"this struggle isn't just for the right to return, it is for the right to stay"

sorry can't make this look pretty right now.

police station that used to be a palestinian home.
wailing wall, used to be much more.

our guide shows us a home in the middle of the old city, one block from al aqsa, that is lived in for one week a year. (right) the front door, obvious arab architecture, israeli flag flying

tunnel being dug beneath palestinian homes

today i had a few meetings cancel, unfortunately, but i did have the opportunity to take a "tour" of the Old City looking at house demolition and settlements. it was through the centre for jerusalem studies http://www.jerusalem-studies.alquds.edu/. just when you think that things cant get worse, they do. our guide explained to us that there is a strategy of occupation of the old city (historically palestinian) that really began in 1967. until recently (1967) the jewish quarter of jerusalem was only 15 dunums (close to 30 acres). there has been a process of forced removal of palestinian families for the past 40 years. part of this means that they "buy" houses, and in this case a palestinian family may be victims of threats, violence, and repeated harassment until they "sell" their house. i use parentheses here because according to our guide, all land in the old city belongs to the Waqf, a sort of religious organization that controls the buying and selling of land, much like in the vatican. this means that they have to give approval of the selling of the house, and there has never been that approval. the settlers buy the house from the family amd move in with the OFFICIAL protection of the israeli army. in fact, many houses are symbolic statements, the settlers only live there for one or two weeks a year, at most. but some are more permanent. some settlers buy one room and demolish a wall of their neighboring house, and slowly consume a larger area. these are not isolated cases, it ahppens all the time. we went into a building where this has happened just two months ago, pictures below. some of the settlements are driven by skewed ideology that there is a historic connection with the land and judaism. but the small wailing wall, picture below, is an example where fundamentalist ideology has not been supported not even in a fragment by archeology, and is dubious even by other less radical interpretations of jewish history.

where the wailing wall is today there were 135 palestinian houses, two mosques, and one bakery. as you can see from the photo, now there is nothing. some of the houses for 8 centuries old.

a radical group called the ateret cohanim http://www.ateret.org.il/new/home.php has been effective in raising money internationally to aggressively occupy houses and expand in the old city. they are one of the most vicious groups in the area. we went to the sayara center, whose building neighbors that of a building recently occupied throught the help of ateret cohanim. the sayara center is committed to providing trainings to women and children in the old city. next door is a "reform" school for criminals, violent people, and drug addicts to be taught in the orthodox ways of judaism. apparently this is quite common in the settlements in the old city. there are two types - schools or homes. the schools are often of this kind, and it is thought that they are done intentionally to place dangerous and violent people into the palestinian areas. at the sayara center we went to the bottom floor where two months ago the director of the organization went to get his morning coffee

and found two settlers walking around in it. he called the police. it turns out that they had destroyed the door and were attempting to come into and confiscate the building. when we were there two children yelled at us from their window, saying we were "arab-fucking dogs" and they motioned at us like guns and cutting throats.

from there we walked through what seemed like endless markets. when we ended we went onto the roof and we were told that every house on the roof of the markets that we had just walked through belonged to settlers now.

a day in jerusalem

today had to be a down day, none of my meetings panned out, but thats ok because its the first day off in a while. pretty tired, i just realized. so i actually have spent most of the day trying to rest and reading a stupid book. but i also went to the alternative information center in jerusalem, a cool place. http://www.alternativenews.org/ they have great publications, including nuanced analysis of the economy of the occupation
http://www.alternativenews.org/aic-publications/the-economy-of-the-occupation/
tomorrow in the morning i will be with a group in east jerusalem that goes through the old city and does a "tour" of the city and educating about house demolition and israeli settlements within the old city. should be interesting. in the afternoon i hope to meet with ghassan andoni, who was a founder of ISM and beautiful activist, with a philosophy of peace and non-violent resistance that is brilliant. i had the privilege of meeting him the last time i was here, i look forward to seeing him again. sunday i leave for a small town in the north of israel to join harry and go to ba'arta, a land stuck in a "no man's (or woman's) land" anyway, enough for now.

a day without checkpoints

damn it. i just erased so much work. ahhhh.... anyway. just kidding. of course there were checkpoints.

