that's all for now!

so i have one last post, maybe most people wont read this one, but its still interesting. after the last writing sever things have happened.

that night i found out that one man i was with in ni'lin had the soldiers break into his house at 3 in the morning last night. they all were masked and dragged everyone from bed into the living room, pointing guns into their faces. they held everyone there, in a panic and confusion, for about an hour and then arrested the 17 year old boy, saying he had thrown stones in the previous day's demonstration. he wasnt even there, but of course, there is no justice here. he is now in jail, who knows how long he will stay.

this is what the army does. terrorize. its not like the police who come knock on your door. no, they wait for the dead of night, when you are in the deepest sleep, and break down your door. now you can never sleep in peace again. neither can your neighbors, because they heard it and your other neighbors, they have a 15 year old boy, so they wont sleep either. gestapo style, terrorism.

99% of prisoners are tortured.

i read an article in haarezt newspaper, israeli, that discussed the visit of a group of human rights activists from south africa. i have included a piece below, very telling, and disturbing.

She was deputy defense minister from 1999 to 2004; in 1987 she served time
in prison. Later, I asked her in what ways the situation here is worse than
apartheid. "The absolute control of people's lives, the lack of freedom of
movement, the army presence everywhere, the total separation and the
extensive destruction we saw."

Madlala-Routledge thinks that the struggle against the occupation is not
succeeding here because of U.S. support for Israel - not the case with
apartheid, which international sanctions helped destroy. Here, the racist
ideology is also reinforced by religion, which was not the case in South
Africa. "Talk about the 'promised land' and the 'chosen people' adds a
religious dimension to racism which we did not have."

Equally harsh are the remarks of the editor-in-chief of the Sunday Times of
South Africa, Mondli Makhanya, 38. "When you observe from afar you know that
things are bad, but you do not know how bad. Nothing can prepare you for the
evil we have seen here. In a certain sense, it is worse, worse, worse than
everything we endured. The level of the apartheid, the racism and the
brutality are worse than the worst period of apartheid."

I thought they would feel right at home in the alleys of Balata refugee
camp, the Casbah and the Hawara checkpoint. But they said there is no
comparison: for them the Israeli occupation regime is worse than anything
they knew under apartheid. This week, 21 human rights activists from South
Africa visited Israel. Among them were members of Nelson Mandela's African
National Congress; at least one of them took part in the armed struggle and
at least two were jailed. There were two South African Supreme Court judges,
a former deputy minister, members of Parliament, attorneys, writers and
journalists. 

anyway, the article is very depressing, but its a plea to the world to know what crimes are happening in palestine.

so i got to the airport and i am now convinced that the israeli security has left a permanent mark in my passport because the first (of about 9 or 10) security checks in the airport looked at mine for all of 10 seconds and said, you are going to have to step aside for security reasons. i mean, he hadnt even asked me questions. either its my profile of being a young male, or there is something there. i have looked since, and i cant tell if there is anything. either way, i was yanked and brought to my favorite place in the airport.

the interesting thing here is that it was the same head of security who did the questioning when i came as on leaving. what are the odds? i joked with him a bit, i knew there was no way out of it. he said he didnt remember me.

we got to the room and the search began. after returning my clothes and my dignity they looked through my bags, and there he was. he looked inside, saw the bear (which i had saved, just one, for this precise moment!), squeezed it tenderly, again like a child, and he went soft. he said, oh yeah, i remember you, you had a lot of these bears when you came in, didnt you? i said yeah, and he actually tried again. he came over and acted angry and said, why do you only have one bear left! i laughed and said that it was for him. i think he might have blushed, but that was the end of questioning from him. i was only held for a little over two hours, my quickest passing through security yet. then i met a young security guy who was assigned the job of taking me through all the other security points to my gate. he told me it was VIP treatment, and we laughed. he is an engineering student and does this part time. when we pass through the long lines i hear people grumble that i "get to go before them" and "who is this guy?" i turn and tell one couple that i am from the secret police, very seriously, and they turn pale. ha! i gave them a story now. we get to the police station in the airport and the security guy makes some veryfunny jokes about police. i shake his hand before i get on the plane. he was actually quite nice.

i remember the first conversation i was conscious of when i arrived in the US. the girl next to me hopped on her cellphone immediately after we landed and "oh ma god! do you know that in denmark red bull is illegal! we didnt know what to do, everyone was suffering SO MUCH! ha, can you believe it?!" ah, america.

from tear gas to bike lanes

here are three pictures of gifts given to me, which i will not take home. one is a certificate from the TRC as a thank-you, another is a traditional palestinian hand-woven piece with copper work to hang on my wall for my keys. the last is a kuffiye with arafat and the dome of the rock on it.

i left harduf yesterday in a semi-panic. just being there, the green grass, the pleasantness, is in such stark contrast to the rubble of ni'lin. the geographical proximity makes it even more difficult. its one thing to observe the difference when i am in the US, but the fact that in the morning i can be shot with tear gas and in the afternoon have a picnic outside, its strange. and i am not talking about the guilty feeling of the fact that i can leave, i am just talking about the juxtaposition, it makes the situation feel even more surreal. but its real.

i leave harduf and hitch-hike to jerusalem, its relatively easy to get there. when i get there i want to take a taxi to the old city, to damascus gate, to east jerusalem. but i am turned down by several taxis, no reason given, just dirty or angry looks. the kind of looks that make my own soul feel filthy, its hard to wash off. but finally i get a palestinian taxi driver, and i make it. the strap broke on my luggage, so carrying it for the 4 miles in the heat of midday is not a pleasant option. but its the option that nihaya from hebron must make, every day. i ease into the cab and feel the wind in my hair as i ride to the beautiful old city. there i meet sadek, a man who has been involved in everything. he works as a sort of parole counselor, with gay youth, folks with substance abuse, and much more. a real community activist. he takes me through the old city where we encounter 4 types of israeli security harrassing the palestinian vendors in various ways. one is a soldier, checking random IDs, standing there with their huge guns, laughing. another is a refrigerator of a man, bald, with a handgun, looking menacing as he asks questions to another. sadek tells me he is there to inspect people's products. and two more different types of "security" are there as well, asking questions, checking IDs, holding people, making life difficult. because they are palestinian. we only need to walk two blocks to witness this, then we get to a cafe where we sit and have a grapefruit juice, and he smokes an arguila. he says he likes to indulge every once in a while, because his work takes a serious toll on him. we talk for several hours about life here, about his work, and so many other things. he and his friend are interested in getting a NADA training for their rehabilitation program, and want to do so as soon as possible. i start to realize that there really is unending work here, and he agrees.

i get to tel aviv, and i have to take a bus to a shopping mall to pick up the keys from sigal for her house, she wont get home until 10. again, going through 3 security points to check my bags, and it isnt just police, the military is there as well. so many guns. and the mall, the massive consumer center, everyone so fashionable and nice. buying things in airconditioned setting. its not hebron. on the bus from the mall to sigal's house i ride through jaffa, where there are palestinians, and many other immigrants. its considered by many to be an undesireable neighborhood. the guy on the bus was giving me advice. he told me that since i am an acupuncturist i can make so much money in israel, but go to the rich neighborhood. get out of this shit, he wispers. he tells me i can find an apartment with one bedroom for 300 or two bedrooms for 500. i can rent the one bedroom to a friend for 300 and only have to pay 200, he advises with a wink. thanks for the advice.

i get off the bus and buy some hummus for dinner, its certainly something that i will really miss. as i walk to sigal's house a rock lands next to me, and i look around. must have been a car bouncing it off its tire or something. i take a few more steps a big rock lands hard right next to me and smashes on the ground. this time its very close and almost hit me, and it was big. i look around and a group of kids are on the roof nearby. its the first time i have had a rock thrown at me. what a weird feeling.

