Below is a story told by Sunita Staneslow on the new friendship and the start of musical cooperation between her, an Israeli harpist, and Yasmin (Ikhlas) Jebara, a young Palestinian poet and graduate student living under Occupation in the village of Salem near Nablus. In the shorter run, the connection between Sunita and Yasmin began at the Music Center in Salem, a center we have helped develop ever since the idea hatched in the mind of its founder (and current director) Jubeir Ishtayya a couple of years ago .

In the longer run, the story of Sunita and Yasmin is deeply connected with the story of our relationships with Yasmin and her family since the murder of her father almost eight years ago. This story and its dramatic twists of pain and hope, suffering and joy, despair and perseverance, and above all — friendship — is told below, after Sunita’s account, by Erella, as translated by our fellow activist Tal Haran.

Ehud Krinis, Villages Group

———————————-

The Story of Yasmin’s Harp,

Sunita Staneslow, 28th April 2012

I first met Yasmin last autumn when I visited the Salem Music Program with my harp to explore the possibility of a workshop with a visiting jazz harpist. Our guest harpist at the First Israeli Harp Festival, Park Stickney, wanted to work with Palestinian musicians during his trip. A seminar was organized for the Music Center several weeks later. It was then that Yasmin told me that she would like to learn to play the harp. She fell in love with the sound. “It sounds like water—like the sound of the sea!”

Harps can be expensive; there are no harps in Palestine (that I know of) and no teachers nearby. But, the seed was planted for Yasmin’s wish.

Park Stickney is one of the worlds’ most innovative harpists and he divides his time between New York City and Switzerland. Park is also brilliant at improvising and his workshop at the Salem Music Center started with a jam session between Park and the instructors. Park later told me that it was the best way for musicians to introduce themselves and find a common ‘language’. Yasmin was the primary translator for the class, and Park taught the kids to play a jazz tune. It was amazing to see the kids learn a classic American jazz tune using their voices, oud, violins, drums, and keyboards.

Park Stickney played on my large classical harp and we gave Yasmin a chance to sit behind the harp and glide her fingers up and down the strings. Yasmin reminded me that she would love to learn to play the harp. I told her that I would help her get a harp and teach her, not knowing how we would ever find the money to buy her a harp.

My husband, Fred Schlomka was certain that if we tapped into our mailing lists and sent out a request for contributions, we really could buy a harp for Yasmin. I am a professional harpist and tour in North America several times a year, and am part of the international harp community. Fred, through his company, Green Olive Tours, has contacts around the world of people interested in helping to bring peace and justice to the Middle East. We sent out a request with a beautiful photo of Yasmin at the harp. At first, money came in from harpists, friends and family in amounts of$15-100. The Colorado Harp Society pooled money and sent a check for $300. But, it was a couple from England who were so taken with Yasmin’s photo that they sent 11,000 shekels to buy the harp immediately. In total, over 40 people contributed towards Yasmin’s dream to learn the harp and welcomed Yasmin into the international harp family.

On Saturday, the 28th of April, I drove from Kfar Saba to meet with Ehud and other members of the Villages Group, and present Yasmin with her harp. The harp is made of wood, has 34 strings and is similar to the style of a Celtic folk harp. Several hundred years ago, there was a tradition in Ireland of blind harp players that travelled across Ireland on horseback to perform to the wealthy landlords. The most celebrated of these blind harp players was Turlough O’Carolan. Many of his beautiful melodies have become standards in the harp repertoire.

In the harp tradition, we have this connection between making beautiful music and being blind, although the modern harp is designed for those who can see the patterns made by the different colored strings. It isn’t like piano, where you feel the pattern of the notes between the different size and shape of the keys. So, for Yasmin, I glued beautiful stickers in the shape of jewels to mark the different colored strings.

There is another complication with the harp. Each string can be more than one tone, and there are levers that shorten the strings by half a step in order to change keys. Small bands were placed on the levers so Yasmin could feel the difference between them.

Our first lesson was spent learning how to make sense of how the harp is organized. Yasmin learned how to tune the harp, how to move the semi-tone levers and learn all the names of the strings. I was impressed with how quickly she understood. Her first assignment is to explore the harp and compose a short piece. She wants to play music that sounds like the sea in the key of C!

It takes me about an hour to drive from my home near Tel Aviv to Yasmin’s house in Salem. I cross through a checkpoint from Israel to the Palestinian Territories and drive alone on a road that most Israelis would never dream of driving on without an armored car. But, it would be impossible for Yasmin to get a permit from the Israeli army to take lessons in my home, so that is not an option. This is an exciting opportunity for me to ‘cross the veil’ into Palestine and develop a friendship with an amazing young woman.

