Four Nursing Students

Palestine under Occupation

        Our friend Q invited Doris and me to have a light supper with him and four nursing students who were staying 3 nights in the same guest house as he.  The young women greeted us a bit shyly,  but complied with our request for introductions, revealing a good mastery of the English language.  The students, Ayat, Malak, Nardeen and Safa, all 20 year old Palestisnians and sharing a desire to help others, met each other when they started nursing school at An-Najah University in Nablus, West Bank. They are in their 3rd year of a 4 year program and have traveled to Beit Sahour to fulfill a practicum in mental health.

   None of the students are from the same village, and, surprisingly, two of them are from Inside Israel, near the cities of Haifa and Akko.  We asked why they chose to go to school in the West Bank instead of Israel, where they are citizens and resources are surely better.  We learned that they did not want to wait two years post high school to start nursing school, but Israel would have demanded they wait while Jewish Israeli students took those 2 years to do their compulsory military service. So-called “Arab Israelis” do not serve in the Israeli army.

   So here were Palestinian youth from both sides of the Green Line.  Was there any difference in how they lived or saw the world?  Just one: the customs and culture in the West Bank are more conservative than in Israel.  Boys and girls go to separate high schools and don’t hold hands in public, not even to do folk dancing.  But these differences melted away quickly as the students had much more in common - their studies and their dreams of helping others and being productive members of society.

   We had many questions for them.  Where would they would look for work when they graduated?  The two from Israel would chose Israel because that is were their families are. Likewise the two from the West Bank - not that they have any choice-  hope to work near their families. 

    What is the hardest thing they face now?  “We are away from home, and we are afraid for our families, and they are afraid for us.”

  One of the young women, in addition to being an athlete, mentioned that she liked art. Asked if she had any examples with her, she pulled out her i-phone and displayed an amazing variety of drawings that showed real talent. I asked her to send me one of those that had a political message. Above is the image she sent me. Half of a coquettish face is black - the occupation. The other half is veined with life-giving water. I think the top hat is just Malak's creative imagination.  The suggestion of a torso is rooted in the land.

Full Moon Over a Sad Land

    Although it is raining lightly, the full moon comes through the clouds as if shedding a skin, and the land below, thirsty, pleads for renewal.

     Two young men lie bleeding on the pavement near Gush Etzion settlement. One of them is accused of trying to stab an Israeli soldier.  The two are left to bleed to death.  They have  not yet been identified because no one has touched them.  This news is from “Palestine TV News” at 8:00 p.m..

     I have just had dinner in the home of my friends whom I will call Sami and Hanna.  They are middle class professionals living in a modern apartment, have good jobs and three children, the youngest a senior in high school.  Beyond that, nothing about their lives is recognizable.

    Briefly, I will tell you their story, while admitting that I can no longer keep up with the number of deaths of Palestinian youth, whose names I have been trying to record.  Let me at least dedicate this piece to them and their grieving families.

    Sami is the director of a local environmental protection agency. He and Mazin Qumseyeh collaborate on protecting biodiversity and the wild plants, birds and animals of Palestine.  He is also a legal resident of East Jerusalem. As holder of a Jerusalem I.D., he can travel in the West Bank and into Israel, one of the few “privileges “ afforded to a select group of Palestinians, and one that Israel is happy to revoke under any pretext, such as being related to a suspected terrorist.

     Hanna is a West Banker. As such she does not have a Jerusalem ID.  She owns a lovely, old home in Beit Sahour, (West Bank) with a garden and an extra apartment for her mother-in-law. However, she cannot live there now.  Hanna is a social worker and director of an agency that serves mentally handicapped adults. Until a year ago she could walk to work, and her children could walk to school.  Then the family was forced to move out of their home and into a neighbhood half an hour’s drive away, where there is no public transportation.  This neighborhood is squeezed between the apartheid wall and a military checkpoint. Its only advantage - and the reason for the move -  is that it is located just inside the boundary of East Jerusalem.  This makes Hanna, with her West Bank ID “illegal” in her own home, should any Israeli authority find out.  But that is the risk they are taking in order to accomplish another purpose.