after my meeting with abdelfattah he took me to the center for rapprochment between people . on the way he showed me a bethlehem that is very different than i k new four years ago. the wall is now completely finished. we went by the guard tower where the old gate used to be, and it faces a girl school. a school with concrete for windows now, a result of the incessant gunfire from the tower, resulting in the terrorizing of the school girls. abed had shown me a video of this, and other events of the past 4 years, and i thought, this cant be, this is impossible. then i thought, wait, of course this happens. this insanity is well within the realm of conceivable human behaviour here. then i realized i was crazy to think that this could ever be normal, that there is any space in my reality where i could accept this somewhere not as acceptable, but possible. and this is why abed says he takes the children on tour to sing and dance and share, so that they can experience freedom, peace. so that they know what to work for when they return home. so that they realize that what they live at home is NOT normal.

abed also showed me the space in front of the wall that the coimmunity had cleared of massive debris. it is a space about 50 feet long, creating a sort of stage. they then painted a section of the 40ft tall wall white, in order to pro ject films on it. and he told me that in the future he hopes they will be able to clear more space and plant a community garden there. their resistance amazes me.

in aida refugee camp of the 5000 inhabitants, over 66% are under the age of 18.

as we continued on to the center to meet with george we didnt pass through checkpoints. this was a shift from the last time i was there. before there were mobile checkpoints that soldiers guarded continuously, and roving patrols of jeeps and hummers that would patrol the town day and nights, filling people's hearts with fear at the mere sound of their rumbling engines. today the soldiers are gone from the streets, but the wall stands high and strong.

i got to the center for rapprochment between people, http://www.pcr.ps/, which was co-founded by Ghassan Andoni. ghassan and george rishmawi were also co-founders of the ISM, who i worked with on my last trip. george is now the executive director of the center. its mission is:

Community service: The primary elements of PCR’s community service program consist of supporting the local Palestinian community’s efforts to remain steadfast in the face of the hardships imposed by occupation policies, contributing the development of the community’s physical and human resources, and encouraging the youth to take an active part in community service and development.
Peace and reconciliation: PCR has a genuine commitment to and a long history of working for peace. High on PCR’s agenda are dialogue aimed at developing mutual understanding and motivating participants to work for peace and justice, education and training for peace and reconciliation, and increasing the the role of civil society in building a just and lasting peace in the region.
Action for Peace and Justice: PCR has a long-standing commitment to supporting people to become involved in nonviolent action and leading them in resistance to the occupation and the struggle for human and national rights.
Advocacy: Advocating for peace and justice, both locally and internationally, is an integral part of PCR’s vision. PCR intends to maintain its stand for Palestinian rights, while continuing, as well, to lobby for the just Palestinian cause and to educate about Palestine and Palestinians.
Serving the youth of Palestine: At PCR we believe that providing the younger generation of Palestinians with experience, proper training, and skills is the necessary basis for their empowerment to defend Palestinian rights, work for peace and justice, and contribute to the development of the Palestinian community.
PCR believes in community-based work. The principal guideline for PCR’s choice of projects to support is the degree to which the community itself is involved in the pursuit of its goals and the development of its resources. The primary consideration for PCR’s involvement is how well a project serves the needs of the community. In addition, PCR is committed to sustaining a high level of independence in defining which projects to adopt and to avoiding over-reliance on funding organizations. PCR, therefore, strives to minimize operating costs through reliance on communal voluntary labor: 70% of the human resources for a given project must be provided on a volunteer basis by community members.

george kindly took the time to meet with me, talked to me about the state of non-violent resistance to the occupation. things are changing. they lost the fight against the construction of the wall. george acknowledged that they were not effective enough in mobilizing massive non-violent resistance to the wall. so now there are new challenges. they wall will remain, enclosing huge areas of the west bank, caging people like animals. george was also very excited to try to incorporate the two-day trainings. he will invite people from the region and organize a training - all he needs now is the trainers to come... he also suggested that a requirement of the participants is that if they get the training for free then they provide it for free. this will ensure that nobody can abuse the tools and training that they get. i thought it was a good idea. i hung out there for a few more hours, and met a few internationals, most of whom were working on the center's new media project. they recently produced this short film - http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=29781625495880441&hl=en - about Bil'in, in his words, it is in some ways the symbol of non-violent resistance in palestine. but george loved the idea, and believes that it can be very useful in palestine. the more tools for resistance the better.

