Across the Green Line And Back Again

Hello,

I wrote this last week, before the election, I hope that you all enjoy it, more coming soon!


Across the Green Line And Back Again

Episode II: Proof of the Jew, Claustrophobia & the Subjective Sea

Like the man Lucas, I am skipping the first episode of Across The Green Line (my visit with my Israeli cousin) so I can write about my most recent foray into Israel. After spending almost 3 months of my time in the occupied territories, it has been, to say the least, a bit of a mind-fuck going to Israel. So, to illustrate this, let us start at the beginning, which is the village of Bil'in.

Having not spent the night in Bil'in for some time, I ended up sleeping there the night after the demo on Friday January 13th (Bil'in has been having a demo every friday for almost a year now). That day, as opposed to the more recent Bil'in demo on Friday the 20th, there were a lot of soldiers and not quite enough demonstrators to make a dent in their presence. So, after that all fizzled out, my friend Johan and I decided to spend the night in Bil'in, just in case the IOF decides to come in arrest people, as they have been doing for the last year. Lucky for us, two other activists had offered to stay in the 'outpost' beyond the wall, so we were able to remain far more comfortable and warm in the apartment in the village.

But, 2 nights later, we got the shit end of the stick and were out in the shack with some men from the village. Actually, it was a great night, as the area has been improved vastly since my first night there in December. The fire was roaring, food was there, the nargilah was bubbling away; a Palestinian campfire, complete with very loud political discussions in Arabic that I didn't mind not understanding.

There was also a settler or two that was hanging out there. which confused one of the more recent ISMers that I was there with. On the first night, it was Yossi from Kiryat Sefer that joined the popular committee of Bil'in and myself for some talk & hanging out by the fire. Yes, an ultra-orthodox settler, who speaks excellent Arabic, joining the political leadership of Bil'in on one of their most creative protests to date (check palsolidarity.org for more Bil'in details). I think that they know each other from before the intifada, but regardless, back then Yossi helped bring them a generator, a nargilah, food, etc; it was really something to see. Now, there were many a discussion, both nights, between the settlers & the lefty activist Jews & the Palestinians of Bil'in, most of which I can't say I understood (it does help here to be trilingual) but all I can say is that the more time I spend here & places I go & people I meet, the harder it is to lump any people into any one category. You just have to take it all as it comes & always be open to being surprised, which usually happens on a daily basis.

So, we left that morning quite early so that we could get to a seminar in West Jerusalem. It was given by PCATI, the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel, which became a wellspring of silly torture-related jokes for the rest of the day. SO, at 6:30 AM we trudged our way across the land of Bil'in, across the wall site, and back to the village where Abdullah of the Popular Committee gave us a ride to Ramallah ( Our shoes and pants, however were caked in the mud of Bil'in, which I would leave as a gift at every stop for the rest of the day). From there, we crossed the checkpoint at Qalandia, and made it to Jerusalem with time to spare.

All this time, mind you, I am working to accomplish what few ever do here in Palestine/Israel; to do many errands, and get them done exactly when I plan on getting them done without fail. Not only did I feel confident enough that we could stay in Bil'in and then get to Jerusalem in time to then get to the seminar. No, I had more plans than that! After the seminar, I was determined to go to the post office & mail a whole bunch of embroidery to soem friends in the USA, as well as some items of mine, clothes, pictures, etc. Then, to proceed up Jaffa street and to the photo store where I could return the camera battery I had bought & maybe get one that works (I had the camera with me). Then, get to the bus station & get to Tel Aviv, where I would spend the night at the apartment of an Israeli anarchist activist (and call him before I leave Jerusalem to see if I can stay with him; small detail, of course!). In Tel Aviv, I would proceed to the Ministry of the Interior and get my visa extended, for a month if I'm lucky, and then while in Tel Aviv, if I have time, see King Kong & get back either to Tel Rumeida or Ramallah, in time for the next Bil'in demo.

No Problem, right?

Well, we met up with the rest of the torture-seminar attendees at the Damascus Gate at 9:30, and before we knew it, we were loaded into vans and heading for some obscure neighborhood in West Jerusalem, which turned out to be quite near the Yad Vashem. And then, the torture began! All 20 some odd of us were in a very small room that got really hot really quick, and talked the rest of the day about, well, torture; the legal system that supports it, the work that the center does to oppose and highlight it & the various organizations that deal with related subjects. All in all, it was really a good day, and most of all I was happy to meet one of the many 'respectful' organizations in Israel that deal with the abuses of the Occupation; there is the ICAHD, PCATI, Btselem, HAMOKED, and the list goes on. Although the work that I have been doing with ISM has been and is very important, we would be nowhere without the work that these organizations do, I reccomend googling all these groups & more. I'm just glad I stayed awake for most of it, I didn't sleep more than 5 hours at the shed the night before; yes, sleep deprivation... nevermind!