      When Hanna gave birth to her second child, her now 19 year old daughter, Yara, she could not get the Israeli permit to enter Jerusalem for the delivery. Thus Yara was born in the local (West Bank) hospital. Had she been born in Jerusalem, she would have had a Jerusalem ID with its concomitant privileges. As it was, she was not given any ID at all.  “Why wasn’t she given a West Bank ID?” I asked.  Because at that time the Palestine Authority (PA) refused it, saying that it might tempt Sami to give up his East Jerusalem residency in order to join his West Bank family.  “And what was wrong with that?”  Answer: The PA did not want Sami, or anyone else, to move out of Jerusalem and thus leave space for more settlers to move in.  It was a sort of blackmail.

     For the next 19 years until the present, Yara has had no document - no picture ID, no passport, nothing.  As a high school student moving about her in her town of Beit Sahour and adjacent Bethlehem, this was not of major importance. But now Yara is a university student in the city of Nablus, a two and half hour journey away, which she makes every week, taking two different vehicles and passing through at least 3 checkpoints where her ID might be demanded. Sami’s reaction to this reality came through in his response to my idle question, “So, what do you think of your daughter wanting to be a lawyer?”

    “I am in great pain,” he answered.  “I try to tell her to be careful, but she says, ‘What can I do? I have to go to school. I can’t just stay home.’  So, I am helpless.  I can’t protect her.”  This might sound like any parent’s lament, but these days it is dangerous to be on the road as a Palestinian. Period.  People are afraid to go to the store, or to walk anywhere after dark, much less leave town.  In all my 13 trips to the West Bank, I have not seen nor heard such fear.  It is because in this last month settlers and soldiers are shooting and killing Palestinians—not arresting, not shooting to injure, but shooting to kill—many times without provocation, as video footage has proven.  If these were isolated incidences, people would not be afraid to go about daily life.

   As I finish this story, I now have the names of the two dead youth whose images I saw on the TV: 17 year old Shabaan Abu Shkeidem and 22 year old Shadi Nabil And al-Muti Dweik, both from the city of Hebron.  Maybe in the next few days the local news will tell us about them, their lives up till now, their parents and siblings or their broken dreams. It is a sad land.

     

    

     

A Settler Intifada

     October 14  - I am not sure what to call this wave of Zionist settler violence that is provoking more and more non-violent and violent Palestinian resistance. The thoughtful Palestinian people I have been talking to are saying that it is too early to say whether this is a Third Intifada. (Or a 14th intifada, if you count all the uprisings that Palestinians have carried out during their long history of resistance to foreign occupation.)  

     As I have said before, I think Zionist Israel is doing all it can to provoke another intifada in order to justify a final ethnic cleansing of this whole area in order to annex it into a purely Jewish state.  To that end, the government has unleashed the settlers, who seem quite out of control and accountable to no one; it has encouraged Israeli citizens to arm themselves; and it has legitimized the use of live ammunition against Palestinian protesters. A recent law imposes a sentence of 4 years in jail for throwing a stone - for small children as well as adults.  With all this weaponry and fanaticism innocent people are going to get shot and killed, and there is going to be a violent reaction on the part of Palestinians.

     Israelis are getting killed and injured. I know they are scared and their families are mourning their dead.  Yet I urge you to be skeptical about the news reports you are getting about how many Palestinians are wielding knives in attack after attack.  Some of those reports are untrue, the knives never being found, or being planted next to a body. One 13 year old school boy was shot and killed as he passed near a demonstration.  Racist Zionist settlers, police and army are targeting innocent Palestinians because they can.   Just like racist police in the U.S. are targeting Blacks because they can.

      A few statistics:  Between October 1st and October 14th over 650 Palestinians have been arrested, either at demonstrations or during midnight raids on their homes.  At least 32 have been killed, 3 of them age 13. 1300 Palestinians have been shot by live fire or rubber coated steel bullets.   Seven Israelis have died.

      So far Palestinian resistance has consisted mostly of throwing stones, now punishable by death by live fire from the Israeli army or police.  It is widespread over the West Bank but it is not organized and has no central leadership.  Isolated incidents of attacks have also occurred inside Israel.   It is important to remember that a high level of tension was created in September as Israel increased its invasions of the Temple Mount, allowing groups of setters to be there, while restricting Palestinian access.  The Temple Mount is the location of the Al-Aqsa Mosque and is the 3rd most holy site in all of Islam.  Since 1967, it has been under the jurisdiction of Jordan and considered Palestinian land.  With good reason allowing settlers access is seen as a threat to this status and to the very existence of the sacred site.  

