one step forward, two back?

last night i got my bag back. at 11:30pm somebody dropped it off at the apartment that i am staying at in tel aviv. pretty good of them, right? i guess there must have been a tiny hole in the luggage, because all 3000 needles and herbs that i brought with me were missing. they must have fallen out. er wait - maybe this is indicative of the state of Israeli security. it certainly isnt the first time that medicine or tools have been denied entry, and it wont be the last. the isreali man who i am staying with simply said "welcome to israel!". even he, a conservative guy, acknowledged that its fucked up for them to have these priorities. i will let physicians for human rights know tomorrow, when the offices are back open. they should at least document it so it goes on file. for what... ah yes, one more statistic. i sometimes feel like that is all this trip is for. one more person that challenges israel, one more person who gets denied, humiliated and naked. they let me in, so taking the needles were just a fuck you. one more person who tried and will probably give up. because DAMNIT if there arent enough hurdles already. enough walls. one more wall. standard strategy of israel - take a little bit at a time, take people's humanity until they have no more. i understand the privilege i have when making these statements. and its not about me. i can get it back. i can get on a plane and go home to portland where there are bike lanes, and no checkpoints between my house and the community acupuncture clinic that i go to preventing the good doctors from doing their community service. why dont i just go home? they dont want me here. nobody does. its no fun being a person not welcome to an entire country. oh yeah, me and countless palestinians. only when palestinians ask themselves the same questions they dont have options. "going home" is the problem. and a lifetime full of israel taking a little bit by bit, often a lot more.

so it could be worse for me, i might not have any clothes. but not having needles will change things here for me. maybe its better. doubtful that i would have gotten them through checkpoints anyway. but certainly something to think about for the future. it looks like i am going to contact the acupuncture university in tel aviv to see if there is any way to do this in the future - to get needles in the country, to get them into the occupied territories. we'll see.

another conversation with a soldier allowed me to realize something unique about the war being fought here. in the morning a soldier can wake up, have coffee with his family, leave for an operation that is two hours away from his breakfast table in the west bank or gaza, carry out an assassination, and return to his house for dinner in the evening. in fact, most soldiers have three weeks at most away from their homes. think about the difference between this and the war US soldiers fight all over the world. the short missions and proximity to home create an atmosphere of less dissent - the isreali soldier has to think "this only will last one (or two or three) weeks." not 6 months or a year. that difference can make the fighting so much further away, because it is something to be endured for only a short amount of time. one can return to the beaches of tel aviv after a "day's work" and forget that occupying someone else's land is terrorism.