So, eventually the torture ended, and we all left. I was able to negotiate being dropped off near the Post Office on Jaffa Street, so that I could rid myself of the bags of embroidery and other items that I was clumsily lugging around all day. At the post office is one of many very poorly manned security 'checkpoints' that just about every Israeli building is endowed with. So, I put my bags of clothes and my backpack on the table, walk through the metal detector, and then open the backpack for what I expect will be a thorough search. Instead, the man looks at the bag, which is very full, and then asks me for my passport instead. I asked him, "are you saying that I need to show you my passport just to go to the post office?" I mean, this guy is not immigration or border police, he's just one of the so many shittly paid under-trained dudes working as security guards at places where most of them can't afford to shop or eat. He responds "well, you bag is hard to search." As I hand him my passport, I think to myself, what did he just say? That because my bag is hard to check, he'll just look at my passport? What in god's name does that prove? I just hope that everyone else on line feels a false sense of security, cause i sure as hell don't.

So, I'm in the post office, and soon enough, I am assembling 3 boxes full of good stuff to be shipped to the USA. And, yes, my first errand is done! I leave the post office, walk further into West Jerusalem on Jaffa street, and complete the second errand, which is to return a battery for the new video camera that has been bought for ISM. And can you believe it, that works out flawlessly! Although I do not find the correct one, I get my money back and continue down the road towards the bus station, where I stumble upon another store that ends up having just the battery I need (and it lasts long, like 5-6 hours i think!). So, pushing my luck, I proceed to the bus station and call Jonothan to see if I can crash at his place in Jaffa, and lo and behold, success!!! I'm glad not only so I can be in Jaffa, but because the last time i was in Jaffa I stayed at an Israeli hostel and it was a little weird. I mean here I am in Jaffa, one of many Palestinian cities that were ethnically cleansed in 1948, and since then swallowed up by the newly built Tel Aviv, and this hostel doesn't even have Palestine written anywhere. All the maps fail to display the green line, just one big land of Israel, nothing more and nothing less. I guess I've stayed at hostels in East Jerusalem too much, where Palestine and various political issues are displayed quite prominetly; those btselem reports are just strewn everywhere, I tell you!

So, into the station (through the back, the security line in the front is a zoo, and there are SO many soldiers) and onto the 405 bus to Tel Aviv. I am sitting next to yet another grumpy looking mal-adjusted Israeli dude, but no matter, in about an hour I am there. Now the central bus station is really confusing, but this time around I find the right bus to get to Jaffa & meet Jonothan at the clock tower. I throw out the bottle of Leban I am drinking (buttermilk) because he is a pretty serious vegan, and after hanging out for a bit I have a great vegan meal with him and his girlfriend Eva. The apartment is really amazing, and like many of the older buildings there in a state of falling apart. Jaffa, which was once the Bride of The Mediterranean and a bustling port, has now been relegated to the status of ghetto, and the crumbling old buildings of that era are quickly being replaced by gentrifying crap. so it goes.

The next morning I head to the ministry of the interior, getting up yet again far earlier than I would choose, and leaving most of my stuff at their apartment. As I thought, and Jonothan confirmed, I would have my backpack so thoroughly searched, that it made sense to leave it there. But, that also made my departure more difficult, as I wanted to leave straight from the ministry and maybe spend two days in Tel Rumeida before going to the big demo in Bil'in. Oh well, off I go, taking a taxi and spending money far too quickly, and I end up at the brand new shiny building that houses the ministry of the interior and many other government offices, like for example some department of gun permits. I arrive at the office and slowly weave my way around the needed forms & find the correct beaurocrat to bother, which turns out to be a very pale looking middle aged man with bright, almost white gray hair. He is, from the start a very official and unfriendly, yet in a strange way helpful guy that has been dealing in files, forms, staples and stickers for a long time it seems. Crowding around his window, aside from myself, are a very interesting cast of characters. There is the Danish guy that seems to be married to an Israeli and is trying to get his papers and permissions and visas dealt with; there is a the Russian guy that is getting his work permit approved, extended, or who knows, maybe he is going to become a citizen; there is a woman that may very well be a Russian prostitute (she certainly was dressing the part), and then the orthodox Jewish-American wife of a Yeshiva student, complete with her whig, an American English accent to her Hebrew, and the first of what will be probably a few more kids.

