Silence: Indulgence of the Powerful/Symptom of Suffering (and my e-mail address)

I left Palestine a little over a month ago, and every day I read the news and wonder what it means for the lives of the people that I met there. I'm frustrated that the governments and politicians have the audacity to say that they are so principled or fervent that they won't hold talks, won't move forward, won't recognize each other. They have the privilege to be able to do that, they can retreat to their respective sides and justify their silence. Meanwhile, there are people in Palestine who would like nothing more than to have somebody listen to them, and there are others, even Israelis who would listen, who are listening, when they can, but the machine of oppression and ignorance and power steamrolls those voices so that they can't be heard. And there are others who just don't (want to) hear.
Do the ends justify the means? Does withholding aid to Palestine, because of Hamas, punish Hamas? It cripples their ability to govern, and they are certainly weakened, but do they suffer? Are they learning a lesson about democracy? No. The people are suffering, they aren't being paid, and they are being punished. And meanwhile, the US won't recognize Hamas as anything but a terrorist group, Hamas refuses to recognize Israel, and all the moderate voices are lost as every side withdraws to their respective corners, waiting for someone else to budge.
Feed the hungry. Pay the poor. Educate the uneducated. House the homeless, protect the vulnerable, restore dignity, and recognize that politics is not about the players, or power, or religion or ideology or any of that. It's about the people. Every day that passes where nothing more is accomplished in moving towards peace, another meter of that Wall goes up. Another Palestinian family goes without a paycheck. Another crazy terrorist launches a rocket into Israel, and another Israeli teenager is commanded to kill. There is no dignity in violence, no excuses for allowing people to suffer. Give the Palestinians their aid. Other countries have found a way to bypass Hamas, to get to the citizens who need it most. Forget the politics and remember that we are talking about real people, like you and me, who want to live a real life, but instead suffer in silence and wait for the people in the suits to find common ground. Here's the common ground: we could all be Palestinian. We could all be Israeli, or American, or Lebanese. We all drew a lottery ticket when we were born, and some of us got lucky. All human beings can suffer. Some can inflict suffering. And some can make a real, a big, difference, right now. No one should retreat from the table when the quality of life of an enormous group of innocent people is at stake. There is common ground; we are standing on it as we speak. Let's try taking it from there.

This stream of thought was sort of inspired by this petition (scroll down for English version) and also because I realized that what I read about Palestine and Israel in the news is so abstract, and almost always from a macro, political level. I tell myself that at least it's in the news. Someone asked me if there was a special security force with my group while I was there, and another confided that he was practically positive that I was going to get kidnapped. What kind of news are we being fed to think things like that? No wonder so many people chuckle when I tell them that I studied peace and conflict resolution. No wonder they say, "good luck," or "yeah, they could use that over there," as if there's nothing to be done about the "other" people who just can't seem to stop fighting. I spent 8 weeks in Palestine, so maybe it's no wonder that I found the courage to speak openly when people ask about what it's like to be an American in Palestine. I speak because what they should really be asking is what's it like to be a Palestinian in Palestine, because they aren't finding that in the papers, or hearing it on the news, or in the political debates taking place. And now, I tell all of you, because I can. And because I believe in the truth behind my opinions more than ever. I'm no politician, and I don't grasp all the complexities of political relations, but I've realized that I can still have opinions. And strong ones. And that I shouldn't be afraid to share them just because someone might disagree. So, to my mostly anonymous blog readers, sorry to make a sudden swerve into politics in this post, but I think you can see how it's been a long time coming. peace&love
Cassie
If you want to get in touch with me, I'm (finally) going public: cassie.weaver@gmail.com

Culture Shock

Last night I had a dream that I was in my house in Palestine and the door bell rang. When I opened it, all the kids from the refugee camp, who had swarmed me in real life to have their picture taken, were gathered outside. They were begging me to come out and play with them, but I kept saying no. I couldn't remember why I wasn't able to, but I just knew that I couldn't. Finally I had to shut the door on them.
I miss Palestine.
After arriving back in the States, I immediately went to Canada and spent a week far, far away from any civilization whatsoever, with only my family members around. It was a good introduction to "real life," but nothing compared to coming back to DC. In Canada I dreamed of Palestine a lot, but mostly just woke up confused about where I was. In DC, when I wake up, I know exactly where I am. My first "holy shit what am I doing here?" moment came driving home, when we stopped in a Tim Horton's in Canada, of all places. My mother abandoned me in the line (ok, she went to the bathroom) and I had to pay out of her purse. I opened the little bag and spilled the money into my hand and almost immediately began to panic. The dimes looked like shiekels, the gold loonies looked like half shiekels, the two-tone two dollar coins looked like ten shiekels, the quarters looked like five shiekels, and nothing made sense. The guy behind the counter looked at me as I chokingly laughed and half panicked, totally unable to figure anything out. Finally I handed him a five dollar bill, even though it was obvious to both of us that I had more than enough coin to pay. I didn't know whether to laugh or cry when I finally walked out of the store. I felt really out of place, and really far away from my summer.