i left george and returned to the checkpoint between bethlehem and jerusalem. the checkpoint is massive. i walked into the building, a massive structure that i am unsure of the dimensions, but it felt like a stadium. i waited in line with a group of 50 people for about 45 minutes , waiting to be searched and pass through metal detectors. all around us was metal caging, and soldiers could walk above us. then we passed through the passport section, where each palestinian had to place his/her hand on a very hi-tech machine to instantly identify the palm and fingerprint of each. this is much more sophisticated and developed than the last time i was here, yet another indication that there is no intention that the wall is actually temporary, as initially suggested. more money, more humiliation. i returned to east jerusalem passing thr ough the west side, the jewish area. i realized again the apartheid-like system in place. arab busses and jewish busses. arab license plates, jewish ones. bus stops. areas. buildings. and the number of armed soldiers and civilians was staggering. walking about it public armed to the teeth. only israelis, of course. pictures of the wall to come. tomorrow i think i am trying to go to hebron to meet with psychologists there. peace to you, my friends. salaam. shalom, too.

picture above is graffiti on the wall, below is the settlement that has doubled in size since the last time i was here. shiny white buildings and tons of water.

pictures, captions to come

view from the roof of the new clinic, overlooking the mosque
inside the clinic, in the main room, looking out
view of the front door of the clinic
the new clinic
left to right, muhammad, ahmed (old guy, president), ibrahim (stocky guy behind him, civil engineer), abed (blue shirt) , mahmoud (guy behind abed), ibrahim (abed's son)

view of main center manaara plaza in ramallah
streets of ramallah
arura village
new space in the clinic for the emergency area
space for the pharmacy

inside the PGFTU building
mural in ramallah street
another mural
another view of ramallah center

smashed-in door at the Union headquarters. the pictures of the bullet holes all over the main office didn't come out.

bethlehem

this morning i travelled to bethlehem to meet with abdul abusrour who is the director of the al-rowwad center. http://alrowwad.virtualactivism.net/ the center is located in the aida refugee camp in bethlehem, it is one of 19 camps in the west bank. the only green space or community space that was offered to the camp from the beginning (which was almost nothing) has been swallowed up by the wall. the center is for children to express themselves through theater and dance and singing, a way to express their feelings about the occupation, about fears, loves, and their culture. they call it beautiful resistance. as we walked along the street, abed pointed out the tracks in the road left by israeli tanks from the brutal invasion of 2002. the memories are vivd in the minds of all in the camp. he tells me that it is important to begin with children, as they are not only the future, but the present as well. the center is for children from 4 to 18 years old. the video on the website is beautiful, if you have a chance. it really gets into what they do here, and the beautiful creations of the children. currently there are photo-video projects done by children, photo exhibits, and dance that all travel around the world, including the US and europe. abed makes the point that how can the children who have never seen peace in their lives begin to understand peace. his goal is to help them find peace inside, and through theater and dance, the children can embrace their culture, their strengths, and their beauty. a tiny girl told abed to tell me that they want to show the world that palestinians dont only throw stones, that they sing and dance and write poetry too. she was 6.

abed wants to have two-day trainings at the center, for children with ptsd and especially in a stop-smoking campaign, as most of the youth, at least the boys, smoke, many quite heavily. abed's close friend is the head nurse in the cardiac unit at the makassed hospital in east jerusalem, and he is interested in applying the 5np in the pre-surgery settings. i showed him the austrian study about the use of acupressure in the ears of patients in ambulances who showed remarkable decreases in stress and anxiety, both pre- and post-surgery. he was fascinated, and believes that there could be a lot to learn. i left the my committment as clear as possible, reminding them that at this point it is only one person, but hopefully with their interest i can return to the states and organize people to return, perhaps even get funding for the project. abed is on the board of representatives from all refugee camps in the west bank, and he expressed great interest in holding a training, or several, for representatives of each of the refugee camps so that each camp could begin working with these tools. ahmed, the head nurse, said that maybe we should start by training professionals only, and abed was quick to suggest that the important thing is that the knowledge is out there.

a poem by AbdelFattah Abu-Srour called "Dear friends "

We are doing fine… do not worry about us…
Nothing goes far from the plans of Sharon and Bush…
Silence is international, and noise is terrorism
Thanks for all those who refuse to remain silent
Thanks for all those who fight against the silence
Thanks for all those who refuse to burry their heads in the sand
Thanks for all those who refuse to be buried alive
Thanks for all those who refuse that we are to be buried alive
Thanks for all those who shout their humanity and solidarity
Thanks for all those who remain humans

i will have lunch now, and later i have a meeting with another great man, george rishmawi, one of the founders of ISM. yalla!

