Update 7- What's Good

(Last Week)

Sitting in a mud dome, it's easy to remember the good things about Israel.

Down on Kibbutz Lotan, I'm spending time, and not money; and my time is going to things that fill my soul to brimming with happiness. Making walls, human habitation, construction, out of waste products (busted tires, glass bottles, plastic jugs/containers) and the earth (mud/straw); taking short stints of working in the hot hot sun, and then taking important breaks to hang out in shaded habitations, to read, to write. We sing Beatles songs, and change a key word here or there to fit our surroundings: "All you need is mud," "We all live in a geodesic dome," "straw-bale: it yields forever."

We all eat together, such wonderful and healthy food; and it's just there, provided for us in such a way that our existence is cherished, affirmed, accepted. My shpilkes act up from time to time, and think: okay, I better hit the road, head on back to Jerusalem for my last week in the area. I still have a few things I'm wanting to do, including a couple of trips to Palestine. Friends to see.
But really, the reason that my shpilkes loves Jerusalem more than Kibbutz Lotan is the opportunity for consumerism. I remind myself that is something that I don't need!
I wrinkle my nose furiously at my shpilkes and decide to extend my time in Lotan, day by day. What started as, "I'll come down for a day," has now turned into three.

(A couple days ago)

An overture to my good friends who make me feel so welcome, who are my family in all places in the world.
Who are quick to hug, and quick to think and joke and laugh,
And who tell me when it's too much
and also when it's just right.

I'm waking up early these days, and now I'm back in Jerusalem after a nice stint of "recovery." And I find good things here too.

The sixtieth anniversary of the founding of the State of Israel / The Naqba is just around the corner, and I don't know where I'm going to be that day. I'd love to be somewhere to commemorate both events, which sounds really great to me.

Yesterday, I spent practically the entire day at "Daila," hanging out with the "veggie bar" crowd there. We made *so much* good good food! Part of the inspiration for us to hole ourselves up in the performance space in downtown Jerusalem has to do with Yom HaZikaron/Hatzmaut; while the entire country is flipping out, we were flipping veggie burgers. I made a carrot-tofu cake and a veggie stir fry. Radiohead and HaDag Nachash are playing in the background.

They bought new plates for the veggie bar, and decorated them with fun slogans in English and Hebrew.

The next day, for the day-of Yom Hatzmaut, I am at Bat Shalom, a women's peace group, for a couple of movies (one about Palestinian refugees who come on a tour of Israel, and Bee Movie, the animated flick with Jerry Seinfeld) and more good vegan food. Afterwards, I go bowling with some Israeli activist friends.

I expected to do something Nakba-related, but then I realized that Nakba Day is a week after Yom Hatzmaut because Naqba day is based on the Gregorian Calendar while Israeli Independence Day is based on the Hebrew Calendar.

I made a final trip into Bethlehem on Friday, and brought with me four people: two Americans and two Israelis.
Israelis have a strange situation that they face in Bethlehem, because they need to choose an alternate identity. As a tourist in Bethlehem, one of the first questions that anyone is asked is where they are from, and given the situation (even moreso since it isn't even legal for them to be in Bethlehem). They can't speak Hebrew while inside, so one of the Israelis, who used the name Amar while inside, decided that he was going to be a New Zealander; no one knows what a New Zealand accent sounds like, he reasoned.

This time, we went to Bethlehem budget-tourist-style (no organized tour, therefore less Palestinian perspective for the group, unfortunately). But we had fun, and it's a pretty big deal for the Israelis to have gone. We went on a hike near the Greek Orthodox monastery called Mar Saba, dropped into the AIC and IMEMC offices for a quick look-around, got lunch, and went to the Church in Bethlehem, and my friend Adnan's souvenir shop. We walked along the streets back to where we catch a bus, and stopped into a sweets shop for a bit. After waiting for a half hour, we piled onto an overcrowded service heading back towards Jerusalem from Beit Jalla. The soldiers asked everyone to file out of the bus and hand over ID.

"Where did you go?" (Eyfo hayitem?)

As we had discussed, the Israelis said that they had gone into Beit Jalla (Area C) to buy some vegetables, no mention of Bethlehem. Bags of vegetables were in our hands.
And that was it. Everyone piled back on, and after waiting ten minutes for everyone's ID to be double-checked, we were on our way back to Jerusalem just in time for shabbat. Both of the Israelis who were with me have had plenty of experience with Palestinians, having gone to demonstrations in the West Bank in support of Palestinians who live there, but this was their first time inside of a Palestinian city.
They are excited to try to go to Ramallah sometime soon. Amar is a student, and talked about re-starting a solidarity committee between his university and Bir Zeit.

Today, for shabbat, I read Torah in Israel for the first time; at Kehillat Kedem. I studied for about two hours by the morning sun, and struggled through the reading, but made it!
A friend from Olympia came into town, and I got to spend a lot of shabbat with her, and have been telling her everything I know about Jerusalem, Israel, and anything else I can think of. That was fun.

I hope that you appreciate the sharp relief and contrast of one update that I write against the next; it's a small window into a world where seemingly exclusive ideas intermingle with wild abandon. Even as I write about standing guard at an orphanage in Hebron, life in Israel fills, compels and captivates me; equally as challenging as this place is, there is much that I love about it.

B'shalom wa salaam,
Jacob in Jerusalem

Update 6- The H in Apartheid

Between 1 and 2 am on Tuesday, April 29, I stood guard at an orphanage run by the Islamic Charitable Society in Hebron. An order for closure was put on the orphanage, to go into effect yesterday; the military has visited the site three times already, and have said that anyone (Palestinian) still in the building starting April 28 could be arrested and held for five years in prison.

Standing guard consisted of sitting near the door with my laptop, playing a computer game, with music coming out of the the headphones around my neck; about four or five times, I paused what I was doing to mute the music, and listened more closely to the sounds of the Hebron night, which never amounted to anything much. There were plenty of night dangers to imagine in the wind which blew through the courtyard, islamic prayer flags flapping against the building.

Shortly after 6am I was awoken and surrounded by curious girls, mostly wearing hijab; residents of the orphanage, who were surprisingly immodest about being near me, while I slept shirtless. We were about eight men in in the corridor, sleeping on thin mattresses on the ground, having pulled one hour shifts each all night long. No military came.