I plan to teach Yasmin every other week. Together, we will work on melodies develop our own arrangements. I will teach Yasmin any melody she loves from my international repertoire, and she will teach me melodies from her tradition. This will be a musical journey that we will explore together and learn from each other. The harp is not a Middle Eastern instrument and the word for a harp in Arabic is either an adaptation of the English harp (harb) or Hebrew Nevel (nebel). Yasmin may be the first Palestinian to have a harp, and certainly the first one who is blind.

We spoke of dreams for the future when Yasmin can teach other Palestinian students to play the harp, perhaps even in the Barenboim Center in Ramallah. Someone asked her if she ever imagined that she would really get a harp. Yasmin gave us a big smile and said, “I am a very optimistic person.”

Yasmin is interested in connecting with blind harp players around the world. She may travel to the USA in September and I will try and arrange meetings for her with other harp players. Her musical journey has begun!

Sunita Staneslow

www.sunitaharp.com
Tel: +972-(0)54-212-5159
Fax: +972-(0)9-777-0020
USA fax: 800-809-7913

Yasmin

Erella Dunayevsky (Translated by Tal Haran)

I have been sitting for hours staring at the empty computer screen.

Walking the paths of this story is like pursuing a single trail that splits into many, each splitting again, like blood vessels. I know I mustn’t venture into this maze because my reader might get lost inside, and I also know that if I don’t, the blood of this story will not reach the heart of its readers.

Mid-morning. August. Hot.

Uri and I walk along a bumpy road. Holes yawn at us in spots where the asphalt is worn out and are filled with gravel and dirt and glass shards of bottles that someone may have hurled in anger.
This, more or less, is how most roads look in Salem village, 2004.

We’ve been walking the roads of this village for two years now, visiting homes and getting to know a growing number of the villagers. Every week the number of our friends grows in direct proportion to the number of victims of the Occupation’s violent hand. Every week sees more villagers who have heard of us, and get used to our presence simply because we show up, again and again – every week, almost.

Mid-morning. Saturday. October 2nd, 2004. Hot.

Uri and I climb a bumpy road. We are on our way to pay a condolence visit to the Jbara family. Abed, native of this village, our old friend, accompanies us.
Sael Jbara was murdered five days ago. He was murdered while crossing a smooth road, free of potholes. It, too, is bumpy, though. A road that discriminates. An apartheid road, as local jargon would have it.
Sael drove a cab that hardly sustained his family at times of closures and barriers. (Salem drivers could deliver their passengers only up to the many checkpoints closing in on the village and preventing their passage even to Nablus and the neighboring villages, let alone other regions in the West Bank).
Five days earlier, Sael drove passengers to Beit Furiq checkpoint, hoping that perhaps this time they would be allowed through to Beit Hassan, a village sprawled south of Salem beyond the apartheid road. The soldiers at the checkpoint would not let him through. Sael was determined to bring his passengers home and put some bread on his own family table. Like all the indigenous inhabitants of this area who know the lay of the land as closely as they know their mother, Sael found a dirt track bypassing the checkpoint. Three meters of an asphalt road separated Sael and his passengers from the rest of this ancient dirt track leading to Dajjan Valley and Beit Hassan. The road has not only been paved upon the village farm lands, it is also a road that only ‘the lords of the land’ are allowed to use. Experience has taught Sael that if the soldiers catch him, they would force him back to the village (with or without getting beaten, depending on the soldier), or detain him for interrogation.
Sael took the risk and didn’t know that a settler from Itamar would take his life.
While crossing the road, Sael was shot in his heart, point blank.

The world of his wife and six children blacked out. The world of his two blind children was doubly darkened, for their daddy had promised to do everything to brighten their eyes and souls.

Saturday. Mid-morning. Hot.