The emotions I feel being back here are really hard to explain. I feel homesick, in a way, and I definitely feel guilty that I left, although I keep telling myself that I shouldn't feel that way, because I plan to go back and because I had to come home, and because there are things I can do here to help. I haven't been sleeping very well the last few nights because of the dreams. It is hard because I was so accustomed to talking to people every single day about Palestine, while still going about my daily normal life. I wrote about that two-fold reality in an earlier post. Now, I feel like I am living this daily, normal life and am unable to do anything Palestine-related at all. I feel really helpless. I read the news and watch the news and I recognize the names of the towns and can picture the maps in my head and I just miss it. It's really hard, and weird. I wasn't able to look at my pictures for a while even. Two days ago I finally put them on my mini-slideshow on my google desktop sidebar, so that I could see them out of the corner of my eye. When I saw the article in this week's New Yorker about the forgotten war in Gaza, I nearly started crying. It took a phone call from my sister tonight to get me going again. I went through all the rest of my pictures, wrote captions, and uploaded them. I e-mailed some people who were in Palestine with me, and I decided to write in my blog.
I still can't read my journal though, not the one I kept while I was there, not this blog, not even the one I wrote before I left which would probably be the most interesting to me. I don't know. Sometimes it feels like the whole thing didn't really happen, even though three weeks ago I was definitely there. So what has changed about me? I *get* the conflict in a way I didn't before, it is very human and real to me now. I process the news from the region in an emotional manner and imagine the effect it will have on all the people and organizations that I know there. I ordered my Arabic alphabet workbook and CDs. I take shorter showers. I miss Arabic coffee. My backpack smells like the zatar my host mom gave me before I left. I read ten different news sources a day, searching for news from Palestine, from the West Bank particularly. The biggest change is that I have life plans! When I left for Palestine I planned to come back for a four month commitment at my nannying job and then..... big empty space starting January. Now, I'm going to travel again starting in January, heading to Southeast Asia, then back to Palestine for a few weeks/couple months, and then my sister and I want to backpack central America next summer. Finally, I plan to start my graduate studies at American University next fall, where I got my undergraduate degree. I want to study International Peace and Conflict Resolution or enroll in the newer Ethics, Peace and Global Affairs program. Either way, I will be concentrating on Palestine and hopefully doing some field research there. So now there isn't a big blank spot for at least a couple more years. I feel so lucky that my family is so supportive with all of this, even though my brother confessed that he hardly slept all summer, just like my mom and sister. They all really do understand why I do this though, and hopefully they'll get a little more used to it?
I really do feel better already, just by writing in here again and putting those pictures up. It'll take time to re-adjust, I know that, and I've only been back in DC a week.. And this weekend I'm meeting a friend at a nargilah bar to tell her all about my summer, so that will help too! Thanks again for reading, I'll keep writing sporadically so check back every now and then. Peace and love,
Cassie
and don't forget to look at the pictures, six new albums, hundreds of new pictures: http://picasaweb.google.com/cassie.weaver

Home Safe! ( aka my mother can now sleep soundly)

I'm home safe and sound, writing from the computer in my parent's basement, probably the site of the most anxious blog-checks anywhere : )
Let's see... I guess I'll start by talking a little bit about my last week in Palestine and then the story of the return trip. Last weekend I went to Yad Vashem, the holocaust museum in Jerusalem. Architecturally, the site is beautiful and well-designed, the main exhibition hall is a series of rooms connected to a main corridor that ends on a terrace that looks out over the hillsides around Jerusalem. I've been to the holocaust museum in Washington, DC, a couple of times so I was trying to mentally prepare myself for what I was about to see, but of course nothing can really help. It is so hard to imagine the terror and horror of those times, and the scale of the holocaust, the millions of people affected... I have the hardest time understanding how so many people collaborated, consented, or turned away from the plight of the Jewish people and the other targeted populations. So many people were compliant, so many soldiers at the camps and people living around the camps and the ghettos.. And in places like Denmark, so few people working together made an enormous difference and saved thousands of lives. Being reminded of the holocaust while living in Palestine was important, I think, because I have been searching for reasons for the Israeli government's actions and fear and security are the two biggest motivators.
It is so forbidden to compare anything to the holocaust, and certainly nothing has happened since on any remotely similar scale, but the creation of the "other," the de-humanization of a population, the mass grouping of ethnic and religious groups, the exploitation of fear, the building of walls and creating of ghettos, population control, restrictions on movement, identity cards with religious categories, all of these are present in every day Palestinian life. The last story I shared, about the old woman who lays awake at night fearing the sound of boot steps on her stairs, reminded me the books I read about the holocaust, the stories from the survivors. I'm not really expressing myself well right now and that is a bad thing; like I said, it is an untouchable subject, but some of the actions by the Israeli government and military absolutely parallel tactics used not only in the holocaust, but in other cases of apartheid and ethnic violence. For example, I learned that in official Israeli government documents, the roads built by Israel inside the West Bank for the settlers to use are referred to as "sterile roads."
I walked away from the museum upset and disheartened, but with even more faith that the one way to change anything in this world is to start by changing yourself... Maybe I'll talk about that more at the end.
Last weekend I went into Tel Aviv again for a day and finally got to eat at the "Taste of Life" restaurant where nothing but vegan food is served. So good. Then the rest of the week was a total blur of organizing and saying goodbye and worrying about security checks at the airport. Before I left for Jerusalem on Saturday night I said goodbye to my host mom and it was so sad, she started crying right away and so did I, and all I could say was that I hoped that I would come back soon.. of course, she told me I was always welcome. I think I could show up on her doorstep any day and she'd welcome me and have food in my stomach in under ten minutes.
