Finding Tonys house in Jerusalem

“Blanket German support for Zionism is wrong as well as foolish; it’s not good for Germany or for the Jews in the long run, and it’s an insult to the Judaism that flourished in Germany for many hundreds of years before the Holocaust. It’s also a sign that the lessons of the Holocaust have not really been learned except in the most vulgar way: Never Again should this happen to the Jews — is that all we’ve learned?”  Jeremy Milgrom:  http://jeremy-milgrom.livejournal.com/

We made our way into Jerusalem with a picture of a picture from an old newspaper clipping and some vague directions.  Go past the YMCA, make a right at the olive groves, walk for five minutes and the Minerva (or Shiber) house is on the corner on the right hand side.  We did not know whether the house was still in existence or recognizable by these 60 year old directions.  Yet somehow finding the  home Tonys father was born in, and forcibly kicked out of in 1948, was incredibly simple and full of interesting surprises!

Tonys father was around the age of 11 when Zionist soldiers came to the doorstep and informed them that they have 48 hours to vacate the home in the West Jerusalem neighborhood of Talbieh.  Many of the events surrounding this pivotal moment in Tonys history are vague and unknown. This seems to be typical of many refugee families as it almost seems that the trauma is too painful to remember with the vividness in which it happened.

The same is true for my family, in fact I didn’t know that my father was a refugee until very recently.  Another friend of mine who is also a refugee knows very little about the trip that sent his family into exile in Jordan.  Many times it takes the questioning and digging of the children and grandchildren to get the full story. Furthermore, Tonys father and Grandfather George Shiber (the architect who built the house) have never been back to their home in Jerusalem.

In some ways I don’t blame them, how difficult it must be to revisit a trauma that has been denied the premise of its irritation and never given justice.  My father tells me stories of being questioned and strip-searched at the border and airport.  What a horrifying experience, to be harassed each time you want to go home, to a home that was stolen.

Tony grew up in the States and this is his first time in his fathers ancestral homeland.  The first time I met Tony we discussed how strange it is to walk the streets of Israel, for me I told him it is like I am reliving the Nakba (or Catastrophe) over and over again.  The strangeness of wondering what was it like before, how did our ancestors live and where are their villages now buried beneath modern cities and national parks?

And the feeling of being unwelcomed upon entering the country is a horror all in and of itself.  Me and every other Palestinian expatriot I know get questioned each and every time and depending on how we respond to it depends upon whether or not we are allowed to enter our ancestral homeland and for how long.

It was a typical sunny day in Jerusalem and the streets were full as usual of people and tourists walking up and down the sidewalks.  We walked from the old city down to King David street where we found the historical YMCA in West Jerusalem.  It was built in the 1800s and Tonys father told him stories of going there to eat and lounge in the restaurant and sitting area.  It is a beautiful structure full of arches, domes and byzantine style architecture.

We began following the directions we were given.  Of course there are no more olive groves so almost by random we find ourselves on the right street.  We walked past houses and apartment complexes draped in Israeli flags and Jewish symbolism.

We stop in front of a very big three story home.  As Tony and our friend Avi stare at the picture of a picture and the home before us I see a man checking the mailbox out front.  Kindly he looks to me and asks me if he can help me with anything.  I tell him we are looking for a home.  He laughs and jokingly says well perhaps you can ask the owners they might be selling. He then tells me that his parents own this home.

Tony walks up to him and tells him that this is the house that his father was born in, and this stranger, whose name is Jeremy, then welcomes us all into his parents home and we proceed to follow him inside.  And while the house has been renovated and redone a couple of times it still has the aura of a home that has seen many things in its time. The current residents call it the Shiber House, named after Tonys grandfather George Shiber who built it.  We are definitely in the right place.

I personally felt such an ecstasy at finding the right house so quickly and being so warmly welcomed by its current occupants.  I looked around and wondered to myself, what happened to the Shibers furniture and household items, where did all the clothing go, how much has been removed and redone, what about kitchen supplies and food items, where did all the ghosts of the home settle?

We sit down for a drink and a chat with Jeremy and his father who is resting after a surgery.  They both seem to be very calm about our arrival, almost as if the home has been telling them that one day the Shibers would come back in search of their home, and now this “one day” has arrived.  At first the conversation is casual, typical things you ask and say when you first meet someone.  Jeremys father tells us that many of the vacated Palestinian homes that were taken by the state of Israel in and around 1948 were given to Jewish refugees.

Then Jeremys father begins to ask us what we think would bring peace to this land. There is an initial silence.  As in most instances of these questions it can be hard to tell which direction the conversation might go in.  With an almost hesitance I begin to stumble over my words and explain why I think one state is the most just and peaceful potential outc0me.

He listens intently as I discuss the way the landscape has changed, how the refugees have an inherent right to return to their homes and what a beautiful place this could be where Palestinians and Jews could build and create such a diverse and beautiful society into the fabric of the Middle East. Some heads nod around me in agreement, when I finish Jeremys father says that it might work.

He voices his concerns over extremist groups such as Hamas and I agree that extremism is a problem and that the current Israeli government is very right wing and does not seem at all interested in peace.  He agrees with me.  I tell him that people will calm down once guns stop pointing and shooting at them and the land is no longer being stolen.  He responds that perhaps two states can be a step towards the one, I nod my head and the conversation seems to taper off there. Because our visit was unexpected it was short but sweet.

Jeremy sends us off and extends an invitation to come back and visit anytime.  We leave the house taking pictures of its exterior and then sitting for an extended period across the street staring at the home and talking about the current status of the conflict.  Things seem so hopeless on so many levels but for me and Avi and Tony we still believe that a better future is possible.

We later found out that Jeremy, the man who invited us into Tonys home, is a major figure in the movement of Israeli Jews for building true peace and understanding around this issue.  In knowing this I felt a sense of relief.   The Shiber home has not been returned to its original inhabitants but the home has attracted someone who is willing to look beyond the dividing line and see what truly exists on the “other side.”

We left Talbieh and made our way to the old city where we wandered through the walled in windy roads, ate kanafah (a yummy middle eastern dessert with cheese, honey and wheat shreds) and enjoyed the electricity of the day.

A Border Passage

“Forgiveness is the fragrance that the violet sheds on the heal that has crushed it.”

-Mark Twain

Angel Dust

When I arrived at the border into Israel the first thing I noticed was how young the border police looked. They looked exactly like the people I had gone to school with at Indiana University. Same angst, the same look of “I’d rather be drinking,” even down to the clothing and hair styles. Second, most of them were women.

It was strange. I immediately felt a sort of kinship and fear because of some of the horror stories I have heard about Palestinians being interrogated and made to feel like terrorists. So I kept breathing and envisioning an easy passage into Israel and then the West Bank.

I walked up to the first woman and gave her my passport. She looked at it and asked me where I am from. I told her my mother is from Jordan and my father was born in Israel (I decided not to say Palestine because this seems to make some Israelis mad, and I wanted to make my passage as simple as possible). She asked me where my father is from and I told her Zababda (a small town in the West Bank).

From there a woman took my passport and asked me the same questions. This woman looked a bit younger than the first. She kept fidgeting with her feet and hands. After going through all the same questions, she asked me to sit down. So I did.

As I sat there, all sorts of internationals passed me by. There were people from all over the world, Arabs of other nationalities, Israelis, Americans, British, Portuguese, all coming to visit this place. I seemed to be the only Palestinian.

The reason I know this is because if you’re a Palestinian who was born in the West Bank, you can only pass through one border crossing from Jordan. I have an American passport and was born in the United States, so I can go through any crossing I want. But being that my ancestors are from this land, I had to be thoroughly checked as a “security measure.”

They held me for four hours. The funny thing is, people had kept telling me to perhaps rethink taking in my fire equipment because it might be perceived as a weapon. I didn’t have a single problem with it. But my ancestral background seemed to be enough fire to hold me for four hours.

While I sat there I had a lot of time to think. There was something strangely familial about the relationship I had with those women at the border. When I asked them for water they took care of me like a relative would. They even asked me if I was hungry.

One girl kept looking at me curiously and smiling when I would catch her glance. It was as if the Israelis and the Palestinians are relatives having a horrible quarrel with each other but still love each other like family does despite the terror and the bloodshed.

Furthermore, what I experienced was an inconvenience, and I must say it doesn’t feel good to be viewed as a potential “security threat” simply for being of a certain race, but this is miniscule in comparison to stories I have heard.

So I made my way into the country and met my sister in Tel Aviv. Tel Aviv is a big city, a strange mix of the Middle East meets New York meets Los Angeles. I was only there briefly, so I don’t really have any other observations about it. My sister and I made our way to Jerusalem and spoke of this strange family squabble. And then we were in Jerusalem.

Jerusalem is a whole other universe. Completely different from Tel Aviv. The streets are old and uneven. The roads are windy and narrow. The tint is yellow and black. And the vibe is tense and pious. It is hilly and beautiful and mystical.

The next day I made my way to Beit Sahour, a small village next to Bethlehem. I met the circus at our residence for the coming two weeks at a beautiful farm called Bustan Qaraqa (BQ), which means the Tortoise Garden. BQ is led by a group of internationals working to create a permaculture farm and is built upon the site of a Palace built by King Herod over 2,000 years ago.