Uri and I drag ourselves with Abed along the village’s bumpy road, the one with the torn asphalt, going to pay a condolence visit to the Jbara family.
Luckily my identity does not include nationality, religion, state and other characteristics normally expressing one’s identity. (One had better not confuse identity with its manifestations). I am thus exempt of guilt feelings and shame for one of my own nation having perpetrated this murder. My heart is free to meet the full power of pain over the loss of life, free to look directly at the poisonous fruit of blind souls who seek their remedy in ideologies of hatred and pettiness, free to feel the paralyzing pain of helplessness.
As I make room for this difficult encounter and pray that they themselves will not regard me as one who has come to apologize for her fellow nationals, we arrive at the bereaved home.
Vines shade the mourning area in the yard. A few people are now seated inside. None of them is familiar to us.
We are invited to sit down. We gingerly accept the invitation.
I sit in a chair next to Yasmin, Uri sits next to Mohammad.
The eyes of the seeing see the eyes of the blind.
Yasmin sits upright, her head slightly bowed. Her face is soft and lovely. And I, next to her, take a long look at her. I see that her blind eyes see a lot.
Some years later, I will be writing to her: “… Dear Yasmin, I know that your vision is deep and focused. Much more precise than many people whose eyes see but are in fact totally blind. The ability to see starts with the heart…”
But now we are in the mourning tent.

Mohammad, his body larger than his twelve-years of age would indicate, sits withdrawn. Uri speaks with him in Arabic.

“My name is Erella” I say to Yasmin, in Arabic as well.
“My name is Yasmin” she answers me in English.
“I am with you in your pain” I continue in English.
“I will not be able to go on living”, she answers. “Father was everything to me”. Silence.
“Hope, too”, she adds.
I place my hand on hers and say that this is how one feels at first. That it’s natural. It’s permitted. When my father died I was nine-years old and I thought life was over forever. Somehow I even wanted it to be so.
“When was that?” she asks, wishing to know me by touching my face.
“A long time ago”, I answer, directing her hand.
“How old are you?” she asks, sailing along my face somewhat hesitantly.
“Fifty-seven”.
“Your voice is young and your skin smooth, I thought you are twenty.”
“And you?” I asked.
“I’m seventeen. I have another year until I graduate high school. But now I don’t know what will happen.”
I hugged her. I whispered to her that after mourning, one can choose to live again. That life wants us to live it.

Nearly six years later, when we leaf back through the pages of this first meeting, Yasmin will remind me that I told her also that in order to live she should be independent and free, and that a higher education will be of great help to her. She will remind me that a week later we came to visit once more and I brought her a jasmine plant. I told her to plant it in her garden, so it would remind her of life.
She suggests I open my story as follows:
“Ten days after the mourning, a child of love was born named Yasmin. She was born of the Jasmine planted in her garden and blooming to this day”.

Since that condolence visit, the Jbara family entered our circle of friends.
Yasmin graduated high school and matriculated.
That year we helped her and Mohammad fulfill their father’s dream – bring them into Israel for a medical examination by a senior eye expert.
It was easy to set up the medical examination but hard to obtain their permits to enter Israel, for after their father was murdered, the children and their mother were black-listed, entry-prevented. This is the status assigned a Palestinian injured by a soldier or settler, and all of his family relations down to the tenth generation of descendants – even if the injury is lethal.
Anticipation was great, hearts trembled. On a rainy winter day Yasmin and Mohammad, escorted by Muna, their mother, made their way to Tel Hashomer Hospital. Uri and Edna drove them, supporting, escorting them.
The doctor examined them. Slowly, thoroughly. Finally, he gave his verdict, delicately, painfully: “They will never see”.
Heavy-hearted Mohammad and Yasmin were cheered a bit when Uri and Edna took them to the beach. It was their first time ever to see the sea. Or rather hear its roar, taste it, feel its water.
Salty sea drops blown by a strong winter wind dripped over the wounds of their heart and gave them a moment of respite.
They would return to this sea. At a more southerly beach, in the summer, in days that were not yet born.

In the meantime, another summer.
It’s hot.
Again we drag ourselves along the bumpy road to the Jbara home. This time we tell them the State has brought the murderer to trial. An exceptional event in the life of the nation. For a moment it seems justice might be done. David, present at the court sessions, learns all the details and updates the family.
Muna is taken up with her mourning and raising her children. She is grateful to David for what he is doing.
It is important for the family that the murderer be punished for what he had done. Not that any of them – neither old nor young – numb their pain with thoughts of vengeance. And still, the thought of such murderers behind bars could instill a measure of physical and emotional security. After all, the family knows that their occupier is a progressive democratic state run by law as other nations in this world, even enlightened occupiers.
In this summer of 2005 the verdict has been issued at the murderer’s trial: manslaughter. But the judge sent the defendant home until the sentence is issued. The State prosecutor poses no objection. The defendant does what he had been enabled to do – he runs away. No state institution – not a living soul – really takes the trouble to look for him. The seal is set.