We were from different backgrounds in many ways: mostly US-ers, although a Quebecois (also Jewish), and a couple of Germans were also among us. While the man in charge of the Sewing Workshop inside the orphanage showed us around, using the phrase "the Jewish" to refer to Israeli administration (as in, "we got a permit from the Jewish"), I jokingly wondered whether I was one of "the Jewish" who had invaded and threatened this orphanage in the past months. I considered correcting him, this professional who I was just meeting for the first time, and who was showing me around, but I let this language issue slide.

20 internationals in all ate breakfast together this morning, who had been organized by the CPT (Christian Peacemakers Team) to be able to be present, engage verbally with soldiers, and document what happens when the military comes in to close down the place. The back-story is something like this:
The Islamic Charitable Society runs a lot of ventures in and around Hebron; perhaps several dozen businesses, including bakeries, and a mall. I was inspired hearing about businesses they have set up to support their projects, so that it's a mix of for-profit, and benefit organizations that are run by the society; it's a model I would like to pursue further myself. In recent years, the military has started leaning on the ICS: confiscating computers, stealing files, in the last couple of years going so far as to destroy access to their offices, so that they can't administer properly (welding shut the doors). More recently, it has stepped up to a point that the Israeli military are destroying, stealing and damaging machines and infrastructure (stealing sewing machines, setting bakery ovens on fire), making any part of any project connected to ICS completely non-viable.
Why? Sewing machines? Orphanages? The claim put forth by the military administration is that ICS has been taking money from, has connections to, perhaps is giving money to, Hamas. The man who showed me around presented matter-of-factly that, as a nonprofit, their finances were an open book, that you can see where their donations are coming from (mostly Europe and North America), and that they don't receive or send any money from/to Hamas.
This is still kind of besides the point: an orphanage, even one partially funded by Hamas, is still an orphanage. A sewing machine is not a weapon. And it's important to note, this orphanage is in H1*.
And so they anticipate the military entering the building, having scoped it several times already, to destroy a good amount of the infrastructure, and welding the doors shut to prevent the use of the space. The CPT wants to make sure that the kids who are sleeping there stay safe, and that, whatever happens, it gets documented.

After breakfast, we split up, and I head with some folks to Bethlehem, and then along with the Germans back to Jerusalem, where I'm back around 9am. As far as anyone knows, the status of the Orphanage is no different now than it was yesterday: slated for closure. I could sleep there the next two weeks solid until I leave the country, and the military might still not have acted; then again, tonight might be the night. It's a strange calculus that your brain unfolds in a situation like this. As I think about it now on a couch in Jerusalem, I'm thinking: "well, if we just took over a classroom there, and brought in some couches, some reading material, got an internet connection going there, I might stay there a week straight." "Ah well," my brain shrugs off the organizing challenge, and I figure I might stay there another night or two at some point. I was never much for commutes.

Before Shabbat
On Thursday night, hanging out at Shai's apartment, I asked him, "Hey what are you up to tomorrow?"
"Going on a solidarity visit to Hebron," he tells me. These tours are organized by Bnei Avraham, I wrote about one last year [http://www.redsolid.com/writings/ip/2007/u2.html]. I don't have any plans, I think to myself, and make up my mind to go along with.

The next morning, I walk with Shai and his roommate to Gan HaPa'amon to catch the bus, leaving at 9:30am. We eventually load in and ship out, the bus about 2/3 full. I recognize a couple of people from the progressive Jerusalem Anglo community there, and introduce myself to a few people I don't know. I sit in back with Shai, who is looking out the back window to make sure there are no undercover cops tailing us. He doesn't think there are.

Bnei Avraham refers to a common ancestral heritage, with both Jews and Muslims claiming descendancy from Abraham. Jews follow the line of Isaac and Jacob, while the Muslim story tells of Abraham choosing Ishmael for his lineage. The battalion that serves in Hebron-- fully 500 soldiers, nearly as many as the number of Jewish settlers in Hebron-- gets swapped out every six months, because it is hard and dangerous to serve there, and also so that soldiers don't get too cozy with any of the local residents. Bnei Avraham was started by soldiers who served in Hebron several years ago, members of a socialist youth group, who were moved by their witnessing injustice to create a relationship with Palestinians living under occupation in H2.
Although we weren't confident that we would be admitted into Hebron, we got in no problem, as a tour bus filled with Israelis and internationals. We parked near the Cave of the Patriarchs, (where Sarah, Abraham, Isaac, Rebekah, Jacob and Leah were buried-- a holy place for Jews, Christians, and Muslims) and filed off the bus. We walked through the streets of H2-- Jewish-controlled Hebron-- and talked about the significance of certain places, many of them places where someone had been killed at some point in the last 80 years. The road, although designed for heavy use, is pretty much deserted; military orders prevent Palestinians from using this main road in H2, so we only need to scoot out of the way of a small number of settlers' cars, who blare their horns at us as they pass. Eventually we make it past Beit Hadassah, one of the more prominent Jewish settlements inside H2, and to an area where Palestinians are once more allowed on the street. We follow our host and guide up the hill to Tel Rumeida, where we trudge off to visit a family and drink tea.

Like many Palestinian homes in Tel Rumeida, they need to use a back entrance to enter, due to the closure placed on the main road. In this case, it meant ducking below a 5-foot high thatched trellis for grapevines, and walking carefully through a yard. With frustration, the mother of a house tells us how, last week, when her son had an asthma attack, he needed to be carried along this route; the ambulance wasn't allowed past the checkpoint up the main road. Our host points out to us that, in medical emergencies, delays like this can easily mean the loss of life.

They told us the stories of their day-to-day struggles; the soldiers and settlers throwing garbage down upon them, shouting curses at them, attacking and harassing their children on the way to school, property destruction. I know these stories. I still don't know what it's like, or how this can continue, but I've heard the stories. Whatever compassion I feel for these people, I wonder that they don't just leave, move to H1. "And who could we sell our house to?" comes the response. Now I get it. It's an economic thing.
People here are living in a crappy situation for the same reason anyone anywhere would decide to: they don't feel they can afford another option, quite literally.