well, i think thats all i got for now, probably the last update as i leave tonight. i hope i dont have problems leaving the airport, that they dont hold me too long. so begins the psychological game played, making it very difficult and painful for people to want to return. even if they dont give me a hard time just the possibility is enough to make me start to get nervous. anyway, its not helpful. i will be back tomorrow night so if anyone has questions please write or call, i will be happy to answer questions. going back to the US gives me so much to think about. so many worlds. thanks to all those who have been reading and passing on the word to your friends and people close to you. it means a lot to me, and to so many people here, which is of course the important thing. many people i have talked to express to me that they often feel hopeless because no one understands them in this world, and no one cares. really, it does give people a sense of hope and support to know that their stories are told, and that when their lives are written and talked about they no longer exist in shadow. its like the lack of the signs for Jenin. the effort to keep it from being written is an effort to deny its existence. to deny the existence not of a city but of a people. of lives. lives that dont exist. and for all practical purposes, the people of jenin dont exist to the whole world. only they know that they exist, and i am sure even some doubt that. but when we write, put a pen to the paper, as visual as possible, or when we talk, we can make our own effort to support, through solidarity, love and action, those who are struggling for the world to know that they exist. i hope this doesnt sound sappy or preachy, so i will stop now. but thanks. see you all soon.

more pictures

pictures

abed with is children and nephew, abed in action, abed and his family, nice picture from the training, picture of the entrance of the freedom theatre, a small stove outside with tiny handprints in the concrete wall behind it (jenin), jenin refugee camp, sort of altar in memory of the 14year old boy shot in the stomach on the street in ramallah, bled to death in front of his parents, one block from where i am staying in ramallah, sunset in ramallah, sigal, the woman who graciously let me stay with her in jaffa.

some pictures

i will try to put up some pictures here, of the training and of various other things. top left: dr. nadal practicing, and me pulling needles, me and trainers and the whole group, my ear being a volunteer for one of the trainees to practice on, samya needling,

please let me know if the writing is too much, because i spend a lot of time trying to write about what i am seeing and feeling. if you are curious or have questions, please ask me. anyway, i feel like what i am seeing here needs to be talked about and repeated, and i just hope that this writing is helping you all understand this situation better and also give you things to talk about with others! i guess i feel like there is a lot of writing about what happens here, not in mainstream news, but its out there. but really the education happens when we start talking about this with people, or start taking action.

ni'lin

first let me remember what happened with abed at his house. i left ramallah in the morning and went to arora, and upon arrival we sat down in abed's living room with his whole family, including his brothers and sisters and children and nephews. we all sat together for a few hours and had tea, very relaxed. then i was put to work for a while, which was really interesting. after working i had lunch and then after that i sat and had coffee with the men under the walnut tree in his garden. it was hot, really hot, but under the shade it was beautiful. we all sat there for a while and just laughed a bit, and talked. then we moved back inside and had more tea and talked more, while the kids colored or played around. its friday, the day off, this is what happens here in the quite village. spending time with family. there was so much affection, the boys were always playing on top of one another, holding their uncle's or aunt's hand. the girls were playing around and a family member would pick them up and have them on their lap. always playing, always hugging or affectionate. we walked in the garden and abed's brothers wanted to give me so many things. they wouldnt let me leave without two types of mint, sage, zatar, cucumbers, tiny almonds, tomatoes, limes, and grapes, all from the garden. they couldnt give me enough. i was very honored. then we sat inside and abed's oldest brother gave me a special root from the village to be ground and mixed with oil that is for bruises or sprains - its very hot, in fact just a tiny bit burned my sensitive skin. he gave me two pieces, a large piece for use and a small piece with roots to try to plant back in the US. leaving was very difficult, i never know if i will see these people again. over lunch i asked abed about the political situation and the future, and he said he was scared of the future. he said that so many people are afraid of what will happen to palestinians if israel goes to war with syria or iran. it looks really bad, he says, and he is not sure what they will do. he has no money, and no place to go. its not like if there were a war his family could simply leave. there is no place to go. jordan wont accept them, no place really will, and no one wants to live a refugee again. leaving makes me sad, because abed is so kind and his family is so wonderful, and goodbyes are never something to be taken lightly.

i returned to ramallah and had dinner with some of the trainees, a goodbye thing, it was very nice.

then the next morning i went to the palestine medical relief building in ramallah to meet with some friends and the ambulance going to ni'lin. we left at 9am and in the ambulance, with the music playing loud, i was sitting in the front seat and very excited. talking to the ambulance driver about his work i remembered that his profession is one of the more dangerous in the west bank, as they are repeatedly shot at. in fact, this driver has a wound, not even yet a scar it was still healing, on his forehead from a bullet that passed through the windshield and skinned his head, barely not killing him. and he laughed a bit, i guess because he had to. then i thought, shit, being in an ambulance may not be the safest place in the world here. what a crazy place. i knew this from my time here in 2003, but its been a while. so a mixture of excitement and fear was going through me as we speed through the streets of ramallah on our way to ni'lin. we get to the atara checkpoint right by bir zeit university and the line is longer than i have ever seen at that particular one. it must be 50 or 60 cars long, both ways, and one driver next to us tells us that he has been waiting two hours. we speed along past all of them until we are halted by the guns of several soldiers. our driver speaks to them and basically tells them to get out of his way, and the soldiers reluctantly let us through. it feels weird to pass everyone by, but i understand why we need to. there are people with urgent needs in ni'lin today, both from the protest that will be and the result of months of israeli terrorism in the village in the construction of the wall. we speed along, i swear faster than i have been in any car in my life, and we get to ni'lin rather quickly. before we enter the village i see across the small valley on top of a hill shining white houses with orange roofs, behind a wall. classic settlement. and we get into ni'lin and the only word that comes to mind is rubble.

broken concrete and trash everywhere, destroyed houses, serious poverty. and then in the ruins of one house i see a peacock. unexpected and strange, nobody else seems to pay attention.

the protest at ni'lin elicited the use of a rather new weapon in israel's arsenal, a tear gas gun that shoots thirty cannisters at once. dozens of people were injured from the gas, many were injured from the beatings with guns or batons of the soldiers. others were hit with rubber bullets. the protests at ni'lin are focused on trying to prevent the construction of the apartheid wall, one that is being built in violation of all international law and is stealing the majority of the land from the village of ni'lin and will in effect leave the village completely engulfed by the wall, so that the people will neither live in the west bank nor in israel, simply within a wall. the wall will also strangle another small village nearby.

at the clinic many people come for their injuries from the protests, but hundreds are there for treatment that they cannot recieve because they are geographically and economically limited by the occupation and the construction of the wall. there are more women than men this day. i help treat dozens of people. one 45 year old mother of 7 wanted help for her eyes and skin, a result of tear gas being shot into her house. she was not even part of the demonstration. her youngest daughter 8 years old joins us, she has cuts on her face from some sort of explosion near her. her mother told me that her daughter played a trick on her yesterday when she came running into the house crying and bleeding saying that she was dying, but really it was just the tear gas that made her have so much tears and swelling in her eyes. she said that her daughter laughed about it, but could still not open her eyes for several hours. one man had bruises all along his arms, torso and legs, from beatings from the soldiers. a young boy came because his shoulder hurt because he threw too many stones. many came with neck injuries, back injuries, and other strange and complex pains. we obviously couldnt help everyone, and it was difficult to have so many people. the mobile clinic that we were in withphysicians for human rights and with palestine medical relief only comes once a week to ni'lin. they go all over the west bank, not just to places where there is active and ongoing protest and violent repression from israel, but all over because there are so many places across the occupied territories that are left stranded. many of these villages have no wall around them, but are rather surrounded by settlements and people are often beaten severely or killed by settlers as they try to leave. another barrier to their health is the obvious restriction in movement, imposed by checkpoints both permanent and flying.

here is a small article about the other driver i was with, who was shot at last week by the israeli soldiers at ni'lin.