One of the main goals is to create an ecologically self-sustaining community with the hope of helping the Palestinian people become less reliant on Israel for water, food and power, as well as more environmentally friendly.

One day we were given a tour of the farm and a nearby placed called Ush Ghrab (you can Google it on YouTube if you like). This is an abandoned military base (first Jordanian, then Israeli). Now some Jewish settlers want to build a Jewish-only colony here and often come on Jewish holidays to hold celebrations and talk about potential development.

What this means for the Palestinians is that land they want to use to build a hospital will be taken away and made inaccessible to them. It chops into their farmland, creates more tension and separation between the people. There was a large amount of graffiti on the walls, and I took many pictures of it and will post them when I have a chance.

The graffiti was done by Israeli Jews and local Palestinians and had mixed messages on them. A lot of it was in Hebrew and Arabic, so I couldn’t understand it, but some of it was in English or in universal symbols. Examples of what was said include: “All Arabs to the gas chambers,” “Hugs are free, “No peace just Israel” and “Coexistence.”

We have spent the past couple of days touring the area and preparing skits for our coming shows. We plan to stir up such magic as turning bullets into bubbles; breaking down barriers, checkpoints and walls; and helping everyone understand that we are the light we want to see in the world.

It has been a dream and a vision of mine to bring fire dancing to my ancestral homeland. I once read that the poi symbolizes a woman’s volatile emotions. And that when she can learn to master the instrument, then she can have mastery over herself. I hope to bring this to the community here as much as possible.

I continue to contemplate what it means to be at peace from the inside out. It baffles me what I see here. A place where three religions originated, a place where such peace was spoken of, a place where blood has been shed for centuries. There seem to be very important lessons to learn here. So I shall continue to remain open, loving and aware.

No Arabs Allowed!!

Growing up I remember hearing stories about the segregation in the United States between “colored” people and “white” people: the separate bathrooms, drinking fountains and businesses. And the divide of hate, lynchings and discrimination that accompanied it.

In my youthful naïveté, I remember taking a look around and breathing a sigh of relief that this kind of thing no longer exists. I remember going to the Holocaust Museum, and after walking through all the sad stories and gut-wrenching horrors, reading the sign that said “Never Again!” and feeling the same relief.

Well, since then I have learned that these things still do in fact exist. I’ve read the horror stories, seen pictures and video, but nothing prepared me for actually seeing with my own eyes.

The night before going to Hebron I had heard stories about how some Palestinians who live in the Old City have actually built cages around their homes to protect themselves from an aggressive Colonizer population.

Hebron is surrounded by at least 17 Jewish-only settlements, and the city itself is quartered up into Jewish and Palestinian zones. In fact, there were places we were walking where one side of the street was for Palestinians and, divided by a small barricade, the other was Jewish-only.

As we approached the Old City, a couple of things became apparent. The streets weren’t as bustling as they are in the newly built city center where Arab shops sell locally made items and produce to passersby. There is more barbed wire, cameras and towers where soldiers look down upon the population from rooftops and watchtowers.

We walked past a closed-off zone that led to a corridor of Israeli flags and marked a settlement gated off from a Palestinian area. This was the beginning of the Old City of Hebron. In this particular area, there had been a school for Palestinian children. The children were harassed daily by the settler population, and eventually the school shut down.

The Palestinian population has steadily been pushed out of the Old City and forced to build a new city center a few blocks down. In the Old City of Hebron there is a Jewish-only settler population of about 600, many of them Jews who have emigrated to the country from the United States. Each settler is armed with an M-16, and the Israeli-soldier-to- settler ratio is 4-1.

There are 3,000 Israeli soldiers there to “protect” the 600 Jews colonizing the area. The Jewish settlers of Hebron are particularly known for being aggressive, and because they live in such close quarters the harassment and segregation is more stark and ongoing than other places in the West Bank. The settlers have been known to parade into the Old City chanting anti-Arab songs, carrying their guns around their chests.

A good example of this harassment is the story of Baruch Goldstein, a Brooklyn-born physician who has been memorialized in one of the settlements. According to Lonely Planet: Israel and the Palestinian Territories, during the Jewish Holiday of Purim and the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, Goldstein went into the Ibrahim Mosque wearing the garb of a soldier. This mosque is heavily guarded still today, and so the soldiers do rounds in the mosques throughout the day.

We had to go through metal detectors before entering. And then each woman in the group was given a long gown with a head covering to finally enter the Mosque.

On this day, our tour guide told us as we stood in the mosque upon the very place in which he stood, Goldstein aimed his gun at Muslims who where kneeling down in prayer with their heads on the ground. He killed 29 Palestinians as they prayed. Eventually he was tackled and killed in the mosque.

When you look around at the mosque you can see places where the bullets hit the marble pillars and walls. The building has been broken up into a separate synagogue with shared walls. It houses the Tomb of the Patriarchs, supposedly the resting places for Adam and Eve, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and their wives.

Non-Jews are not allowed in the synagogue. And the strangest part of it is that you can peek through the cracks of doors and see the synagogue on the other side of the wall. They are so close to each other yet seemingly worlds away.

As we made our way through the city we came upon the entrance of a Jewish settlement. It was a most surreal experience. Happy Klezmer music blasted in the background from a local restaurant, creating a paradoxical backdrop to the downtrodden, barbed-wire city we had just walked through.

The soldiers immediately began to question our tour guide and Vivien, a fellow Palestinian-American living in Los Angeles. They were the obvious-looking Arabs in the group.

The soldiers asked Vivien what her religion is. She said she does not have one. They were not very happy with this answer. They asked them if there were any Muslims in the group, and there weren’t.

Then the soldiers said no Arabs are allowed to enter here, even if they are Christian. They said it very nonchalantly, and Vivien came back to the group to let us know what they said. Everyone stood in solidarity with Vivien and our tour guide and decided not to go in.

I had a bit of a different experience. The thing is, while I am Palestinian, most Arabs, and it seems Israelis, can’t really tell by looking at me. I think the way I dress throws a lot of people off, and I can sort of walk around incognito. So the soldiers weren’t trying to hold me back.

I had a very strong inclination to go inside. One, because I am an Arab, and I guess you could say my inner rebel wanted to go inside for that very reason. Second, I wanted to see this place, this racist, discriminatory place reminiscent of the places I had heard about growing up. I wanted to know it from the inside out, to understand it. What is it? Why is it here? What inside me mirrors this?

I had such a craving to go inside. At the same time I also felt an intense fear. What if they found out I was an Arab? Would I get attacked? Would the soldiers arrest and/or interrogate me? Or was this all just irrational fear rearing its head again?

I was very conflicted as I stood at this crossroads of division and understanding. In the end I decided not to go inside, and we moved up the road. We came across a part of the town that seemed to have been recently abandoned. There were broken windows, partly demolished homes, huge holes in walls inside and outside of stores and houses. There were groups of young soldiers walking around, but they didn’t really look threatening.

I didn’t really understand what was going on there, perhaps a recently evacuated Palestinian part of town being prepared for more Jewish-only housing.

After all of this, we made our way to a children’s community center where we would do a short workshop and perform. The children were excited and intrigued with this group of internationals who were working and performing for them. There is so much angst and excitement in them because of the trauma, and it can be a bit overwhelming at times.

So amid the screaming and fighting and childlike playfulness of the group we managed to spin some poi, climb ladders, play guitars and accordions, walk on stilts and have some fun with the kids.

Then our first performance!!!!! It was a most beautiful experience and my first time spinning fire there! And it all happened perfectly. Throughout our performance we played accordions, guitars, tambourines and things, and fire spinning was the grand finale.

When the Muslim call to prayer occurred, though, we had to stop playing our music, because Hebron is a very conservative place. So we stopped, but this is when the fire lit up! And what a call to prayer it was. The crowd immediately settled down, and everyone was mesmerized.

I ate fire, and I and two other women in the group spun poi to the call to prayer. It was an ancient ritual attempting to burn away hate, division and walls. The alchemy that turns bullets into bubbles, bombs into beats and walls into bridges. It was pure majik!

That is all for now. I am a bit behind on my blogging. It is taking me a minute to digest what I see here, but I do know that I have missed this land, and it has missed me. And I am so ecstatic to be here and incredibly blessed to have this opportunity to bring more love, acceptance and fire to this holy land within us all.

Songs of Freedom!!

The night before travelling to the village of Bil’in to join their regular Friday protest I had heard horror stories about the ways in which the protests are disbursed. Everything from sound bombs, tears gas, nerve gas, rubber bullets, water hoses, live ammunition and physical beatings.

Bil’in is a small village located in the northern part of the West Bank. To reach the village, one must first travel south and then go up the windy and curvaceous mountain tops. This would normally take 30 minutes but took us 1 and a 1/2 hours because of checkpoints, Jewish only colonies and the wall. And when we passed through one checkpoint near Jericho a soldier asked us where we were going.

We told the soldier we were going to Jericho, as Bil’in is considered a hot spot because of all the activism going on there. Had we told him where we were really going he may have stopped us, searched us or interrogated us.