Then there was me. I gave him my forms, some money, ran downstairs and back with some passport photos, and read while my papers were being processed. As I sat, I thought of my ISMer friends that had been recently denied their visa extension. They had been arrested already, and though the charges were dropped, they still got in the system and the Shin Bet had marked them for no visa. So, I was called to the window, and the man asked me the first of two questions. Since the form had had a place for my religion, I figured that now was the time to play the Jew card, to use my privilege so that I can do more solidarity work with the Palestinians. So he asks me "Do you have any proof with you that you are Jewish?" Now, an hour later and onwards I thought of every great response to such a crazy question (most having to do with dropping my pants), but all I could manage at the time was "uh, No." Then, he asks me about my plans to stay, and on the form I had stated that I wanted to spend more time with my friends and family, period. So, he asks me, who are your family here in Israel, where do they live? I respond that I have one cousin that lives in Kibbutz Mizra... he cuts me off at that point with a knowing nod, saying " Ahh, Mizra" and looks down again and continues his cutting, peeling and pasting. At that point he also asks me, so you only need one month, to which I say yes, and then goes to sticking the new visa onto my passport. I ask him, do you think you could stick it to the paper that has my old visa, to which I get the curt response of "No, this way, or not!" So, I give in, he sticks it in, and then asks me "So, you want to visit an Arab country?" In that moment, it is as if I am transported to Zaatara checkpoint, where a 20 something year old punk-ass soldier asks me "what is so special about Nablus?" Yes, I guess outside all those safe White Western Modern countries, there is nothing worth seeing or doing, and certainly no people worth knowing.

As I took my passport, I thought to myself, yes, I am going to visit an Arab country, and it is called Palestine.

So, in a daze and completly surprised that I have gotten my visa extended with very few snags in my plan, I start to walk down the street. Not knowing what to do next, and seeing that it is 10:00 AM, I cross the street to the Asreli center, which contains a big old shopping mall. I walk into this mall, and I am instantly somewhere between Israel and the USA; I mean, I am in a mall, but it's Israel, not Route 17 in New Jersey, and I am surrounded by soldiers in uniform with their rifles slung around their shoulders. I sit down at a coffee shop, where I have coffee & some food and just watch what's around me, feeling really out of place and uncomfortable. The table across from me has two police women, next to me a couple russian women speaking russian, and in the other direction a lot of fashionably dressed young Israeli girls with credit cards in hand. But, the mall does have something I want, which is King Kong! As a person who loved Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy, I really wanted to see this one, so after coffee and people watching, I went to see all 3 hours of it at the 11:30 showing.

As I really need to finish this tale, I will skip my feelings on the film, after which I emerged from the theater... to the goddamn shopping mall!!! It had been long enough in that movie that I had almost forgotten where I was, and so all that wierdness of the Israeli shopping mall scene came rushing back, and there was no solution but getting the heck out! I then walked from there to dizzengoff center, but it dawned on me by then, after looking at my visa a few times, that I had been given 2 more months, not just one. This I didn't expect, and really couldn't process at all. I mean, I would like to stay longer, the work that I am doing is really important, but I really miss my girlfriend, my friends, my life back in the USA. I also am starting to see how addictive the work we do here can be; as a friend who left said in an email, he misses the action, the intensity. It is pretty unique, much more intense than the usual 9-5 reality at home, that's for sure. So, it kind of evokes a mild panic in me, one which starts to grow as I keep walking.