My biggest worry about leaving was that I would somehow get blacklisted, which means no entry into Israel for up to seven years, because I would be seen as a Palestinian sympathizer and threat to Israel. I don't feel like a threat, but who knows? Other people in my group who had left already had experienced hours of questioning and had their bags totally unpacked and searched. There are different "tactics" to use at the airport, one of which is playing the tourist and saying that you've been traveling the country for two months, and the other is to tell the truth but not give the names of anyone you talked to, worked with, lived with, etc. in the West Bank, because if the security knows that you've been there, they'll want to know who you talked to. My friend J and I were on the same flight so we decided to say we had been traveling together. We stayed at a hostel in Jerusalem the night before so that the shuttle would pick us up there and take us to the airport. In the hostel, instead of sleeping, we got out our guidebook and brushed up on the places we had visited. J was planning to tell them that he had volunteered in Bethlehem but that we spent most of our weekends traveling in Israel. By the time we left for the airport (our shuttle picked us up at 3:45 a.m.), I was too tired to be anxious anymore, and just wanted to get on the plane and be done with it. We were first approached while we were standing in line and asked how long we'd been in the country, what we had done while we were here, where we had stayed, etc. At first J didn't say that he had volunteered, because they didn't ask, but then they did and he told them the truth. The woman took our passports and we went to screen our bags. We were asked the same questions again while they x-rayed our bags, and then they sent us to another place where they opened and partially un-packed my bags while asking us both more questions, including, "I'm sorry to ask a personal question, but what is the relationship between you two?" and, "While you were in Bethlehem, did anyone invite you in for coffee, tea, dinner, conversation? Were you in any private homes?" We said no, which is so laughable because every single person we talked to invited us for tea, dinner, everything. After they checked out our bags and I managed to stuff everything back in my backpack, we went to the ticketing line, got our boarding passes, and then got some food. The final security check was before entering our terminal, and was just a metal detector and a hand check of our carry ons. I was so relieved that we got through with little hassle, I'm curious to see how the other woman did who was also on our flight, because I'm pretty sure she was one of the last people onto the plane.
The flight to London was long and boring and I slept for most of it, and then I only had an hour in London so I basically walked from one gate to another. The second flight was even longer, 8.5 hours, and hard because I was alone for the first time. I definitely cried thinking about everyone I had left behind, and I began to realize just how far away Palestine is, and just how far away my life there was about to become. When we landed in Detroit at 4:30 p.m. local time I had been traveling for 20 hours straight, and I was exhausted, stressed, and ready to see my parents. I went through customs with no problems at all, and felt like I was totally lucky because my bags were already on the carousel. I got a luggage cart, grabbed my bags, and prepared to greet my parents. Seconds before I went through the final gate, a man stopped me and asked to see my passport and customs sheet, which I showed him, told him where I had been, and he let me go. I was literally two steps away when a woman pulled me aside and asked for the same documents, and then began to ask even more questions about what I had been doing. It didn't take her long to decide that I needed more screening. She took me over to an inspection station, basically a computer in front of a long conveyor belt. Besides the usual questions, she wanted to know who I had traveled with, and when I only gave his first name, she wanted to know his last, and when I asked her why, she asked me why I wouldn't tell her, so I said that I didn't want him to get in trouble. Bad move, in hindsight, but I meant that I didn't want him to have to get pulled aside and questioned as well. Too late, she took his last name and then made me put my bags on the conveyor belt. I'm happy to say that I started crying immediately at the thought of having to re-pack those damn bags again, and I told her so, but she really didn't care. She went through my carry-on first, and pulled out my journal. We'd been told in Palestine that the Israeli security guards don't have the right to read journals, so I felt safe carrying mine through. Homeland Security does not share that view, clearly. She thumbed through it looking at the papers I had tucked in it (travel insurance and a copy of my passport), and then started looking at the pages. I immediately told her that it was my journal and asked if she really have to read it? She responded that yes, she had to read it, because she needed to know if I was telling the truth or not. I honestly felt sick to my stomach, not because there was anything "bad" or "illegal" in the journal, but because I write things in my journal that even I wouldn't want to re-read, it is a totally safe and private space that was being invaded in front of my eyes, for no apparent reason. She called her supervisor over and told me to ask him any questions, but I didn't really have any questions, I just wanted to know why she was reading my journal. He told me that they have the right to inspect any documents or items that anyone carries in the United States, period. I don't find fault with this, I just don't understand why I seemed like enough of a threat or a liar to warrant having my journal read. She finally set it aside and unpacked the rest of my bags, examining every piece of paper she found. After she unpacked my two checked bags and camera bag, she told me that I could re-pack them. I asked if I could re-pack my carry-on and she said, "No, I need to read your journal a little more closely. You seem to refer to the military and soldiers frequently." There are soldiers on every street corner in Israel, and to go anywhere outside of Bethlehem, I have to deal with the military... I told her that, but again, she didn't care. She sat down, in front of me, and read my entire journal, beginning to end. She laughed at parts, made faces, and made me explain one part where I had written "Italia! Italia! Italy won the W.C. tonight." Do you get it? It was when Italy won the World Cup, and everyone at the bar was chanting. Why she wanted that explained, of anything, stumps me. She also asked me to explain relationships I talked about, and asked why I wrote "I love Palestine" in some of my entries. It was really terrible, it makes me feel sick thinking about it, and right now I can't imagine re-reading that journal without getting queasy at the thought of someone else reading it. It definitely reminded me that the right to privacy is so important. I mean, we all close the door when we use the bathroom but that doesn't mean we have anything to hide. She told me, "it's ok, I'm not your mom. Two seconds after you leave here, I'm going to forget about you." I was getting more and more anxious as time went by, I felt totally invaded. Finally, another supervisor came over and asked me if I was okay. I responded by telling her that I was very uncomfortable with someone reading my personal journal and couldn't understand what threat I posed as an American who had traveled as a tourist to Israel. At that point, the first lady finally put down my journal, mostly because her supervisor had come over, and gave me my passport. I re-packed my bag for the last time, and went to greet my parents crying, upset, and angry. What a welcome home.