Ramallah, 26-06-08: The Israeli military deliberately targeted PMRS health worker Ahmad Ayyash on the 16th of June as he attempted to reach one of the non-violent protesters injured during a peaceful protest against construction of the wall in the Palestinian village of Ni‘lin. While 29 year old Ahmad was approaching a youth injured in the thigh by a rubber-coated bullet, an Israeli soldier fired one bullet at the PMRS vehicle in which he was traveling. "I made every effort to show the soldiers that I was a health worker" said Ahmad. "I sounded the siren of the vehicle, I called to the soldier in English, and I clearly showed the PMRS logo on my vest". Ten seconds later, soldiers fired 14 more bullets at the vehicle, damaging the body and smashing the windows. "This was a deliberate and targeted act of violence", said Ahmad. "This is not a one-off incident, but its part of a wider series of attacks against medical staff. I have been attacked three times before under similar circumstances in Bil‘in village", he added. Under the Fourth Geneva Convention, medical staff are afforded special protection and should be given full access to emergency situations in conflict zones. However, the Israeli military frequently denies the access of health workers to such areas and there have been several cases of soldiers attacking medical staff.

back in ramallah

thursday was a really good day. early in the morning i went to the TRC and helped 'supervise' with the other trainers a couple of 5np sessions with clients. it was really incredible. there were two groups, one for men, one for women. everyone was nervous, the trainees were excited, and they did a wonderful job. after the needles went in and they sat for half an hour, there was nice discussion afterwards. the men said that they all had come in feeling very agitated, and even angry, many of them had had to deal with severe harrassment from soldiers even that morning on their way to the treatment center. compounded trauma. men sat around the room with scars on their gentle faces. they talked about politics for a while when they had needles in, but one of the trainees asked them to listen to the quiet music and think about beautiful things. after the session was over the men agreed that they really liked it and it was a good suggestion to listen to themselves on the inside. the best part, perhaps, was the confidence that the trainees got, because they saw finally the effect on their clients, and they were very, very excited, and proud of themselves. they are very much looking forward to continuing the work, and they had tons of questions afterwards.

it was a sad goodbye from the center, over the past few weeks i have come to know all the workers there, and we are quite affectionate of one another. one man offered me a job next year in a holistic care center for children, i have a job offering at the TRC, and one woman wants me to come back to ramallah to open just an acupuncture clinic. so the possibilities are so numerous i dont really know where to begin. i have really enjoyed working with all these folks, i am sure the relationships wont end today.

at night i went out to have coffee with some of the workers and their friends, and it was really nice. their friends there were happy to meet me because they had heard so much exciting stuff from the trainees, and had been test subjects as well. i sat most of the night with a really nice guy who reminded me of my friend muhammad in tulkarem from 2003. ahmad is 25 and he works for a computer company, but his true love is sports, both soccer and basketball. he says that he hopes that things dont get worse (he means israeli military presence) because he actually wants to have a full season this year. in all the years that he has played basketball, he has never been able to play all the games because of closures or checkpoints or whatever. they train very hard, he says, two days on, one day off.. always though there are problems with actually being able to meet the other team to play. its very sad he says, and it wears on him. i am telling this story because of all the things that we take for granted in the US. people cant even do the most enjoyable things in their lives without being stifled by the occupation.

today i spent the whole day with abed in his village, it was amazing. i will write more later, but i have to run. tomorrow inshallah i will be in ni'lin with physicians for human rights for the protest against the wall. please look into this issue, there is a good link on the right of the blog to get history. its pretty terrible. thats all for now.

Today in jenin

this morning i left for jenin, it was a quick ride, very unusual. we think it was so because there is so much happening in nablus and in ni'lin. last night in nablus there was an operation, leaving at least two dead. you may have heard about ni'lin, a village that is near ramallah that has been protesting the construction of the apartheid wall for about two months now. on the 4th of july the israeli army declared closure in the entire city, and the protests that ensued left dozens wounded, some critically. several internationals were arrested. check out a report from the alternative media center here at http://www.alternativenews.org/ . the four-day seige was lifted yesterday, but protests are expected to continue, especially tomorrow which is the anniversary of the UN ruling on the construction of the wall. physicians for human rights invited me to go with them on saturday to ni'lin, so i hope to do so.

today in jenin i have been at the freedom theatre, again without a camera, but please check out the website, there is a link on the right of the page here. it is a wonderful and beautiful place, in the middle of jenin refugee camp.

also, another amazing resource, perhaps the most comprehensive website for information about palestine, is www.pcpd.org for the palestine centre for peace and democracy, and you should definitely check it out. it has dozens of full-length videos for streaming, and you can watch arna's children on it, the documentary about this freedom theatre. it also has many incredible maps, and so much more. anyway, its good if you want to get sucked in and learn a ton about the conflict. you could spend hours on the website.

today i visited abdallah baracat who is the general director of the governorate of jenin, a very nice man. he was telling me many stories about his life in jenin, about how the settlements in the east of jenin used to prevent thousands of people for 5 years from having smooth access to the jenin city. the settlements outside of the city made the conditions such that a person who lived only one mile from the city would have to travel almost 40 miles around the settlements to get home. this would make a 10 minute commute into a 1.5 hour commute. but with protests they were able to remove the settlements, and now life is a bit easier. he also told me about his village, in the mountains north of jenin, where before 1948 it was comprised of 38,000 acres, after 1948 it was reduced to 8000, and now it is close to 5000. his personal land has been reduced even further by the construction of the wall by a third. but he smiles and tells me that he still lives on his land, at least he is not a refugee.

not sure

i have tried to post something but i am not sure if it makes it up or not... i hope so, its like 15 pages of writing. i hope you can see it where you are, because it isnt showing up for me.

i know its a lot, but take your time

So since the last time i wrote many things have changed. I am thankful that I am able to adapt, I think, because plans change so quickly. Initially I thought that on Sunday I would be travelling to Nablus, but then joe said he was going to hebron for the day, so I cancelled my meetings in Nablus, made some in ebron, and planned to go in the morning and return in the afternoon for another meeting in Ramallah. but when I got there I was immediately busy and then asked to stay to go to the summer camp for children. So I cancelled my afternoon meeting in Ramallah and stayed the night in hebron, and changed my Nablus plans for nect week because now I will go to jenin on Tuesday and Wednesday and need to be in Ramallah on Thursday, then things close on Friday and Saturday so I don’t know where I will be, perhaps go back to the village of arora and I also need to go back to Jerusalem. I only have a week left, so each day I have to make count. My plans to go to jenin this morning (Tuesday) were solid until midnight last night, then I had to change them and now I will be here in Ramallah again today, maybe go to Jerusalem, and then to jenin tomorrow. Wow, things have been busy and back and forth, but good. Now let me try to remember everything that has happened since Saturday.

On Sunday morning I left for hebron with joe and three other internationals working for ngo´s here. The area of hebron is beautiful, very hilly and green. Our trip took us through a confusing matrix of Israel and west bank roads and lands, through several checkpoint. At some times we had Palestinian villages on both sides of our road, which was for the exclusive use of Israelis, and the villages were separated from the road by fences on each side. Again, more cages. On the side of the roads the settlements are clearly distinguished from Palestinian villages because they are cookie-cutter. We also passed several “illegal” outposts, which are basically trailer parks filled with very armed and very religious settlers who feel that it is literally their “god given right” to be there. these are the people who ruthlessly attack and kill local Palestinians when they try to reach their olive trees or fields. They are some of the craziest and most violent people here, the most fanatical and dangerous. And each month there are more and more of these “outposts”, filled with people who are filled with the pride of knowing that they are on the dangerous frontier in the name of god, willing to make the sacrifice in a savage land for Him. Very scary.

I notice that on the way to hebron we see only signs in Hebrew and English, not in Arabic, and none of them mention any names of Palestinian villages that are along the way, but they have big signs for even the smallest of Israeli settlements. When I comment on this, a guy in the car who has been here for years reminded me that there are no signs in the west bank that have the word JENIN on it. Not a single one. Jenin has been repeatedly assaulted by the Israeli military but there are so many other ways that Palestinians are denied their identity by Israel, such as this, in order to make life so difficult so as to wipe it off the map.

As we drive I ask the woman next to me about her work, and she tells me she works for defence for children international http://www.dci-pal.org/ where she takes testimony from children who have endured trauma or violence by the hand of Israeli soldiers or settlers in order to document the human rights violations and lobby for European and UN involvement. she told me this story about a boy she interviewed the other in qalqilya. this boy was subjected to physical abuse amounting to torture for 2.5 hours by Israeli soldiers who stormed his family’s shop on 11 June, seeking information on the location of a handgun. The boy was repeatedly beaten, slapped and punched in the head and stomach, forced to hold a stress position for half and hour, and threatened. He was deeply shocked and lost two molar teeth as a result of the assault. the soldiers had come into the shop where the boy was watching over for his father, they were demanding the boy show them his father's gun. the boy kept saying that his father had no gun, and the soldier continued to beat him. i checked the website, and there are many other stories like this.