"work for 48 hours in a day" (part 2)

so before i forget, the title of the other day's entry yellow plates, white plates is a reference to the blatant racism and discrimination that exists in the west bank - palestinians have white plate, others get the pass-through-checkpoints-and-use-the-good-roads-easily yellow plates. anyway

so i went to the president's house for lunch, where they prepared a meal of hummus, olives, eggs, cheese, olive oil, and bread, all produced on the family's land. after lunch, tea. then coffee. such generosity and love. i almost broke down in tears during the conversation, feeling such gratitude.

after lunch we smoked cigarettes and then abed invited me to see his house. he wanted me to stay the night, in fact the village committee wanted me to stay so that tomorrow they could have an official town lunch in my honor. everywher i went people were asking if i would please spend the night in their house. i had to tell them that i am on the move and have meetings tomorrow, so i couldnt. but it pained me. i didnt want to offend anyone, and i think its ok. i will be back.

at abed's house his beautiful two daughters and 2 sons came running to greet us. they immediately brought us water and coffee. his youngest son, 8 years old, ran to get me a pomegranate. then he and his older brother picked us figs and brought us a plate o juicy, sweet figs. when i said they were much sweeter than i hve tasted, i think i might have offended them, because they quickly ran out to a different variety of fig tree and picked me a whole bowl of figs of a different, less sweet variety. the abed said that he would like to meet me in jenin before i leave with a bowl of different figs, so that i can bring them home with me. fuck.

then abed reminded me about his fair trade olive oil program that he works with in jenin, and he started giving me literature about it. in looking for the literature he found an old, picture-filled map of jerusalem. this is when a tiny hand reached up and touched the map with curiosity, and i found the huge brown eyes like saucers of a six year old looking at me curiously. when i showed her the pictures on the front of the map i read on the back - shalom! welcome! wilkommen! bienvenido! bienvenue! and realized quickly that salaam was not on there. and that she may never go to the holiest city in her religion. a city 1 hour away. an ancient, sacred, and beautiful city. abed must have seen the look in my eyes because he said, we are used to this. this is life. we cannot go there. and we live here, in our houses, with our families, and we go to work. this is all we want. but they come. come to kill our children and our women. tear our olive trees. keep us from our jobs. from our prayers. but then abed said he was hopeful. he works harder than any person i have ever met. and dedicates all his life to his people. he said that his children were so happy to see him because he is so busy that he is hardly ever home, and despite that, he spent two hours with ME in his house. when i left i became very sad. realizing that in this world, i may never see this beautiful man again. insha'alla. god willing. there is no doubt in my mind that i will return to arora.

"i would work 48 hours each day" (part 1)

this morning my day started off nice. i went to a restaurant to wait for abed, in the shop i ate a falafel and had a water, and then out of the blue the owner came over and gave me a little cup of arabic coffee. a very sweet gesture. after a few minutes i got in a minivan off to the village arora to meet with the village council about their clinic. we left ramallah and passed birzeit university, a beautiful campus. after crossing a checkpoint we travelled another half an hour. across field of olive trees and figs, dusty and grey-green and rocky, hills and blue sky. the driver talked to me about his family in chicago, how he cant leave, but wished he could. when i arrived to arora village was met by the president and entire village council, as well as a few doctors. i felt good because i brought them fruit! i am glad i remembered, they were touched. in fact, they went in a circle and explained to me how grateful they were to have me there, even before they really knew what i was there for. i shortly explained that i came to learn about the health situation in the area and that i had heard of their new clinic and wanted to see it, and perhaps offer help for the future. they were excited and wanted to give me a tour of the new facility. i explained that i am a student of chinese medicine but can offer in the future my personal services, and hopefully i can recruit people from my country to return before i can to also participate in their clinic in some way. they replied that i am welcome, and that they were thankful that we are "paving the road" for future exchange. they were interested in bringing revolving volunteers to their clinic who can offer various alternative services - natural medicine, herbs, acupuncture, homeopathy. they said that in the villages in palestine everyone knows about these medicinces and are open and excited to try them. i suggested that we could perhaps offer basic trainings to their staff or community members in the tools that the various visitors would bring with them, and they all were happy about that. they profusely thanked me for coming and were looking forward to future relationships. later in conversations i came to learn that any visitor who is a friend of mine (wink, wink) is welcome! that is wonderful. we can stay in their houses or in an apartment and come to do trainings and work in their clinic. a bit about the clinic - it is state of the art, donated from jordan, and will offer pediatric, gynecological, general health, emergency, pharmacy, and x-ray services, and they hope in the future to be able to add a birthing center. one thing that makes this particular clinic so important is that it will provide for 45-60,000 people in the surrounding 9-16 villages. these are people who would have no other option in the case of an emergency but to go all the way to ramallah.this means passing through check points. this clinic would be able to offer service without the danger of the checkpoints. in the clinic the civil engineer, ibrahim, designing the place and overseeing the construction spoke to me alone about his life and motivations for this work. he started by telling me that he hopes that there will be a birthing center in the future because six years ago his wife was pregnant. he explained that for nine months he pampered her, asking "do you need this, can i get you that, are you feeling ok?" and thrilled to be a father. when ibrahim's wife was in labor they had to get her in an ambulance and take her to ramallah. she was pregnant with twins. on the way to the hospital she started bleeding heavily. the soldiers at the checkpoint before ramallah held her for six hours before finally letting her through. when she got to the hospital she gve birth to the twins, but they both dies within one hour. he told me then that of course this story is not unique. he called in the other men to the room and told them that he had just shared the story with me, and each of them, one by one, shared their own personal stories of horrors at checkpoints. ibrahim says that he will never stop, he will do anything to get this clinic opened so he can help his people. he told me that as a civil engineer he has had offers to work in germany, the US, kuwait, and italy. but he said he would be like a fish out of water. he would die without his land, and he would never leave. he told me that he would sell his blood, work 48 hours in a day if he could to help his people. a man with the possibility of leaving, and he decides that he will stay and fight to help his people here.