After trying to find cheap mini dv tapes at the dizengoff center, I flee from yet another mall, and really start to feel the panic, almost like a mild claustrophobia. I think; I need to get to the sea, just get to the ocean and you will feel better. The way Tel Aviv is built, I know the ocean is near, but I just can't get there, I keep getting shunted off to these streets that should get me closer, but to no avail. Finally though, I emerge from the confusion of poor city planning and large crappy buildings to arrive at the sea. And you know, it really did help, walking down the beach, I was able to relax and calm down after a crazy day or two. I thought at that point of many things. I thought of my ridiculous amount of walking, in jerusalem and tel aviv, and that I am probably avoiding buses for the obvious reason of suicide bombings. I'm not sure what to say about that, but there have been many times that I have taken buses, but I do like walking, and try and do some whenever I get the chance. But, I think that the more time you spend in either community, the more you tend to ignore, downplay or rationalize the suffering of others. Israelis may know a few general things about the occupation, but not much really. And when you are in Ramallah or Hebron most of the time, suicide bombings become less than real, and nothing when compared to the weight and oppresion of the occupation that you see and feel every day. In the end, one must keep in mind that along with the political realities, there are the personal, subjective realities, and one person's anxiety when taking buses shouldn't be ignored, especially when it is your own.

After being healed by the sea, at least for now, I arrive in Jaffa and get my things packed & finally eat something (the most expensive shwarma sandwich yet!) which I had not gotten around to all day. Being about 4 or 5 PM, it was kind of necessary, both mentally and physically. I get on a bus to the station, overhearing the mixed english-hebrew conversation of a bunch of American & Israeli Jewish young people, and make my way to the 405 bus back to Jerusalem. With my return delayed by the days events, I decide to put off Tel Rumeida and go to Jerusalem and then to the Bil'in demo.

And soon enough, I am at the hostel by the Damascus Gate and back across the green line. It never ceases to amaze me how many realities this place contains, both within each side of the line and between it (read Joe Sacco's book Palestine & you'll find out what I mean). It also amazes me how many and how few of those worlds and communities interact and intersect; if you want, you can live in your chosen bubble in Israel and forget the occupation or anything else unpleasant. And those under the weight of that occupation are being cleaved off and compressed into smaller and smaller isolated pockets; isolated from each other, and isolated from the world.

After that night and the next day in Jerusalem, I returned to Ramallah and got ready for the next demo. That day, a suicide bombing was done in Tel Aviv.

But I was across the green line; but was I safe... inshallah, inshallah.

Elections, Chutzpah & Ilan Pappe

Hello,

With the news, as I am told, going nuts over the recent election news from Palestine, I thought I'd say hello & send an article out. It's a review of a book I read this summer, called Beyond Chutzpah by Norman Finkelstein, done by the Israeli academic Ilan Pappe, another excellent author.

Here are a few links to articles on the elections, and hopefully I will have some more recent experiences written up and sent out asap!

Nonsense in Blood, To Talk with Hamas By URI AVNERY
http://www.counterpunch.org/avnery01272006.html

The Indispensible Juan Cole
http://www.juancole.com/2006/01/achcar-on-hamas-guest-
editorial-first.html
http://www.juancole.com/2006/01/victory-of-hamas-and-
miseries-of-bushs.html

Hamas Election Victory: A Vote for Clarity
Ali Abunimah, The Electronic Intifada, 26 January 2006
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article4425.shtml

Hamas in charge By Beshara Doumani,
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-doumani27
jan27,0,1573178.story?coll=la-news-comment-opinions

Hamas, Son of Israel
The Israelis birthed and nurtured their Islamist nemesis
http://antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=8449
Justin Raimondo

Thursday, January 26th, 2006
How Israel and the United States Helped to Bolster Hamas
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/01/26/151252


Professor Ilan Pappe on Beyond Chutzpah

Occupation Hazard

Norman Finkelstein Challenges the Conventional Line on Israel.
http://normanfinkelstein.com/article.php?pg=11&ar=132

By Ilan Pappe | BOOKFORUM | Feb/March 2006

Why is the history of modern Palestine such a matter of debate? Why is it still regarded as a complex, indeed obscure, chapter in contemporary history that cannot be easily deciphered? Any abecedarian student of its past who comes to it with clean hands would immediately recognize that in fact its story is very simple. For that matter it is not vastly different from other colonialist instances or tales of national liberation. It of course has its distinctive features, but in the grand scheme of things it is the chronicle of a group of people who left their homelands because they were persecuted and went to a new land that they claimed as their own and did everything in their power to drive out the indigenous people who lived there. Like any historical narrative, this skeleton of a story can be, and has been, told in many different ways. However, the naked truth about how outsiders coveted someone else's country is not sui generis, and the means they used to obtain their newfound land have been successfully employed in other cases of colonization and dispossession throughout history.