Our particular visit was set up as a "solidarity visit," as distinct from some other tours that Bnei Avraham offers, introducing people to the situation there. Our group was composed of people who would like to express solidarity with the Palestinians of Hebron, and so a fitting action was planned. Black t-shirts were distributed, on which was written in white block letters: "I have a dream." Our visit, taking place over Passover, also marked 40 years after the original occupation of a Hebron hotel by Rabbi Levinger and a group of Jewish settlers in 1968. A few signs were distributed, reading in Arabic and English things like "Stop settler violence." Highly controversial, I know. We walked down the street, chanting slogans intermittently, but mostly just walking down the street.

It was over in just a few minutes, and it went the same way as the last time I came here last year: the Palestinians walked with us on 200 feet of road that they are typically prevented from walking on, as a symbolic protest, and then they split off from the group behind the barriers and back to their neighborhood on the hill. A couple of settlers got in our faces... one man holding a video camera grabbed a sign out of an Israeli's hands, and threw it on the ground. Meanwhile, the police and soldiers stood beside, and tried "talking him down." This is the tactic of the law enforcement of the area: like the parent of an extremely angry child, just talk them down. It's going to be okay, sweetheart.

We arrived at the first bus as planned, and as far as we could tell, the day was pretty much over. Some people filed into the bus, and I continued walking with others continued walking to get to the second bus, which had come from Tel Aviv. Then, in a predetermined fashion, several soldiers and border police surrounded Amos, a key organizer, and brought him into their police jeep.

A group of Anarchists Against the Wall, perhaps twelve Israelis in all, sat down in front of the jeep, and linked arms, typical nonviolent disobedience style. I sat down on the edge of the group. Soldiers started hauling the young men off to the side, and physically restrained them from re-entering the road. I stuck around to make sure my friends were okay. By this time, the bus we had come on arrived, and most of us piled on, but between the settlers confronting us, and people who just didn't know what to do, the bus ended up unable to move for probably another 20 minutes, while settlers and Palestine support activists swapped insults. The bus finally headed out, and to the police station at Kiryat Arba (the settlement next-door to Hebron), to pick up Amos.

At this point the local authority decides to detain all of us, and demands to see identification documents before letting us go. It's worth mentioning at this point that, besides for those who interfered with police action, we didn't do anything illegal. It is perfectly legal for both Israelis and internationals to be in H2, the Israeli controlled side of Hebron. The basis for our detainment was basically that the settlers didn't like us being there. And the settlers control the situation on the ground.

Perhaps an hour later, anyone who offered their ID information was allowed onto the first bus, which made its way through the gate of the Kiryat Arba police station, only to be met by a volley of things thrown at it-- mostly eggs. With a clouded windshield, and an 8-year old standing in the road with his dog in order to block us, we backed up into the police station, and ended up waiting another couple of hours for police/soldier backup. This was one of the first times I got a sense of what it was like for people who went to register black voters in the south: the "people" are all against you, willing to use violence against you, and the authorities will protect them. It's as if the schoolyard bully has been given tacit support and protection from the administration of the school.

They were obviously not going to detain, arrest, or indeed give any consequences to the settlers who were assaulting us, despite the fact that we were predominantly a group of Israelis that the army was ostensibly in charge of protecting. The soldiers did, however, fan out on the sides of the bus, and run alongside it, physically allowing it to pass through the settlement relatively unharmed, and back to the main roads, which took us back to Jerusalem barely in time for Shabbat.

I often don't like the term Apartheid to be used when talking about Israel, or the Wall, or the situation here; the situation here is complex, and isn't South Africa. I can't say worse, or better, I can say different. But there is a great similarity in terms of the creation of different sets of rules for the people living in the same place. The US functions in some of the same ways for migrant workers that live there. I don't want to point it out as unique: just a clear example of injustice.

And what do we do when we notice injustice anywhere?
Well, we write about it.

Alright, I gotta head out for the day, stop haunting my friend's apartment for awhile.

B'shalom wa salaam,
Jacob in J-Town

For pictures of our "solidarity visit" to Hebron [http://www.flickr.com/photos/activestills/tags/hebron/]
For more backstory on the orphanage: [http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=42151]

H1, H2 explanation (from [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hebron])

Since early 1997, following the Hebron Agreement, the city has been divided into two sectors: H1 and H2. The H1 sector, home to around 120,000 Palestinians, came under the control of the Palestinian Authority, in accordance with Hebron Protocol. H2, which was inhabited by around 30,000 Palestinians, remained under Israeli military control in order to protect some 600-800 Jewish residents living in the old Jewish quarter, now an enclave near the center of the town. During the years since the outbreak of the Second Intifada, the Palestinian population in H2 has decreased greatly, the drop in large part having been identified with extended curfews and movement restrictions placed on Palestinian residents of the sector by the IDF for what it says are security needs, including the closing of Palestinian shops in certain areas. Settler harassment of their Palestinian neighbours in H2 was a reason for several dozen Palestinian families to depart the areas adjacent to the Israeli population.

Update 5- Egypt, Uganda

Writing is hard, and an idea confronts me: perhaps I don't know what to say anymore. I know that this happens. Somehow, after foreign-language immersion, and new situations, the words don't flow quite as simply. So, for now, it's work.

I'm going to start by talking about my life right now. Being in Jerusalem this Passover has been a very hard experience, and it's not because matzah is hard to find. In the neighborhood that I'm in currently, it's actually rather difficult to find chametz, even if you're looking for it.
In a curious inversion, my friend who I'm staying with here has a strong secular identity, told me that this Passover he has been trying to fast from matzah, but that he ended up getting matzah when eating out somewhere. Last night, when my belly was grumbling, he assured me that my problems derive from too much matzah.

Last you heard from me, I accompanied a couple of folks into Tulkarem. That night, I caught a bus to Be'er Sheva, where I stayed with a friend and met up with another. The next day I meandered my way down to the Arava, and stayed at Kibbutz Lotan, where there was an 80's dance party. I hope I'll track down some pictures to share. I learned that day, a Wednesday, that you need to pre-arrange a visa in order to enter Egypt beyond the Sinai, and in the morning I caught a ride down to Eilat, and then a taxi to the Egyptian embassy. About two hours and 110 shekels later, I had a multi-entry visa for the next three months into Egypt.

I shared a ride with some fellow journeyers to the border, and walked across into Taba with very little difficulty. After waiting for a couple of hours, I made it to Cairo, where I've got two friends independently studying Arabic, for two years, and three months, respectively.