      What does have the feel of an organized uprising is the setter violence - a settler intifada.

The right wing, racist and violent settler movement seems to be running Israel, or at least Israel’s expansionist (i.e. zionist) policies. Settlers have always received support and encouragement from the Israeli governments and army, no matter what farmer they have attacked, no matter how many olive and fruit trees they have  burned or uprooted, no matter what Old City apartment they have moved into claiming it belonged to a Jewish ancestor, and then been as noisy and unpleasant as possible in order to drive away their Palestinian neighbors. 

     However, now the settlers are out in front of the army and police, demanding and carrying out “death to the Arabs.”  No one is stopping them because they are actually carrying out the Zionist objective upon which Israel was founded: remove the natives in order to impose a Jewish state.

      

October 12, 2015 - I don’t know what your sources of news from Palestine and Isreal are, so I may say some things you already know.  But I feel I should report from here.

     This morning’s breaking news was of the assassination of another 13 year old Palestinian boy during a demonstration. It has become important to me to write and pronounce the names of those killed - to honor their identity as human beings who will be mourned by their families. This boy was Ahmad  Sharaka. 

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    Fadi Aloun, age 19, was shot dead by Israeli police after a gang of settlers accused him of stabbing one of their group, pointed at him and yelled to nearby police, “Terrorist!” and “Shoot him!”  Later I read that Fadi was raised as if an only child by a single father.  His story is this. When he was 2 years old, his mother took Fadi’s older brother to Jordan to visit relatives.  When she tried to return, Israel forbade her entry.  From then on, the family could not be reunited and saw each other only by skype.  Fadi’s father dedicated his life to his son, and they were very close.  Fadi had his 19th birthday 5 days before he was shot. As a gift, Mr. Aloun said he would help Fadi to buy a car. He was a high school graduate, and he had dreams.  His father is consumed by grief.

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     Jonathan Cook, an American journalist who has made his home in Nazareth, Israel, and who blogs regularly (www.Jonathan-Cook.net/blog/) wrote about how what is happening in the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza, is also happening inside Israel, where 20% of the population is Palestinian (Arab). Caught on video, soldiers, police  and armed civilians surrounded a 30 year old Palestinian woman in a bus station in the small city of Afula, and she looked positively terrified.  Someone thought she had a knife, but she clearly posed no immediate threat. Nevertheless, the armed men moved in on her, and shot her.  Fortunately, she survived, but Jonathan points out that the armed men turned into a mob, and their target was a non-threatening Palestinian.

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     As I sit in the Palestinian Museum of Natural History, baby-sitting the museum while Mazin and Jessie are busy elsewhere, it is quiet and peaceful.  If it weren’t for just BEING here, I would feel quite useless.  But yesterday evening Doris and I, having a Sunday off, went visiting, and every visit is a slice of life here in occupied Palestine. Manar is a school social worker in a public school on the outskirts of Bethlehem.  Her daughter, Nadine, age 14 is in 9th grade in a private school in Beit Sahour. Manar says the school children are more traumatized than ever, meaning more disruptive, aggressive or distracted than ever, making her job ever more stressful.  Nadine, short on words, herself stressed by an upcoming exam in English, answered my questions by saying that she and her classmates are “scared” and “don’t like anyone to be killed.”  

      Our next host, a tour guide named Johnny,  took us to dinner at a restaurant right near the Church of the Nativity. We sat in its quiet garden, where you would never guess you were in a country in complete upheaval. At the next table, a group of adults were celebrating a birthday. A cake came out with a huge sparkler instead of candles. Johnny's 7 year old daughter got over her shyness and -in perfect English - started quizzing me on my Arabic vocabulary.

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     Finally, I want to quote part of the statement on the current situation by the Palestine National Committee of the BDS Campaign (BDS= Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions):

“Like their parents’ generation, the thousands of Palestinian youth in Jerusalem, Gaza, Ramallah, Hebron, Bethlehem, Jaffa, Nazareth and elsewhere who have taken to the streets in large protests against Israel’s occupation and apartheid are first and foremost shaking off despair and liberating their minds of the myth of oppression as fate.  They are also nourishing he entire Palestinian people’s aspiration to self-determination and living in freedom, dignity and a just peace.” (10/10/15)

     Liberating their minds of the myth of oppression as fate.  In other words, empowering themselves to make a difference instead of accepting the occupation as Israel would have them do. Once the mind is occupied, there is no hope of liberation.