i took pictures of the clinic, hopefully they will show up. the village committee has asked me to help them in any way possible, and i told them that i would do all that i can. i will return home and see if liscenced acupuncturists, naturopaths, etc would like to be a part of the project. this is exciting for me, because i feel like now this can mve forward without me there. they have invited us to their houses to stay, to share our knowledge, and work with them. it could be for one month or 6 months. today i fantasized about attending birzeit university and learning arabic while working in their clinic once i graduate. i like this dream

then i went to two people's houses... gotta eat, so i will finish this later.

off to abed's village

this morning i head out to abed's village to see the clinic, and meet his family. tonight i plan to return to jerusalem. every time i think of that it makes me feel physically ill. want to vomit. i CAN return to jerusalem. it turns out the physicians for human rights mobile clinic is cancelled for this saturday, so next saturday it is. so i will stay in the west bank instead of returning to tel aviv (whew). on sunday i am going with harry and his organization Middle Way www.middleway.org . check it out. it is something that i think ruthie and jonothan might be interested in. anyway, it should be interesting. ok, more to come soon. and pictures too, i hope. its just so hard to pull out the camera and start taking pictures, i feel really uncomfortable doing that sometimes. but we'll see, i know its important. i am hopeful this morning. i woke up early and did the 14! still didnt sleep much last night, but better. ok, all for now.

reflexology and ear maps for dr. sahweil

these are for the good doctor.

white plates, yellow plates (part 2)

long day today, but very productive. its been really emotional. i slept only a few hours last night, again, and woke up groggy, but hyper=thinking. i cant stop feeling like there is just way too much to do, mixed with fear, mixed with anxiety and a whole lot of other shit. getting to ramallah yesterday was the first time i have been back to the occupied territories, and i was reminded very quickly what that means. there is a huge wall all the way around jerusalem, only one entrance. and the road is being widened and repaved proudly by USAID. the irony. this morning in ramallah i met with abed, a man who has a bigger heart than anyone i have ever met in my life. he walked out of the restaurant with shining eyes and kindness and found me, graciously invited me to eat breakfast of hummus and pita, arabic coffee, and cigarrettes. abed is a union leader, working for the palestine general federation of trade unions, PGFTU, working in the legal department bringing advice and workshops to workers about their rights in factories in the territories, in israel, and even in the settlements. yes, palestinians have the dangerous and inhumanely ironic job of working construction in settlements, or working in israeli factories in settlements, using their cheap exploitable labor for thier export industry. they face the obvious racism and violence from settlers daily going in and out of the areas. but the deseperate economic situation in the territories has forced many into these jobs. abed also works in jenin in area of fair trade olive oil, and he is on the community councils in dozens of small communities throughout the west bank. in fact, he just finished building an emergency health clinic in a small village north of ramallah, that will be open 24hours a day and serve 25,000 people in the outlyinf villages of ramallah who otherwise would have to face dangerous or humiliating checkpoints in order to get to the only other hospital in the area in ramallah. its a great project. after hours of conversation with him and the secretary of projects related to women and gender in the PGFTU, abed decided tha the wanted to invite me to do a training in his clinic. he was enamored with the idea, he wants to know the next time i will come and he can advertise it all over all the villages - for treatment and for the training. in the future he has invited me to come work, once i have graduated, in the clinic in his village! what an honor.