I spent two nights there, including all of shabbat. My friends were great, but Cairo is a lot to take in. It is perhaps the most densely populated city in the world (nearly four times that of NYC). Crossing the street is terrifying at first: the cars actually turn towards you, because they anticipate that you will continue crossing the street. I feel for the clumsy people of Cairo, tripping could be deadly.

I took a taxi to the airport Saturday night for a 10 pm flight to Uganda. Everything went smoothly, air travel was a lot more relaxed on Egypt Air than I'm used to. Five hours in the air, and I land in Entebbe, and make it through customs after paying $60. My friend Amanda is there to meet and greet me. We make it back to a hostel in Entebbe to finish the night's sleep, and I get my first experience with mosquito netting.

The next day, on the way to the botanical gardens in Entebbe, we pick up some bananas and peanuts to feed to the monkeys. The botanical gardens felt like a city park in Portland, a nice patch of land to hang out in nature, with picnic tables in certain areas for noshing (only this place had a restaurant there too, which I'm sure was
playing some music). They educated me about the local plants and animals, many of which were unbelievably large, like from a Dr. Suess book.

After a good long while attempting to track down the monkeys in order to feed them, we eventually came upon them, and they rushed us at once noticing the bananas we had with us. One greedy little monkey jumped on Amanda, scratching her hand, and pulled a banana out of her purse. They were less feistily passionate about the peanuts we gave them later, although they competed somewhat among each other, and came right next to us, sticking their little hands in ours. One monkey had no feet; it might have been born that way. Although it would scurry the same way as the other monkies, when inspired, it would flip itself over into a handstand and walk over a distance on its hands.

Eventually we made it into Kampala, the capital city, which is not so big actually, about the size of Portland perhaps, and eventually on to the village where Amanda stays near Bulenga. Once outside the most central part of the city, all the roads are dirt. And this doesn't seem to be a huge problem, for the most part; it's a little sketchy when it's raining, especially when riding a motorbike.

As we pass by children on the road, we are greeted by "Bye Nakalema!" (Nakalema is Amanda's 'Ugandan' name), or "Bye Mzungu!" (Mzungu=white person), or even "Bye Aaron-ee!" (Aaron is another peace corps
volunteer whose name the kids have learned at some point.) They figure I am Aaron because, well, we are both not Ugandan. And we have glasses. Besides that, he's an extra six inches taller than me, possibly skinnier, and a bit darker-skinned-- his father is African American. Growing up in Florida, many people thought of him as black, but here in Uganda, he's just another whitey, because he's lighter-skinned than most of the black Ugandan folks who live around there. They add "ee" at the end of "Aaron" because it's fairly inconceivable to them that a word would end with a consonant; I didn't mind being called that, since it's my middle name anyways. But when I introduced myself to people, it was as "Yakobo," the luganda translation of my name.

One day I rode on bodas (motorbikes) to a number of different schools in a particular region, to encourage them to send teachers for an HIV/AIDS curriculum training for secondary and vocational school teachers. My second day in Uganda, and I was already acting as if I were an official representative of Amanda's organization. They bestowed a great deal of respect upon me as I visited each school and explained the program to them. In Uganda, there is a high level of English fluency; if I want to speak with someone, I need to slow down a whole lot, and change my emphasis and word choice a little to reflect "Uganglish," but I can still make myself understood more or less.

One funny moment from this experience was when one particular headmaster asked me what would be covered in the curriculum. I can't be certain, but I considered that he might be concerned about the perspective. I explained that my organization was a Christian organization, and that he could expect everything covered to be appropriate. This, while I was wearing my kipa.

A number of people would ask me, when wearing my American-style kipa, what religion I was. Often, after I would try to explain what Jewish was, the closest people came to is "something like Catholic." This was an interesting contrast: for better or worse, everyone in the middle east knows what Jewish is.

Amanda and I went for a trip to the eastern part of Uganda, centered around a town called Mbale. The first time I passed through Mbale, I met up with Israel, a man from the Uganda Jewish Community known as Abayudaya, at his simple hardware store. He explained to me how to get the Jewish community when I returned for shabbat.
Then we went to Sipi Falls for two nights, whose geography and climate was slightly reminiscent of the Pacific Northwest during summer, with a few nice waterfalls to hike to. On our way to each falls, we would walk through mountain villages; towards the end, a group of children followed along with us until the falls. Our tour guide picked some aloe vera to take home, and wrapped it in a bundle with a banana leaf, and one of the children carried the package for him.
The hostel we stayed at was very nice, I could imagine happily living there for a month. The man who ran the place was quite accommodating, a German ex-pat who appreciated the things that life brought him in Sipi Falls: drinking a beer and watching the sunset, having a chat with those who passed through. Some people worked at the hostel whose sole job was heating water for showering; they would light a fire and heat a vat of water, and an hour later it would be ready for showering. This didn't work very well. Sometimes it would take hours to get the fire going. Sometimes they would heat the water too much and it would come out scalding hot. It mostly was just a funny social interaction to negotiate, it didn't bother me much.

Two days later, on Friday, we caught a minibus back to Mbale, and caught motorbike-taxis to the village of Nabugoye. Nabugoye is the "headquarters" of Abayudaya, and we checked into the guesthouse there, and I met with the spiritual leader of the community, Aaron Kintu Moses. Several days before we arrived, the power and water connections to the village were severed, so we got the real village experience, using water that had been hauled from the well nearby.

He gave me an aliyah to read the next day, which meant that I had to learn 12 lines by the last hour of daylight that day, and to wake up with the sun to complete learning it. We walked up together with Isaac, who runs the guesthouse, to the synagogue for Kabbalat shabbat services. It was similar to many kabbalat shabat services I have been to, only many of the psalms we read were in luganda, and because it was dark I couldn't really follow along. They tended to use fairly simple tunes that repeated often. There was separate seating, but no
mechitza. During "lecha dodi," I, along with most of the men in the congregation, walked around the bima counter-clockwise chanting and marching together with the song.

