Meen Erhabi

Lajun

2008-08-25T22:19:00.000-07:00

"Welcome to my house," Adnan told us in Arabic through Hanin. He was standing in a specific spot in the middle of a forest. We had driven 20 minutes from Um Il Fahim to a gorgeous and desolate spot in the woods. Until 1948, this forest was Adnan's village. The spot he welcomed us to was the exact place where his family's house had stood—he remembered every detail, every room.

Adnan and his family were expelled from the village of Lajun when he was just a child. They took their house keys and little else with them, because everyone thought that they would be allowed to return shortly. They are still waiting to return.

Two telltale signs alert you to the fact that certain areas used to be Palestinian villages: the first is the stones scattered everywhere on the forest floor, remains of buildings; the second is trees that are not indigenous to the region. Israel plants the trees to cover up the fact that there were once villages in these spots. I will quote Susanne's account of the same day: “The Jewish members of my tour group later reflected to us their horror of realizing that they had paid for these trees growing up. In their U.S. synagogues there was always a box with a sign asking for people's pocket change to 'Plant a Tree in Israel.' They thought they were helping the environment. It turns out they were also helping to cover up former Palestinian villages.”

Adnan bid us farewell and hoped that next time, he would be able to host us as guests in his house.

Ramallah

2008-07-10T08:41:00.000-07:00

ART!

2008-07-08T15:16:00.001-07:00

Jenin Refugee Camp

Mas'ha

This wall surrounds Munira and Hani Amer's home on one side, the other three sides being surrounded by settlements. A group of internationals came in to do these murals. The soldiers asked them, "You're not going to paint on the wall, are you?!" and they responded, "You know kids... they'll paint on anything!"

Jerusalem

Jerusalem

2008-07-08T15:08:00.001-07:00

"Peace be With You," the sign reads. Sure, Israel, sure. Cue photos of the checkpoints: if you have a permit to work in 48, you have to get up at two or three in the morning to be on-time for work. The Palestinians are packed into these metal cages like animals and stand in line for hours waiting to cross the border. It's very dehumanizing, especially since you can't see the soldiers who ask you to hold up your passport, you just hear a voice. They can hold you however long they want, it depends on their mood.

Khalil/Hebron

2008-07-06T09:48:00.001-07:00

Israel: Equality and Justice for All*

*Some restrictions may apply. Offer not available in all areas

Hebron is home to some of the nastiest settlers in the territories. They are proclaimed as some of the most religious people in the world, when in reality these people are monsters. (Stop me if I'm wrong, but isn't it very un-Jewish to try to kill your neighbors?) In the market, the Palestinians have put up metal grids above them so that the settlers living in the buildings the story above won't throw trash, bricks, and crowbars on them (they aim to kill).

The Israeli authorities have a perverse sense of “justice”. When they want to close a Palestinian shop for whatever reason, they weld the door shut. Palestinian fruit vendors carry their fruit in wood and wire baskets... one day a vendor was walking down the street and there was a wire sticking out from his box... he accidentally scratched a settler woman's arm as he passed her. She went screaming to the nearest IDF soldiers that this Palestinian had tried to stab her, and they closed the market down for two months.

The photos of the crumbling structure that used to be a house mark the border between the Israeli-controlled and the PA-controlled side of town. Hisham, our guide, joked that since different parts of the former house were in different territories, if the IDF wanted to arrest someone from the PA-controlled side they'd “wait til he was in the bathroom,”--i.e., on the Israeli side of the house.

We visited a man in Tel Rumeida, a partially seized village, who had settlers living above him next-door. His yard was full of trash they threw at him and his children, including a WASHING MACHINE. They call his children whores every time they try to go to school, and scream at the Arabs to die—there are videotapes of settler riots, of these people tearing down gates, going in to trash Palestinian homes—and the soldiers are just standing there! HAVE YOU FORGOTTEN THE HOLOCAUST SO SOON?! “For me, this is Krystallnacht,” said Dunya. The similarities are so uncanny, that Israel's excuse for taking over a country is because the Jewish people were terrorized in the Holocaust does not hold up any weight at all. For anyone who calls me an anti-Semite for saying this, do you remember the pilgrims who landed here in 1620 escaping religious persecution? I don't think that gave them a right to drive the Indigenous population off of their land and contribute to a genocide. For me, Israel is America is ethnic cleansing, 1492 is 1948. It didn't have to be this way.

Dheisheh Refugee Camp, Bethlehem

2008-07-06T08:35:00.001-07:00

The view from the rooftop.

Some kids in the street, very curious as to why this weird group of Americans were taking a tour of their home, followed us around and eventually commandeered my camera. They kept wanting to take pictures of me, and I was like, "No! Let's get some pictures of you guys!"

I'm pretty sure his name was Mohammad, but I could be wrong.