We arrived with all of our instruments and circus hope on hand. There were many internationals there — Americans, Europeans, including the vice president of the European Parliament Luisa Morgantini, to march in solidarity with the Palestinians.The situation in this village is quite simple: Israel has taken around 65 percent of the land to build the wall. This has cut off many farmers from their farm groves and agricultural land. This weekly, non-violent march is against the building of the wall and ongoing occupation of the people.

Currently the wall in this region is a fence, but if construction is allowed to continue it will become a 25-foot-tall, 5-foot-thick concrete structure; in other words, a prison. The marches in Bil’in have been going on for years and are notorious for ending violently. And by violently, I mean the Israeli army attacks the protestors with the above stated mechanisms.

So we began playing Bob Marley songs and Hebrew peace songs as the group marched our way toward the corridor of fence where the wall is meant to be. People were chanting (“No, no!” to the wall) and laughing and singing and dancing.

We marched through the village then made our way to an entrance between two fences. On the other side of us we began to see Israeli soldiers. There is an immediate reaction that seems to happen in my body each time I see a man (or woman) in uniform with a gun. And it is not a feeling of safety.

As we marched along between two fences another uneasy feeling set in, that of being caged in. I sort of drifted along toward the back of the group, not really knowing what to expect, breathing through it all. The sound of the music and movement of my feet getting me through. And then, unprovoked, an Israeli soldier threw a sound bomb at us. Although it is only a sound bomb, it is very scary.

Furthermore, if the cannister were to have hit anyone and/or exploded on them that could have caused serious damage.

Immediately I began to shake. Why did he throw a sound bomb? We weren’t doing anything violent. It was a peaceful protest.

The group continued on, so brave, and all I wanted to do was run back to the village. But I pushed myself to keep going. And then something else was thrown, this time tear gas. People immediately begin scurrying in all directions, running blindly.

Again I remain in the back so I am mostly unaffected but absolutely horrified at what I am seeing.

Now, just to clarify, at no point was I afraid for my life. This was not what horrified me. The scariest thing was the violence coming from the soldiers. They wanted any excuse to use (or should I say abuse) their authority (or should I say their uniform and weaponry).

And this is absolutely unfathomable to me. I have a very difficult time understanding why one human being who is looking at another human being who has flesh and bones could possibly want to hurt that other being, unprovoked. I have never in my life witnessed such violence.

The marchers continued bravely, except for the ones who got hit by tear gas. And the tear gas and sound bombs continued to explode, one after the other. And then the Israeli soldiers opened the gate and began to walk towards the protestors.

Again I wanted to run as far as possible from this place but kept moving my legs. My desire to understand this and to see the humanity in the soldiers kept me going.

So from a distance I observed as the soldiers began to physically push people back toward the entrance we came in through. People fell to the ground, the soldiers kept pushing. One French man got hit by tear gas and was walking in the direction the soldiers were saying. The soldiers began to push him so he would move away faster.

One of the circus members asked the soldiers not to push him, she got pushed for sticking up for him. Then, away from all the chaos, I helped a man named Quintin, who was temporarily blinded from a direct dose of tear gas.

Again from a distance, I observed as sound bombs and tear gas fell from the skies. And throughout it all four members from the circus kept playing music while simultaneously avoiding being hit by tear gas and sound bombs. From a distance, I did my best to let them know when something was falling close to their heads.

It was the most epic thing I have ever seen. The explosions, the gas filling the air, choking the people and the trees and the soldiers attempting to beat the people into submission, and the whole time the music kept coming.

It was my rock. Every time I felt I might freak out I heard the music and something inside me was at peace. Every time I wanted to run away, I began to dance, and I felt still inside.

I still feel baffled by the behavior of the soldiers. I am amazed at the Palestinians who marched on that day. To go there once a week knowing you will get a beating but to do it anyway.

I am amazed at the internationals who were there in the very front, attempting to take the brunt of the violence away from the Palestinians, a shield of sorts. And I keep going back to the soldiers.

I think about the most violent parts of myself. About the times I attempt to beat myself into submission, to beat the anger out of me, the rebellion. The times I have tried to just be like everyone else or have been driven by my own fear.

I am reminded of the most neurotic and brutal parts of myself. And observing the soldiers helps me have more compassion for that part of myself. And I know that the music and dancing that took place on that day has planted a seed, an insight perhaps, into simply observing and knowing the most violent parts of ourselves. The one it is most difficult to look at. The one that is in fact part of the whole.

You can go to the Web site Bil’in, a Village of Palestine to read a bit more about what happened that day and to see some video of it.

We had our last performance at Ush Ghrab, that is the piece of land in Beit Sahour I wrote about on my first blog posting, the one that some Jewish colonists want to take for themselves. There is a park right by it.

It was a sweet last performance, the crowd seemed mesmerized by it, the children wouldn’t move away from the stage. Afterward, the children followed me around, asking if it was real fire I was dancing with. They were convinced I was some sort of magician creating an illusion of fire that went into my mouth and twirled around my body. And in a way it was majik.

I think of the violent sentiments the Zionist Jews who want to colonize the area have expressed through graffiti on the nearby abandoned buildings. I think of the smoke that ascended from my torches and the poi I twirled and the two other women, Lisa and Sara, spun with me.

Burning away such narrow ideas and beliefs that do not spare room for inner visions, making space for coexistence, for love, for connection between all peoples no matter who, what, when or where.

Come Visit Palestine!!

We had our first day of picking olives not too long after our Hebron tour. We went to a village called Al-Khader, an area to the south of Bethlehem. We came to the entrance of the farm, and the taxi driver could go no further. He dropped us off, and we walked along the narrow road up toward the farm.

On our way through rows of grape vines and jasmine bushes we passed some Israeli soldiers. They brazenly leaned against their military jeeps, snuggling their guns across their chests as a mother would to protect or baby her child. My body immediately reacted to the soldiers’ presence. My stomach twisted. It was an uneasy atmosphere.

We walked toward the olive groves and met a group of 50 or so internationals. People from all over the world come to Palestine with the Olive Harvest Campaigne to help the Palestinians do the simple job of picking their olives. This has become quite a challenge in Palestine, since their land has been confiscated for the expanding Jewish-only settlements and the winding wall. So internationals come to witness and to shield because the colonizers are less likely to attack a foreigner than a Palestinian.

The man who drove the bus of internationals to the farm (a Palestinian) was detained for three hours as punishment for bringing people to help the farmer pick his olives.

So we gathered with this group of merry internationals at the top of the farm’s hill. And it was a most beautiful scene, people of many languages and colors gathered in support and love for the people and the earth.

It was one of the most beautiful and richest farms I have seen yet in Palestine. The soil was dark and moist and squishy beneath my boots. The grapes were plump and sweet, and the olives were fat and falling from the trees. And so, as the circus, we did what we know best! We put on our stilts and accordions, and we began to pick olives and play music in the field.

On the very edge of the farm to the left there was a Jewish-only settlement. The land that is off-limits to the Palestinians is literally an olive’s throw away! There was a fence separating the farm from the settlement. On the other side of the fence a couple of settlers had gathered, one of them draped in an M-16. Jake, our Jewish circus member, immediately began to play a beautiful Hebrew peace song that he also sang in English. It was an incantation calling for peace between all peoples in the land of Israel. A group of us gathered and danced around him in a circle. The settlers on the other side looked at us curiously — we must has been a fascinating sight to see.

Next, we began picking, and we picked olives through the morning and a good part of the afternoon. During that time I walked over to where Vivien was standing and speaking with the farmer, near the fence that separated the farm from the settlement.

He told us that the colonizers have offered him $15 million for his farm. He turned the offer down because his land and the fruits of his harvest are more important to him than money.

We made our way down the hill, picking tree after tree, moving quickly because of our numbers. Then another round of soldiers came up to watch us. They drove up in their jeep and again sat with their guns to their chests.

Vivien walked up to them in an attempt to ask some questions and create a dialogue. The soldiers told her that they need approval from their higher ups before they could speak with her.

Afterwards, I made my way down to the main house to use the facilities. I was led down the path by a girl named Deema. We reached the house and the smell of fresh herbs and hospitality filled my senses.

Inside the home, the women brewed a feast for us, stuffing spinach in homemade dough and rice and spices in zucchini, rolling grape leaves and love into the meal.

I sat and chatted with them. They were so sweet and welcoming they could have been my own aunts and cousins. I felt at home, at ease in their warmth and presence. After some tea and conversation about their lives and the difficulties they face, I made my way back to the olive fields.

It was almost noon, the sun was bigger, the sky was clear and there wasn’t a soldier in sight. I peeked over at the Jewish settlement and saw that the settler with the M-16 was still quietly observing the scene from afar. I wondered if perhaps deep down inside he really wanted to join the musical celebration, the dance, the harvest and the coming feast.

“The settlers on the other side looked at us curiously — we must has been a fascinating sight to see.”

We picked the last of the day’s olives, rounded up the tarps from the ground and put the olives away in burlap sacks and buckets, ready to be taken to the olive press for further processing. We made our way as a group back down to the house where a feast was laid out on a white plastic table.