That night we had dinner with Israel's family, and ironically talked about money in Uganda: about work, about the economy, about jobs, that sort of thing. I had my first dinner that was typical Ugandan fare: rice, posho (a mashed root), matoke (boiled plantains), fish, perhaps lentils. Unfortunately, the new foods were a little hard on my system.
We got to sleep, and I succeeding in learning my reading just before synagogue, and I was really happy with how well I read. I was sad that I didn't get a single yasher koach (essentially, "you did the right thing"); because they often have visiting Jewish scholars or rabbinical students, I don't think they are all that impressed by Jews that Got Torah. The food caught up with me by the end of the torah service and I laid down and took it easy the rest of the day. After shabbat, a group of us bazungu walked into the local town, and bought some food. One thing I really liked in Uganda is that they have real ginger beer everywhere (unfortunately, it's a Coke product).

We left the next morning and spent my last few days near Kampala. I bought a couple of drums, a reed mat, and an amazing painting on cloth. I enjoyed my time, and took a regimen of antibiotics to fight off giardia. I went on a series of home-visits with Amanda, meet with people who have HIV/AIDS, and to be able to offer them support, or answer questions they might have. One of my checked bags to Uganda was entirely filled with clothing to give away (all of which I had gotten for free), and we gave each family four or five pieces of clothing, until it was all gone.

Overall, my time was idyllic, I got to live like a rich person, and focus on taking care of myself during the days. I learned a lot about the contextual nature of racism, and the construct of race. I thought a lot about the kinds of poverty people are facing there, and brainstorm about how to intervene in some small way. When flying back, I walked right onto the plane with my large drum, well over the size limit for carry-ons. The plane was only about half-full, and I strapped it into two seats of its own, using a seatbelt to hold it in place. Once in Cairo, I handed it off to a friend, who will enjoy my drum while in Cairo and get it back to me hopefully in the Pacific Northwest.

I got back to my friend's apartment in Cairo fairly early, and equipped with the key he had left me, chilled out the whole day, waiting for people to get home from work or school. I caught up with some friends for dinner, and then attempted to take the late bus from Cairo to the border. It was a trial for me: it took me much too long to find a taxi, because I headed the wrong direction, then I ended up with a driver who 1. didn't know where he was going and 2. didn't have a meter, even though I went a huge distance out of my way to try to
get one of the few taxis with a meter. In the end he charged me 3 times what he should have, and I ended up missing my bus. By the time I got back to my friend's apartment, I was on the verge of tears.

I made it back to the bus station for the 6 am bus, and crossed the border mid-day. After hitching for a couple hours I caught a ride to Be'er Sheva with an Argentinian man (with whom I spoke Spanish), and then took a bus back to J-Town, where I oriented myself, feeling every bit like I was "brought forth out of Egypt" for Passover.

Who knows? Maybe you'll hear again from me soon.

Chag Sameach, Shabbat Shalom,
Jacob in J-Town

Update 4- Tulkarem and back

The day I left Jerusalem, I went to Tulkarem for the first time in four years. A couple of Olympia friends wanted to visit Flo, who was in Tulkarem for a little while, and the synapses fired in my mechancial brain: here's a Jew (one of them is Jewish) wanting to go to Palestine. That can only mean one thing: I gotta get them in!

Whenever I think this too loudly, a get some feedback, a sort of white noise, which goes something like this:

"Well, what if they weren't Jewish?" And I feel a little sheepish that I wouldn't be as driven to get them to Palestine, I might not have given my day to that effort, going through checkpoint after checkpoint to get them where they want to go; but whatever: I like bringing gentiles into Palestine too, it's just different. A less integrated experience. When there are gentiles who are friends and lovers of Jews, in the same group as them, it's not hard or confusing, because these people by-and-large give Jewish people the space to experience whatever comes up for them, and act as an anchor of safety in an otherwise confusing situation.

So I brought them into Tulkarem. We met up at 9:30 at Damascus Gate (after I overtured them about being on time, it was *I* who was 20 mins late). We caught a 'service' to Ramallah, and on the way, I briefed them on "Hello," "Thank you," and numbers 1 through 5 in Arabic. After being told contradictory information about where the 'service' to Tulkarem was, some especially helpful people drove us the several hundred meters to the parking lot.

Since this was my friends' first time into Palestine, I decided not to just put them in a 'service' and go back to J-town, I also decided that i wanted to go back to Tulkarem to see Flo again, and to hopefully see any Palestinians I had met four years previous.

We hung out waiting for the shuttle to fill up. I lay against a tree outside, munching on 'loos,' which I think are baby almonds, where you eat the whole fruit. It tastes like a cross between sugar-peas and a citrus fruit. I introduced myself to the driver: "Ana Yacoub," and shook his hand. He told me his name too. And then he told a rough-looking guy that my name was Yacoub.

He approached me. "Yacoub is a Jewish name," he says to me, not disguising contempt in his voice.

"Why?" I ask him. (Lesh?) Feigning ignorance seemed best at that time.

This is not a person I want to 'come out' to right now. He asks me where I'm from, and I tell him.
"America is no good," he tells me. "Bush is crazy," I echo back, hoping that this password will be good
enough. Fortunately, he leaves me alone, although I am now distinctly uncomfortable.

Despite the discomfort, I'm really glad that i went with them, because the first checkpoint out of Ramallah, the soldiers pulled us off the 'service' and questioned our intentions, knowledge, and sanity. This could be a bit much to negotiate for anyone's first time to Palestine.

"Listen, if you don't come back, it's us who has to clean it up," the Israeli soldiers tell us. "Haven't you heard of kidnappings? What do you think they'll do if they know you're Jewish?" And truthfully, this question sometimes tests my mind.

I convince the soldiers we know what we're doing, that we're innocuous enough to enter, and smart enough to keep ourselves safe.

