U7 What's Left

-And they come, and they go, *so* far away, and we believe they can
make a difference. We don't know exactly to whom, or when exactly, but
this is our hope. Because people are not listening to us, they need to
hear our story.-

After about the hundredth demolished home that you've seen, the
seventh story of a man who watched his own cousin die right in front
of his eyes, in fact to have his cousin's blood stain his clothing, we
engage in a slow, subtle detachment. It's not that we don't care
anymore. It's that we don't know how to use the information. Believe
me, if I thought that there was someone important who would listen to
this, and change the situation, I would devote my entirety to making
that change. I just don't know who that person is.

I actually don't need to hear these stories anymore,
yanni, I want to keep listening because I think that it's important
for the teller to tell it.
But not because I want to know.

Rides with taxi drivers are interesting. I find myself always trying
to figure out if my taxi driver is Palestinian or not. Often it's very
difficult to tell. People who speak Arabic as a first language have a
different accent in English, which is often a telltale sign for me.
Although not everyone in this region whose first language is Arabic is
Palestinian. These negotiations are often affected by racism; a
non-Palestinian Israeli will be insulted if I think he is Palestinian,
and it's more likely that I will think an Iraqi Jew is Palestinian
than a Romanian Jew. Here, there is no longer Polish or Morroccan,
there is just Israeli. And this cultural conformity, the erasing of
histories, has been a violence upon the people who came here, just as
the assimilation of immigrants to the United States has sought to
destroy their identities. "SPEAK ENGLISH," we say.

Although the situation is a bit more complicated here, the English
language is still the foremost language of oppression, even among the
Israeli Occupation, when I insist that the soldier who is confronting
me speak to me IN ENGLISH because I haven't learned his language, I am
reinforcing this language oppression. On the other hand, if I insisted
that he speak to me in Arabic, because I am in an Arab village, and
surrounded by Arabic-speaking people, this would be a step to resist
this language oppression.

"DABER ARAVIT!" Speak Arabic!

After I shout this at my imagined soldier, I feel good about my
strides against language oppression. Moments later, the warm feeling
in my soul is replaced by confusion: the imaginary soldier starts
speaking in Arabic, and I can't understand a word. I grab a friend
(maybe an international who knows Arabic, maybe an Arab who knows
English), and ask her to whisper an English translation into my ear.

This is what democracy looks like.

But what my North American friends really do is insist that you speak
to us in English, to include us, because we're feeling excluded. This
is the way we know how to tap into our national, socio-political
privilege.

**
I finally finished reading Tanya Reinhart's "Road Map To Nowhere,"
covering the political and human developments in the conflict between
2003 and April 2006, including a fun section on international and
Israeli-Palestinian resistance. Man, she knows her stuff; chock-full
of quotes explaining why policies have been carried out the way they
have, from the Gaza Disengagement, to the military actions within
Palestine. She died just a couple weeks ago in NYC in her early 60's;
even though I never met her, I miss her still.

Two more days to kick around this holy land, and I'm dropping
everything; yesterday I left my wallet on the bus. I hope someone
somewhere made good use of it. Again, a contradiction: as a fortunate
son, I notice my blessings when I lose my shirt. $200 gone, cancelling
the credit cards, get a new license when I get back home; that's all
this means for me. "How will I eat now?" doesn't play a role. Really,
street urchins, you might be doing us a favor when you steal our
money.

Let me offer a counter-proof. I rock climbed the whole day in Wadi
Ram, in southern Jordan. My brother and I were being guided by a
French-Israeli named Joel, we climbed up about nine pitches of 5'6
through 5'8 rock... something like 600 or 800 feet vertically up a
cliffside. The rock at Wadi Ram is pretty similar to that at Smith
Rock, in my home state of Oregon, so it was a curious experience to be
climbing my familiar rock with a French-Israeli and my brother. After
we had climbed all but two pitches, we commenced our rappel down to
the bottom, so that I could make it back to camp for a 5:30pm taxi to
the border. I got to the border a little before seven, so that I
wouldn't be held for over an hour: the border crossing at Aqaba closes
at 8pm. As my luck would have it, I was held just 40 minutes, even
less time than they held me going out! But because I had become
friendly with some Italians that got held up, I waited for them to get
pushed through, at 7:56 pm.