In one case, Israeli interrogators beat 15-year-old Ibrahim S. over the course of several hours. Ibrahim was then threatened with sexual assault for the purpose of extracting his confession. The accusation, which Ibrahim kept denying, was that he had thrown stones at the Israeli army when it invaded his village the day before. A Military Court accepted Ibrahim’s confession and he was imprisoned in Israel for five months.

In a second case, 14-year-old Mohammad E. was standing with a group of friends near the Wall which passes close to his village near Ramallah. Mohammad was suddenly grabbed by four men in plain clothes who proceeded to hit him about the head with the butts of their guns whilst spraying his face with tear gas. Bleeding from wounds sustained during his arrest Mohammad was coerced into signing papers written in Hebrew in which he confessed to throwing stones at the Wall. An Israeli Military Court accepted this confession and sentenced Mohammad to four and-a-half months’ imprisonment.

Who are these men that do this? These are not just bad apples. They are not an exception to the rule. The army breeds these animals, these people who can beat a child so ruthlessly. And of course, Claudia told me, this is just one story. There are hundreds of these that she herself has documented. And just about children. And Israel defines child as anyone younger than 16, not 18 and thus violating yet another of the international agreements to which they are a signatory.

and then i remember that one block from where i am sleeping here in ramallah there is a memorial picture and small palestinian flag on the sidewalk, a place to highlight the exact spot on the sidewalk where 10 months ago a fourteen year old boy had thrown stones at an israeli military truck passing on the street and was shot in the stomach. he died there on the corner, bleeding to death, while his parents and many watched and the soldiers prevented any medical assistance from getting to him.

Our wonderful, rambling conversation continues and they tell me a bit about hebron, the old city that I have watched movies about and read so many reports of. The old city is occupied by settlers, and is one of the only examples of Israeli settlements that are actually within a Palestinian city. It is difficult to imagine the violence and conflict that has arrived as a result of this process. By the settlers’ own admission they have, and I use their word, “sanitized” the old city. check out video of the tel rumeida project on the link on the right of the blog page.

I tell my fellow riders that yesterday I had seen the horrific video of what happened in Jerusalem with the Palestinian man who went on a rampage and killed several people with a tractor. In the video you see an off-duty soldier (because everyone is either a soldier or an off-duty soldier in Israel) jump on top of the tractor and reach the cab, calmly reach into his back holster, pull a handgun, take aim, and fire first one shot into the driver’s head, then three more. A policeman then jumps onto the tractor, and when he arrives shoots the man three more times. And I cant stop thinking about this moment. It haunts my dreams and thoughts. I keep wondering what I might do in that situation. This man gets there and I know that the driver had just killed people, but in the moment when the Israeli guy gets there, and is looking at the man, who is unarmed and could easily be subdued, he decides to shoot him in the head at point blank range. Of course, there is no citizens arrest in Israel. Just kill them. That’s the first impulse. I am not saying that the Palestinian driver was a good man and didn’t deserve to be punished, but Israel is a country that doenst have a death penalty. and he was executed on the spot here.

and this to me encompasses the essence of this conflict, and so many other conflicts, this inability for people to treat the other person in front of them as an individual. The collective trauma and anger don’t allow us to make decisions about the person in front of us as a unique person, but rather an abstract representation of a larger conflict. and in that moment we place all the blame for past events on the person in front of us, for things that they had nothing to do with and neither did you, but somehow we are all held accountable for. This sort of disconnect allows for policies of collective punishment to be carried out. Collective punishment, the concept that you punish a larger group of people for the actions of an individual, or an unconnected party. It allows for people to take their anger out on innocent people. It allows for soldiers to beat a child, it allows for suicide attacks, it allows for missiles fired into houses, it allows for checkpoints and hatred, and it allowed for the off-duty soldier to look at the unarmed man who had, yes, just killed several people but posed no threat to the man in front of him, and shoot him in the head. I wonder what the face of the man looked like when he saw the soldier. Was it fear, remorse, anger. Whatever it was, we will probably never know. But that man made a decision to take this man’s life. One more life destroyed. And that Israeli man’s life will undoubtedly be altered by this trauma, of him having to make that decision. In fact there was probably no deliberation, this is how he was trained. But in hindsight I am sure it will haunt him too. Who knows what he will have to do to get past this trauma, to convince himself that he had to kill someone that day.

Anyway, its just been difficult for me to replay this event in my head. I wonder if I could look at the driver of the tractor that had just killed my own family or people around me and I just cant imagine a situation where I would want to kill that man. I cant say and I will probably never know, because I cant imagine being in a situation where I have the ability to take the life of a person with a gun for any reason, and I hope that I never do. I try to understand what might have gone through that soldier’s mind and it is difficult for me to imagine executing such an action. The only way that I can sort of understand it is that he must have, in that moment, been out of his mind, not thinking, acting, as david told me in the kibbutz, as more machine than man. I cant imagine the Palestinian man, what he must have thought that morning, to just snap. Also, he was out of his mind. He could not have been looking at the people in front of him as individuals. He may have thought about every time he was wronged at a checkpoint, humiliated, or whatever, but instead of dealing with those individuals in the moment, because you cant exactly tell the soldier who is beating you that you think this is wrong. The denial of justice and communication between individuals in this conflict is what creates this pent up hate and anger and reaches a boiling point at some time where someone else who is a long way from the initial insult or injury, to suffer.

I get to the treatment and rehabilitation center for victims of torture in hebron, where I am met by dr. assad and rahman, both of whom were participants in the 5np training course in Ramallah. they were elated to see me, and were very touched by my visit. The word, which is often the only word that all Palestinians know and I have heard more than anything else, “Welcome” was repeated to me through smiles. Dr. assad was telling me that “the workshop was really really terrific, and people are very hopeful to learn something new”, he had already presented his information to the entire staff at the TRC in hebron. When I arrived he wanted me to talk to a class of psychologists and volunteers who come to the center. Each class lasts six months, and helps train community members and university students in how to help deal with trauma and torture victims. When I get to the class I suggest that he give the introduction, not me, since he was at the training, and I guess he really was listening! He passionately described Chinese medicine and the uses of the 5np to the class, and everyone was on the edge of their seats. Then he demonstrated the 5np on the class and everyone reported that they were very relaxed and happy.

After the class I was talking with the social worker at the center, nihaya, a very wonderful woman who graciously spent that day and the next with me, translating and explaining the center and hebron politics for me. she explained to me all the methods of torture used by isrealis in the detention centers, stories that I will not include here. She invited me to stay the night in hebron and then come to the summer camp for children the next day. The camp is three weeks long and it is for children who have suffered torture or are sons or daughters of the clients at the TRC. Of course I said I would stay, so I changed my afternoon plans in Ramallah and stayed the night in hebron.