Generations of Israeli and pro-Israeli scholars, very much like their state's diplomats, have hidden behind the cloak of complexity in order to fend off any criticism of their quite obviously brutal treatment of the Palestinians in 1948 and since. They were aided, and still are, by an impressive array of personalities, especially in the United States. Nobel Prize winners, members of the literati, and high-profile lawyers—not to mention virtually everyone in Hollywood, from filmmakers to actors—have repeated the Israeli message: This is a complicated issue that would be better left to the Israelis to deal with. An Orientalist perception was embedded in this polemical line: Complex matters should be handled by a civilized (namely, Western and progressive) society, which Israel allegedly was and is, and not entrusted to an uncivilized (i.e., Arab and regressive) group like the Palestinians. The advanced state will surely find the right solution for itself and its primitive foe.

When official America endorsed this Israeli position, it became the so-called Middle Eastern peace process, one that was too sophisticated to be managed by the Palestinians and hence had to be worked out between Washington, DC, and Jerusalem and then dictated to the Palestinians. The last time this approach was attempted, in the summer of 2000 at Camp David, the results were disastrous. The second intifada broke out, and it rages on as this article goes to press.

The Zionist narrative is as simple a story as the history of the conflict itself. The Jews redeemed their lost and ancient homeland after two thousand years of exile, and when they "returned" they found it derelict, arid, and practically uninhabited. There were others on the land, but they were basically nomads, the kind of people you could, as Theodor Herzl wrote in 1895, "spirit away" outside the Promised Land. Still, the empty land somehow remained populated, and not only this, but the elusive population rebelled and tried to harm the Jewish returnees. Like any other narrative, this one too can be laid out elegantly and scholarly or conveyed coarsely and simply. It can appear as a sound bite on American television when a suicide bombing is "contexualized," or it can dominate a book produced by one of the prestigious university publishing houses in the West. But however verbose or taciturn Israel's advocates may be, the historical narrative they insist on broadcasting is a false representation of the past and present realities in the land of Palestine.

In academia, the Israeli claim of complexity and the Zionist time line as a whole have been exposed as propaganda at best. Similarly, the pendulum has swung in favor of many principal chapters in the Palestinian narrative, regarded hitherto as an Oriental fable. The emergence of critical and post-Zionist scholarship in Israel helped this process along by providing internal deconstruction of the Zionist metanarrative and accepting many historical claims made by the Palestinians, especially with regard to the events of 1948. The group of "new Israeli historians" who have focused on 1948 have endorsed the basic Palestinian argument that the native people were forcefully dispossessed in what today would be called an ethnic-cleansing operation.

But outside the universities, particularly in the United States, public figures continue to be embarrassingly and unapologetically pro-Israeli. Few have dared to challenge these self-appointed ambassadors because many of them are quite often influential journalists, highly placed lawyers, or former politicians, ex-hostages of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee in its most active years. Norman G. Finkelstein is one of the few who has. In 1984 he confronted head-on Joan Peters's From Time Immemorial: The Origins of the Arab-Jewish Conflict Over Palestine , which claimed that most of the Palestinians made their way into the territory only in the 1920s and '30s—an assertion so ridiculous it made Peters's book easy prey. Finkelstein tore her argument to shreds.

Now, in Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse
of History , Finkelstein goes after bigger targets and challenges some of the most sacred taboos in the American public arena regarding Zionism and Israel. One such exposure involves the misuse, indeed abuse, of Holocaust memory in defense of Zionism. Any substantial criticism of Israel is immediately branded by apologists for the state as a new wave of anti-Semitism. The Anti-Defamation League's grotesque manipulation of the message of Mel Gibson's film The Passion of the Christ and its purported association with the Palestinian struggle against occupation makes one wonder how intelligent people—even basically moral people—could spin such idiotic tales and arouse unwarranted, hysterical reactions with the effect of papering over Israeli atrocities on the ground. The puzzlement grows when one reads Finkelstein's industrious, at times sarcastic book, which shows how easy it is to distinguish what happened in fact from what Israeli sources (and their American defenders) say happened. Scholarly work by historians Finkelstein does not particularly care for because of their political positions (such as Benny Morris) and self-inhibited Israeli human rights organizations such as B'Tselem show that even within their apologetic and cautious representations there are few doubts remaining on two issues: that Israel forcibly ejected the Palestinians in 1948 and that it has abused, oppressed, and humiliated those that remained ever since 1967.

