Hares. I went to take pictures and talk to families the following day, but by that time it was 'quiet.' Of course, the army came back every night that week to throw sound bombs from 11pm until 5am. Certainly not your typical definition of quiet, but I don't think anyone was injured or killed. Not there, anyway. Nablus and Gaza are a different story, of course. I think there were 17 Palestinians killed in one day last week. But I just read it in the news, like the rest of the world. It's amazing how close we really have to be, how much we really have to see with our own eyes, before true empathy can surface. Sometimes. I guess the pain might overwhelm us if the empathy were present all the time. But it does frustrate me. For myself, and for all of you who are out there reading and who I desperately want to understand aspects of my experience, of Palestinian experience, of Israeli experience.
I've been having more and more conversations with Israelis recently in which they've told me that they're completely depressed, that their country is suffering from a deep and unrecoverable psychosis, that they want to get out of here. These are people who have and haven't served in the army. Especially the ones who have served recently - kids whose political awareness and conviction were not quite strong enough at age 17 or 18 to stand against their families and their countries and refuse to serve. And I think of myself at age 17/18, spending a year in Israel before going to college, believing in peace as an abstract concept but not yet aware that the very things I'd been taught to love most were the things that most obstructed the possibilities of peace in this region. So these women tell me of their roles as commanders, training hundreds of soldiers to use weapons while they themselves are suffering nervous breakdowns and are heavily medicated for depression. One tells me that her brother used to come to all the peace rallies with her when she got out and he was still in high school. Now he's driving a tank in Gaza.
I think it will take longer for deep and lasting change from the Israeli side than from the Palestinian side. From what I've seen, the hatred is both deeper and more ideological. Palestinian hatred for Israelis gets expressed in very concrete and tangible terms of loss - my brother, my son, my house, my land, my job, my freedom of movement, etc. Israeli hatred for Palestinians gets expressed through fear, misconception, paranoia, racism. Not that Israelis have nothing tangible to fear, but I think the hatred comes from a different place and goes beyond reality in a way that I haven't seen as much from Palestinians. It's not easy to express what I'm trying to say. It's not easy to ascertain in the first place. And it's certainly not easy for me as a Jew to accept that the global representation of Judaism has strayed so far from any Jewish values I might want to identify with myself.
I saw Fahrenheit 9/11 last night here in Tel Aviv. Maybe my expectations were too high, but I have to say I wasn't impressed. Or let me say that a different way: I think the movie wasn't made for me. I think it was made for the 'mainstream American public' (whatever that might mean). The film plays on the same fear of terror in general, and Arabs in particular, as it tries to denounce. It could, however, prove to be an extremely useful propaganda tool; if Americans add Bush to their/our list of fears, maybe we really can get him out in November (now we just need a real candidate to run against him...). The point, though, is that Moore is a smart man who knows his audience, and he knows that the best way to affect the most people at this point is through fear. I personally would have preferred compassion - not only for the families of a few American soldiers (which he does quite effectively), but also for Iraqis, Afghanis, Saudis, etc. Compassion for 'the other.' Are we not there yet? When will be at a place where compassion can be as powerful and as effective as fear? Especially in America. Especially in Israel.
Still hoping somewhere deep inside that our creativity can see us through this,
Hannah
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