As we feasted, the circus performers got right to work playing more songs and setting the tone for movement and merriment. We sang songs of freedom, lullabies of beauty and chants of peace and nourishment. Again, it was beautiful to see a long row of internationals, Arabs, Europeans, Americans, Christians, Jews, Muslims — human beings all speaking the same language through music and dance.

In those moments everything inside and out felt at peace.

Bullets to Bubbles

“At critical moments in history mythic sense tries to return to awareness in order to indicate life’s inherent capacity for renewal. When the end seems near and nothing seems to make sense anymore, the sense of myth tries to return to make sense of all the endings and to hint at ways of beginning again.”

from The World Behind the World by Michael Meade

Graffitti from the wall being built in the West Bank.

A couple of months back, before I even knew that I would be going to Palestine with a circus or that the Olive Tree Circus even existed, I had a vision. A waking dream I guess one could say.

I don’t remember what I was doing exactly, probably some mundane task like washing dishes or lying in bed before sleep, something seemingly insignificant. I saw myself spinning fire in Palestine. To my right were Palestinian school children leaving their homes, and to my left were Israeli soldiers aiming their guns in the direction of the children.

I seem to act as some invisible shield, because suddenly the soldiers begin to shoot, and as the bullets reach the alchemical fire, they are magically transformed into bubbles. The children begin laughing and playing with the bubbles floating in the air and all around them.

After our first olive picking experience, I definitely became very in tune with the magnitude and magic that music and circus can bring to such a traumatized consciousness. I felt my own inner traumas that I was seeing played out in Israel and Palestine begin to settle a bit, to calm down, to feel that they could be received by loving arms.

The Olive Tree Circus spent a day at a school for the blind in Beit Jalla called Al-Sharouq (The Sunrise). The children were very responsive to us. And even though they could not see what was happening, they could definitely feel it. So we spun poi, played music, sang songs, climbed ladders, walked on stilts and even made paper mache.

Beit Jalla School for the Blind

Spinning poi with the children posed an interesting question because you can’t exactly show the child how to do the move first. Rather you can help the child feel, kinesthetically, how the poi should spin. Sara, a fellow circus artist, puppateer and poi spinner, and I would do this by standing behind the children and gently assisting them at the wrists with making some simple circles and then allowing them to explore from that point on their own.

Some of the children got this and were able to build a bit from there, while others simply enjoyed feeling and attempting to understand what the poi were made of and what this instrument was for.

Either way it was exciting to watch the children discover each new art form in whatever way felt comfortable for them.

Singing about going home...

One child had a particularly mystical quality to him. I can’t remember his name but will never forget his face. He was like a young Stevie Wonder, so full of life and music. Once he began singing he simply wouldn’t stop. In fact he continued to sing as we were pulling away from the school in a taxi. He had a chant-like rhythm to his voice that was almost haunting and would sway his head from side to side as if his singing was the only thing that existed in that moment.

I suppose in some ways this may have developed as his way of dealing with growing up in such a tense and conflicted land. There was something very peaceful about watching him, something very comforting.

We spent the following day rehearsing for our next show in the Olive Harvest Festival at the Bethlehem Peace Center. Our rehearsal time was a bit constricted because of all the traveling, touring, workshops and performances we were scheduled to do. We came up with quite a few skits but really only had time to practice and perform a couple of them.

Also, many interesting issues pertaining to what is happening in the West Bank came up in our rehearsals.

For instance, one of our skits had two of our circus members walking on stilts and swinging a jump rope. First a farmer would try to pass through the rope. The stilt walkers would ignore him and continue to swing the rope in his face. The farmer gets frustrated and heads back home.

Then an ambulance containing three pregnant women attempts to go through the jump rope blockade. One of the pregnant women is actually a man, fellow circus artist Jake. The children always laughed when he would come out with his bloated belly and brightly colored hair net breathing through contractions and birth pains.

Then another “pregnant” circus artist’s water would break. At one point we weren’t sure if we should even do this because there is such a sensitivity to sexuality in Arab culture, but the audience seemed to just laugh along with the rest of the skit.

Meanwhile, the stilt walkers are too busy swinging the rope in the face of these three women about to give birth at the blockade. So the women congregate in a circle to devise a plan to get through. On the count of three they grab the rope, pull the stilt walkers to their knees, hop back into the ambulance and siren their way to the hospital to give birth.

This skit brings up a real and sensitive issue for Palestinians living in the West Bank. First, checkpoints are a disturbing reality that most people have to face on a day-to-day basis. They are set up between Israel and the land it occupies, in addition to being sprinkled throughout and between West Bank cities, towns and Jewish-only colonies.

Because the land is so divided and fragmented there is much delay and sometimes complete closures in travel. Jews are separated from Palestinians who are further separated from each other.

I experienced a couple of checkpoints while in the West Bank. And again, because I look like a foreigner I was always ushered quickly through while behind me a line of Palestinian men and women would stand, awaiting inspection and questioning. Whether they are on their way to work, to the hospital or to visit a friend, there are no exceptions, everyone must wait in line.

The only exception is foreigners and Jews. In fact there are different color license plates to indicate whether you were born in the right religion or race of people to pass effortlessly through the checkpoint. This is another place where internationals come to document and witness any human rights abuses being committed by the occupier on the land they are occupying.

And there have been many documented cases of ambulances containing emergency care patients or women in labor being held for extended periods or denied entry completely. This has resulted in many deaths and women giving birth to still born babies.

There are approximately 800 checkpoints sprinkled in and around the West Bank. Some are smaller outposts, and others are giant concrete structures with many rooms, cameras, windows, metal detectors and machines. There is such an energy to these places, a haunting of sorts, a pain that pulsates within the walls of these increasingly institutionalized structures.

Naji Al-Ali, a famous Palesitnian cartoonist and graffitti artist has a drawing of a Palestinian woman who is pregnant and lying on her back. Around her thighs is a rope tying her legs together. He describes this image that Palestine is pregnant and ready to give birth but has been forcibly forbidden from doing so.

So this skit provided us with some sensitive inquiries during our rehearsals, as did some of the other themes. The bullets-to-bubbles vision was a skit we rehearsed but didn’t quite finish, so it didn’t get a chance to meet the public’s eye.

Throughout all of this there was a fine line of wanting to maintain the humanness of the soldiers and occupiers while simultaneously honoring the horrors experienced by the native population. At one point we entertained the notion that perhaps after the bullets turned into bubbles we could have our circus “soldiers” join the children in a joyous celebration of the magic and wonder brought about by the transformation.

We then decided that perhaps this was too much for now and for the time being the soldiers simply retreat when they realize their bullets have no power in the face of imagination and alchemy. It was fascinating trying to navigate through such heavy and sensitive topics with lightheartedness and artistic vision.

So the following day we performed at the Olive Harvest Festival at the Bethlehem Peace Center in Manger Square, just across the street from the Church of the Nativity. This church supposedly occupies the exact location of Jesus’s birth.

There were many traditional dance troupes there that night shaking the stage with their traditional Palestinian dabke dances and native cross-stitched outfits. And we performed toward the end of the evening. As always, the audience was boisterous and excited throughout. And as always at the end of our set we came out fire eating and poi spinning.

And we experienced the same thing we have been experiencing in almost every performance in Palestine — the children getting very close to the stage and a little too close for comfort to the fire spinners. I could sometimes get the children to move back by getting the fire just close enough, but this didn’t always seem to work and this night’s performance was one of those times.

So we continued to spin our poi about while simultaneously being mindful of the children laughing and playing about us. This is something I thought a lot about. I would try to tell the children in Arabic that this is fire and they must move back so as not to get hurt by the flames or the power of the swinging instruments. There simply was no reasoning here. This perplexed me at first, and it took me a minute to realize that these children know fire very well and in some ways have grown not to fear such heat.

They were born into occupation surrounded by soldiers and settlers toting guns much bigger than most infants. Casey, one of our younger circus members, would get very nervous in the presence of soldiers and guns. Her mother said that at one point while we were in Hebron, a Palestinian town heavily populated with soldiers and colonists wearing guns, she was gripping her mothers hand so tightly she almost cut of the circulation.

This makes perfect sense for her because it is a new experience. I too had a similar experience of discomfort. Yet for these children it is all too normal to see such things.

I can only hope that the representation of this element through spinning poi may plant the seeds of a newly-born idea of what fire contains and has to offer.

The Fire of Resistance….

Name: Raz Bar-David Varon
Age: 18
Why I am one of the Shministim:
“I wasn’t born to serve as a soldier who occupies another, and the struggle against the occupation is mine too. It is a struggle for hope, for a reality that sometimes feels so far away. I have a responsibility for this society. My responsibility is to refuse.”
First Sentence: 3rd – 21st Nov. 2008 (18 days)
Second Sentence: 24th Nov. – 30th Nov. 2008 (currently in prison)

In a brief statement made on the day of her arrest, Raz said:

“I have witnessed this army demolishing, shooting and humiliating people whom I did not know, but have learnt to respect for their ability to go on dealing with these horrors on a daily basis. There’s supposed to be a good reason for all of this. This reason is supposed to be my defense. I feel like screaming: ‘This does not defend me! It hurts me!’ It hurts me when people, Palestinians, are being so brutally assaulted, and it hurts me when they later turn their hatred towards me because of it. I wasn’t born to serve as a soldier who occupies another, and the struggle against the occupation is mine too. It is a struggle for hope, for a reality that sometimes feels so far away. I have a responsibility for this society. My responsibility is to refuse.”