We we re-enter the taxi, a distinguished professional in the back seat says he overhead the conversation. "I hope you know they are lying," he says. "You are most welcome. No one wil hurt you."
A stark reality faced me the rest of the way to Tulkarem. Getting to Tulkarem is way harder and more stressful than just going to Ramallah or Bethlehem from J-town, where I've mostly been in the last couple years. We went past no less than five checkpoints, each successively pointing out the ludicrousness of the type of Occupation and Control that is being maintained. Beyond the guise of security, Palestinians are being separated from Palestinians, West Bank from West Bank.
(Let's hope US pressure can change this somewhat, and soon)

I made it into town for a deep embrace from Abed, someone who used to be an ISM coordinator in Tulkarem. He's around 40 years old, a very sweet and safe man, who has spent perhaps five years in Israeli jails in the 80's. Flo acknowledges me minimally, in some ways by necessity (men & women can't hug in the street).
It was instructive to think about the needs of my friend I brought in:
my friend was born female, and now presents as male, and because of this, I was unsure of what gender rules he should follow: the "male rules" which would allow him to wear short sleeves, or the more restrictive "female" standard. He decides that he will not necessarily pass as male, and so adopts the stricter rules.
We visited a prisoners' support organization, which helps the families of prisoners navigate the bureaucracy of visiting prisoners in Israeli jails. All of the people working with the organization have been in jails for 1, 3, 5 years. It was very inspiring to hear their stories and see that they were organizing on behlaf of prisoners.
Later, we had a very lavish lunch- at 17 shekels per person, we may have set a record in the City of Tulkarem that day for the most spent on lunch. Stuffed to the gills, I sought out a 'service' to Ramallah.
While waiting for it to fill up with people, I stopped in the sweets shop across the way. A 10-shekel ($3) package of Palestinian sweets is often a great gift to give to anyone whose house I am staying at.

While talking over my purchase with the shop owner, he asks me,"Are you Muslim? Are you Jewish? Are you Christian?"
Not feeling certain whether this is a safe place to out myself, I tell him I have no religion.
This decision haunts me: here, I specifically came into Tulkarem as a Jew, and when someone asks me directly about my religious orientation, I lie. When I think more about it, this isn't a particualrly important relationship; I may never see this guy again in my life. Still, I don't like the hiding or dishonesty even in this passing exchange. I want him to know that there *are* Jews out there who are willing to gothrough six checkpoints to go to his sweets shop in Tulkarem, who want only the best for him and his people.

I realized that what is holding me back, where my hesitation comes from, is an in ability to communicate in Arabic. I would have felt a lot more comfortable telling him I am Jewish if I could have, immediately afterwards, effectively answered any questions he might have had about that. Instead, I would just be flinging a fact into his lap, and while I might hope that he would do something good with it, he might interpret it any number of ways, and there would be very little possibility for dialogue.

I add a little star next to "learn Arabic" on my mental list of How to End the Occupation.

Today I will be going to the Abayudaya Jewish Community in Uganda for Shabbat. This should be awesome! I hope everyone is well, and is blessed with health and joy this weekend.

Shabbat shalom y'all,
Yakobo in Mbale, Uganda

Update 3- Bethlehem et al

I am in Egypt for the first time in my life. Indeed, sitting at a bus station, waiting for the first bus to Cairo- which the man who works here reports to me, has broken down. So I'm here another four hours until the next one comes. I buy a ticket from the vendor, and he fishes the change out of his wallet. He charges me 10 Egyptian Pounds more than he should, but I'm not going to argue about it. I can take advantage of my newfound wealth of time to write about taking my first group of 'Jews et al' into Bethlehem.

On Thursday after Purim, I found myself in the Encounter office, where I introduced Cindy & Craig Corrie to the work done by Encounter. It was an interesting shidduch, to the extent that they have a large amount of respect for each other, yet in a lot of ways speak different languages to different communities. Rachel's story is such that she has become an icon for Palestinians, and for the movement for (Palestinian) human rights. A stark reminder that the occupation, at least in a few cases, also kills without regard to race or national origin.

Encounter is a very targeted project for religious Jews. It must address particularism as much as the Corries address universal values.
So anyways, after their interesting meeting, I ask Encounter staff if they know anyone who can a tour for me and 'Jews et al.' They give me a name and number, and I call him a couple of times until I get him on the phone. I talk over the design for an alternative tour for 7-- no, make that 9-- people.

"Is anyone in your group Israeli?" he asks me. Yes, I reply, after a moment's hesitation. "That's great," he replies. "Israelis definitely need to see what it's like here."

Friends, in case you are not familiar with the situation in Palestine, right around the time of Oslo*, part of a "peace process" was to "hand over" partial control of the West Bank to Palestinian administration and security. Palestine is a checkboard map of these three areas, starting with the most urban, progressing to the most rural: Area A (Palestinian administration/security), Area B (Palestinian administration, Israeli security), and Area C (Israeli administration/security). Note that you can read the word "security" also as "military control." Israelis are not allowed into Areas A or B; if they are caught entering, there is perhaps a 5000 shekel fine ($1500 US). Regardless of the intentions behind this law, which has been in effect only since around 2000 or so, is that Israelis can't go to Palestinian communities, safety aside. With the status quo, there is no chance of it "going back" to the way it was: in 1990, someone who lived in Kfar Saba could just drive into Qalqilya to buy vegetables.

So the way this affects us is that for the Israeli in our group, we have to be a little strategic, and take checkpoints from Area C back into Israel, and he has to have a story for the soldiers about where he was, and cannot say that he went to Bethlehem.

Onward, Jacob! This update is taking forever to get out. Here's the gist. On Thursday, everything got arranged, our host knew that most of us are Jewish, and since he is an activist, and a pragamtist, and thoughtful about how to create change for the people of Palestine, he knows that he needs to have good alliances with, and change the opinions of, Jews. He is perfectly happy that we are Jews. I'm just being a little redundant on this point because people ask about it so much.

On the other hand, the status quo of Palestine demands that we not publicize our Jewishness to people on the streets of Bethlehem, which was pretty much a non-issue for everyone; for more religious, or outwardly-identified people, they would have to put their necklace inside their shirt, or tuck in their peyos, or wear a hat to cover their yamika, you get the idea.

At 11 pm the night before we rendezvous'd and left for the Bethlehem area, I realized that daylight savings time was changing that evening... in Israel, at least. So, instead of meeting at 9:30 as I had intended, we moved the meeting time to 10:30 am, which would give people the same amount of sleep. After researching on the internet about whether or not Palestine was changing times when Israel was, I still was not sure about it, and read contradicting information. It turned out that they did switch times at the same time; I believe that in the Fall, Palestine Time* switches one week off from Israel, as a vestige of distinction.

We finally started meeting up at 10:30 am outside Damascus gate, and I ate hummous while waiting on everyone to show up. At 10:55, we headed out to find the 'service' which would bring us into Beit Jalla, a town in the Bethlehem area. We didn't get to our destination until noon; we filed out of the 'service' and met up with George, our fearless, funny, and quite opinionated guide.