Dr assad took me to dinner with his family in the evening. First we went to a wedding celebration for a distant relative in his family. We went to the building where there was a reception, a lavish and happy event, where we drank coffee and ate sweets for some time while the family received us and we told them congratulations. Then he took me with his wife, son and daughter to his favourite restaurant in hebron, where I ate so much food. The hummus, falafel, babaganoush, tabouleh and pita were enough to fill me up, and even though this happens every time I still forget, that its simply an appetizer. Then the meals come out, course after course of delicious food. I am a bit of a confusion to thiem since I don’t eat mean, they say that they don’t think that vegetables and rice will ever fill you up, and they feel very sorry that I am not eating meat. I tell them its not a problem but I think they think I need to eat more and more in order to be full. I am filled beyond capacity and then they order desert, which I am convinced to eat just one more, so many times. In fact, dr assad’s wife tells me that in their culture, a woman chooses her husband on one criteria alone, and that is how much food he can eat. I tell her that must be why I am not married and they laugh, but feel sorry for me. on the way out of the restaurant we see a small-scale replica of the dome of the rock, the holiest place in islam, made with a half-million small glass beads. The replica was made by a man who is part owner of the restaurant when he spent 26 months in jail. The dome of the rock is in Jerusalem, where this family has not been able to visit in nearly 8 years. then we leave the restaurand, and go to the street where we eat more sweets, and I really begin to feel that I cant take anymore. Then we get into the car and they decide to go get icecream and sit in the only park in hebron. So I sigh only because it means more food, but I cant express the gratitude. We get icecream and go to the park, and tiny, tiny park in the middle of hebron. They all apologize for the size of the park, saying they know in my country there are big parks. They say it is small but they really like it, and they are very proud of it. It is a new addition to hebron, just built last year. The green space in the park cant amount to more that 20 square feet, and a handful of benches and a small fountain. And they are very proud. As we sit in the small park I am informed that it is their 29th anniversary, and they have spent this entire evening entertaining me. I am not sure I can express how humbled I felt at that moment. Dr assad’s wife says “you are bringing change to Palestine”, and her tone almost sounds like a question so I wonder if she means the coins I have in my pocket, but she says that she thinks that acupuncture has so much potential to help here, and I think she must be talking about the other kind of change. I sleep well that evening.

I wake up and am supposed to meet nihaya at 7:30am to go to the summer camp but she doesn’t arrive until after 8. she apologizes profusely and tells me that she is late because the Israeli checkpoints have been vicious the past two days, and that people have been held for a very long time. I ask her to please not be sorry for being late about this. I wonder if this increase has to do with what happened in Jerusalem a few days ago, and she shrugs that it could really be anything. It could be the Hezbollah prisoner exchange that has people on edge, it could be the Jerusalem incident, it could be anything. She says it doesn’t take much to get this treatment, and often it happens for no apparent reason. Collective punishment. Somebody is mad somewhere and all soldiers have a collective policy to punish all Palestinians. So many innocent people. Nihaya is feeling very tired, as we walk to the summer camp, because she was unable to take her car across the checkpoint. They make everyone get out of their car, walk across the checkpoint, and take a taxi at the other side. So much walking, she says. And when people cant take their cars across it obviously limits what people can take with them, so forget about any large products or goods that need to get into the city. The Israeli army has decided that nothing gets in today, and it is so. And there are so many people and so few taxis, it takes so long. Then we keep walking to the camp and she makes a joke about how she is so happy about the occupation because she gets so much exercise. Without the occupation she would probably be so lazy. I reluctantly laugh.

We get to the summer camp and stand under the shade of a 250 year old olive tree in the middle of the courtyard of this small school. I am reminded of the fact that the olive trees are such a symbol of Palestinian connection to the land, because for hundreds, thousands of years the same families have been picking olives and making a living from the same trees. And the Israeli army and settlers have a policy of destroying the trees, severing a very visceral connection to the land. I watch from the tree as 40 young children, ages 6-14, line up and do morning exercises. Laughing and playful, smiling, they are so happy to be there. I find out that the majority of these children are sons and daughters of parents (one or both) who have been killed by the Israeli army. Many of them have seen their parents killed. Other children have also been tortured or beaten by settlers or soldiers. All have been traumatized. A tiny girl, 6 or 7 years old, volunteers to sing me a song for me, ala kufiya, a wonderful song, and then they all sing it together. The summer camp is filled with activities like singing, drama, art, and traditional Palestinian cultural activities. I sit in one of the classes for most of the morning and since it is day two of the camp, the children have been divided into three groups and each must come up with their own name and a song to sing to represent them. This group is called birds of paradise, and their song is “we are the birds of paradise, we wish peace and blessings on this camp”. Some of the children engage quickly and easily with the others, and there are some who you can see almost have a hollow look to them, who have or are currently really suffering. Deep-set eyes, subdued. Sad.

At the lunch break I share a popular education activity that I developed a few years ago with the leaders, and they love it and will implement it. It feels good to be able to contribute in this way as well. I give one man a few ear seeds to help with his foot pain and his smiles broadly, slaps me on the back and declares that he hopes I find a good wife very soon. Later I show them how to put ear seeds on the shenmen point on the children, a point I learned helps with hyperactivity. It seems like such a small thing, but I hope it helps. The camp leaders learned how to do it and were very excited, and I left them with a few hundred seeds and they promised to share with me if they noticed any difference. If anything the kids are feeling special because they all get a neat new sticker on their ears.

In one of the drama activities the children are asked to play out a scenario of a checkpoint, and it almost brings me to tears. Its such an everyday part of their lives.

I remember that david, harry and chana’s son, will be trained in the next eight months as a soldier to enter the west bank homes to arrest suspected persons of terrorism. It is this soldier who I saw shooting children in tulkarem in 2003, who left two children dead one morning shot in the stomach. it is this soldier who leaves so many innocent people shot, and who kills so many men and women, innocent and only suspected, dead, and it is this soldier who leaves so many children like these in front of me, as children of martyrs.

I leave and the man who I gave seeds to earlier kissed me four times, two on each cheek, thanking me for coming.

Nihaya takes me to the old city where we pass through the market. Its a common scene if you have been to an arab country – big bowls filled with different colored seeds and spices, a man on a donkey pulling a cart, vendors selling clothes, trinkets, food, animals. And then its atypical because above the street along the market there is a fence covering the street. It is a metal fence that is littered with glass bottles, trash, cans and other filth. This is what the settlers throw onto the people in the market, and the fence has been constructed to protect the people just trying to make a living there. almost all of the houses in the old city of hebron have been occupied by settlers, where over the past years they have violently harassed the Palestinian occupants until they were forced to leave. An permanent Israeli military presence in the city ensures the protection of the settlers, although ostensibly there for peace. This is, I remind you, in Hebron – Area A – where at the entrance to the city there stands a sign that declares the limits of the city to be under the control of the Palestinian authority and the presence of Israeli soldiers is illegal under Israeli law. I can only imagine what sort of daily treatment the vendors and consumers in this market had to endure before the fence was put up, that exists there now to prevent the Palestinians from the excrement of the ruthless settlers there on a mission from god. We walk to the end of the market and pass through a checkpoint, where I am held for five minutes in line, holding everyone else up because of what I have in my bag, and I feel very embarrassed to make them wait even longer than usual. I get through and nihaya apologizes again to me for having to wait, although she says it is normal for her. We pass through the checkpoint so that we can visit the mosque, and now we have to pass through yet another checkpoint, where the soldier tells me that no tourists are allowed in while they are praying. How noble of him, to protect the sacred mosque. Despite the fact that I am there, upon the generous invitation of muslims to visit their sacred mosque, it is an Israeli jew who regulates this coming and going. I am insulted, and so is nihaya, but she smiles and shrugs, and we head back. The rest of the old city is a full-on settlement, and if nihaya goes there it is likely that she will be beaten, or worse. We head back and I ask her about how she feels about the checkpoints, the soldiers, the occupation. She says that she is used to it, a comment that makes me cringe. Nobody should have to feel used to this treatment, and she says its the only way to stay sane. I ask her what she thinks about me, and about foreigners, especially those who come to Palestine. We have built a trusting relationship, so I tell her I expect an honest answer. She said that when she heard me say, I am from the US, she immediately thought, Bush. Then it changed after we started talking, but couldn’t help but admitting that this is a common initial thought. She also said that she was bored of hearing so much rhetoric from the international community supporting Palestinians, they are just tired of it. There is no real support, just talk, and they are bored of it she said. But she said she was happy that I was there, and I am not sure she was speaking honestly, but it seemed to be quite heartfelt. She said she understands that individuals are different from their governments. She kindly walks me back to a taxi so I can return to Ramallah.