Brutality Unleashed

October 7, 7 pm. :  I have just watched an AP video documenting a level of brutality by Israelis against Palestinians that has me gasping.  It conveys two things. One, that Israel has pulled out all the stops so that it is acceptable to  beat and shoot Palestinians like despicable creatures; and two, that Israel has launched an observable campaign to push Palestinians unto a violent resistance that will justify removing them from all of Palestine.

The AP video is shocking. It shows very clearly and up close how Israeli men, dressed to appear to be Palestinian protesters throwing  stones at Israelis, draw in the waiting soldiers who then attack the real Palestinians whether or not they were also throwing stones. What happens when the soldiers advance on the Palestinians is what drives me to write these words.  The “undercover” Israeli men suddenly join the soldiers and draw their handguns.  After they together pull a Palestinian to the ground and kick him repeatedly, one of the infiltrators puts his handgun against the Palestinian man’s thigh and shoots.  Full stop. Read that sentence again. Thus disabled, the man cannot walk, so the soldiers drag him along the ground like a piece of meat toward their waiting vans. 

Meanwhile, another infiltrator shoots a Palestinian in the head, and he too is dragged away.  I could see him in the video, on the ground, a shaking hand reaching for his head and pulling back full of blood.  There was a third such assault underway, but frankly, I don’t remember what it showed.  My brain is just echoing the brutal kicking of an injured man and the certain death of the second man. 

And this has happened only a few miles from where I am sitting.

Yesterday Netanyahu declared all-out war on terrorism. To the average Israeli this reads “war on most Palestinians” because they have been indoctrinated to believe that Palestinians are inherently violent.   To the  rampaging settlers, who have already taken over Palestinian lands, attacked farmers and random youth,  and declared their intention to clear the way for a purely Jewish state, this means they can be as brutal as they want.  They are now fully justified in provoking, kicking, torturing and shooting any Palestinian.

I write about one scene, but there have been others like it happening in rapid succession over the past 5 days.  I believe Israel is perpetrating and provoking as much violence as possible in order finally to be able to expel or eliminate the unwanted Palestinians from the rest of the West Bank and East Jerusalem.  That leaves only Gaza, and we already know how its fate can be decided.   Another “Protective Edge” like last summer’s assault, protecting the edge of the apartheid state, and the Zionist project will be complete.

What will happen?

I am finding that it is important not to write about events as they are occurring unless I am an eye witness.  First reports from friends or news media may be based on little evidence and a lot of speculation.  But now I can tell you of the news from the day I arrived in East Jerusalem until this morning - from Saturday Oct. 3 to Tuesday, the 6th.

     The Palestine Red Crescent Society reported that over the weekend 96 Palestinians were shot with live fire or rubber coated steel bullets.  Of these I don’t know how many died or will die, but here is what I have read:

     On Saturday evening, inside the Old City in front of the Austrian Hospice where I often stay and where my friend Doris was staying, a 19 year old Palestinian man attacked a group of settlers - their very presence a provocation in this Muslim section of the city. He stabbed one of them, grabbed his gun and shot 2  settlers, killing them, and wounded 2 others before he was shot dead by Israeli police or army. One does not know if this attack was pre-meditated or a spontaneous act of rage. (Note: Settlers are easily identified by their habit of carrying guns, rifles slung over their shoulders.)

     A Palestinian from nearby Shuafat village filmed the incident, and is now being sought by the Isreali army. For having documented the attack, he is seen by Israel as a criminal, so his village will be searched -usually a violent procedure - until he is found.

     Subsequently, the family of the attacker was told that their home would be demolished as collective punishment (a violation of International Law), and they could chose to demolish it themselves (much less expensive, since they would be billed double if Israel does the job) or leave that task for Israel to carry out. The Halabi family self-evacuated their home and started the demolition on Sunday.

     In the early morning of Sunday, maybe 4 a.m., another Palestinian teen was trying to pass by a group of settlers just outside the Old City. Instead of letting him pass, they surrounded him and accused him of attacking them, and yelled “Terrorist. Shoot him!”  Israeli police intervened and shot the teen to death as he appeared to be running away.