Sael was murdered yet again. Once by Yehoshua Elitzur, a German convert to Judaism from Itamar settlement, and again by the justice system of the State of Israel.

The family mourns again. We stay with their pain, contain it, and together with them lick again the seething wounds of helplessness.
At this time, Yasmin is getting ready for her first year at university.
She spent her first ten years of school at a special school for the blind in Ramallah. Her last two years of high school have been successfully accomplished at the normal high school in her village.
But university is an altogether different matter.

In spite of her full fluency in Braille, in spite of her talent and the stable part of her personality that enables her to recover time and again, Yasmin is anxious before starting off her academic studies. A small tape recorder which we give her for the lectures she will be attending helps a bit to assuage her fears. But this does not begin to meet the needs for independent movement. This has not been taught at the special school for the blind.
For two long years Yasmin grapples with her need to be escorted on her daily journey from Salem to Nablus and back, and in the large university campus itself. She learns to transform the shackles of constant debt to her helpers into the liberating state of gratitude.
When Yasmin learns, at the beginning of her first semester, that most of the professors mail their lectures to the students electronically, we engage in finding a special computer for her with a particular program for the visually impaired.
As always, this time, too, we have gambled. The challenge is met by a Jewish Israeli citizen who donates money to buy the computer.

Saturday, early summer 2006. It’s hot.

After walking up the bumpy road, full of potholes, we gather at the Jbara home – Noa and her partner Ehud, who look to the professional aspect of the computer; Qassem, computer-store owner from Nablus, where the computer was purchased. He has never before been in Salem, four minutes ride from his shop; Fadi, the blind installment technician (Palestinian citizen of Israel from Sha’ab village in the Galilee); Yasmin and her family and ourselves, of course.
We all crowd into the small living room to celebrate another phase in Yasmin’s coping with her boundaries.
Silence fills the room. Some of the people deliver a few modest and celebratory words on this occasion. So does Yasmin. Then silence wraps us again.

A Palestinian from Nablus, Jews from Israel, a Palestinian from Israel (arriving on the bumpy road, without the potholes, receiving a special permit to enter through the military checkpoint), visit a Palestinian home in Salem. They all sit in one room from which the curtain has momentarily been lifted. For a borrowed moment they witness the order of Creation as nakedly self-evident as when it was eternally born – serving each other with the measure of love needed to heal pain. Love manifesting itself in various modes of one identity – a human at the shrine of the deity.
Muna serves heaps of stuffed vine leaves. We eat, laugh, weep, chat, take leave. Each of us goes home, having to cross the army checkpoint again on our way out (no other possibility when the order of things loses its obviousness).

Mohammad, who, until now, has attended a special school for the blind in Jenin, is transferred to a similar school in Bethlehem. Yasmin is finishing her sophomore year at Al Najah, and is moving to Nablus to live at a special hostel for blind students, going home on weekends. Muna cannot resist the pressures of her family and neighbors and the computer, waiting for Yasmin at home, becomes everyone’s business and is in a state of disrepair. Our attempts to convince Muna to move the computer to the hostel are resisted, We don’t understand the reason for this. Nor do we understand why Yasmin, who usually knows how to hold her ground, does not veto this. But we do realize there are things beyond our comprehension.
Perhaps these are social, family or neighborhood codes unfamiliar to us. Whenever I touch the thin line separating that which is in my hands from that which isn’t, I am deeply saddened. It’s an existential sadness that opens its arms to me, and I surrender to it until the pain eases.
It happens this time, too…

Muna is a woman of valour. A brave navigator in stormy seas. Sometimes in a tsunami. Only occasionally, here and there, are the skies are partly cloudy or clear.
As the family now has no breadwinner, Muna makes good use of her wisdom and the special knowledge that the impoverished use in order not to drown. With the meager funds that the Palestinian Authority allots bereaved families, and the meager help of her extended family, she somehow navigates the ship. Her nights unravel her worry. How will she ensure the future of her children – Suhad, the eldest, not yet done with her technology studies at Nablus’ Hajawi College; Yasmin still faces another three years, almost, until she completes her B.A. in English; Sharif, already seventeen, does not want to continue his schooling and has been looking for work – so far in vain; Mohammad has yet another three years until matriculation. Then he plans to go to the university in order to acquire a profession he can qualify for with his blindness; Beautiful Assala, just twelve, already knows she will be a lawyer when she grows up; Yahya, the youngest, is still a long way from maturity and independence.