We are lucky in the taxi and are not held for very long at the checkpoints, and I arrive in Ramallah by around 3:30 and go to the TRC to answer some lingering questions from two of the best students from the training last week, Amghram and Sami. I answer the questions as best as I can and we set Thursday as the day when they will first practice the 5np on their clients. Very exciting! Then I talk to sami for a while. She is 24, born in east Jerusalem. Truly a no-man’s (woman’s) land. She comes to Ramallah everyday to work. Through the wall.she says that most of her social life is in Ramallah, and that she only has one friend in Jerusalem, because it is a depressing place. It makes her sad, to see so many Palestinians trying to act jewish, losing their language, culture, their style. Just be Palestinian, she says. But she doesn’t belong in either world. She is a second-class citizen in Israel who cant vote and is resented. (west bank ID holders are more like third-class citizens). She is viewed sa not Palestinian fully because she has some of the very few privileges as a palestinian with a jerusalem ID and is resented by other west bank Palestinians as well. Even in the Palestinian presidential elections there was a large debate about whether east Jerusalem Palestinians could vote. In the end they said yes, but the issue itself increased her feelings of alienation. Her passport is Israeli but it says “Palestinian” next to her name, cementing her second-class citizenship. But now when she renews her ID they put a series of stars next to her name and she says they are denying her to even call herself a Palestinian on her ID, so she hasn’t changed it yet.

Amghram says tha she was born in Israel, in pre 1948 arab areas, so has full Israeli citizenship. But her husband is from the west bank and can not leave to see her family. But she keeps the Israeli passport because she gets benefits like health care, access to ben gurion airport, and can go to the beach.

My plan was to leave this morning for jenin, but that has changed so I stay in Ramallah and still think I might got to Jerusalem today. Tomorrow I will go to jenin, in the morning to be with the freedom learning centre, and in the afternoon at the TRC office in the city. On Thursday I need to be at the TRC in Ramallah in an advisory capacity for the two women to start their 5np program with their clients, and on Friday I will most likely go to arora with abed again. Who knows what the next week has in store. So that’s a ton of writing, I am sorry for it to come in such a lump. peace

jenin

i watched a documentary about the center that i will be visiting on tuesday, its called arna´s children. its one of the most powerful movies i have ever seen about palestine and the conflict. here is a link to the trailer. i highly recommend watching this, with friends, as it is pretty depressing, but very insightful. http://www.thefreedomtheatre.org/projects-trailor.php

on the other side of the wall

i have been here since wednesday, and its been strange. since i got to tel aviv i met my old friend harry, the chiropractor who works all over the place treating people for 12 hours a day, just about every day, for next to nothing. with him are a team of people doing the same, with different skills. one young guy named mikey is his apprentice and he has studied shiatsu for 3 years. another man is an acupuncturist. the last man with them is the most interesting of them all - an autistic man who has incredible powers of healing and intuition. i arrived to meet harry and there this man was, looking like a child at my bags, and harry explained to him that i study acupuncture, and he laughed and said, oh you use the needles, but all i need is this and he lifted his index figer slowly. i was a little surprised, not what i expected to hear from this man. and then harry explained to me that he had just cured this man of pain for thirteen years by touching him with his thumb on his body somewhere, and the pain was gone. then he told me more stories, and aviad looked out the window or made jokes. a very simple and pure man. he told me he doesnt have a diploma, except for the one from above. and if there is someone who can see energy he would happily show them his diploma. so together they are quite a team of people who do a lot of amazing work in the west bank, and all over, for next to nothing. all harry asks for is to be able to put food on the table.

which is where we go next, to his kibbutz. so clean, so quiet, so calm. the house is wonderful, and they treat me like i am family, with so much affection. we sit and talk the night through.

i go back and forth about how i feel being in the kibbutz. part of me of course feels like i must go immediately back to the west bank and work more, that if i am resting then i am not doing all i can. but i am also so tired, and it seems like a good place to rest.

oh yeah, i just remembered an fascinating man i met in ramallah. as i was waiting on the corner for abed so we could have coffee a man bumped into me and asked where i was from. i told him, and he told me that he has been living in georgia for the past 15 years. this palestinian man had a full-on southern drawl with is slight palestinian accent. he had phrases like "wull if thars anuthan yoo need, y' just lemme know, olright?" i remark that his accent is very strong, the southern accent that is, and he just says, "well yer dayamn right ubout thayat". incredible, i cant dream up a more hospitable mix in the world, the southern hospitality of the US, with its welcoming and soft tones and phrases, together with the most generous culture i know, the palestinian. and this man had it all. it was something so rare i am not sure if i will ever see it again. i felt as if in the presence of some sort of cosmic phenomenon! it was weird, and he just kept talking and i just kept looking at him in suspended disbelief at the fact that a very strong souther accent was leaving this palestinian man's mouth. he immediately gave me his phone number and said i should never feel alone when in ramallah, i should call if i needed "anuthang".

israel culture is quite different, especially in the cities, and part of that is simply because it is a city. when i get to the kibbutz people move slower, greet one another on the street, and dont lock their doors. i met an israeli activist who worked for five years living in the west bank, and she had a vrey difficult time there. she had been shot twice in the stomach by the israeli army in a demonstration, and she hasnt been back since. the family she lived with, a man and woman with 15 children and relatives living with them in a small house, have also suffered very much, and she wants me to go see them, and perhaps help the mother, who has been shot three times and is still suffering from the physical wounds, as well as psychological. i spent most of the day today with a youn woman, just 21, who was raped last year. when i met her she appeared so sweet, so fragile, the type of person you that anyone in the world when they see her wants to put down whatever they are doing and offer her something, and just to be in her delicate presence to feel her sweetness. later i find out that last year she was raped by a stranger. david, harry and chana's son, returned last night for the weekend from the army. he has been there for 7 months. it was a difficult choice for him, growing up on a peace-loving kibbutz with two non-violent parents. he struggled for such a long time about how to decide, and it seems that the pressure from other boys in his environment and in this culture dont allow him to listen to his heart. so he chose the army and when i see him when he gets home, i ask how he has been. he says, i am more machine, less man. this is what the army does to me. i am taken aback. quickly he shifts to showing me photos of his army experience - 18 year old boys like they are at camp, but with huge guns, being robbed of their innocence and childhood. just kids pretending to be hardened and tough, showing off their guns. then their is child-like laughter, games,punching each other. its a coming of age, a rite of passage for them. its so awful that they have this stolen from them, being turned into machines. david says that he will be trained in how to detonate and disarm mines. he has a picture on his desktop of his computer where i type this email looking at a dusty scene with his feet up on a chair. he has taken the photograph, so all you see is the landscape and his feet, so you know he is there. occupying.

everyone is affected by this conflict, so many lives are touched, wounded, destroyed. now i find myself part of it, and you all who read this too. i cant decide if the seemingly random acts of violence and trauma and suffering confirm or deny the existence of some sort of higher force.

today i go back to the west bank, and i must admit i am ready. i will deliver some things to the center in ramallah, then probably spend the night there, and in the morning go again to abed's house and see their clinic, the one they were building last year when i was there. its complete now, but it was closed when i went on the last visit. from there i hope to go to either nablus, if they let me in, or to jenin, with the same qualification. the checkpoint to nablus is by far the ugliest in all the west bank. well friends, thats all for now. sorry about not writing as much, there hasnt been as much going round in my head. but perhaps soon enough. after all, i have nearly two more weeks to be here. so more to come, stay tuned!

one man snaps in jerusalem

this morning i awoke in jerusalem and took my time, walking from the hostel to the bus station, all through jerusalem for about one hour. i had to be careful asking for direction, and saying thank you, trying not to speak the arabic that i have learned and begun to be more comfortable with. how would people react? what would they say? not knowing is enough for me to feel afraid to slip.

i walk through the nice streets of jerusalem, all nice with nice shops, not crazy like the west bank. i take the 40 minute bus ride to tel aviv and when i arrive i hear on the radio that there has been some sort of "terror attack" in jerusalem. when i arrive to sigal's house i realize that twenty minutes ago, in other words twenty minutes after i left jerusalem, on the very street that i had spent most of my morning walking on, a palestinian man had driven his tractor into a bus and down the street crashing into cars everywhere, until he was finally killed by a policeman who jumped on top of the tractor and shot him dead.