all day today i spent with abed, and he was unendingly gracious. always offering me coffee, tea, food, the chair, the door, everything. he introduced me to the rest of all the PGFTU and we talked for several hours. they showed me how their union office has been raided by israeli forces last month, they stormed the building at night, wrecked all the furniture and doors, stole the computers, and shot the place up. they have filed an official internation complaint, as a violation of all ILO standards. at one point during the conversation he said, oh you just go to jerusalem, then come back, you can do it easily in one day. and i almost broke down and cried right there. jerusalem is 15 minutes away, and palestinians are not allowed to go there. he worked in east jerusalem for 20 years, and is no longer able to leave. for just an instant i felt the stifling strangulation of the occupation. but for me it was an instant, and i felt so stupid that it had not been on my mind, while obviously it is on the minds of every palestinian. all the time.

later abed accompanied me to a meeting i had set up with a doctor in the treatment and rehabilitation center for victims of torture. http://www.trc-pal.org/ is a comprehensive website. i wil post the notes from the meeting very soon. Dr. Mahmud Sehwail is the general director of the program, he started in 10 years ago. he graciously agreed to meet with me, i am not sure how i got the meeting. but anyway. he was a psychologist in a mental hospital in bethlehem for 15 years. he opened the center, and has an incredible operation. we had a conversation about PTSD, he says according to his surverys in the center and around the west bank (he works in jenin, tulkarm, qalkiliya, ramallah, bethlehem, and hebron) that in 2003 there were 24/100 people had PTSD. today its closer to 28 people in every 100. compared to the rest of the world - US 1-4/100 (max in some areas 10/100), in the arab world 8-10/100. in palestine the rates of anxiety and depression are equal to the rates of PTSD - 28/100. according the doctor, 40% of the adult male population in palestine has been in prison at least once. b'tselem, an israeli organization http://www.btselem.org/index.asp, estimates that 85% of palestinian prisoners are tortured while in prison. the palestinian surveys put them at 95%. you can imagine the PTSD that is a result. the clinic offers free treatment to anyone, not restricted to nationality (even israelis, spanish, american, german, egyptian, and swiss) or to perpetrator or victim. it is a clinic that offers an individual plan of treatment for each patient, offering a range of treatments.
the center also does three trainings 1. students of various institutions in mental health and trauma, 2. for palestinian security officers 3. trainings for health workers in communities to be able to identify trauma and ptsd in patients. 4. they also have awareness programs to talk in communities about the immediate and remote consequences of torture. he told me stories of prisoners who had been tortured who return home and inflict the same torture on their wives and children. so it is important to stop the cycles of violence.

he shared a moment of his own rage about the occupation. his mother has cancer, whe is 82 years old. the only hospital in the area that treats cancer is in jerusalem. he accompanied her to the wall, where she was denied entry. the soldier said hell no. everyone on the bus was pleading with the soldiers, nobody knew the woman, but they were all attempting to get the soldier to let her in. no luck. how many other stories like this? he shared several. one boy was 10 years old and watched his mother get shot in the head in front of him. then he was angry at school, and worse. he attended a summer camp that the center offers in one of the 6 cities they work in. at the end of the camp in all the cities there was a game that the children played, where they were offered 3 wishes. 12 out of 15 kids (all across the west bank) shared one of the same wishes - death. children wish for death.

after a long conversation and brainstorm about how i could then help, the doctor invited me and whoever else to return to do the 2-day training in his clinic, in all of their clinics, so that it can be incorporated as part of their ptsd treatment plan. he is very excited. he also had heard of reflexology and would like to incorporate that as well. he too invited me to work there as a volunteer when i graduate. so a depressing and exciting day. i was also able to hear testimony of some people at the clinin. maybe i wont write about that today.

thats a lot, thanks for reading. more to come. tomorrow i go with abed to his village to see his community health clinic. i will spend the night at his house... i have to go. maybe i can sleep tonight.