Third picture up from the left: these were my favorite little imps! The guy in the middle is Tariq.

Second picture up from the left and third picture up from the right: view from the rooftop. There bars are everywhere in Palestine; if you want to add on to your house, you usually build on top of an existing structure.

First and second pictures from the bottom right: We watched Shiraa''s local youth circus... they were quite good! The first picture is a routine where everyone is on a bus and the kid in front is driving it, in the second one this kid is actually juggling with fire! He tried to teach me to juggle balls after the performance, but I was pretty hopeless.

Bottom picture: the top floor of Ibdaa'. Painted on the wall are three martyrs from the camp, on the ceiling is children's graffiti.

Al-Quds/Jerusalem

2008-07-05T05:53:00.001-07:00

Our very first view of the Aparthied wall, en route to Ramallah. We kept asking, "Is that the wall? Is that the wall?" since this country is full of walls and fences.

Two soldiers have pulled over this car.

"We Wish You a Lasting Peace Process"

2008-06-29T04:29:00.000-07:00

"WHAT'S THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN AN ARAB AND A TRAMPOLINE?
ON A TRAMPOLINE YOU STEP WITHOUT SHOES" --Hebrew grafitti in Hebron

"THESE ARE OUR BEST ARAB NEIGHBORS" --Hebrew grafitti on Palestinian cemetary

In this country, the question of "One-state or two-state solution?" is the eqvivalent of "Boxers or briefs?" The one solid concensus Palestinians seem to agree on is the fact that they are exhausted, and they want to live in peace. It's the Israelis who are very, very opposed to this.

Whoever heard me back home talking about Israel heard a much more belligerent opinion from what I've heard from the Palestinians here. "We don't want to throw anyone to the sea, we don't want to be thrown in the desert," said Jaafar Farah of the Mossawa center. "We are exhausted, we are tired, we want to live in peace," said Sumr, a student in Gaza. These are simple demands. Hani Amer's home in Mas'ha is surrounded by fences on three sides, the Aparthied wall on the fourth side. He and his family are terrorized by settlers and soldiers every single day because they refuse to leave their own land.

You could hear the exhaustion in his voice when he related the story of his daily experiences to us. I'm not asking to live a lavish or Israeli lifestyle, he said. He just wants to live his life on his land, to host guests in his house without them being shot at. Apparently the right to life and liberty is too much to ask for.

Here's the part that will shock and surprise: the Palestinians in the West Bank DON'T want to kill the Israelis. They want to live side-by-side with them-- they feel SORRY for the Jews that have been brainwashed by the dogma of Zionism!

"Israeli Jewish citizens are hostages of their establishment," said Mohammad Jaradat of the Badil Center. "The Zionists are not interested in Judaism, but colonialism ... Judaism is misused as a political tool." (By the way, all the religious wack-a-doos are from OUR country... the Nazi-esque settlers from Brooklyn, the Christian Zionists, the Islamic fundamentalists with American passports.)

"Settlements are there for our people to die," said Areej. (They like to attack the Arabs on Shabbats. How sick is that?) Sarah from my group remarked how furious she was at the settlers, becasue they call themselves religious and this was the most un-Jewish thing they could do. The Holocaust is no excuse to TAKE OVER a country. Mohammad from Badil said that the Palestinians would have welcomed Jews into their country to live as human beings--not to create an inherently racist state that would exclude the Indigenous owners of the land. Something that was created under the pretext of protecting the Jews produces Hitler Youth today. These hypocrites need to open their eyes.

The Palestinians are willing to live next to the Jews. The Jews think the Arabs are dogs. And they are pissed beyond belief that the Palestinians refuse to give up their pride--SO angry that they don't surrender! It's actually quite funny... Israel is the petulant child, who NOBODY ELSE LIKES. It's hilarious.

Since everyone on BRUP liked my Brazilian soldier joke so much, I'll leave you with another one I heard. So this Israeli guy goes to Sweden and customs asks him, "Name?" He says, "Schlomo." They ask, "Occupation?" He says, "No, they're terrorists!"

"Like a Monkey on a Brick"

2008-06-29T04:10:00.000-07:00

Using the phrase "close to home" is somewhat problematic, since I've never experienced reservation life, but this is the phrase I'm going to use to describe the situation of the Palestinian people.