when i watch the tv at sigal's house, every channel has coverage of the incident, all immediately talking about the tenuous truce between israel and hamas. what will happen, will israel invade, there are speculations everywhere. i see the interviews with people, holding their faces in shock. crying. the children were on their first day of vacation from school. they are terrified. news headlines say that "terror strikes jerusalem again". indeed, it must be a terrifying and confusing scene, one i cant fully imagine despite the fact that i was there just twenty minutes earlier. i probably passed the construction site where the man worked. i passed people getting on and off buses who this man hit with his tractor. i walked passed stores where later shop owners would look out their doors in horror and fear as they see the events unfold. so much fear.

as i watch tv i cant imagine that the news stations covered the deaths of the two palestinian workers murdered last week outside their factory in cold blood. i cant imagine that every news station is covering the daily beatings, torture and murders committed by the israeli army against palestinians. and here again we begin this violent propaganda, one that perpetuates violence and is not concerned with halting it. the disproportionate coverage determined to, through repetition of words, symbols and images, convince the world that palestinians are less than human. that what led this man to commit this terrifying act is different than that of every other human. we all have limits, and this man reached his.

this man, who knows who he was. i doubt he was a hamas guy, or an islamic jihad guy. who knows his story? i can only begin to imagine. and who knows the woman who he killed? who knows her relatives, her family. the person sitting next to her on the bus?

when this incident happens here in israel, the mighty force of the israeli army, with the full unwavering support of the united states and the ENTIRE fucking world, begin to plan their retribution. it is a way to validate and justify all their attacks on the palestinians, past and future. and when a man dies at a checkpoint, when a woman loses her child in an ambulance held by soldiers, what is their recourse? who do the palestinians call so that they too can have a sense of justice. no, for them justice is always denied. no one is held accountable. and in these violent cycles of violence, it is usually the innocent who are held accountable, on all sides.

i just thought i needed to write about this in the moment, because i am sure that the news in the US will be flooded with this new attack. the man will be called a terrorist. what we will hear about are the political strategies and negotiations between the top dogs. but what is going to happen for palestinians with work permits in israel is that they are all going to be looked upon with even more suspicion and racism than they already suffer. it will be even harder to move around. each person will have to explain themselves to everyone they encounter that they are peace-loving and just want to go to work so they can provide for their family. but they wont be able to tell everyone, there are too many. and everywhere in the west bank, in every city and at every checkpoint, things are going to get even nastier for a while. soldiers will take their vengeance on each palestinian arriving to their checkpoint. lines will be longer, people will wait more, in the hottest sun of the year. not that every soldier has this evil in his heart, he will be ordered to hold people longer, search EVERYONE more thoroughly. these policies are not the doing of the idealistic 18year old soldier or reluctant reservist, but they follow orders. they will keep people longer because of this policy of collective punishment. innocent people who had nothing to do with the man who lost his mind in jerusalem. a man who probably he himself sat in the long lines in the sun after an attack, or just because a soldier felt like it. because the soldier had the power of a gun in his face and he did not. we wont hear about the thousands of individual cases of increased abuse delivered by the israelis now in the occupied territories. this is a common phenomenon. people all over the west bank are shaking their heads, knowing that what is to come is more suffering for them. the majority of the people condemn these events, and they know that they will be punished for it. the feeling of injustice is unbearable, but it is the life that they must live.

i am certain that some will criticize me for highlighting "only one side of this story", and i do not mean to dishonor the feelings of the victims of today's events, but i am simply trying to offer my opinions to help create a more complex understanding of what happened today than you might recieve in the mainstream news or media. my sympathies are with all of those hurt by what happened today, and i am just trying to point out that there are many more that will be hurt as a result and will never, ever be mentioned.

many lessons for me today. patience

the occupation hits so many so hard, and affects peoples' lives in every way. and there are struggles within that are compounded by the occupation. class struggle in this place cant really be talked about. the palestinians are oppressed. period. every one of them. but there are layers of oppression that go deeper. these layers seem very difficult to address in US society and culture, impossible to imagine here. i had a taste of different worlds here so far, between doctors and labor organizers and international NGO folks. the doctors all had their sweet taste of privilege in their mouths, which i have a natural aversion to. but its more complicated that that. they feel like they deserve more because of their fantastic status. they have wealth, and they have power. but of course, this is a relative power, and wealth, because it is limited by the apartheid wall that the israelis have built. but a power nonetheless and it is perhaps the occupation and oppression upon them that make them cling to their status even more dearly. so its a strange mix of feelings for me. they dont wait in lines, they get frustrated when someone is in the way of their car, they expect their secretaries and assistants to wait on their every beck and call. they dont experience the daily hazards and implications of the occupation in the same way as do 90% of their "countrymen". and at the end of the day it seems so sad because they cant go 9 miles from ramallah to jerusalem just like every other palestinian with a west bank card.

so i got a little tired of being introduced to doctors as "this is mateo, he has come to talk about chinese medicine, and he himself was a detainee by the israeli army and was psychologically tortured." this sentence ends with a hearty chuckle in the room by the doctors, and i am not sure how to respond. what he says is true. and in saying so i remember standing naked in front of 5 soldiers and being told that i would be killed before i left. this was not funny to me. so maybe there is humor in that it seems so bizarre that i fall into the same category that their patients fall into, an uncommon situation. these men have never been arrested or experienced the torture that their patients have. and granted my experience in prison pales in comparison to that of so many thousands of palestinians, but it doesnt change the fact. i doubt that these men laugh when their patients tell them of their torture. so what is it that makes them laugh? in a moment i resent them for their laughter, their superior doctorly laughter, and then i remember that they have lived under occupation their entire lives. and of course they cling to the little grace, respect, and privilege they can get in their lives.

and in the afternoon i go to the office of the palestine general federation of trade unions with abdelrahim, and sit and listen and talk politics with the secretary. a different experience, very much so, but also so similar. oppression everywhere. except the analysis of broader struggle to end oppression doesnt end with the occupation for the labor guy, it ends with the end of capitalism. but he says the palestinian society cant begin to think about these things until the occupation is over. he says they need to take responsibility - clean up their streets, stop throwing trash on the ground, stop putting chemicals on their foods, take responsibility. but its so difficult when the occupation pits one against the other. he said to me "i like life, the israeli likes life. but he makes it dark above. when its dark skies, above ground below ground, whats the difference?" he tells me about his village, 1200 years old, now has a settlement from 15 years ago that takes the local water for their fountains, swimming pools, gardens, grass and his village only has drinking water one day a week. 2 men from his village were killed by a settler recently when they were going home from work in a factory. they were waiting in the car after work to pick up their friend, a settler came out and asked what they were doing, he told the guy, and the settler left and came back 2 minutes later with a machine gun and murdered the two at point blank range. no punishment for the settler, he was never "found".

i leave the trade union office, and on the way out they show me the new door that was put in six months ago from after the soldiers came in and destroyed their computers and shot up the place, for the second time in a year.

having lunch with abed he tells me about a visit to the US, on a speaker's tour. his phone goes off every 22 seconds, and someone always needs something from him. he admits that the only real way for him to rest is to leave, and this is a privilege that few get and abed himself feels a little guilty about having. but the speakers tours are not all good for him, they are exhausting, and the organizers often pack the events so closely and so full that he is even more tired than in the west bank, just because they need to save money on a day of transportation or lodging for him. and then a man in ohio whom he was staying with was supposed to be responsible for a piece of luggage he left in the airport. the suitcase was full of gifts for people, t-shirts, doves of peace embroidered, many things. and the man never returned him the suitcase. he never mentioned it to anyone, he is so humble and gentle. he didnt want to make anyone feel stressed. he let it go, and told me if that man wants to steal t-shirts, let him. i am not sure what i would do if i saw this man on the street, but many unpleasant things cross my mind. i cant imagine someone treating my friend abed, one of the best people i have met in my life, such a dear man, in such a disrespectful way.

i walk back to joe's house, a man who works as a policy advisor for an ngo in ramallah. he makes more money than the average palestinian and lives in a nice house in the old city of ramallah. a really nice guy, wonderfully hospitable. yet another layer in this world.