i can't believe its only been a day since the last time i wrote (part 1)

so much has happened, i have decided to break this up into two sections, so that you won't get bored reading half-way through. but stick with it! please. because exciting things have happened in the past two days. so on sunday night i stayed in the palm hostel in east jerusalem. i met mohammed (not his real name, for safety), a man who has been involved with X organization for a long time. beautiful man. when i met him he had a shirt on that was hilarious - it simply said fuck bush, in really big letters. on the back, in smaller letters and in a list, it said fuck exxon mobile, fuck walmart, fuck the army, fuck nestle, fuck ___ evil corporation. i should have taken a picture. but i am not worried, he will probably be wearing it the next time i see him. immediately he gave me free tea and coffee, and the hostel offered free dinner of eggplant and rice. yummy. mohammed has been disabled for five years because of a stroke that has left most of his entire right side partially paralyzed. he had the option of recieving treatment in jordan, but refused to stay there because he said he needed to be close to the people and the movement.

then i went to my room, where i was not sure who i would be sleeping with in the dorm. turns out to be great folks. a young kid, jeff, from chicago, just turned 18 and it has been his activist's life dream to be here. he has been involved in all sorts of badass organizing in chicago for years. inspiring. he is here to go to birzeit university in ramallah to learn arabic. smart fucking kid. then i met the other two people, claudia and sebastian from vienna, austria. the conversation started slow, and suspicious, as most do here, but soon we found that we shared so much in common we all stayed up until 2 in the morning with wonderful conversation. the two austrians had been in hebron for a month in the tel rumeida area with ISM. a horrible situation, in hebron there are settlements actually inside the city, and the settlers engage in barbaric humiliation and violence against the palestinian occupants. settler children, under the age of being legally punished, are often the most violent. jeff told me he had rocks thrown at him and the women he was escorting by a group of 5 year olds. it is so sad to see the education that these children recieve, filled with hate from the beginning. but the international presence has been considered effective - the violence has decreased recently relative to the last 3 years. http://www.telrumeidaproject.org/ is a good website that talks about tel rumeida specifically.

so that night was great, it has been a long time that i have been in a room where i feel so comfortably politically with everyone that no explanation is necessary for any views, and we could laugh about a lot of things. in fact, i laughed more last night than in the past years, i think.

note - i have been sleeping only one or two hours per night lately, maybe because of stress, maybe because of time difference, i dont know. but at least it is warm here.

the next morning i was planning to leave for bethlahem but i ate breakfast with hesham who said he was going to ramallah, so i decided to go with him. good decision, as it turns out. when we arrived to ramallah i accompanied hesham to the bank and he was meeting some friends of his, and low and behold, there is abdul kareem, an independent journalist (who writes for lots of international arab newspapers) who i met four years ago while working in tulkarm. amazing. we exchanged hugs and surprise, and then he told me that 45 minutes before he met another acupuncturist, this one from britain. i said i need to meet her, and he said yalla! so he took me to the place where she was staying, she is here for a month volunteering in other work, and it turns out she had been a professor of acupuncture for 15 years at the university of westminster in the UK. cool, right. but then when she was asking me about what i am doing here, she freaked out. she said that she had a similar idea two years ago after a conversation with a psychologist in hevron talking about the generational psychological impacts of the occupation. she went home and developed a two-day training curriculum for the NADA protocol to be used for PTSD, etc. you can imagine the exciting and rapid-fire conversation that followed. it turns out that she lost steam and couldn't get funding from her university, and the guy on the other end in hebron backed out, so she gave up on that but has continued to do solidarity work. she said that she was excited to work with me and get this going, i could have access all her material, and get support from her university. this is great news. we agreed that a first step would be to get the nada two-day training in before the ultimate 10-day course, which i think is a good idea. so what a fortuitious meeting with her. mary. what a great lady. she supports the project 100percent and she said its in my hands now, but that she will back it later if things get off the ground. i take that as great news. she also invited me to go to an international conference with her to help present the case. sounds cool. she would pay for it...

after that meeting i went to a guys house for the night. i read an article on a znet website and emailed the author telling him that his article really resonated with me. he responded by saying he works in ramallah with the palestine centre for peace and democracy. i asked if i could meet with him when in the area, and he invited me to stay in his house. i have been here two days recieving incredible hospitality. he has the most comprehensive website on the occupation, http://www.pcpd.org/ . it should be on the web in the next 25 hours. inshala! he has been great too.

