U6 Dvarim Tfutzim

Scattered Words

A new day, a new page. Here, even my writing has taken on imminence,
where everything is imminent. I can't seem to let the words flow, the
way they have in the past, I have thoughts, mostly secret, mostly
censored, that I won't remember to write out, even with my purest
intentions.
As I eat my pita, dipped in hummous, and cough like a "pack-a-day"
smoker, I think that passover will treat me well: I've been eating too
much wheat here. In the last few weeks, there's been Purim, my mother
and brother have come (and my brother has left), I've left and
re-entered Israel successfully by way of Jordan, I've been staying
busy, as you might imagine. My writings are here, but the order may be
awkward or arbitrary. There it is.

part 1- Stuperb

Well folks, I've done it once again, engaged in debauchery along with
a bunch of other adherents of our little tradition of Purim, when
nothing is as it seems. Today, for the first time in months I:

*hitchhiked from a Palestinian town to Jerusalem -- with Settlers!
*consumed a substantial quantity of alcohol
*danced my pants off
*Offered a toast: "To death!"

And so much more.

Today, I was in Beit Ommar, because reports indicated a high
likelihood that settlers in the Gush Etzion settlement of Bat Ayin
would be having the Purim march through nearby Palestinian villages.
Because Erez Levanon, a settler from Bat Ayin, was killed recently,
and because the two 17-year-olds that confessed upon interrogation are
from Beit Ommar, it seemed possible that today would see some
violence. It is also the anniversary of Baruch Goldstein's massacre of
Arabs praying in a mosque, and it's also a day when our weekly parsha
indicates that we are commanded to "blot out the memory of Amalek from
under the heavens," and many ideological settlers equate Amaleq with
basically anyone who doesn't like us.

As it turned out, there was no parade, I had an enjoyable day, and
lunch in the sun, at the apartment of the Palestine Solidarity Project
in Beit Ommar. The were four of us Jews there, and we just chatted in
this village, mostly about dynamics between activists.
We caught a two-shekel taxi to the settler crossroads, and hitched
there for approximately six minutes before getting a ride straight to
Jerusalem, a journey that was an hour quicker than negotiating the
return via Palestinian transit. (and free) It just meant being in a
car with settlers for forty minutes, which was actually fine, because
Aviva and I just chatted the whole time, about Palestine, about
boundary-crossing, mostly oblivious to our English-speaking company.
Later, there was me wearing a purple dress typical of Pakistan, and
much raucousness in Jerusalem. There was Michael Jackson in the CD
Player. And connecting with Jewy Jews. Chag Sameach!
part 2- Loose Ends
Whenever I go to Israel/Palestine, I try to learn one big thing.
Recently, the aspect of society and occupation that impresses me most
is how much it relies on aesthetics.
I'm currently visiting friends at Kibbutz Sasa, about 3 hours from
Jerusalem, if you cut straight south through the eastern edge of the
West Bank, along the Jordanian border, and then West from the Dead
Sea. On Thursday night, I had an event I wanted to get to in the Holy
City, so, both in an effort to save money, and because it's more fun,
I decided to "tremp", or hitchhike.
Now friends, it is much easier to hitch here than in the United
States. It's entirely culturally acceptable, many police cars always
pass me and I never worry about them stopping me, unlike my experience
near the freeway in Washington state. Here, they would only stop to
give me a ride (the good kind.) In this double-society, it's important
to appear Jewish in order to get rides from Jews, and to look
not-Jewish in order to get rides from Arabs.
Because I didn't have my passport on me (oops), I decided to just get
rides with Israelis; when going through checkpoints, Israeli cars just
get waved through. If I were riding with Palestinians, it's likely
that my documents would be checked; no passport might mean that I
would have an unexpectedly long stay in Palestine that day. Which
could be fine sometimes, but not when I'm trying to get to a class in
Jerusalem.
I got a ride from a man who lives in a very small settlement in the
Shomron (territories), who is a beekeeper, and had all his beekeeping
gear in the car with him, as well as several jars of honey. He told me
his sob-story: that because he's from the Shomron he has to pay
exorbitant taxes which prohibits him from being able to sell his goods
to the United States. He's wondering if I can help him with any
solutions to this problem. It's also interesting to note the
connection between hilltop settlers and the hippie community: he
markets his produce as organic. (Organics.co.il is the website for
Kfar Tapuach's produce) While he talked business on the cell phone, he
drove away from the Jordan valley road, and up into the mountains of
the central West Bank. I would be fine, he assured me, I would be able
to get a ride from the Tapuach junction; my sense of where I was, and
where I was going, wasn't good enough for me to insist on jumping out
at the right place.
At Tapuach junction, several things became clear. The first thing
wasn't the sky; it was raining a lot. I was not getting a ride from an
Israeli anytime soon. Perhaps one Israeli vehicle (distinct from its
license plate) passed every minute or two, and for the most part they
were just heading to the settlement of Ariel, which was not
particularly a place that I wanted to go. This is the place that, if I
had my passport on me, I would have taken my kipa off and jumped in a
Palestinian service to Ramallah, and just been a little late to
Jerusalem. As it turned out, I ended up waiting with a couple of
settler kids, maybe 16 or 17, also waiting for a tremp, but who
assured me that a bus would come sooner than later. In my broken
Hebrew I tried to converse with them.
An Arab man walked up to the bus stop, smiling, hoping to get some
shelter from the rain. One of the boys I was with inflated his height,
and worked towards intimidating the man into standing outside the
shelter, in the rain. I attempted to protest, to block off a section
of the shelter for him, but the aforementioned boy was not going to
let him stand under the shelter, if he could do something about it. I
attempted to reason with him in my small amount of Hebrew.
"Hu ben adam," I told him. "He's a human being, like me or like you."
My argument didn't sway Settler Boy. The Arab man tentatively started
in towards the shelter, then thought better of it and decided to stand
in the rain, after which I walked out to join him in the rain. He
shook my hand and thanked me for saying that he was a human being, and
that I didn't need to stand out there with him. He told me he was
headed to Ramallah.
The settler boys didn't hold it against me that I had attempted to
defy one of them, and had been conversing and openly friendly with a
Palestinian in their midst. They tried to explain their racism: it's
not like in the United States, where you stand together. Here, it's
different, we don't stand together.

part 3- Cumulation

Two days ago, my mother and I went to Budrus, to meet up with Abu
Ahmed; I lost my passport and cell phone in the taxi on the way there.
That didn't stop me from having a truly lovely visit, Abu Ahmed's
family was tremendously hospitable of us, and as a seasoned host of
internationals, I didn't even need to explain vegetarianism even once.
Small things like this mean a lot.

My head is a jumble. I'm in Jerusalem right now, but I'd rather be in
a Palestinian village nearby visiting a friend. So I think I will wrap
this up quickly and attempt my departure. I have so many ideas, so
many feelings, thoughts, frustrations, and above all- I'm leaving
incredibly soon. Sunday, actually. I will do my best to get writings
out to you before I head back to the States.

Shalom y'all,
Jacob in J-Town

ps oh right so I got my passport back, but not my cell phone, if you
want to call me in the next few days, the number is 050-579-4086