In July 2007 the family wins its civil suit, pressed against the State by an attorney. The State of Israel pays them damages which can never be enough to hide the naked obscenity, but still provide Muna some relief.

The family breathes more freely now. It shows in Suhad’s shy smile, completing her studies; in the walls of the home, freshly painted by Sharif; in Mohammad’s daring to return home and begin, for the first time ever, a year of normal high school; in Asala, an outstanding student, and in Yahya who now enters adolescence.
In the meantime, without any emotional privileges, Yasmin ripens into young womanhood. Along with her ripen her poems.
A love crisis slashes her spirit in late summer 2009. Yasmin recites for us a poem born of this crisis. (As always, since childhood, writing, her openness and her ability to share help her rise all the stronger from the pitfalls on her way).

“In our silent, narrow street
I followed his footsteps…

In a dark and cloudy mood
Moon, sun, stars
Look so bright,
Confidence… courage… Oh fear
Not even a teardrop in heaven’s eyes
Only a spark of hope so close
That even escape will not defeat”…

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January 2010. Cold. Rainy.

Danny, Ehud and I navigate the bumpy, potholed road, now muddy too, trying not to trip. We walk to Yasmin’s house, to give her a private party of our own, celebrating her graduation as a Bachelor of Arts in English.

In honor of the occasion, Yasmin writes:

“Have you ever felt
What it is like to be a person
Soon graduating,
Standing at the university gates,
Facing the threshold of one’s life?
People coming to congratulate me
Light within me a spark of hope.
Like a king who has won a kingdom
I am a woman loved by her fate…”

A few weeks later Yasmin calls us, profoundly depressed. No school. No Nablus. No hostel. No friends. Yasmin is home again. This secure nest no longer fits her size. Yasmin wants to break out, spread her wings and take off – away from the arms of her mother and little village. She wants independence, she wants to own herself. But she has no mobility skills and no job. Muna is resourceful and tries to use this time to enable Yasmin more independence in performing household chores – cooking, laundry, cleaning… Yasmin cooperates but, at the same time, sinks into a deep black pit.

Ehud suggests we mobilize our friends abroad, especially in England, to call her on the phone and keep her busy conversing and exercising her English, and especially to give her a sense of contact with the ‘world out there’.
Dear Nancy from faraway Edinburgh takes charge. With so much attention and empathy she keeps calling. At first because we asked her to. Then, because Yasmin’s personality fascinates her, invites her to love. What a gift Yasmin is. If only she could trust her strength, rely on the beauty of her garden.
“Jasmine blooms in winter”, I remind her in our frequent support calls and visits.
Nancy has managed to arouse the interest of her friends in Yasmin’s story. They have transformed their obvious empathy into donations for purchasing a new computer for Yasmin (laptop, this time), including a modern program for the blind. The computer that was out of order will now be repaired, and will serve Mohammad in his next year of studies, his matriculation time. (Our many attempts to revive the computer with Tel Avivian knowhow were futile. Recently the solution was found in Nablus. Masters of improvisation).

On a Thursday in February, 2010, as on every normal Thursday (if there is such a thing) we are in the South Hebron Hills. While our friends from Umm Al Kheir show us the ruined fence in their farmland (the tracks of its destroyer lead to Carmel, the nearby Jewish settlement), my cell phone rings. It is Nancy from Edinburgh calling. She joyously tells me Yasmin has been summoned for a work interview in Ramallah, by an NGO called “Stars of Hope”. My spirit cannot share her joy. One part of it is still caught in the broken fragment of that ruined fence, and the other part is twice-shocked – first, realizing that news of Yasmin reaches me via Edinburgh, and second – wondering how anyone in “Eastern Palestine” even knows of some Yasmin in Salem village looking for work. This is the “gamble” that has reached some haven and has been picked up.

The story of Yasmin, which we have made public by email several months earlier in an attempt to help her in her despair, has reached the Ramallah NGO through one of its workers whom Ehud met at one of the Jewish-Palestinian conferences we attend occasionally. At her request, Ehud added her address to the list of our contacts.

Between winter and spring, in March 2010, Yasmin begins her training in the Palestinian society for the advancement of disabled Palestinian women – “Stars of Hope”.

She goes to live in Ramallah, is nearly independent and is earning her own livelihood for the first time in her life. Yasmin’s joy soars and is blessedly gathered into the lap of a soft, embracing heaven. Then her rage crashes against a tight, parched ground in a painful emergency landing. She is fired after one month.