I will spare most of the individuals for the purposes of this review; they are all named in the book. One after another, the most famous figures in the American Zionist establishment—and some fellow travelers, like the current president of Harvard—are all shown here to subscribe to the exact same message: Criticism of Israel feeds a new wave of anti-Semitism in the United States. Reading their declarations in a single place, one can appreciate the madness of their views, and Finkelstein has not missed a thing.

And to his further credit, he does not dismiss the possibility that anti-Jewishness has in fact risen as a result of Israeli brutality in the occupied territories. But the cry of anti-Semitism is not a response to this development; it is rather, in his words, "an ideological weapon to deflect justified criticism of Israel and, concomitantly, powerful Jewish interests."

No one co-opts intelligence in defense of a fable better than Alan Dershowitz. Finkelstein observes that, unlike Elie Wiesel, a troubled Jew who cannot apply his universal moral standards to the state of Israel and thus legitimizes all its misdeeds and crimes by default, Dershowitz comes from the realm of criminal law and has himself stated that "the criminal lawyer's job, for the most part, is to represent the guilty, and—if possible—to get them off." Israel must be guilty in Dershowitz's mind, as becomes apparent in The Case for Israel , which defends his client's most obvious crime—its human rights record. It would have been a more "complex" case had he chosen to stand for Israel's right to exist or its wish to represent world Jewry, but no: He opted to cleanse the most glaringly unpleasant feature of the Jewish state since its inception—its treatment of the Palestinians. In so doing, Dershowitz attacks everyone from Amnesty International and the United Nations to Israeli human rights organizations and Jewish peace activists, on top of course of condemning anyone who is Palestinian or pro-Palestinian. They are all part of the new anti-Semitism.

The most original aspect of Finkelstein's book is his deconstruction of Dershowitz's praise for the Israeli Supreme Court and his own examination of the court's record. Finkelstein's book is full of evidence of Israeli oppression that in itself is essential reading for those who wish to judge Dershowitz's propagandist claims. But the Israeli Supreme Court is one of the strongest links in an otherwise very weak chain on which Dershowitz hangs his defense of Israel. It is after all a body commended throughout the world for its professionalism and impartiality. Finkelstein systematically shows how the most callous aspects of the occupation—torture centers, demolition of houses, targeted killings, and denial of medical care—were in fact legitimized a priori by the Israeli Supreme Court. The court, and the legal system as a whole, like the Israeli media and academia (neither of which is treated in the book), are essential components in the state oppression and occupation of the West Bank. Much more work needs to be done in this direction; hopefully Finkelstein will be one of many who further analyze this atrocious reality.

The concluding section of Finkelstein's book is devoted to the historiographical aspects of Dershowitz's work. We can only concur with Finkelstein that "next to Alan Dershowitz's egregious falsification of Israel's human rights record and the real suffering such falsification causes, Dershowitz's academic derelictions seem small beer." In fact the coda is anticlimactic in such a powerful book, but to be fair it appears as an appendix and not as an integral part of the work. Morris stars as the main source for refuting Dershowitz's historical claims; it would have been better to use Palestinian historians and oral history sources in addition to Morris. But this does not undermine the overall service Finkelstein has performed in exposing one critical layer of knowledge production concerning Palestine that for years defeated any attempt for the Palestinian plight to receive a fair hearing from the American public. The Palestinians deserved, but never received, the same empathy and support good-hearted Americans usually lend to occupied, oppressed, and persecuted people the world over—even those harassed by their own government. Shrewd advocates of the occupier and the oppressor—abusing Holocaust memory and heightening years of anti-Semitism—succeeded for a long time in stifling solidarity with the Palestinians. This book cracks the wall of deception and hypocrisy that enables the daily violation of human and civil rights in Palestine. As such, it has the potential to contribute to the removal of the real wall that shuts out those in the occupied territories.


Ilan Pappe is the author, most recently, of The Modern Middle East (Routledge, 2005).

More IOF Violence in Bil'in, aka, Oh My Aching Knees!

Hello everyone,

well, I sit here in Ramallah tonight, and that odd warm spell we experienced back in December is a distant memory, unfortunately. The hills are now gripped in a dense fog, it's pretty darn cold, and the drizzle is, well... drizzling.

And in addition to that, I'm tired, sore & still reeling from what was yet another incredible demonstration in the village of Bil'in. Today we had somewhere between one to two thousand people in Bil'in, and in this game, numbers make all the difference. Of course, one reason is that many Palestinian politicians and their party members were present to pay their dues before the elections next week. But, it also doesn't hurt when 300 Israeli activists show up, as well as nearly 100 Internationals; yeah, I know, like where the heck did they all come from?