____________ _________ _________ _________ _________ _________ _________ _________ _________ _________ _________ _________ _________ _________ _________ _________ ____

Full Declaration of Refusal:

I oppose oppression.

Oppression, going by the dictionary here at my side, means submission, forcing an individual or a population, disallowing free speech (and other rights). I oppose any form of oppression –whether it is practiced by a society against an individual member, by the whole of humanity against the other living species on this planet (I am a vegan because I want to avoid participating in the oppression and murder committed by the meat, egg, and dairy industries), by men against women, or by people who consider themselves to belong to one nation against those they associate with another nation. I refuse to accept acts of hatred and violence as legitimate in problem resolution, even if the problems themselves involve violence.  When a society reacts with violence towards another society, I believe, it instills violent norms in its membership and in doing so it harms itself. As a result the need for vengeance and injustice in the other society mounts, thereby provoking more counter-violence against itself.

The violence – or, in other words, the terror – which the Israeli army, in the name of the state, inflicts on the Palestinian people, is not only excessive and – as history bears out – has not solved the conflict in our region: it actually escalates the conflict and entrenches oppression (directed against almost anyone) as a norm in Israeli society.

I use the word terror because a soldier who:

· drops bombs on people in Gaza or on the West Bank from his fighter plane;

· demolishes homes;

· shoots at people and sows fear and enmity;

· enforces a tyrannical, undemocratic military regime;

· rules over (nearly) all aspects of the lives of three and a half million Palestinian men and women;

· stands guard at the army checkpoints which seriously limit Palestinians’ freedom of movement;

· enters people’s homes (with state permission) in order to conduct searches at any hour of the day or night;

· humiliates, at a whim and unsupervised, old people, children, men and women,

is indeed a terrorist, just like – if not more than – the Palestinian who blows himself up along with other people in a bus within the boundaries of the state called Israel. Perhaps more because a person who lives under an ongoing occupation and gets to meet only one type of Jewish citizen: the soldier; someone who has no future choice or hope – perhaps such a person can be said to have been cornered into this position (as he is exploited, both by Israel and by fundamentalist Islamic organizations, each for their own purposes). An Israeli soldier, on the other hand, whose background is often more affluent and comfortable and can, usually, look ahead to a future in which he is in control of his choices.

I don’t think there is any justification for terrorism.  The cynical use of the phrase “self-defense” , widespread in Israel, is disgraceful in my opinion. No one should have the right – just because they wear a uniform and have signed up as members of a certain organization – to mess up or even destroy the lives of others, whatever their background or nationality. No one has the right to do such things. Occupation is not the same as self-defense. When emergency laws are activated in order to do things that run counter to Israel’s professed democratic principles (the Nazis, too, by the way, used such laws in order to gain access to power) – this is not self-defense. Such acts are the outcome of the economic/personal interests of those who are financially and otherwise powerful. They are a choice and not dictated by necessity. We can always choose against violence and for peace.

The army, moreover, as an organization, is non-democratic.  It is a hierarchical body which supports nationalist values (and hence, again, it is non-egalitarian) ; the army is patriarchal and believes in blind obedience and/or unlimited control over others, in traditionally “masculine” values such as aggression, abuse of power, and violence – all of which are seen as legitimate methods when problems need to be solved, and all of which negate alternative approaches, especially those that could be considered “feminine”. The latter include sensitivity, conflict solution through dialogue, gentleness, and so on – modes of communication that are, on this view, inferior.  As a result, there’s a prevailing view of women (except those who prove they are “like a man”) as subordinate (so, for instance, in the army the Hebrew for “female” is used to denigrate soldiers in training) and a generally chauvinist mindset among the young men and women who enlist for military service. (And the army then significantly contributes to their further development in life.)

While instilling and perpetuating these stereotypes, the army also causes those women who act according to them to feel inferior. This is why the majority of women in the army take marginal functions – they do secretarial or clerical work; this is why during military service, women are much more likely to experience sexual harassment than in their civilian life; this is why women’s surroundings become increasingly violent.

And since the army takes such a very central position in the civilian lives of Israelis, the above phenomena spill and spread beyond the army, into their daily existence: women are kept out of positions of power, they internalize masculine oppression and prejudice and learn to regard sexual harassment as a social norm.

It is because of these fundamental characteristics and activities of the army that I absolutely refuse to serve in it. They clash with my own principles and beliefs regarding equality and justice. Not only are the army’s acts immoral and wrong, they also undermine peace and co-existence, the objectives for which I struggle.

This is why, as I mentioned at the start of my statement, I request to be exempted from mandatory military service on conscientious grounds and to do alternative national service. I ask, therefore, to appear before the military committee that authorizes such exemptions.

Due to the inbuilt chauvinist tendency of both the Hebrew and English languages, this letter, even where using a “neutral” masculine, means to refer to a society that is heterogeneous and plural in terms of sex and gender.

November, 2008

Honor the dead, Light a Candle for the Living…

“Anyone who survives this wave, it will be like they were born again,”
~Mahmoud Musa, 55,
a first-grade teacher in Deir al Balah, Occupied Gaza.
(http://www.latimes.com/news/science/la-fg-enclave5-2009jan05,0,4188567.story)

As I sit here in this new year, I am at a loss for words about the recent happenings in the Gaza Strip. For days my inbox has overflowed with horror stories and pictures.

With a moment’s notice, a mother loses five daughters, their small bodies wrapped in white like mummies next to one another as if they were sleeping peacefully, away from the chaos that was once their existence. More than 700 Palestinians killed and over a thousand injured. Homes, mosques, hospitals, markets, cultural centers and universities crumble to the earth.

A ship leaving from Cyprus, steered by Internationals of the Free Gaza Movement, including doctors, human rights activists and former U.S. Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney, attempted to bring much overdue medical supplies. The boat was rammed by Israeli military boats and almost sunk with everyone on board, but it was eventually rescued by Lebanon.

Israeli officials claim they did not know who was on the boat. Yet, interestingly enough, the ship was rammed by Israeli military boats demanding that this boat of “terrorists” return to Cyprus.

The other day four Israelis, including two Israeli Arabs, were killed by rockets launched by Hamas. And as politicians and world leaders ramble on about ceasefires and terrorists, blood falls like rain upon the parched desert landscape.

I have to stop and breathe. The madness feels like it is all happening inside of me. I sit and observe from the distance of my home, from my computer screen, listen to the radio, catch a glimpse of MSNBC at the bank, sign a petition, send a letter to Obama, light a candle, mourn the dead, pray for peace.

Gaza is a small area, with about 1.5 million people in an area that is roughly 25 miles long by five miles wide. It is one of the densest ghettos on earth, an open air prison.

This land, once known as Philistia, is situated on the Mediterranean coastline and borders Egypt. “A city so rich in trees as to be like a cloth of brocade spread out on the sand,” the Arab chronicler Dimashqi said in 1300. It is believed that the ancient Canaanites gave Gaza its name, which means strength.

Of the 800,000 refugees forced from their country in 1948 when Israel declared its statehood, 200,000 ended up in Gaza. The Israeli occupation of Gaza began in 1967, spurring the construction of illegal Jewish-only colonies, checkpoints, separation and the dumping of the Israeli state’s trash on the road to Gaza.

Gaza has endured various closures, bombings, clearing of trees on vast portions of the small territory, and embargoes that have prevented food, medicine, electricity, water and water sanitation from entering the land. In 2005 Israel implemented the unilateral disengagement plan, withdrawing its Jewish-only colonies from the Gaza Strip.

The Israeli state still maintains control over Gaza’s borders, meaning Palestinians are under Israeli authority when trying to leave or enter. This includes goods to be imported and exported.

Israel also controls the waters and maintains a ban on fishing. As a result, Palestinian fisherman (sometimes accompanied by Internationals to support and witness) have been harassed, shot at and killed.

Gaza was a mess to begin with, and as a result of the bombings, the situation has completely deteriorated. Those suffering from injuries are now faced with overflowing hospitals, and water and medical supply shortages. Bottled water has run out, and electricity is needed to pump water from the wells. A parched and starving people bleed to death on American television screens.

In the midst of all this I am perpetually haunted by the words “Never Again” written at the end of the Holocaust Museum in Washington D.C. I ponder why this phrase only seems to be applicable to one group of people.

I continually hear the argument that Israel has a right to defend itself, and I do not disagree, but I wonder who will protect the Palestinian population from the Israeli military (the fourth most powerful military in the world.) We are talking about a mostly unarmed population that is simply trying to survive.

Yesterday I attended a silent candlelight vigil in Los Angeles in front of the Israeli consulate. It was organized by the American Friends Service Committee, LA Jews for Peace and The Islamic Shura Council. Members of ImaginAction were there to facilitate a mourning ritual.