For me, this is Plymouth Rock. I admit I am biased in that I very much see this issue in terms of black and white. I have always tended to lump white people into one category, Israelis into one category, even though I know that there are white people and Israelis who fight tooth and nail against racism, colonialism, and use their privilege as leverage to fight and educate against these systems of oppression. (Case in point: the refuseniks; this group.) This trip has helped me very much to humanize Israelis, to see them as human beings. Though I look at the majority of them and see pilgrims from 1620, it didn't hit me until Rotam's tour of East Jerusalem that even those settlers are people. Even the bad ones like in Hebron... there has to be some shred of good left in there. But I really doubted that after seeing the fencing the Hebronites put above the marketplace to stop the settlers from throwing trash and bricks on them, after visiting Hashim's house in Tel Rumeida and seeing his new baby, hearing that his neighbors above him threatened his and his children's lives every day. It's hard not to see things in black and white when you hear these stories. Even though I know the oppressors are human, I can't detatch myself from my lifelong loathing of my own imperialist culture and supremacist dogma. I've studied too much.

The Birthright kids see a home for the Chosen People, compensation for the Holocaust, beaches, sun, democracy. I see 1492, I see genocide, ethnic cleansing, Manifest Destiny. I see Wounded Knee Creek, I see fences and walls trapping, I see Bantustan, I see the FBI machine-gunning reservations. America says, "Why are you complaining? We gave you the land you're living on!" Israel agrees: "Yes, this was a GENEROUS OFFER!"

I see Richard the Lionheart, white slaughtering brown, again and again and again and again and again.

THESE PEOPLE SHUT DOWN ORPHANAGES. They STEAL FOOD FROM CHILDREN. You can't look at the truth and side with or God forbid, sympathize with Israel. You can't, especially not if you call yourself a liberal. There is no happy side to Aparthied. This is not a question of Jews having a right to biblical land, this is an issue of HUMAN RIGHTS.

I see Chiapas, I see Ireland, I see the AIM and the EZLN. In Palestine I see a people terrorized beyond belief that still refuse to stop living, refuse to give up their name. In the last scene of The Crucible, the inquisitors tell John Proctor to sign something before he's executed and he refuses: "Because it is my name! ... How may I live without my name? I have given you my soul; leave me my name!" Areej, our guide through Dheisha refugee camp in Bethlehem, told us, "Israelis have taken everything EXCEPT our pride." These people will keep the name "Palestinian" even if they die keeping it.

اسفر و أتكلم...

2008-06-20T21:11:00.000-07:00

I had my first taste of the urgency/absurdity of the situation today, and I haven't even left the States yet. I called Matan to confirm travel details and he immediately told me, "Don't say your name over this phone. Don't mention my name to the customs. Say you're staying with Noam in Nirit."

I remember when I first found out that Noam was a refusenik; it was back in November on the day of our mock wall protest. I thanked him that night for what he did and started to cry. More than anything us Americans or those with personal ties to Palestine had done, his actions meant the most to me because he is an Israeli Jew who willingly went to prison because he felt that the occupation was morally wrong, and would not passively sit by or participate in his country's tradition. He did this for no personal gain, but because of his outstanding moral convictions. To me, this man is a hero. It is people like him who inspire me to keep fighting.

I am grateful beyond belief that I have Israeli friends who are fighting tooth and nail against their country's system of segregation and oppression. All of these activists are examples I proudly point out to people in the Middle East I run into through discussions on-line, furious with Israel and therefore saying stuff like "Hitler had the right idea." So, thank you my friends for standing up for what is right, and showing the world that not all Israelis/Americans/white people are bad.

Another person who greatly inspires me is Dina's baby cousin, Carla, who pooped on an IDF soldier. (Ask her to tell you that story sometime, it's hilarious!)

اذهب إلى فلسطين جميل

2008-06-19T18:39:00.000-07:00

Earlier this April, I decided to take upwards of $2,500 from the money I've been saving since high school and signed for Birthright Unplugged to take me to Palestine this summer. That money was supposed to be for emergencies (and groceries), but I figure, if military occupation and systematic segregation isn't an emergency, what is, eh? I had only signed up for the tour part initially, but Dunya and Hannah (the women in charge of the program) really wanted Hampshire students to participate in the BDS/I Institute (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions) since Students for Justice in Palestine is already deeply involved in a boycott campaign.

I feel ridiculously unprepared, so I'm glad that Kanya will also be there to represent Hampshire SJP. I don't think I'm as intelligent as the other people in the group--I'm the mistress of propaganda, and I plan and participate in protests. I'm a good demagogue, but not a good scholar by any means. I am very unsure of the specifics of the conflict, but very set in my opinions/ideology.

The reason I am so involved in work for Palestine is that I see land theft as an Indigenous issue. I am a white woman of Indian descent, and for that reason I don't really have any tolerance for military powers forcing original populations off their land, swallowing up their country on the pretext that it is a God-given right, and calling the little fenced-in bits of land where they dump the refugees and survivors a "generous offer."

Before there can be peace, there must be justice. It's time for the West to stop taking, taking taking and start repairing what it has destroyed. I hope I can be of some use.

Keep watching this blog for updates and photos... I don't know if I will have access to a computer, but if not, look for a full account of the trip on July 4th or soon after.

All my love,
Hannah