i meet back with doctor sehwail, the general director of the treatment and rehabilitation center for victims of torture, and he has me wait for two hours in his office to speak to me for fifteen minutes. then i get lost looking for the bus station becaus it is now dark and i am alone with my bags, speak no arabic, in a culture that is still very unfamiliar to me, and alone. yes, these are the moments that i wonder why i come back. holding my bags, walking in circles, lost, not understanding a fraction of what goes on around me. but then it feels so good to see people smile when they get acupuncture, and that the training was a huge success. programs are to initiate in 4 cities within the month, and one of the trainees said to me when i left "you might be surprised, i think that the next time you come back everyone in the center will be walking around with seeds in their ears!" i like that daydream. anyway, because of this i miss a bus and end up waiting for two hours to go to jerusalem, where i wait 4 hours in line at a checkpoint to go 9 miles. i remember the story that the secretary told me at the pgftu who said every day he waits in line at a checkpoint, sometimes with 20, 30, 40 cars long, for hours, and then a settler car pulls past everybody, and in 12 seconds he is through and on his way. doctor sehwail doesnt notice that i had to wait two hours for him, he is used to it. he doesnt know where the buses are that take me to jerusalem, because he has a big fat SUV. and also because he hasnt been allowed to go to jerusalem for 10 years. its so complex that my mind begins to spin. i dont know where to begin. and i am not even getting into the israeli side of things.

all these lessons to me have to do with patience and perspective. its always good to try to step one more step back. there is good all around as well, and i apologize that tonight i am writing about my frustrations and not sharing explicitly the beauty in this. but its there, and i am feeling this simultaneously, which makes things feel even more strange.

so at the end of another long day i sit and type in a hostel in jerusalem, with my friend hisham. tomorrow i will finish the journey that i started today to tel aviv to retrieve the package that i sent three weeks ago filled with supplies and materials to support the training that i just finished participating in. such is life, here, i suppose. so this is a long ramble, and for someone who isnt a writer i seem to be doing a lot of it. this is pretty much everything that i have thought about today, welcome to the inside of my head.

only dark, nothing clear?

yesterday was a wonderful day, i arrived in the morning to the treatment center and everyone was waiting there excitedly for the trainers to arrive, and when they did people were smiling and hugging each other, big handshakes everywhere. buzzing in general. people were even more thirsty for information than the first day. the day began with a review and several question, but quickly moved into the practical application. everyone was having so much fun. all morning people were finding the points over and over on different peoples´ears and they were checking one another instead of the trainers. then they started needling each other, and i have to say their technique after only one day of handling needles was impressive. they were catching on so quickly. after lunch there was a small examination where people were nervous but then laughed because they realized there was no actual pressure from the trainers. after the test there was a group of volunteers that came from the center to be the first test, and they all did phenomenally. after that, the training ended a full day early, with a nice little ceremony with the passing out of certificates. each person thanked the trainers at length, and said it was the best workshop any of them had ever participated in. they said it was the first time they all felt like a group working together, with each other, having fun, and learning so much. quite a compliment, i think.

the workshop concludes four days of workshops at the center, facilitated by the center and sponsored by the United Nations, as June 26 was the International Day to support Torture Survivors. Many international people were at the center, with many workshops.

many of the participants, being senior psychiatrists, psychologists, or counselors, had a difficult time at first with the "evidence" behind the method, but they were soon assured by the results that they were feeling and seeing. also, about half a day was dedicated to the understanding of the rest of the ear as a way to treat other physical and mental diseases, and people left with tremendous enthusiasm. one month from now the group will unite again to review and debrief, with the help from the trainers. i will try to add photos of the workshop soon...

after the workshop was over i immediately left with my friend abed to go have coffee. we went to a nice little place of a friend of his, a man born in brazil to palestinian parents. in the shop i met an iraqi man who showed me bullet wounds in his stomach, and he threatend to kill me, but soon calmed down and was kissing my cheeks. it was a strange incident.

over coffee abed began to tell me about his latest work with the unions here in palestine. there are serious problems, and they are just getting worse and worse. all prices for everything have been going up, and peoples wages are staying very low. only 6-7% of people make enough to support their families. there is a 47% unemployment, and a 65-75% underemployment. the price of grains has increased from 48 shekels (about 13 dollars) to 200 shekels (about 65 dollars) in just the past two months, and things threaten to only get worse. as gas prices increase the taxi and bus drivers are stuck between a rock and a hard place. they cant afford to pay for gas and charge the same amount, but the people cant afford to ride the transportation if the prices go up, so abed said a strike might happen soon, but i am not exactly sure, and neither was abed, about how anything might change. the situation is dark, he told me, nothing is clear in the future. he repeated, "only dark, nothing clear". as for labor the situation is, as you might imagine, unimaginably bad. there are no labor laws, labor standards, no minimum wage, nothing. everybody is squeezed by the occupation. people arrive and demand higher wages, the store or factory owners explain that they are losing money at the borders with israel and in transportation costs for thier goods, so they cant pay more. at the same time you have a desperate population with no work and very little hope, this makes for a massive pool for very cheap labor. the race to the bottom, and its happening fast. it certainly seems dire.

i then went with abed to his village of arora, where i was last year as well. he has invited me to stay the night with his family. we pass through two checkpoints on the way from ramallah, and the occupation is still everywhere, all the time. getting to his house we sit down in his living room, and have coffee. abed then starts to tell me all sorts of stories about his life, about palestine, and about his experience with all types of people in this world. he has a perspective and compassion that are heart breaking. he tells me of so many instances when, before the second intifada, life was relatively good. he had a car, he had money saved in the bank. now he has nothing, no car, no savings, only losing money each month. and he is going to sell some of his land now. when he travelled to jerusalem years ago to have his son operated on, he tells me of the exchanges he had with israelis and international peoples. in the hospital he was assumed to be a jew, since he was in jerusalem. when a dutch man was watching tv and there was news about gaza, he yelled at the tv and said look at these fucking animals. and abed asked him politely what he meant by that. the dutch guy looked at him and asked, where are you from. he said the west bank, i am palestinian. the dutch man got up and left the room. the doctors would come in the room. abed shared a hospital room with a zionist settler and the settler´s son and had a long conversation with him, ending in the fact that the settler said that abed should be grateful for any little bit that the israeli government gave to the palestinians. he said that all palestinians are animals. abed said, dont you think this isnt about you or me, but about our sons, cant we find peace? the man said he didnt want it.

to know abed, such a gentle man, so noble and kind. it gives me so much pain to imagine a situation where someone would treat him in this way. and this is the way that so many others are treated, with such disrespect.

more and more stories came from abed, talking for hours. i just sat and listened, trying to hold back tears and not be angry.

after talking abed asked if i could help him with his back pain, and numbness in both feet. of course, i said. i left him with needles and went to play with his children. i am happy that i was able to bring a small toy and some colored pencils for his children, and abed almost got mad at me for a moment. he said, gifts are for friends, i am your brother. give these presents to a friend somewhere, you dont have to give us anything. this is too much. his humility was almost unbearable to me. in the end he allowed me to give them, and his little ones were happy too. if for just a few hours or a few days they can have happiness, it makes me feel a little bit better. they were so pleased to get such a small thing. its very difficult to understand that moment.

when i returned to abed he opened his eyes and they were filled with tears. i asked if the needles were causing him pain, or if his body pain was too severe. he said, no i feel very good, just surprised at the things that were coming to his mind and heart. he felt good.

afterwards we walked in his garden. it was dusk, the sun going down, beautiful evening, warm breeze, olive trees and dusty hills in the distance, the quiet of the village. he took me around his garden, and picked me a fuzzy little baby cucumber straight from the ground, snapped it in half and gave me half and his little son the other half. then we walked around the village all night until midnight. abed said, you are my brother, you are home.

in the morning (tuesday) i recieved a call from tel aviv letting me know that my package has arrived. i think i will travel there today, stopping for a while in east jerusalem to see a friend, then on to tel aviv tonight. there i will meet with harry tomorrow (who works with the middleway organization and physicians for human rights, and i will travel with him to harduf to see his family for the next few days. saturday i will return to ramallah with the package and continue on to nablus and then jenin next week. at least this is the plan for today!

and thanks for the kind messages, friends, they are nice to see, and give me energy. salaam.