It was a most beautiful ceremony. There were a couple of hundred of us there, and we lit candles and chanted for the dead of Gaza. And we sang for the Israeli soldiers who are being forced to become killers. And we sang for Israelis and Jewish people around the world who resist the actions of the Israeli state.

And we sang for our world leaders to wake up and hear the voices of the people. And we sang to Gazan children who had to experience everyday horrors long before this assault took place. We also sang for the small group of people across the street waving Israeli flags, saying they were there for peace but refusing to join us.

With the help of the drum we vocalized, vibrated, chanted and softly pounded these hopes for peace into existence. Doing our best to honor the dead, both Israeli and Palestinian, and lighting a candle for the living!

****************************************************

***Hilarious and Poignant Video, Jon Stewart on The Daily Show: Gaza Strip Maul:

http://www.thankyoujonstewart.com/

***Democracy Now on Gaza:

Leading Israeli Scholar Avi Shlaim: Israel Committing “State Terror” in Gaza Attack, Preventing Peace *

The assault on Gaza is entering its nineteenth day, with no end in sight. Israel continues its intense bombardment of the territory as Israeli troops edge closer to the heart of Gaza City. Nearly 1,000 Palestinians have been killed, more than 4,400 injured, many of them women and children. Thirteen Israelis have died over the same period, ten of them soldiers. We speak with Oxford professor Avi Shlaim. He served in the Israeli army in the mid-1960s and is widely regarded as one of the world’s leading authorities on the Israeli-Arab conflict.

Listen/Watch/Read
http://www.democracynow.org/2009/1/14/leading_israeli_scholar_avi_shlaim_israel

A video on life in Gaza:

What may come of the tragedies

Below is an email from ANNA Baltzer who is a Jewish American woman who has traveled extensively in Palestine and Israel and written a lot about it. She is a Fulbright scholar and is currently in Damascus.

Anna can be reached at anna.baltzer@gmail.com

Last week I sent out a story about a Gaza woman being asked to choose
which five of her children would live and which five would die–an
unmistakable parallel with the famous story of Sophie, a woman who had
to choose which of her children to give to the Nazis to kill. When I
first heard the story from Gaza, I could hardly believe it, and indeed
many readers have responded incredulously to my post over the past week.

The author of the report, Barbara Lubin of the Middle East Children’s
Alliance, is someone whom I respect and trust completely. True, we can
never know with certainty that the mother was telling the truth, yet
one has to wonder why a mourning woman would make up such a story?
What would be required to give the account legitimacy–confessions by
the soldiers? Was Sophie’s word accepted or were Nazi officials
consulted to corroborate her story?

What strikes me is the unspoken sense many of us have that surely an
Israeli soldier would never do such a thing. We would not question the
same story coming out of Darfur, or Rwanda, or Sri Lanka… but Israel?
Is it that we don’t believe a Jewish person capable of something so
cruel? Is it our collective memory of the Holocaust? Or is it that we
want to believe that people like us–Westerners, whom we can relate
to–would never stoop so low, that we are different?

The truth is that everyday people of any background in any place are
capable of unthinkable crimes. Germans were not born Nazis.
Palestinians were not born suicide bombers. When you give 18-year-old
boys big guns and tanks and send them into an area full of people they
fear (and consequently hate), the result is predictable. It doesn’t
matter where you come from. The story is not anti-Semitic; it’s just
one story of many, all testimonies to the dangerous power-dynamic
created by unmonitored occupation and ethnocentric nationalism. And
it’s a call for us to change the circumstances that can lead to the
repetition of history.

Comparing Israel’s actions to anything done by the Nazis is something
I almost never do, because it is rarely accurate or useful. However, I
am tired of pretending that similarities do not exist. Obviously there
is no comparison between systematically exterminating 6 million Jews
and dispossessing or imprisoning 10 million Palestinians (and killing
tens of thousands more). Still, the ghettoizing, the massacres, the
humiliation tactics, the torture, the religious and ethnic profiling…
they all feel so horribly familiar. I might add that the official
definition of genocide extends also to the destruction of a cultural
or national identity, something of which Israel is surely guilty.

My last post was tainted with hopelessness, but I am as sure as ever
that things will–must–change, that Israel’s unfettered control and
transformation of Palestinian areas are unsustainable. Israeli
commentators such as Uri Avnery assert that Israel’s onslaught against
Gaza will hurt Zionism in the long-run, and I tend to agree. I’m
reminded by people involved in previous struggles (eg. for civil
rights in South Africa and the United States) that things often get
worse before they get better, and ultimately I believe the recent
events will only contribute to the inevitable downfall of Apartheid in
the Holy Land.

One hopeful thing to come out of these tragedies is that the
Palestinian people seem more unified than they have been in a long
time. In the West Bank, demonstrations in solidarity with the people
of Gaza continued, even after a protester was killed in the village of
Nil’in. The Palestinian hip-hop group DAM, based in Israel where they
live as second-class citizens, immediately put out a new song for
their brothers and sisters in Gaza.

In addition, multiple Jewish Israelis have recently written and joined
my list, saying it was the recent attacks on Gaza that finally forced
them to confront their government’s crimes. Outside Palestine millions
stand in solidarity with frequent demonstrations around the world,
even now as Gazans begin to put their lives back together. In the US
we tend to get only a fraction of information about the atrocities and
the global movement against them (I’ve heard more about certain
demonstrations in the US than the local media in the exact same town
reported!). But even that has been enough to inspire many to join the
movement, just as the death of Rachel Corrie and the massacres at
Sabra and Shatila and so many other horrors stimulated the movement in
the past. It is little consolation to the victims of course, but can
at least motivate us to prevent future horrors.

I want to describe the feeling in Syria during the attacks, where I
watched everyone from 7-year-old children to minimum-wage janitors
donate money, clothing, and blood to the people of Gaza. A woman with
nothing left to give put her wedding ring into the charity basket. A
friend of a friend raised more than $1,000 but was robbed on her way
to delivering the money to an aid organization. Her purse was
delivered to the police, with her personal cash stolen (amounting to
about $100), but the envelope labeled “Money for the Children of Gaza”
was left untouched. There is a great feeling of universal solidarity
with the people of Gaza, transcending social, class, political, or
religious differences.

In the capitol, every day enormous protests flooded the streets. As we
marched past, shop owners would close their shops and hurry to join,
students would rush from school to take part, and the constant chant
“We are all Gazans” grew louder and louder. Each day had a different
theme, ranging from law to health to education. Women held other women
on their shoulders to lead cheers and floats with speakers played
inspiring music to energize the completely nonviolent crowd.

What struck me–aside from the sheer size and constancy of the
marches–was how empowering the events were. Rather than leaving
hopeless or angry (as I often do after frustrating protests), I left
with the knowledge that tens of thousands of others around me were
equally outraged, and that we would not be silent until something
changed. This unity is something very powerful and important for the
movement, and I’m watching it happen all around the world.

The question is where to put this energy, and I think I have an
answer. We are at a crucial moment for change in the US and beyond,
and it’s time to take the next step. For years I have wondered what
this next step should be, and the answer has become increasingly
clear. It’s a campaign that deserves its own email uncluttered by this
one, so expect it in your inboxes early next week, and don’t put off
reading it. If there’s one email you ever read from me, this should be
the one.

In peace,
Anna

Breaking the Siege

“O you sleepless!  have you not tired
from watching the light in our salt?
And from the incandescence of roses in our wounds
have you not tired, O sleepless?”

~Mahmoud Darwish, State of Siege

How do we know what is impossible anymore?  After the Free Gaza Movement broke the siege of Gaza successfully 4 times it now seems that what was once seen as unlikely has been turned on its back.  On Friday night I attended a talk by Free Gaza Movement members and representatives hosted by the Topanga Peace Alliance.

This group has successfully been able to bring in medical supplies, food and water to this broken, beaten and weary population.  The fifth time they attempted to break the blockade they were rammed by the Israeli military and almost sunk but made it to safety thanks to the state of Lebanon.  The group is planning on bringing in even more humanitarian aide with perhaps a whole fleet of ships or even an airplane, who knows what is possible from here?!

The Israeli state and military have maintained a partial to at times complete blockade of the borders, waters and airspace over Gaza.  The ramifications of this are multi-dimensional.  First off Gazans require Israels consent to travel to and from Gaza, and international access to this barbed wire prison also depends upon Israeli permission.

Furthermore the Palestinian market is completely controlled by Israel who limits or thwarts the goods that come in and out.  This covers food, medicine, water and electricity in addition to goods produced by the people of Gaza.  Because of a lack of access to supplies needed for water treatment 13 of Gazas 20 Mediterranean beaches have been “deemed as polluted and unsuitable for swimming.” (http://www.pchrgaza.org/files/campaigns/english/gaza_closure/Narratives_17.html)

Furthermore, the tap water is also undrinkable.  This is probably not even taking into account the recent onslaught of bombs and illegal weaponry that the Israeli military used in the recent bombardment of Gaza and the residuals of these chemicals on the environment and the human flesh it has touched.

Gaza appears to be an unreachable mess.  The stranglehold is so strong and has been ongoing for over 40 years now.  And while the eye of the world was focused on this area the Israeli military continued to bulldoze homes in East Jerusalem and confiscate land for Jewish-”settlements” in the West Bank.  Last week 250 acres of land was confiscated from Bethlehem. (http://www.democracynow.org/2009/2/17/headlines#12)

Just recounting all of this to you right now makes my head spin.