Now, here I am, and I'm over the journal-reading thing for the time being. I just don't know what to think of it, really. I'm a little anxious about my friend and hope that he didn't get any extra-questioning, but as I keep reminding myself, all of this is nothing compared to what Palestinians go through on a daily basis. (He just called and thanked me profusely for selling him out before telling me that he had no problems whatsoever at US customs...)
So they told us that we might experience some culture shock when we get back. The term, to me, is literal. Last night especially and today I feel like I am a walking zombie. The grass is so green! It's so quiet! The air is so nice! The lake! Good pasta for dinner! Filter coffee! On the other hand, no amazing Palestinian breakfast, no crazy taxi guys to drive me to work, no beauitful breeze all day long. Hopefully my ten days down time in Canada will be nice, and then back to DC, which will undoubtedly be crazy.
I'm all over the place, sorry... it was nice to get home and have some political conversation with my parents. I think that my father is a one-man awareness raising campaign. He alone has drawn more people to this website and talked to more people about what I am doing than anyone else I know, myself included. It is also really cool that my parents have become such activists in the sense that they are totally up on the current events and engage others in conversation about Palestine all the time. My friend and her boyfriend came over last night as well, and he immediately started asking me questions about my time in Palestine, which was really cool because I was afraid that I'd get here and people just... wouldn't care. Maybe that will be my experience in the future, but for now, people are definitely interested. Even my friend, who is not political at all, had a ton of questions and was genuinely intrigued and wanted to know more about what I want to do with my life. Which is a good question.
So that's all for now, and then more next week. I don't think that any of the world's biggest problems can be solved by one person acting alone, but I don't think that any of the world's problems are too big to be solved either. I think the solution lies within all of us. I think that if every person decided to be more conscious, every day, of the shared humanity of life, we could end oppression and foster justice. We are all humans, we are stuck here together on this earth, and we are all stewards of life. If we all reached out and tried to humanize the senseless deaths in Lebanon, Israel, Palestine, everywhere, and we all tried to imagine what it would be like to live oppressed, or poor, or hungry, and we all opened our hearts a little bit more, I think that there would be enough of us who refuse to stand by and let our fellow human beings live in such conditions. We wouldn't stand for it if it was our daughter, or our grandmother, so we have to accept that everyone is someone's daughter, everyone has a grandmother. My friend's boyfriend asked me if I was optimistic about the Wall, about Palestine, and I said yes and no. No because the Wall is being built, it is a physical barrier that is surrounding the West Bank and strangling the people and for it to come down and life to return to normal is pretty far out right now. But yes, I am optimistic, because I truly believe that even if I act alone, I can make a difference in Palestine. I think that by raising awareness and having conversations like that and by keeping this blog, I can do something. The power of the individual shouldn't be under-estimated, and I can do anything.
Thank you so much, to all of you, for reading this and keeping up with my summer and taking the time to care. Some days, just the thought of being able to write here and process my thoughts here was all I had to keep me going. Some of you I may not know at all, so a special thanks to you for reading the story of a complete stranger. Thanks to my friends who spread the word, and my family who also spread the word. And again, the biggest thanks to my dad, who supported this blog more than anybody. The hit counter is over one thousand now, and nine hundred of them can be attributed to him and his tireless networking skills. So thanks again, and check back next week for pictures (I promise! I finally have room to upload all of them!) and more postings.
Peace and love,
Cassie

Leaving...

tomorrow morning at 8 a.m. I'm staying in Jerusalem tonight so that I can have an Israeli shuttle take me to the airport, where I'll face some scrutiny from the security officers (hopefully not too much) and then onto the plane. I'm so mixed up inside, I can't really begin to write. I haven't posted in a while but I've been writing in my journal, so when I get home I'll update with a few posts about different things. Also, I'll keep updating for a while when I get back to let you know what I'm up to and how I'm working to raise awareness about Palestine. So look for posts Sunday night/Monday morning US time, and then again a few days later when I return from my vacation. I'm so sad right now, but I have about a billion things to do to get ready because I've put it all off for the last minute. If you know me, you're not surprised. Keep your fingers crossed that I slip through security as a harmless American tourist and not a newly-proclaimed activist for justice and human rights! (Sounds good, right?) Thank you for reading, be prepared for a real wrap-up post soon. And more pictures, hopefully. Love and PEACE from Beit Sahour, West Bank, Palestine,
Cassie

"I want you to tell my story."