I was told that I could hitch from the road near the Aqaba crossing,
there's a place where all the soldiers stand, underneath a
streetlight, so even in the dark it's okay. Instead I threw my lot in
with these swanky Italians, because they were considering driving to
Tel Aviv that night. In the end, the two hours this businessman got
held at the border ended up changing the plan; I rode with them in
their car to Eilat, where they decided they would stay over. His
partner was very happy about his decision.

But now, I'm in Eilat, it's 8:30 pm, and I don't see a good place to
hitchhike. I start walking north, with my fingers out. About seven
minutes later, I run into a couple of Israelis; an Indian (Itai) and a
Russian (Dudu). Itai tells me that the are just walking back from the
hitchhiking point, and that it's another 10 km north of there, and
that they waited there for a ride for four hours. I later established
both of this figures to be gross exaggerations, in any case it was
enough to dissuade me from attempting the same game they had been
failing at for so long, as native Israelis. Instead I just sort of
started following them around, relying on my backup plan: a midnight
bus to Tel Aviv.
They are both 21, recently got out of the army. Friends forever.
"Where do you work?" I just, how do you say, ended. "You quit?" He
shakes his head. "Fired?" Yes, fired he tells me. We are walking
through the lights and the fanfare of the Eilat evening, a boardwalk
with plenty of people buying plenty of things for plenty of money.
They were both fired actually, this morning. Until now they had been
working as waiters here, although they live a full three hours away in
Beer Sheva. "Why were you fired?" They came late to work today... my
sense was 'came late to work again' is more accurate. The were
partying last night, fell asleep in the hotel attached to the
restaurant where they work, and when they woke up:
1. They were late to work
2. Their money was gone
So it eventually came out that they were more-or-less stranded,
without money or access to money, and hadn't eaten since yesterday. I
shared my Jordanian pita and halvah with them, which they ate
hungrily, and a short while later I bought us a round of falafel. We
played cards together, Dudu taught us a Russian game.
I asked them about the army. Dudu pushed papers; Itai saw combat. In
both Hebron and Lebanon II. He talked about it proudly, that he saw
really intense stuff, said he really liked combat. A bit later, I was
able to dig a little deeper on him; in reality this kid was a gentle
soul, and when I was asking him what he wants to change, he tells me,
"I want peace. Everyone wants peace." All this killing is shit. The
army is shit. This country is shit.
His pride and steadfastness is a cover for actually hating the
situations he has been put in.
These kids are very warm and grateful that I've bought them food, and
I offered to buy them tickets on the bus I'm taking, that could let
them off in Beer Sheva. But Itai's sister was on a bus from Beer Sheva
to Eilat, and would arrive at 2am, and would give them money for the
bus north. "Why is he buying you food?" she asked. "What's wrong with
this kid?"
"He's just nice," Itai insisted. People in Israel won't just buy you
food, he tells me. He tells me what a nice guy I am, not like
Israelis. I would say the same thing about US-ers. I wonder if in
Palestine they say the same thing; it's hard to believe, but just
maybe.
Itai's sister tells him that she will kill him if he takes me up on
the offer of a ticket north. Given that, I'm glad he waited for his
sister.

The midnight bus ended up being a 1am bus, completely packed, but I
made it on. Tel Aviv by 5:30, sherut to Jerusalem, Jerusalem by 7am.
Wandering around the shuuk (open market) in West Jerusalem, buying
hummous and other salatim. The shuuk seemed like a very holy place
early in the morning. A few people wandered around unselfconsciously,
one lighting a cigarette, sitting on a stand that will hold cucumbers
in about an hour. A man slowly, methodically, stacking his fruit.
Children on tip-toes to see what's on the stacked baking sheets, fresh
from the oven. Soldiers murmuring to each other and huddling around
plastic cups of coffee. A yeshiva boy's peyos and tzitzit trail after
him as he marches through the alley, clutching his siddur
(prayerbook).

I wasn't travelling through the night because it was particularly
convenient; I sought to catch the Encounter bus the following morning
to Bethlehem. "Encounter"(1) brings those studying to be
professionally Jewish people, such as rabbis, cantors, and Jewish
educators, on trips to the West Bank; currently to Hebron and
Bethlehem. I tagged along, coming up with excuses for what roles I
have in terms of conventional Jewish leadership; mostly I was there to
experience how the group was organized. Maybe I will tell you about it
sometime.