But the tides are beginning to turn and there seems to be a momentum that is preparing to break through the iron wall of segregation and inequality.  Hampshire College in Amherst, MA is the first university to agree to divest from any companies that profit from Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. (http://whoprofits.org/)

Thirty two years ago Hamphshire College was the first University to divest from apartheid South Africa for similar reasons. For those of you who don’t know the meaning of Apartheid, it is as follows: any institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial or national group over another. It not only refers to racism but rather a racism that is enforced by means of legal separation and systems of inequality. Something similar to the Jim Crow Laws here in the states in the 1950s and something very much resembling what is happening both within the state of Israel and the territories under its occupation.

And it was this withdrawal of funding from the International community that was one of the factors that put enough pressure to end the apartheid government of South Africa. While the events that recently happened in Gaza were horrifying and the population is still suffering the repercussions of the ethnic cleansing that is taking place one good thing seemed to come out of it. The world is slowly awakening to the horrors of being Palestinian in Palestine.

As we in the privileged world sit and watch genocide and ethnic cleansing take place on our televisions there is a growing angst that is breaking the divide.  We are in such a unique place right now in the history of the world. All the information we need to remain aware and make informed decisions is available and accessible. With all the changes in the world today there is a subtle tide that is turning and we are only beginning to feel the cool mist of it as it sprinkles and cools off our skin beneath the heated sunshine of the day.  We can only begin to imagine what can be!

Re-Membering!!!

“Asks the Possible of the Impossible, “Where is your dwelling-place?” “In the dreams of the Impotent,” comes the answer.” Rabindranth Tagore

On the eve of the 6 year anniversary of the death of Rachel Corrie, I am reminded of the importance of Re-Membering!  Rachel Corrie stood in front of an Israeli bulldozer in a civil disobedience attempt to prevent yet another demolition of a Palesitnian home in Gaza.  She was wearing a bright orange vest, and with blond hair and blue eyes surely she stuck out like a sore thumb.  She was confident that the driver of the bulldozer would stop, to the horror of all eyewitnesses the soldier drove forward and continued to crush her with his CAT bulldozer, reverse and then drive over her again.    http://www.rachelcorrie.org/

This past Friday Tristan Anderson, an American, was hit in the head with a cannister of tear gas and is currently in critical condition in the hospital.  He was part of a peaceful demonstration in the West Bank village of Nillin to protest the construction of the Separation Wall that will break up the village and take away land from the Palestinian population that lives there.  http://palsolidarity.org/2009/03/5324

Being here in the West Bank trauma speaks to you in so many ways and is most visible in the body language of the people you see.  Often times it is as obvious as missing limbs or crippled bodies, other times in haunted and sunken eyes and hunched shoulders.  As a Palestinian American who has been mostly disconnected from this land I often find myself wanting to discuss what is happening with the locals.  I am met with various responses, for some it is a desire to not want to talk politics, because the political has been way too intimate and personal for comfort.  And for others they will tell you their traumas as if you are engaged in small talk.  It is such a normal thing here, to have family members in prison or dead, or to have been shot or beaten.

Currently in East Jerusalem 1700 homes, including a school, are slated to be demolished under Israeli orders.  If the plan is executed then 17,000 Palestinians will be homeless.  Refugees become refugees again and again.  The supposed reason for the demolitions is that they do not have the proper Israeli permits to be there, yet many of these houses have been there since before there was such a thing as an Israeli permit and home demolitions have been a trademark of the Israeli occupation and ethnic cleansing of Palestinian land.  In the place of some of these demolished homes and buildings are plans to build a park.

Recently I have been contemplating a lot the refugees of Palestine, both within the state of Israel, in the Occupied Territories and all over the world.  The number is currently up to somewhere around 6 million.  Their stories haunt me.  My father for instance, was studying in Egypt when Israel took over the West Bank and he automatically took on refugee status simply because he was not physically in the country.  Overnight he became homeless, stateless, no country no place of origin to return to.  I can only imagine how traumatizing that must have been for him!  Now to enter back to his ancestral homeland he must endure being questioned and interrogated by Israeli airport and border police.

A week ago I came into the country through the Israeli airport and the second the woman at customs looked at my passport (without even asking me anything) she gave my passport to a security official and I was taken away to a “special” room.  I was questioned for two hours as to why I was in the country, what would I do, where would I stay, all those sorts of questions and my bags were scanned separate from everyone else.  In addition to all of this it turns out that my entire family is in their database, pictures and everything!  I saw pictures of my grandfather and pictures of my uncle.  In fact they seemed to know more about my family than I did.  One of the airport security asked me my grandmothers name, I was very young when she died and accidentally told him the wrong name and he so kindly corrected me.  I found it strange that my whole family would be in their records like that, as no one in my family has ever hurt a Jewish person.

Growing up I always felt as if I did not belong anywhere, as if I did not fit in.  I can look back on that now and see that some of its roots come from being the daughter of a refugee.  And in the midst of all of this I am contemplating two things:  what is home and why do traumas continue to haunt and repeat themselves?

It still baffles me to think that the Jewish people once sufferred such horros and yet some people from this lineage are able to carry out and support the displacement, murder and traumatization of another group of people.  It reminds me of the importance of acknowledging the displaced and mutilated parts of myself.  Those parts that don’t always look so nice and perhaps in my comfortable American life style became easy to shove into the dusty corners.  I am learning how to sit with all these traumas, how to love their disconfigured faces, how to hold and nurture them unabashedly without fear.

Re-Membering, Pt. II

“Cowardice asks the question – is it safe? Expediency asks the question – is it politic? Vanity asks the question – is it popular? But conscience asks the question – is it right? And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular; but one must take it because it is right.” Martin Luther King, Jr.

Living in Occupied Bethlehem you see such a variety of faces and people from all over the world. Pilgrims come to see the holy sites, Palestinians of all shapes and sizes and internationals come to be with the locals, in the distance Jewish only settlements sprinkle the hilltops.

One of the most shocking things about being witness to the situation here is the normalness with which things happen. Every single day someone is killed, beaten, jailed, harassed, humiliated, homes demolished their occupants (often extended families) left to wander and relocate. Not only does the Israeli state demolish their homes but they also charge them for the price of the demolition.

Back in March a festival celebrating Arab and Palestinian culture was banned by the Israeli municipality in Jerusalem. Event organizers decided to go ahead with celebrations anyway in an act of civil disobedience. And it was Palestinians releasing balloons, dancing and singing in the streets and children playing games that caused Israel to send extra police forces into the Old City of East Jerusalem and arrest dozens of people.

Part of the irony to me in all of this is that there were many instances in history where Jewish people had to practice their traditions in secret. Again history is repeating itself in the most ironic ways. Perhaps this is a chance for us to take a deep look at these lessons and truly mean it when we say “never again!”

The fact that there are people in the West Bank and Gaza Strip that are still willing to celebrate their culture, practice their religion/traditions and protest and stand up for their humanity is nothing short of a miracle to me! It truly attests to the ability of the human spirit to affirm life no matter what the circumstance.

In fact this place is seething with life!! Everything from religious pilgrims praying at all the historical sites, activists, both internationals and Palestinians, carrying out various forms of non-violent protests and civil disobedience, to film, dance, theatre and music festivals!

And despite the current horrifying conditions and the newly elected right wing Israeli governments very open plans to make it worse, people continue to live their lives. Despite the right wing settler group Chabad that is currently calling to “Judaize” the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem in order to rebuild the historical temple that was twice destroyed some thousands of years ago that threatens to bring with it riots and violence, people still practice what they believe in. Despite over 60 years of attempts at burying and erasing Palestinian culture the people here continue to celebrate and create new and innovative art forms.

Everything from feature films to plays exploring the experience of Palestinians in the diaspora to what the city of Jerusalem would say if it could speak about its history from a womans perspective. Even in the starving and demolished Gaza Strip people continue to learn, imagine and create. During the recent assault on this small land mass the Gaza Music School was destroyed by Israeli missiles. There are currently plans to rebuild the school, with help from international donors/charities, and continue with music lessons.

Some interesting art to note are: Salt of This Sea (a film by Anna Marie Jacir), Pomegrantes and Myrrh (a film by Najwa Najjar), Spell (an audio CD by Nathalie Handal), Amreeka (a film by my sister Cherien Dabis), I am Jerusalem (a play by Ashtar Theatre in Ramallah), Theatre of the Oppressed Festival (by Ashtar Theatre) and the Ramallah Contemporary Dance Festival (by Sareyyet in Ramallah.) These films and plays travel all over the world and the festivals bring people here from all over the world. Everywhere there are examples of non-violent resistance and global solidarity to the horrors people here are forced to live with. In essence an assault to anyone’s liberty or life anywhere is an assault on life everywhere.

Millions of Christians all over the world just celebrated Easter, and hundreds of people marched through the walled in labyrinth of Jerusalems old city streets. Israel sealed the borders of the West Bank hence making it difficult for Palestinians living here to get permission to go. And of course the Gaza Strip is near impossible to enter and exit.