Sorry it has been such a long time since I last posted, things have been busy. Which means this could be a long post : ) Last Sunday I traveled again to Hebron, this time with the whole group. We visited an organization called the Tel Rumeida project, a group of right internationals who live in the Tel Rumeida neighborhood in Hebron. Tel Rumeida was once populated by 400 Palestinians families, now less than 50 families live there with a couple hundred settlers. Again, these are the fanatic, ultra-religious settlers who attack the people of the town on a regular basis. The people who work for the Tel Rumeida project practice direct non-violent intervention. In other words, they stand between the settlers throwing the stones and the kids or old people being hit. Our presenter was hit the day before right on her lower back when she intervened with a group of two dozen young settler boys attacking two old men. We again visited the Ibrahimi mosque but also went into the Jewish side of the mosque this time as well. It is much smaller and mostly outside, but the grounds around it are beautifully cultivated. There were some settlers walking around and I wanted to approach them but two things prevented me: first, that I had been warned by the Tel Rumeida project people, the leaders of my non-violent camp, and the people who run the organization that I am here with that the settlers are violent and irrational. Second, I was in a large group of internationals, so I doubted that I would have the time to really approach them without disturbing the whole group. The contrast between life as a settler or life as a Palestinian kid the life that I am returning to DC is really hard to process. Since I leave here in nine days, I know it is something I need to start thinking about...
The rest of this week I spent my mornings conducting interviews with various people in the Bethlehem and Beit Jalla area. I met with a one woman fighting machine, Carmen. She is over sixty years old and lives on the second floor of a six story otherwise abandoned building that is now surrounded on three sides by the Wall. This is the section of the Wall designed to provide security for Rachel's tomb. The map that links to is provided by B'tselem, an Israeli human rights group. This is one of the best maps I have found yet. Note the green line, which is the internationally defined and UN accepted border of Palestine. Then note the red and purple lines. If you can find Bethlehem, (south west portion of the West Bank, zoom in and look for all the crazy zigzags next to Rachel's Tomb.
a story:
In 1983, Carmen's family opened a restaurant on the ground floor of a six story building they hoped would one day be a hotel, and the whole family moved into the spacious apartment on the second floor. For years, business was good. One of her three sons got cancer and died, but the business provided enough money to take care of his widow and their children. The customers were not just locals, but many tourists traveling into Bethlehem, and even Israelis who came easily and frequently from Jerusalem in the time before the Wall. During the First Intifada, in the '90s, the restaurant stayed open and business remained steady, although the number of tourists fell off until the end of the intifada. When the second intifada began, and Bethlehem was sieged by Israeli forces, their restaurant was ransacked by soldiers. During the siege, they used the restaurant as a primary post, while Carmen and her family lived upstairs, imprisoned by a twenty four hour a day curfew for forty days, and too scared to leave anyway. The soldiers often raided the home, trashing the house in search of documents or evidence of participation or sympathy to the Palestinian fighters. They confiscated the key to their front door, as well as to the stairwell door and restaurant door, and chained the doors shut. Then they boarded her front door shut, so that her and her family were forced to leave by clambering down a concrete ramp with wooden slats for steps. When the siege ended, her family fled to their relatives' houses in Bethlehem, but Carmen remained, terrified that if she left, the soldiers would take the building. The restaurant had been transformed. Once a bright and inviting room with neatly set tables, pictures decorating the walls, a cabinet filled with local wine and other liquors, and windows on all sides facing out to greater Bethlehem over the hills, the restaurant lay in nearly indescribable ruin. When I saw it this week, the floor was covered with a layer of dirt and dust where it wasn't glittering with broken glass. Empty liquor bottles were the only things remaining from the once well-stocked bar, and playing cards lay scattered across the floor. An old, crusty loaf of bread, now gray with dirt, laid next to a broken table fan. The tall Coca-Cola refrigerator was pulled sideways out of the wall, the trays removed and door ajar. An empty bullet casing lay amid the broken glass, and Carmen wept as she walked us around the room. It gave me the serious creeps, to think that she had to live above a family business now taken over by Israeli soldiers. Before we entered the restaurant, we had peered carefully through the windows to make sure they were not inside. Carmen tells us later that she can hear them at night, their boots on the stairway next to her bedroom that she can no longer use. Before the wall, the building was the tallest in the area, and the Israelis established a post on the roof. They still use the roof, often at night, but now a guard tower in the wall next to her house gives a higher vantage point. She tells us that the soldiers in the area rotate, they only serve a short term near Rachel's tomb. Each time a new unit rotates in, her home is raided. She was hospitalized once, along with her son, because she was beaten badly in the chest with the butt of a gun. She shows us the hospital report. After we have seen the restaurant and we have clambered up the concrete "stairway," she leads us into her home. The first thing she does is show us the bullet holes in the glass in her front room, and then leads us onto the porch and shows us the baby chicks she is raising to keep herself busy. When we settle down for tea and the first four fresh figs I have ever eaten, she tells us most of the story I have just related to you. She sometimes visits her grandchildren in town, but sometimes when she leaves her home she returns and things have been moved in the apartment, and so she knows the Israeli soldiers are watching her, and come when she is gone. Her son stays at the house with her at night, but still she has trouble sleeping because she is afraid that she will wake up and the soldiers will be standing over her bed, as has happened before. Her grandchildren are terrified to visit, the sounds of the heavy caliber machine gun fire and soldiers boots on the stairways have left them too petrified to visit her. Their courtyard, once well kept, is now so overgrown that you can hardly see their playground. Their front porch once offered a breathtaking view of Bethlehem, as we saw in pictures she showed us. Now, we see only 25 feet of concrete wall. While we look at the pictures, she gets out another stack of papers. They are her water and electricity bills for the last six years. The sums are astronomical, almost 30,000 NIS ($6,800) in unpaid bills for the electricity alone, with some months well over 3,000 NIS. Alone, she uses less than 200 NIS/month. However, the soldiers constantly run a generator on the roof, and tap directly into her water supply. She runs out of water sometimes, and sometimes the utilities just get shut off and she has to fight for them to turn it on. When she complains to one bureau, she tells us, they send her to another. So she documents everything and shares it with people like us. She asked the Red Cross and the Red Crescent for help, because her family is broke, their business is totally shut down. She was given a box of food that fed her family for less than a week. The Palestinian Authority gave her a bag of beans that proved to be rotten. They are not doing their job, she says. I'd say that is an understatement. A few months ago, the wall was only two or three meters high, but since then they removed the smaller fence and put in a big one. So now that is the only view from her front porch that she will ever see until it comes down. She can't afford a lawyer to fight this, and she'd had to fight in Israeli courts anyway. Her family can't afford the ten thousand dollars it would take to renovate the restaurant either, but even if they could, the Israeli soldiers could easily ransack it again. We tell her that we are writing a booklet about the Wall, and ask her if she could tell the world anything, what would she say?