Chag Sameach L'kulam! This is my last email from Israel/Palestine, but
not my last email about Israel/Palestine.
I wish for all of us personal liberation during these times.

Shalom y'all,
Jacob in J-Town

(1) Encounter http://www.encounterprograms.org/home.html

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

U5 I Bleed For Palestine

On Friday, I caught a bus from Gan Ha-Pa'amon in Jerusalem to Bil'in.
People notice me, because I wear a kipa. The bus was filled to the
very last seat. I sat next to Maja, and wrote, and talked. It was the
two-year anniversary of the weekly protests that have been held at
Bil'in; many of the activists come week after week to support the
resistance.
Our bus stopped at a roadblock, and we crossed on foot to wait under
olive trees, until Palestinian service-taxis arrived. The Tel Aviv
crew showed up shortly thereafter. We started walking up the road, and
eventually a military jeep showed up; it was clear that the soldiers
weren't happy that there were Israelis walking towards Bil'in, but
they didn't seem prepared to do anything about it. Several of us
linked arms across the road, therefore keeping the jeep behind us (for
whatever reason). Eventually, one of the services doing laps to and
from Bil'in had space for our gang, and we piled in for a ten minute
drive.

We arrived into the village of Bil'in, a village like any other
Palestinian village in the Western reaches of the Ramallah district.
Same story as Budrus: the wall built on their land effectively
prevented Palestinians from accessing, much less farming, half of
their land. For an agricultural economy, this is devastating. I went
to the store, bought halvah, pita, and hummous. Then, like so many
internationals and Palestinians, I just hung around on the main road.
It looked like Bil'in was having a big fair; there was hot food
offered up, small children selling overpriced bags of popcorn to the
azj-nabi community.

After about the first half-hour there, I tired of the special
attention I was getting for wearing a kipa ("Ze lo tov," a Palestinian
young man tells me, pointing to my yamika. "That's not good.") In the
current state of things, the best I can hope for is to expose the
Israeli left to the idea that some people both like to davven (pray)
AND resist injustice. So I took it off, and put it into my back
pocket.

A procession was formed; we marched down from the village to the
outlying farmlands where the fence/wall-thingy (that's a technical
term) is. We chanted in Arabic, Hebrew, English about how we don't
like walls, and especially this particular one. There were border
police, jeeps, etc., on the horizon, waiting for us. Given how many
people they employ as security, I wonder if it wouldn't be more
cost-effective if they just let protestors damage the fence, and then
pay people to repair it, rather than preventing the damage in the
first place. I'm not a military contractor (at the moment), so I don't
really know.

Four or six of us formed an ad-hoc affinity group, basically knowing
to look out for each other, checking in with each other about our
wishes for this particular protest. We were more or less all in the
"hangers-back" category. So after the group arrived at the thingy,
there was some yelling, some posturing, and a few Palestinians climbed
on top of the gate connected to the thingy. One way or another they
fell off- either the gate was shaken, or they just fell, or they were
pushed off gently. One, holding a Palestinian flag with a wooden stick
breaks the stick over the head of a border-policeman (in full riot
gear, I would doubt that it hurt), and those of us lounging around
thinking, Hmm when's this thing really gonna start anyway?, started
heading quickly up the hill. We didn't wait for the response, we knew
it was coming. As I turned around I scraped my knees on a big rock
(hence the bleeding.)

Then, the usual: sound grenades (one of which hit the back of my
friend's leg, right next to me) rang in my ears, tear gas wafted from
the olive groves behind, in front of, and beside me. In a couple
minutes I was out of the "conflict zone", far enough away that any
tear gas was easily spotted lobbing towards us, and easily avoided
(paying attention to which way the wind was blowing). The shebab did
their thing: throwing rocks. They pretty much stuck to their own area,
under cover of olive groves, out of easy range by the military, which
also meant that incidentally they weren't going to be hitting anything
with the rocks besides the olive trees.