     The above comes in the context of Palestinians under 50 years old having been restricted from entering the Al-Aqsa Mosque, their most holy place, during the 8-day Israeli Sukkoth Holiday.  And since the above events Israel is heightening the tensions by forbidding all Palestinians who do not reside in the Old City from entering its gates, which means they cannot get to the Al-Aqsa Mosque either.

    On October 2nd Palestinians near Nablus shot and killed 2 settlers. Since then, 10 Palestinian demonstrators were shot by Israeli soldiers with live ammunition. On the same day, settlers from the right-wing Yitzhak settlement torched several acres of Palestinian olive trees while Israel, not protecting the farmers’ land, closed the nearby checkpoint to all traffic.

       On Oct. 4, soldiers kidnapped a 23 year old Palestinian engineer from his hospital bed in Nablus.

    Yesterday, Oct. 5, a 13 year old Palestinian boy returning home from school was shot in the chest by live ammunition. He died.  This happened half a mile from where we were at the Museum. After that there were incessant sounds of gunfire and teargas until nightfall, and again all day today, the day of the funeral for the boy. The window of our office is closed to keep out the teargas.

     Perhaps the best way to close this chapter is to tell you the story of the waiter who served me and Loren dinner last night. Loren had chosen a nearby restaurant because, being in a hotel, it would have to be open.  Almost all other businesses were observing the general strike which was called to honor the dead Palestinian youth.  We chatted with the very pleasant, skinny young man who took our orders.  He lives in Ramallah, which means he has a permit to work in Jerusalem, but it also means he has to go through a notorious checkpoint to get here and home again. We expressed our concern for his safety, given the past 24 hours of violence and calls for protests, and he answered, “I don’t worry for my life; just my wife does.”  “So, you are married?” “Yes, four months ago.”  His words echoed in my heart. It should not be that a recently married young man does not care if he lives or dies.

    

State Violence From Guantanamo to Ferguson

Statistics can be misleading and boring, but they convey a message. There have been a maximum of 779 Muslim men in Guantanamo since its opening 14 years ago. Now there are 121.  Those who have gotten out were released after being cleared by our military, which could find no evidence against them. Some of them were brutally tortured, as proven by the Senate “Torture Report” made public last year.  All have been psychologically tortured by being held in a remote prison, not charged with any crime, and isolated from their families for up to 13 years.

These statistics have translated into anti-American sentiment on a massive scale in majority Muslim countries.  This is one reason Obama wants to close the prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba; besides the present cost per detainee of $2.8 million a year.

When police shot Michael Brown and his community in Ferguson erupted, some men in Guantanamo sent messages of solidarity.  They saw the connection.  We who gathered in Washington, D.C. on January 11 to mark the  14^th anniversary of the opening of Guantanamo saw the connection also. The same state violence that created the disgrace of the island prison created the militarized police force that has targeted Black men, youth and children in our United States.  It is not safe to be Black in America.  It may also be true that it is unsafe to be Muslim in America.

The men in Guantanamo prison are human beings who  are suffering.  Almost all of them were handed over to the U.S. military for bounty. Thus their only crime was being Muslim at the wrong time in the wrong place.  We must close Guantanamo and hold its architects accountable. 

Michael Brown was a human being too–  stopped by  a White policeman and gunned down for being Black, his humanity denied as his body lay in the street for over four hours.  A Black person is killed by police every 28 hours in this country.   We must stop police murder and hold murderers accountable.

From January 5 to 12, 2015 Witness Against Torture (WAT) was present in D.C. fasting, praying and demonstrating to demand that the prison in Guantanamo be shuttered, and to bring justice to the men there (charge them, try them or release them).  And we joined Hands Up DC at their invitation to add our voices against the injustices in the U.S. prison system, against police brutality and racial profiling.   As a mostly White movement,  WAT has used our White privilege to speak for the voiceless in Guantanamo.  Now we chose to expand our message. The same state that created Guantanamo has created the mass incarceration of Blacks and the impunity of those White policemen who carry out state violence. On the streets of Washington, WAT carried a banner to sum up our grievance: “White Silence = State Violence. (Photos at www.witnesstorture.org )

   We who are White  can speak up because we are White.  We can listen to our Black brothers and sisters, and ask them how they want us to show our solidarity. But  it is up to us to speak.  We can break our own silence.