"I am hopeless. I want my business back, and I want my family back. I am hopeless. All I see is destruction, destruction, destruction... I want you to tell my story."
She is crying now, I will cry later. We thank her for her bravery and strength, this one woman soldier against injustice.
I have more stories, a landowner who sits each day in his fields and watches the bulldozers tear down the carefully cultivated land that has been handed down for generations. But let me save that one, for tomorrow maybe. And maybe I can post some pictures so you can see what it is that I'm talking about. In the meantime, check out http://www.stopthewall.org/ and http://www.openbethlehem.org/
Also, the restaurants are hopping in Bethlehem...unfortunately. My favorite cab driver, Y, told us that just the other night he convinced a friend of his who owns one of the two discos in the area to open up for just one night to a group of 150 people. Who are they? Refugees, from Haifa and Nazareth, seeking shelter from the war. And there are thousands of them here.
And, I want to tell you about my trip to Yad Vashem, the holocaust museum in Israel. I have a lot of catching up to do, I'll try for later today or tomorrow, insha'allah.
Peace and love from Palestine.

"Every mother has a baby..."

Story:
He is a shopkeeper in his mid-60s in Beit Sahour, he sells clothing for children and women in an upstairs shop on a half-abandoned, half-busy street. I am buying some gifts and have to pay with a 100 NIS bill, so he sends his daughter to get me change from the shop across the street. "Why are you here?" he asks, and when I tell him I am learning Arabic and volunteering, he wants to know where I volunteer, where I take classes, where I live. "Thank you," he says, "for visiting me in prison." I don't know what to say. "The West Bank is the biggest prison in the world," he says, and I have heard this before. "My whole life is controlled by the occupiers. I cannot travel anywhere. Here, I drive maybe 1,000 kilometers (620 miles) in an entire year. I hear that in America, you can drive that much in a day, if you want. You can move around." I nod, thinking of all the miles I put on my car last summer. "It hurts business, you know. I have to go into Israel to buy the clothes, and they are expensive. And then, when I come back, I have to wait at the checkpoint. And just to get into Israel, I have to apply for a pass. Sometimes, they still won't let me through. This is my life." I finger the clothes in my hand, think of the effort put into acquiring them, and feel guilty because I just paid less than half what I would pay for such things in the States. "But this, this is my life. What can I do?" His daughter comes back with my change. She gives it to me but I don't leave yet, I can't walk away without saying something. Finally, I say, "I'm sorry..." Why is this the only thing that ever comes to mind? He says, "Do not be sorry. I want to thank you. Thank you for coming here, for staying and living this life with us. Do not forget us. You are always welcome back in Palestine. Thank you." I thank him, I turn and I leave. His wife, who has sold me the clothes and called me "darling" the entire time shouts to me, "And come back to this shop too, darling! We carry everything you like, and we will always be here!" I wave goodbye.