The "hardcore" group of anarchists (awalls.org) stayed right next to
the fence, amid chants of chayyelim babayita (soldiers go home), and
many other things I couldn't catch, and got soaked repeatedly with
water cannons (like the 60's in the US!) The soldiers couldn't very
well tear-gas them because they were right next to them. Many of these
folks come week after week, and get their heads bashed in, and get
arrested; what a way to end the week!
There's a strange dynamic here: unlike the United States, these
protesters generally don't get held for any period of time at all, and
don't get charged with anything. Recently, a prominent anarchist,
having been arrested dozens of times, was sentenced to a 3-month
deferred sentence, instead of the usual community service. He publicly
requested that his sentence not be deferred.
[In conclusion, Pollack addressed the judge and said "If your honor
thinks that a prison sentence is befitting the crime that I have
committed, your honor will take the liberty and personally send me to
prison right here and now."(1)]

I hung around on the hill watching the action down below for a couple
hours, and chatted with Israelis and internationals. It's kind of
surreal, but if you can avoid focusing on the crazy shit happening all
around you, it's as good a time as any to make friends :) It's fun to
act joyfully when there's teargas in the air. A few hours later
shabbat was coming, and I had to get back to Jerusalem. I rode with
Arik Ascherman, the paid staff of Rabbis for Human Rights(2), in order
to get back for shabbat.

I was supposed to bring "chunky" salad, and I apologized profusely as
I entered my friend's home who was hosting shabbat, that I hadn't made
arrangements to be able to bring it, and by now stores were closing,
and I still needed to change out of my tear-gas clothing. They
graciously welcomed me without salad, and I was able to help them
prepare the space before going to synagogue with my friends.

Who would I see at synagogue, except for Rabbi Joey! My very own rabbi
that I grew up with, who performed my Bar Mitzvah.
And then shabbat! Who can say anything bad about shabbat.
Reconstructionist minyan in the morning, where I saw an old friend who
used to live in Olympia! She's hanging out in Deheisha Refugee Camp
these days. Later, a picnic lunch, carrying mattresses on our heads
the fifteen minute walk to the little park. Played a little frisbee
until it broke. Found another Josh who wants to check out Ramallah;
We'll go together next week.

Purim update coming sooner than you expect.

Peace y'all,
Jacob in J-Town

p.s. I'm really in favor of the two "sides" at a protest
choreographing the event beforehand, so that they are able to have the
magnificent processions that they would like to have, but no one has
to get hurt.
First come the Palestinians, dressed as militants, keffiyehs wrapped
around all parts of their bodies, armed to the teeth, shooting in the
air, and blaring slogans through overpowered megaphones. A huge
contingency just sets up mats and starts praying (and prays for the
duration).
The Internationals come forward, hiding behind the Palestinians,
wearing T-shirts that read proudly, "I'm with Mohammed." We are
equipped with every kind of media capturing device imaginable, and
hold signs ragging on Israel, the USA, and/or our home country.
The Israeli anarchists come in, dressed in various shades of black (in
reality the anarchists here are a very diverse group of young folks,
moreso than in the US), piercings gleaming and all kinds of home-made
anti-soldier weapons and protection gear hanging off their torn
clothing. They lead the charge, and smash through a huge chunk of
concrete wall, and then clear away for the shebab to launch rocks with
slingshots that have a battery-powered sling-action. A huge volley of
rocks destroy the first several jeeps, before the batteries run out.
The IDF comes swooping through with F14's and shoot tear-gas missiles
into the crowd (not real tear-gas), and then a staged fight takes
place between humongous Border Police and Israeli anarchists. Those
who wanted to be arrested give a good fight, but in the end are
subdued by legions of soldiers. Those arrested get to decide what, if
anything, they want to be convicted of, and how long they want to be
held. All sides meet up later in Qalandia for some knafe (sweet cheese
dessert) and to critique the performance.

There's potential here for Israeli-Palestinian cooperation. It would
increase tourism. Palestinians, Israelis, and especially
Internationals would come from all over to see these legendary
show-downs. It's better than the operahouses, whose conflicts are
quite passe.

(1) http://www.awalls.org/leftist_asks_court_for_jail_time_after_convicte...
(2) http://www.rhr.israel.net
(3) Video from the demo: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5WOQWxMXGdU