In the West Bank city of Nablus there is a small sect of Judaism called the Samaritans. During their celebration of Passover they were joined by thousands of Muslims and Christians, including Nablus’ Governor, who gathered in the streets of their small village to celebrate and congratulate them on this Passover holiday. It is interesting that they are called the Samaritans and that they have lived in peace with their Palestinian neighbors since before there was a state of Israel. Their village has existed atop this mountain for thousands of years.

In Jewish tradition Passover is the celebration of the Hebrews escape from slavery in Egypt. Ironically enough April 17^th is Palestinian Prisoner day and almost 11,000 Palestinians currently sit in Israeli prisons, many of them without charge or trial. Easter is the celebration of rebirth and I hold vision that beyond all of this death, racism and festering decay something better is being reborn.

****Check out the month of March in pictures at: http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10437.shtml

Putting Humpty Back Together Again

Friday May 1st was Workers Day here in Palestine and I got the day off! So I decided to follow a group of friends to a March happening from Solomon’s Pools in Al Khader village to end at Artas village for their Annual Lettuce Festival! When we arrive at Solomon’s Pools there is a Dabkeh dance troupe there dressed in white.

They start off the pre-March atmosphere with their flute driven dabkeh beats, stomping and spinning down the street. Our guide Awad leads us through the windy hillside. Solomon’s Pools were built in the time of Kind Herod 2000 years ago. At one point they were full of water reserves but now they are mostly filled with litter.

In the third pool Awad tells us about two little boys who drowned the day before. They were playing on the ledge when one slipped and the other tried to help him. The pool is not very deep and had the children known how to swim perhaps they would have survived.

We make our way past these somber waters into the valley where Awad tells us about the land confiscation, settlements, uprooted trees and issues of the area. We are led to the land his grandfather owned. He tell us, without your land where is your heritage, where are your roots? In Palestine people are very connected to their lands and their families. In fact you could almost say these are the two most important things to people in this society.

The creation and maintenance of the state of Israel has done a lot to disconnect the Palestinian people from both of these things. And yet you have people like Awad whose land has not quite been taken yet and who is working to make sure that his heritage is preserved. When we get down to the bottom of the valley Efrat settlement becomes visible in the distance silhouetted by two hilltops. Awad tells us about the protest that took place here in 2007 to prevent the confiscation of land confiscation the Israeli state wants to use to expand Efrat.

For 22 days a group of Palestinians, including Awad Internationals, sat on the land. On the 22nd day bulldozers came in and uprooted olive, apricot and walnut trees amongst others. Ironically enough all the settlements in this area are named after fruit trees. Protesters were arrested and beaten, including Awad who was put in jail and forced to sign a piece of paper saying he would not go near his land in order to get out. Now Awad tells us he is illegal on his land.

We make our way out of the valley and into Artas Village Lettuce Festival in celebration of their famous crop. I did not get a taste of their crispy treat but we did get there in time for an impromptu dabkeh show. There were lots of kids and traditional Palestinian woven clothing embroidered in local designs and colors of red and black.

After a short walkabout we made our way to Wallejah to visit Abed on his farm and check out the farmers market he runs on his land. He welcomed us with coffee and a meal and after a sip and some greetings I asked him what the story was with his land. He tells me the story like he is speaking about someone elses story and he takes me on a tour of his open and beautiful farm.

Abed lives on a cave on his land, there used to be a home on the site but the Israeli military bulldozed it and told him he was not allowed to live there. In the West Bank there is an old Ottoman Law that is still used that says if someone does not live on a piece of land it can be taken by the state. For this reason Abed knows that he must live here in order to prevent its confiscation.

His land is very near the “green line” the border that separates the occupied West Bank from the internationally recognized borders of Israel. On a nearby hillside is Gilo settlement that is built on land taken from the West Bank city of Beit Jalla. Abed has an actual home with a wife and kids but chooses to stay here to preserve his heritage. He keeps asking me, what do they want from us?

Abed just wants to live on his land and he tells me that anyone is welcome so long as they come peacefully. He told me a story about how two Israeli soldiers came to his farm and said they wanted a drink. He told them to leave their uniforms and guns behind. So they did and they sat down with Abed for coffee. He works very hard and sacrifices precious time with his wife and children in order to preserve what is his.

There is a group of Israelis who come help him tend the farm and with the Friday market. A group of British people from Beit Sahours’ permaculture farm Bustan Qaraqa are currently helping Abed build a compost toilet. Neither the Israeli or Palestinian government will give Abed water facilities on his farm. So in order to adapt the compost toilet was the solution.

Compost toilets are also brilliant for places where there is not a lot of water as no water is necessary to run them. The compost will eventually be used to fertilize the soil and nourish the crops therefore creating a cycle in which everything has a use. Abed is a shining example for people everywhere on ways to build constructive solutions in difficult situations and live harmoniously on the land.

Refugees of Consciousness

Walking around the city of Jerusalem I am often amazed at how seemingly normal everything is.  It is like an image of a picture perfect family.  Everything appears to be ok on the outside but on the inside there is self destruction and violence.

May 15th 1948 is  a day that has been forever branded in the skin of Palestine.  It is a day that symbolizes a massive uprooting that took about 85% of the native population into exile.  There were massacres and invasions that killed around 13,000 and caused 800,000 to flee in the  months leading up to and after this day.  As I walk through the streets of Israel I can’t help but feel haunted by the sorrows of these misplaced voices.

And being here and being so close and intimate with this Nakba, or Catastrophe as it is called in Palestine, I am understanding first hand what happens when a trauma is not delt with.  Over 500 Palestinian villages were destroyed, many of them became national parks and others became Israeli cities with different and sometimes very similar names.  And generations later Palestinian refugees are still trying to return to their homes.

The Zionist Israeli state does not want to allow the refugees to come back to their homeland because their numbers would change the ratio of Jews to non-Jews and thus Israel would no longer be able to be a “Jewish Democracy.” 

The idea being that the Jewish people need a place to be safe.  Yet I find it hard to understand how a group of people can be safe and have a homeland by making another people homeless in a world where they are not safe as a result.  There have been many massacres of Palestinians since the Nakba inside and around Israel, in Lebanon, in Iraq, in Kuwait.

And there have been many Nakbas ever since this first one.  East Jerusalem right now seems to be a major vortex for this recurring trauma.  Thousands of houses are slated for demolition in Israeli municipality efforts to “Judaize” the city. 

A couple of weeks ago I was reading an article about a little Palestinian boy living in East Jerusalem who was carrying a very heavy bag on his back.  When someone asked him what he had in it he told them that he was carrying his most precious belongings in the fear that he might come home one day to a pile of rubble.

I have not been able to stop thinking about that little boy.  Nor the fact that every day many people here live in fear that one of their most sacred spaces, the space in which they lay their heads to rest, could be gone so quickly without any sort of compensation or justice.

Below is an account by Father Rantisi who was 11 years old in 1948:
(http://www.alnakba.org/testimony/audeh.htm)

“I cannot forget three horror-filled days in July of 1948. The pain sears my memory, and I cannot rid myself of it no matter how hard I try.
       First, Israeli soldiers forced thousands of Palestinians from their homes near the Mediterranean coast, even though some families had lived in the same houses for centuries. (My family had been in the town of Lydda in Palestine at least 1,600 years). Then, without water, we stumbled into the hills and continued for three deadly days. The Jewish soldiers followed, occasionally shooting over our heads to scare us and keep us moving. Terror filled my eleven-year-old mind as I wondered what would happen. I remembered overhearing my father and his friends express alarm about recent massacres by Jewish terrorists. Would they kill us, too?”

These stories haunt me.  Recently an employee of Yad Vashem, the Holocaust museum in Israel, was fired for mentioning Al-Nakba.  The village of Dier Yassin, a village that was massacred and destroyed in 1948 is visible from the museum.  The employee was simply mentioning a similarity that stuck out to him between the Jewish trauma and the Palestinian trauma. 

And what happens to a trauma when it is denied recognition, when it is denied the reasons for its distraught state?  I can look at my own inner process and see similarities.  See the ways in which I sometimes want to deny that feeling of uprootedness or horror.  Go about and pretend like all is ok on the outside, picture perfect, yet within driven by a sense of inner violence that needs pain to remember itself. 

There is lots of talk about the “peace process” by politicians and media regarding this sliver of land.  Ideas of breaking it up even further into a “two state solution” and giving a fair solution to the “refugee problem.” 

To all of this I can’t help but cringe a bit.  I feel that if we are to create true peace, (and why would we do anything less??), then we need to honor peoples most basic rights.  Refugees right to return to their homes is one of those. 

I keep hearing people who are not Palestinian speak of these things.  To them I would request that they stop trying to pretend to know what is best for another people.  I also hear Palestinian politicians feeding into this rhetoric and to them I also request that we take a deeper look to see what is truly best in this situation.

Many Jewish Israelis still don’t feel safe in the world, neither do many of the worlds Palestinians.  What about this?  One state for TWO peoples?!!!  One place where Palestinians and Jews can come, find refuge and celebrate our intertwined destinies.