First stop: Church of the Nativity. It was my third time there, and definitely the most crowded with other tourists. George spoke passionately about the negative effects of this type of Bethlehem tourism: no one even stays over night, people drive into Palestine, go see the church, then jump back on their buses heading for Israel. All people bring is their trash. They have a negative impact on the Palestinian Economy. He was upset that we, his guests, were being cut out from seeing the "grotto" at the Church by these long lines of people who don't help out the Palestinians: since he lives here, he should have priority in bringing friends to see the church.
George also indicated something that I hadn't noticed before: the bullet-holes through the stained glass in the upper reaches of the Church, as viewed from the courtyard in the middle of the church. From Israeli fire during the siege of the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem during Operation Defensive Shield in 2002. (the event that launched ISM from obscurity)

Next, we went to see the Wall. Over near Rachel's Tomb, in the northern area of Bethlehem, 26 ft. concrete wall snakes and travels in order to capture Rachel's Tomb on the Israeli side, so that Jewish visitors are able to see their holy site without the trouble of seeing Bethlehem, or any Palestine Palestinians for that matter. It's a
pretty ugly wall, as you might imagine, but there is cool graffiti on it and nearby, including works by the famed "Banksy," a British tagger.

At this point, we headed to Palestinian homes for lunch, split into two groups: vegan and otherwise. I told George that there were three vegans among us, but I didn't tell him that almost no one in our group would eat meat, so that caused a little bit of an issue. People worked it out. I ate with the vegans and wannabes in George's house, it was really sweet to meet his family, and eat with them. They were very nice to us, and welcoming. The carni-philes and associated people ate down the block at George's uncle's house.

After lunch, we heard a different George (with the same last name) speak about nonviolent resistance in the Bethlehem area in the past 20 years or so. I really liked this part of it. Some of us were succumbing to food-coma at this point, but most of us were alive-alert-awake & attentive. We asked some good, and hard, questions. Back in '04, I worked for a week or two in the same office as this George and another guy who works at the IMEMC (International Middle East Media Center, check out http://www.imemc.org)

Last on the tour, we went to 'Aida Camp (a refugee camp of around 10,000 people), and some young guys there told us about the place, and about some arts and cultural programs that they have for giving a positive outlet for the youth of the community.

Around 4 pm, George was heading for Ramallah to hear the Corries speak, and Mikey and Melissa went with him. The rest of us took another hour plus to go into a trinket store where I saw my friend Adnan who runs the place, and then walk through the streets of Bethlehem, where the fruit/vegetable market was closing up the last of its wares. We made it back to Beit Jalla, and caught a 'service' with barely enough time to make it back to J-Town for Shabbat. But we did.
And it was good.

My folks flew out the next morning, and I wandered around Jerusalem in a shabbat-inspired daze. What. a. world. I thought I was going to meet a friend for lunch, but I went to the wrong place, and some nice Brooklyn Jews took me in. We sang a lot of rounds, which was fun. I didn't talk about Palestine at all.

Perhaps for the next update, I'll write something about people's reactions to the trip, if I can compile some of them. I think that would be a useful thing for me.

I'm working on a song about Area C,
here's the chorus:

Area C, Area C
Everybody's Welcome in Area C
Area C, Area C
You Can Be From Anywhere in Area C

The tune is similar to the "Kit Kat bar" commercial.

Okay, yeah, and I'm in Uganda. That's right. As I speed by on the back of a motorbike, the children call out to me: "bye muzungu!" (muzungu=white person). The ones who don't run away screaming, which a couple do.
It's a little funny writing about Palestine, but still important. Actually, I've been talking about it with people here, including Ugandans, who are quite interested to learn about the situation.

I was also in Cairo for a few days en route to Uganda. It's really easy to find a copy of Mein Kampf there, in Arabic. If anyone needs a copy, let me know, they're like $3. Shabbat was interesting there... interesting like non-existent. I went to the Pyramids on shabbat. I've got friends living there, studying Arabic who were amazingly welcoming and great to spend time with, and while they like to talk shit about Egyptian food, I actually was pretty happy with what was available to me. I guess it's different if you live somewhere for two years, you don't get sick of it after two days. I'll write more about Cairo later.

Bye friends, hope to talk to you soon!
-Yakobo in Bulenga

Oslo- The Oslo Accords, back in the 90's
Palestine Time- There was a Darwin Awards story about some Palestinians who accidentally blew themselves up with a bomb intended for Israelis, because they got confused between Palestine Time and Israel time, and thought that they had an hour more than they actually did.

Update 2- Short and Overdue

Chevre,

Last you heard from me, I was getting ready to shear the tzitzit off my keppe.

Thursday, March 20-- Ta'anit Esther
I arranged to meet with fellow Palestine-travelers at 11am at Damascus gate, and I arrived at the Techana Merkazit (central bus station) around 10 am, and started walking. I walked through the shuuk (market), and by chance, passed a barber shop, who was willing to cut my hair but slightly incredulous that I wanted to cut my peyos off.
"Why?" he asks me. "It's Purim," I tell him. "Time for a chidush chadash," a new transition.
I didn't tell him: "because I'm going to Ramallah in an hour, and I really don't want want to walk down the street there with peyos." The off-chance that he wouldn't be willing to cut them off for me wasn't worth it, I was on a time-schedule.

So here I am, freshly hair-cut and wait just five minutes (although I'm ten minutes late) for the first two contestants of the game show, "Who Wants to Go to Palestine?"

I thought another friend was coming too, but no, it's just the three of us. We grab a shuttle from the Palestinian bus station, and are in Ramallah around noon, after an extensive display of how far Palestinians are redirected thanks the to the Wall around Ramallah. I decide not to fast, so I walk around searching for my favorite falafel place, but was unable to find it after twenty minutes or so, and settled for a different restaurant.
Ow! My first meal in Palestine, and I was already injured! I got something spicy in my eye and had to wash it out. It hurt a lot. Maybe I should have fasted.