So, it was a march, then some soldiers, then we all started doing our thing, and man can I tell you how much those damn batons hurt! Later in the demo we had to de-arrest quite  a few Palestinians, which we did, mind you, but we all got a bit beaten in the process. As for me, not just one knee, but BOTH knees eventually got nicely banged up by some nice baton work. I was hit harder back in early December, I think, at the third Aboud demo, when I seriously thought I had gotten my arm broken... ok, for about an hour I thought that (but no worries, I was ok!).

But, a few bruises this time, a bit of a limp, nothing that a little sleep and Ibuprofen can't work out. It sure as hell is better than, oh, I don't know, let's say the average experience of arrest and prison for Palestinians; beating, torture, administrative detention, and the list goes on. You could be held for a few hours, or end up staying in jail for days, months, or even years, for nothing more than attending a demonstration in your own village. See this link for the experience of a young man from Bil'in in an Israeli prison; http://www.palsolidarity.org/... .

We have put up a report on the demo, which is at this link http://www.palsolidarity.org/... , it's got some cool pictures (we shot some good video footage as well, thanks Paul!). It's kinda funny, if you check on google, the Palestinian news agency WAFA copied our report almost verbatum! There is also a Ynet article at http://www.ynetnews.com/... .

So, there you have it, I wish I could tell you more, but I need to either crash & get some sleep right now, or stay up and write some more about other stuff. Tomorrow I'll be off for Tel Rumeida in Hebron, where some of the most fascist Jewish settlers have been totally out of control, and then to Qawawis, where the shepherds have been without our presence lately... yes, due to lower number of activists.

So, if my stories have been giving you the itch to check the situation out for yourself, then there's only one thing to do; get the hell over here!

thanks & love to you all

IOF Soldier: "You are disgusting Arabs and you should be beaten like animals and stay in jail."

IOF Soldier: "You are disgusting Arabs and you should be beaten like animals and stay in jail."

My apologies for not writing recently, I have been very busy, going to demonstrations, doing media work, and taking a few days to visit relatives in Israel. It is sometimes very difficult to find the time to stop doing all these things and write about them, but I do hope that I will be able to write about the last week or two sometime tonight.

But before I do that, I would like to share an experience myself and some friends had at a checkpoint recently. I think that it is important for people to see this not from my experience, but from the experience of a Palestinian, my friend Raad. This is not a unique story, nor is it as bad as it could have been; it is just one moment in the life of a Palestinian traveling in his own country.

thanks & more soon!

IOF Soldier: "You are disgusting Arabs and you should be beaten like animals and stay in jail."

January 12th, 2006

http://www.palsolidarity.org/main/2006/01/12/iof-soldier-you-are-disgusting-arabs-and-
you-should-be-beaten-like-animals-and-stay-in-jail/

By Raad

After a successful non violent demonstration against the illegal Israeli apartheid wall in the West Bank village of Bil'in, we came back to the ISM apartment to hold our regular evaluation meeting to discuss what had succeeded in the demonstration and what we could improve. During the meeting we received updates regarding a small village called Bardala in the Jenin region which is closed by a checkpoint controlled by the IOF.

The people of Bardala and some local organizations were holding a nonviolent demonstration against the checkpoint which not only prevents freedom of  movement for the people, but also their ability to trade in farm  products. We decided that some ISM activists would go there and stand in solidarity with the Bardalla farmers in their struggle against the illegal checkpoint. A Palestinian was needed to go with the international  activists so I offered to accompany them and we traveled back to Ramallah to take a taxi to go to Jenin. After changing and packing our  bags, we left Ramallah at noon in a taxi and started our journey in my  beautiful Palestine. We traveled for more than two hours and arrived  in a small village called Al Zababda close to the place of the demonstration. We stayed at the Na'eem Khader Center where we were given a gracious welcome. We hung out for a bit and I told my friends that we should go to sleep  early because we have to be ready at 9 AM to start travel towards the  demonstration at Bardala.

In the morning we took a car prepared by PARC, Palestinian Agricultural relief committees, the organization who  asked us to come to the demonstration.

On the way we realized that we had to pass the Tayaseer checkpoint. Unfortunately, when the driver saw one of the soldiers at the checkpoint he said this soldier is the worst of all of them. When I saw how the soldier was treating the people in front of us I realized he was right.

