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.