jerusalem

this has been a long day... after making several contacts in tel aviv about how to get cheap needles, i finally made it to a store where very nice people worked. the woman is an acupucture student here and the man was just great. both were sympathetic to my situation of having had my stuff stolen, and gave me a good price for new needles. not as many as before, but now i got some! the woman decided to come to jenin with me and harry next week, which is amazing because she has never been to the west bank before, and she is excited. and scared. but we are going with a small group so she is ok with that. and i had a great conversation with the man, he was actually hilarious. he said that i should take a 15inch needle and put it up the ass of the israeli security guards who took my needles. then he said he would give me a ride to the bus station, and we got in the car and he showed me across the street the ministry of defense and he said i should try to acupuncture the whole ministry. help them chill the fuck out, he said. he grew up on a kibbutz. really good guy. anyway, from there i went to the office of physicians for human rights, a very cool organization with lots of cool people there. and miri, the coordinator, got really pissed about the needles being stolen so she yelled at a lot of people and actually has hope of getting them back. i am not so sure, but either way she was really excited about the project and said that physicians for human rights would endorse the project, not give it financial backing, but be able to provide logistics and contacts. you know what that means? the ten day course must be created! things are in place no matter what now, with PHR backing. and i got a nice official letter to put in the faces of soldiers if they give me any shit from now on. so she put me in contact with a lot of doctors and small community clinics. she had great politics! it was so refreshing. and she encouraged me to go with certain people, ask certain questions, etc. anyway, it was a good day. then i got on a little minibus to jerusalem, and when igot here, i actually found my way without asking directions to the same hostel i was in last time. crazy. i got a telephone. dude's got a phone :). so you can call me if need be, remember i am 10 hours ahead west coast. 0526265308. i have no idea what you have to dial before that, maybe someone will know... tomorrow i head to bethlehem to aida refugee camp to meet with the al-rowwad cultural center, and with another doctor contact that miri gave me. after that i am off to ramallah. otherwise, i feel good. a little tired, walking everywhere, getting lost and making a whole lot of mstakes which makes things take longer. but it has been good. random thoughts: i saw a shirt that said
MONEY
OVER
BULLSHIT
weird. who would wear that? and a book in my friend's apartment was called "conquer english grammar". interesting. and the first page i opened it to said (fill in the blank) i was____ when a bomb blew up near my apartment. next line - i was _____ so i bought some figs. i saw a group of young israeli boys dancing around after a soccer game, i assume. its the same all over the world, i guess. ok, all for now. sending love.
mateo

maybe its just baby steps...

last night i had an amazing and hopeful experience! i was invited to eat dinner with two older activists elana and david, and their daughter rachel. elana and david had been living on a kibbutz from 1955 until 1990, and now they live in Jaffa, in a mixed neighborhood. the area itseld is very much different than tel aviv. they live in a very modest apartment with their daughter where they have tons of books lying around, the floors and walls covered with them. they have been activists for a very long time. david just finished a book about the strategy of economic violence (my words) in regards to the jewish development of industrial areas of arab neighborhoods within israel, stifling any potential growth and creating resentment. he explains how it is accomplished, not simply through the simplistic and reductionist arguments. anyway, very interesting. and we had a very vigorous discussion about what is happening in the occupied territories, where i actually found myself between them and their daughter in terms of "radical" political beliefs! that was interesting, indeed. but they all gave me several contacts, including a man in tel aviv who has a store four blocks from where i am staying that is all organic products and he is an acupuncturist. also several people in jerusalem, free places to stay, international cafes, you name it. in fact, they put me in touch with a man who is a chiropractor who essentially spends all his time going (with a group of people) between different towns in the west bank to give treatments! he invited me to go with him next week to jenin for four days, and to a couple of other places. i think i will spend most of next week with him. he is getting me security clearance to travel, so i might actually be able to get needles in! when i visited ronin (the acupuncturist in tel aviv) this morning, he gave me a good place to go buy needles, so that is what i am going to do next. i also shared the 5np with him, and he was excited. so after i get out of this internet place i will get breakfast, probably coffee, and then get needles, then go to jerusalem where i will stay the night, then tomorrow go to bethlehem and then on tuesday to ramallah to meet with the other contacts that i have there. i will return to tel aviv on friday and leave with physicians for human rights on saturday with their mobile clinic and return to israel on sunday and i will meet with harry (the chiropractor) and go with him. so loosely, that is the plan. interesting. i am not getting my hopes up about any of this, as we all know it can change very quickly and unexpectedly. but for now its good news. and i even got to give david a treatment last night for sciatica that has been bothering him for a year since he jumped in a demonstration against the war in lebanon (he is 70). he got a lot of relief, and i felt good that i can at least do something. hopefully i will be able to do more. but it was nice to hear support from elana and david with the project, and they have more contacts among activists here than anyone else, so it was quite a fortuitous encounter. they are great people, making me feel very welcome, and even loved. above all, there was a feeling of solidarity. and it was good. hasta pronto...