Story:
I am interviewing a woman for work about her experience with the Wall. Eventually, the conversation leads around to her family. I ask her if she has any children, she is in her 60s. "I have three children, two boys and a girl." I ask her where they live. "My sons, they live here, one in Ramallah and one in Beit Jalla. They are in their 30s. My daughter, my baby..." she pauses. "She lives in Haifa." I wait, expectant. Haifa is a town in northern Israel, much in the news recently. She waves her hand at the tape recorder in front of her, indicating that I should turn it off. I do. "I cannot say this on tape, I cannot risk it. But I want to tell you her story." I turn off the tape recorder, close my notebook. I haven't been taking notes anyway, I force myself to look her in the eye. "My daughter... she went to university, like her brothers, in ---." (I won't name the town here, I'm changing identifying details because her daughter could be put in danger.) It is a West Bank city. "She is Christian, and while she was there she met a boy in her prayer group. They liked each other, and he asked his father if he could become engaged to my daughter, and then asked my husband. We asked our daughter if she liked the boy, if he was a good man, and she said yes, so we gave our blessing." She pauses. "I am going to tell this without crying, maybe, for the first time..." A longer pause this time, she takes a deep breath. "After they were engaged, they spent a lot of time at our house. He was born in Haifa, his family lived there. He has an Israeli passport then, of course. But they spent a lot of time with us, and everyone could tell they were in love. So comfortable with each other, so happy." I smile, thinking of how my mother will one day tell the stories of how my siblings and I fall in love like this. "Then, Israel passed a law. No Israeli citizens could marry Palestinians. It is a form of population control really, to maintain the Jewish majority in Israel. My daughter... she was heartbroken. He was back in Haifa, every chance we had we applied for a pass, we used all of our passes to help her see him, and sometimes he could come see her. She spent so much time on the computer, talking to him. Our family and his family, we did everything we could, talked to every authority. But it was a law, it was not something we could appeal. We approached the religious leaders in our community, they told us to forget it. A broken heart, it is better than prison, they told us. He could not give up his Israeli passport, move into Palestine. He could make no living here, he would be a prisoner and my daughter as well. My daughter... she could not be consoled. I am her mother, I could do nothing. Finally, the day came when many Palestinian Christians were granted passes to go into Israel for a big feast. He called us and said prepare for a wedding, we will do it when you come for the feast. I am preparing for the wedding here, he said. There was so little time for anything, just to prepare and not for goodbye. We went, it was just one day." She pauses again. My heart is pounding and my eyes are stinging. Her eyes well with tears and as they begin to fall, so do my own. "My baby... I had to say goodbye to my baby in just one day. She is gone now, she is living with him there. I can't see her... my baby. I talk to her, she tells me she cannot give me grandchildren because she is too sad, it is too hard to raise a child there." I am crying, she is crying, my friend and co-worker is crying. "My baby..." she says again. I hear my father's voice in my head, calling me his baby. We sit silently, and I think that star-crossed love is not so romantic at all. I think it is very sad. Now I hear my own mother's voice in my head, calling me her baby. She says, "Every mother has a baby, you know? She is mine. She is my baby. One day, you will be mothers. You already are daughters. You know what it is like to love a mother. One day you will know what it is like to love your baby." We are all still crying, but the interview is over. It has been over. In fact, maybe it was never an interview. Maybe it was a release, a telling of a life to two young witnesses who will one day fall in love. Or maybe we have intruded into a very private and painful story... but then she stands up and dries her tears, and so do we. There is work to be done. She doesn't say it, but I am thinking that she will always cry when she tells this story. Only it isn't a story! It is a life, a person, a real event. Her baby daughter, on the other side of a concrete wall, on the other side of a country, and it might as well be on the moon.
And now I am crying again. I think that every five days or so I just stop processing and need to cry.
Today my brother asked me why I am here. I thought about it. I told him I can't remember why I came. Maybe when I go home I can look in my old journal, maybe I wrote a reason down there. But I don't remember. Was it really just to learn Arabic? To travel abroad? To immerse myself in a foreign culture? Maybe. But now I am here, and those things don't matter. I am here because at some point, in the first week that I was here, I opened my heart and my mind, and this land came tumbling in. Imagine walking down the street and seeing a child crying on the curb. Would you stop to ask what is wrong? And when you found out what was wrong, would you do something? Or try to do something? Or maybe just listen to his story and try to comfort him, or relate somehow? Either way, what would happen if you just walked on by? Maybe it wouldn't bother you too much, but maybe one night a few days later you'd be laying in bed, trying to sleep, and his face would come into your head. Or you'd hear the sounds of his crying. Maybe it would bother you, but you could tell yourself that it wasn't your place, or it wasn't a big problem. Or maybe it would be a little dangerous for you to stop there, you'd heard stories about the place. But if you'd stopped, asked him what was wrong, and then left with a word of comfort and not much else, maybe that would bother you even more. Maybe then you'd lay awake thinking about what you could have done. For me, the only thing harder than opening myself to this place and letting it all in and vowing to speak and fight and witness, the only thing harder than that, is walking away. I don't know why I came, but I am here because I will never get Palestine's tears, Palestine's face, out of my mind.
peace and love

"There's no self without other people..."

I'm back on my regular work and school schedule today, so maybe my head will settle back into the routine as well. It has been a crazy few days here, especially with all the news from Lebanon. The incongruity of wandering Bethlehem yesterday and then playing cards in a cafe last night while all the atrocities were happening in Qana is unsettling, but that is how life goes here. You have to somehow digest the news and yet, you also have to live your life.