When it was our turn in line the solider collected our IDs and the passports from us and suddenly he asked us to get out of the car and stand in one row. He was speaking in Hebrew, I told him "we don't understand you, what are you  saying ?" and then he started screaming at me saying "Shut up, at this checkpoint we only speak Hebrew!"

Suddenly we realized there was a soldier speaking in English at the checkpoint, it was an American guy who was serving in the Israeli military and after approximately 40 minutes, the really aggressive solider called the American soldier over to give the international volunteers their passports. They decided to hold me and my friend until  they got an answer from the secret service and they told us to stand  with our backs to the checkpoint and that we could not use our phones. They also asked the driver to drive the international volunteers away  from the checkpoint. The aggressive soldier kept screaming at us  saying "You are disgusting Arabs and you should be beaten like animals and stay in jail, you shouldn't be going around with pretty American and European girls."

Our friends tried to call us but he wouldn't let me answer the phone and told me to turn it off. Instead I made the phone silent and kept in touch with the rest of the group, who were approximately 100 meters away, via text messages.

The aggressive soldier told me I was a Hizballah terrorist and that he would break my bones. I told him "ok" and he responded by saying "Shut up!"

After another 40 minutes the officer received and order from his command to take our phone numbers so we gave them to him and I found an  opportunity to talk because he told us to keep our phones on because the Shabak might call us to check. After just three minutes I got a phone call from a friend who was working with ISM asking if we passed the checkpoint or were we still detained. When I started talking to him the aggressive soldier started screaming at me to shut off my phone but I told him the Shabak called me back and I'm talking to them. I don't know why, but the soldier believed me. After just 15 minutes they received and order to release us but the officer refused and sent back a message saying he needs the commander of the area to tell me to release them.

The officer received the order to release us three times and he was just looking for a reason to keep us and beat us. When they received the order for the first time, an officer of the checkpoint told the aggressive soldier "go eat so you can be strong and ready to beat them."

But after another 15 minutes two international girls who came with us decided to walk toward the checkpoint to see why the soldiers were still detaining us. Suddenly the crazy soldier who has no regard for the language problem just ran toward the roadblock and hid himself behind it so both of the girls could not see him. He started screaming in Hebrew, the girls could neither hear him nor understand him, so he cocked his gun and pointed it at them and when I saw that I got kind of crazy because I was afraid he was going to shoot them. His commander was screaming at him asking him not to shoot and suddenly the American soldier appeared again and screamed "stop! stop!" and told the girls to walk away from the checkpoint. The crazy soldier put his gun down and walked away and the American soldier just followed the two girls to see what was going on and why they wanted to talk to him. They spoke to him and asked when we would be released and if there was some kind of problem.

Then the crazy soldier came back to the checkpoint and his commander asked him to clean his gun and said "it is a very terrible thing for this to happen at my checkpoint, and before you talk to me clean your gun." After that he asked him why he got crazy and tired to shoot the internationals because they are not dangerous like the Palestinians. The soldier answered saying "you know the orders that we have" (if someone comes toward the checkpoint and you ask them in Hebrew to stop and they continue, you should shoot them with no regards as to whether the person in front of you doesn't know Hebrew or even is deaf or crazy, just shoot!). After that the commander called the American soldier and gave him our IDs and told him to tell the internationals that it is because the Israelis respect them that they will release us.

Israel's policies of apartheid and racism will never succeed or help in solving the conflict, and they have nothing to do with 'security.' They will just increase the hate and the bloody situation we are in will continue. This is against the interests of us all, and international law and the Geneva conventions are clear; UN Resolution 242, 338 call for Israel to end the occupation of Palestine and 194 asks Israel to solve the refugee problem. The Geneva convention and the Universal Declaration of the Rights of Man say that people under occupation have the right to resist, and that occupying forces should respect the rights of civilians.

The international community should guarantee human rights for all, yet they have failed the Palestinian people miserably. The individual activists who are coming from all over the world to support us in our non-violent struggle against the illegal Israeli occupation show real support for human rights. We see these activists risking their lives along with us, and they come because they believe that we all have the same dreams, even if we live in what's called the Third World.

I call on people from all over the world to just visit Palestine, Jerusalem , Bethlehem, Nablus , Ramallah, Hebron all of these places and just to observe the situation here. I wish you all everywhere a happy new year full of love and peace and hope to see you in Palestine.