We found the ISM office, talked to the folks there for a little bit, then picked a village to head out and see. We picked Bil'in, where there have been weekly protests every Friday for three years. We found our way to a shuttle heading that-a-way, found the "international house" (Abdullah's house), and sat in the yard hanging out with some Palestinian kids for half an hour or so. Inside, many members of the household were teaming up to clean the place up, that's why we were in the yard.

Abdullah took us in his car, along with another friend, to see the Wall, which at this particular location consisted of a series of fences, razor wire, roads, and sensors. The story goes something like this:

During the time when they were initially building the barrier, Palestinians were prevented from accessing the olive groves on the grounds that no one lived over there, despite the fact that the land historically belonged to the village of Bil'in. The settlement of Modi'in Illit, to the West of Bil'in, was illegally building additions to their settlement, stretching eastwards towards Bil'in. Since there didn't seem to be any authority willing to stop Israelis from building without a permit, some folks thought of a creative resistance they could employ.
One night, Israelis and Palestinians together built a one-room "house" on Bil'in land out beyond the olive groves, and beyond the path of th wall, nearby to where Modi'in Illit was building their Matityahu East expansion. The idea was this: if the courts upheld that Israeli settlers were allowed to remain in their illegally built structures, then by extension "Bil'in West" had to stand as well.

Without the specifics of exactly what happened, the current situation is this: the route of the wall got moved somewhat, so Bil'in had access to a bit more land on their side of the wall, and a gate was installed so that a villager from Bil'in can, with a bit of hassle, access the olive groves on the far side of the barrier, facilitated by the Israeli military.

Our host Abdullah explained to us that we, as internationals, would not be allowed to cross through the gate, but that they, as villagers from Bil'in, would be allowed to. He asks for permission for us to all go through. The soldiers talk amongst each other and up the command, and ten minutes later, the decision is made known that we aren't allowed through. It was a pretty surreal manifestation of bureaucracy, that no less than six personnel were being used to watch and man this gate, and to maintain a presence at the barrier, which is the traditional site of protest.

We made our way back to Ramallah, and then to Jerusalem, where we walked through the Border Terminal (nee military checkpoint) known as Qalandia. A new thing is that they checked the date on our visas. I had rarely, if ever, seen those checked. Back to Jerusalem, a night at Benj/Emma's and the anticipation of hitching through the West Bank the following day to Kibbutz Sasa for the Purim weekend.

Shavua tov!
Ya'akov

About Modi'in Illit and the placement of the Wall near Bil'in:
[http://www.palsolidarity.org/main/2005/12/29/bilin-land-grab-thanks-to-the-wall-2/]

A reason to be happy that my phone doesn't work that well:
[http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-wellbeing/health-news/mobile-phones-more-dangerous-than-smoking-802602.html]

a shabbos thought

The point is to be able to communicate well. It's not to *appear* as
if you know how to communicate well. It can often be a hindrance to
appear to communicate well, while in fact not being able to. At the
same time, it is nice, and useful, for people to feel comfortable, and
the simple communication, and the joy in being able to communicate
simply, is not to be overlooked. I want to know five languages by the
time I'm 30, not because I want to then kick back and pat myself on
the back, but because then I will be ready to really get down to
business. With English, Spanish, Hebrew, Arabic, and Japanese, I
should have communication access to about 1/3 of the world, and it
will then be time for some pretty serious organizing.

Recently, I've been having a lot of good conversations with myself, in
my head. Remembering that people like to read what I write, I think to
myself: I should write down some of these conversations. The
conversations happen while I'm *doing*; either praying, or walking--
when I'm engaged. Writing does not feel like doing to me. It feels
like attempting to transmit the insights gained by doing. Perhaps
writing in itself can become a *doing* for me, and then I will be able
to marry the inspiration to the ability to write.

I write on shabbat. Right now, I'm writing on a computer on shabbat.
In some version of the future, I don't want to write, or use
computers, on shabbat, but because I don't write as much as I'd like
during the week, I feel okay about allowing myself this leisure on
shabbat. As I was saving the file, I considered specifically not
saving it, like creating a rule for myself that I can write on
shabbat, but I can't save it. My writing will be like smoke. But
because I love reading my writing later, and because I have the
feeling that *it could be important*, and actually writing for me on
shabbat might make a lot of sense, because my head is quite clear, I'm
going to keep it for now. Perhaps in a future I will dedicate my
Saturday nights to writing, after I've already had a full day of
shabbat, and then I will have a night of writing. It is so hard for me
to resist the temptation of spending time with others! But I bet that
I can do it.

Maybe I need to just write for myself more, then I will have more to
give to other people. Sometimes it's hard that everything I write I
send out, because I end up censoring myself somewhat, or at least
tailoring to an audience. I don't write audacious things. I write
perceptions. And I try to be, true to my Pacific Northwest white
Jewish upper-class upbringing, politically correct.

I want to write a story, with amazing characters. A character that I
thought of recently is "Rabotai Tzvi." I don't know who that is yet. I
need to learn more about what "Rabotai" means, and what "Tzvi" means.
Then I might know who Rabotai Tzvi is.

Today when I was praying, my voice echoed in my head, as I bowed right
and left: strife, joy. strife, joy. strife, joy. When I pray around
here, I usually think about Palestine. I often try to think about
other things, I feel like a cliche unto myself, but it is the case
that Palestine is what I have in mind. It's hard for me to form other
things to pray about. All kinds of other things enter my thoughts, but
only tangentially. I often pray for understanding. (not "to be
understood", but rather "the ability to understand")

Today, when I bowed right and left, and prayed strife and joy, I was
engaging to hold both of those ideas in my mind at the same time. For
me, that is so much about Palestine. In Palestine, they give you
coffee and tea, and push food on you incessantly, they treat you with
the greatest respect. They have real, connected relationships; in a
town like Bethlehem, I can tell the taxi driver the name of the man I
am meeting, and most likely he knows him. Some people's houses are
really nice, and they do so much to make you comfortable. In many ways
it is idyllic.
And it also makes me cringe. Like a dull pain, slow arthritis. The
checkpoints, economic depression, the dusty roads, the nothing-to-do
that hangs in the air, which to my Western sensibilities feels like
impotence. That I'm not openly Jewish there. That I sometimes can't,
and more often think I can't, talk openly about spending time in
Palestine, which creates for me a divided life.

You are an insignificant speck of dust.
You are made in the image of G-d.

Shavua tov,
Jacob

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