I spent all of Friday and Saturday in Tel Aviv with a friend. It is just like any major city in most aspects: expensive, busy and loud. Our goal was to be on the beach in Tel Aviv on Friday by 11 a.m., which in Arabic time means we were right on time at the beach at 1 p.m. We left Bethlehem around 9 and caught a bus into Jerusalem, where the bus driver helpfully let us off at a stop where we could catch a bus to the main bus terminal where we could catch another bus to Tel Aviv. The round trip bus ticket to T.A. was 30 NIS (about $6), the other bus trips plus the shared taxi to our hostel raised the total cost to maybe ten dollars. Tel Aviv is around 45 minutes away, so we took the time on the bus to read our guide book and while we were looking a guy in the seat behind us asked us if we were looking for a good place to go out on Friday night. We ended up talking with him for a while, his name is Eli and he is an American Jew who studied for a year at Tel Aviv University and came back after graduating in order to help guide a group of 600 American Jewish teenagers around Israel. It was one of his two days off in the six week trip. The discussion eventually led to the whole "what are you doing with the rest of you life?" conversation, and he said he was looking at grad schools. I ask which ones, he says American University. It turns out that he applied to the same grad program that I did, the IPCR program, and spent a half hour in May talking with Professor Said, my mentor and original source of inspiration for all my studies and now, travels. He was equally as taken with Professor, saying that just one half hour in his presence was amazing. It is a small world, everyone here who has studied the Middle East or Peace studies at all has heard of American University as well as Professor Said. Anyway, Eli then helped us to navigate the super-mall that is the Tel Aviv bus station. There are armed soldiers everywhere in the station, and there are at least six different floors, and there are fewer English signs there than even in some of the tiny West Bank cities that I have visited. But, mish mishkala (no problem) we found our way to MoMo's hostel three blocks away from the beach. We checked in, dropped our bags, and proceeded to lay in the sun for three hours on the beautiful sand. The Mediterranean sea is like 75 degrees too, and we were lucky to be there on a day when the jellyfish weren't out, so we could swim. The surf was big too. Friday night we went to a couple different bars and then collapsed in bed right around the first call to prayer at sunrise. We had to checkout at 11 a.m., so we rented a locker for the day to leave our bags in. Because it was Saturday, and therefore Shabbat, absolutely no buses run from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, or within Tel Aviv at all, until sundown at 8 p.m. Also, all the shops and markets are mostly closed. We found our way, slowly and in a circuitous path, to the Tel Aviv art museum, which was really cool, especially because it was air-conditioned. In my ever-lasting luck with Impressionist exhibits, the museum had some Monets for me, and some Rodin that I especially admired with Thomas in mind. After the museum we had time to kill so we went and saw the absolutely awful Superman Returns. We ate some schmach (which is totally not what it is called but when I remember I'll tell) that is pita bread stuffed with ten thousand different salads and dressings, hard boiled egg, and fried eggplant. It tasted pretty good sitting on a curb in Tel Aviv people watching. Then we went to the beach and walked on it as the sun set, which made for some absolutely beautiful pictures which I somehow managed to delete... Inshallah, I can recover them when I get home. The cool thing was that people were still swimming, even at 10:30 when we finally left the beach, which seems like a good time of day to get in the water, considering the temperature. The bus ride back was uneventful, but when we got to the Jerusalem bus station the bus to the Wall checkpoint in the Bethlehem area had stopped running, so we had to pay 40 NIS to get there, and then once we passed through the checkpoint (a wave of the passport at the bored Israeli guard), we had to walk a looong ways with all of our bags before I finally caught a taxi home and collapsed in my bed at 1 a.m.
Sunday I spent wandering the Beit Sahour hillsides, the view of the beautiful valley filled with olive trees marred by the vast and imposing settlement on the opposite hillside. This morning I finally caught up with all the weekend news and am sick all over again. I really feel like the US should be shouldering so much of the blame for the bombing campaign that has targeted the civilians of Lebanon. The casualty figures are staggering, almost 550 Lebanese civilians dead (which is expected to rise if and when rescue/retrieval operations begin in southern Lebanon) and 51 Israelis dead. I make no excuses for the killing of any person, but these numbers speak for themselves. Hezbollah made a cross border raid and killed and kidnapped Israeli soldiers. The Israeli response is to bomb Beirut into oblivion, destroy the infrastructure that would allow Lebanese civilians to escape, and create a zone so susceptible to Israeli air strikes that it is impossible for any aid to reach the civilians stranded there. This is not justice. This is not retaliation. This is collective punishment, a war crime. A few days ago, the US caused a UN Security Council Resolution calling for a ceasefire to be tabled. Today, after the deaths of literally dozens of innocent children, the US will now call for a temporary ceasefire. Why? Why did we have to wait for such an atrocity to occur before we called for a ceasefire? Why does it all seem so obvious from here, the blatant disregard for human life when it can be taken with the justification of defense? And these are US missiles, one recent report showed that 5,000 lbs. of missiles were delivered from the US to Israel in the past week. I can only hope that there is outcry in the States. Again, there is a march in Washington, D.C. on August 12 that I urge any of you D.C. readers to attend. This madness must stop, and every day that it continues, by air or on the ground, means more innocent life taken and a higher toll paid in blood. We cannot shrug and walk away. Take a position, get informed, even if you want to disagree with me. Just don't let this pass you by. Call your congressional representatives, read the news, check out english.aljazeera.net for a different viewpoint, and don't just discredit it because it is Arabic. Look at the official responses of other nations to Israel's actions, especially non-Western nations.
.... Sometimes I feel like I should try to organize my thoughts better, provide you all with facts and sources, lay this all out methodically, but as soon as I start I find myself frustrated and sad, and so my emotions color all of this. The facts are out there, the sources are out there, I guess I leave it to you to search it out, while I sit here and try to pass my feelings through a computer screen.
"The idea of absolute freedom is fiction. It's based on the idea of an independent self. But, in fact, there's no such thing. There's no self without other people. There's no self without sunlight. There's no self without dew. And water. And bees to pollinate the food we eat....So the idea of behaving in a way that doesn't acknowledge those reciprocal relationships is not really freedom, it's indulgence."
Peter Coyote
With love, from Palestine.