Her insult is as deep as the bleeding pain of her ripening understanding of the existence of elements that interfere with her fate, which she has no way of directing or affecting.
She is home again, restoring the debris of her life. The school for the blind in Ramallah has notified her that she will not be appointed teacher in the coming school year. Yasmin realizes she must expand her employment opportunities, and decides to proceed with her graduate studies in English, specializing in translation.
This will happen only in October, and in the meantime – a long and exhausting summer lies ahead.

Summer 2010. Hot. Humid.

I climb up the bumpy potholed road to the Jbara home.
Between tea and stuffed vine leaves (that Muna prepares, knowing I like them), Yasmin sows an idea as old as our acquaintance: “I would so much love to visit you at your home”, she says.

Typing her family data on my keyboard, a slight shadow creeps into my mind. I try to ignore it but it grows insistent until there is no escaping it. I feel it hammering in my head: “They will not be issued permits”, “they will not be struck off the black list”, “there’s no chance”, “Occupation never changes”. Then I hear my heart: “No doubt they’ve been taken off the black list”, “even brutality has its limits”, “it’s been six years”, “after all, perhaps the regime is building trust by making mobility lighter”. And again the hammers strike, again the heart speaks. Hammers… heart… The mail to Buma (our ‘permit’ friend) is on its way. Two weeks go by. Buma calls. The answer has arrived. No permits. All this family’s children are ‘prevented’ (denied entry into Israel-proper) by the Shabak secret police, formally known as the General Security Services.

No hammers, no heart-voice. Only the blunt ache of helplessness spreads throughout my body and what remains of my sane mind. Nothing has changed. Nothing changes. Six years are like the forty-three years of Occupation. My heart goes crazy, my mind leaps out of itself. I cry.
In my mind’s eye I already see myself arriving at Salem this weekend, on the bad road without the potholes, how I’ll climb on foot to their home on the bad road with the potholes, and tell them, face to face, that they have no permit to be free.
Buma suggests suspending the answer. He has filed an appeal, requesting permits once again for the family in spite of their being blacklisted. “You know how it is”, he says. “This whole business is arbitrary. Perhaps the second request will be treated with a different arbitrariness”. And indeed a different arbitrariness is applied.

“Thank you for the right to freedom that loses its freedom by being granted, let alone granted by the mean insolence of arbitrariness that leaves not the slightest doubt who is just and who evil…” my soul wants to cry out. I transform the outcry into a wish: “I wish for you, the blind, that one day,” I say in my heart, “your eyes will open to see”… my soul, tamed to transform, relents, tired but grateful for this wish that has transformed a raging fire into the light that enables me to tell what is in my hands from what isn’t. Freedom itself is embodied in this aching acknowledgement. Freedom that can neither be granted nor robbed, for freedom of the heart can never be dependent on anything. When I do the deeds that bring me in the way of blunted hearts and other damages of blindness,
I do them of my own free will. I use my fullest freedom when I choose to come in touch with the realms of suffering of the other one, and to be a true healer. After all, I could choose not to be present on such occasions.

Summer. August. Hot. Humid.

The Jbara family walks the narrow paths of Kibbutz Shoval. Danny, Ehud and I lead them to our home.
In a little while we’ll drive to the beach. Zikim beach. They will be sitting in the waves that lick the shore, abandon their bodies to the water’s warm caress, taste salt, laugh with their whole being as they’ve never done before, at the thrill of a first encounter.

Only Yasmin and Mohammad will remember that their first was five years ago, in winter after a medical examination. The rest will have no memory. The first time on the beach that is no further from their home than it is from mine. We will look at them lovingly. Our souls will laugh and cry, and so will theirs, when the sun will set into a hazy horizon, patient and soft, reminding us of the order of Creation, self-evident.

Erella Dunayevsky, Villages Group, May 2012. Translated by Tal Haran

(Crossposted from the Villages Group Blog)

Several large families–among them, Ihrizat, Ihraini, and Abu Samra–belong to Um al-’Amad, perched on a high hill west of the desert and directly across from the drab and violent settlement of Otniel. In fact, Otniel sits on the Abu Samra family’s lands. Like all other settlements, Otniel has also drawn a wide perimeter fence around itself, effectively annexing another large chunk of Palestinian land; still worse, for the last thirteen years the settlers and soldiers have denied the Palestinians access to the relatively fertile grazing and agricultural land in the wadis just under the settlement. Israeli courts have confirmed Palestinian title to these lands in the wadis, but in itself this is by no means a promise of access. Quite the contrary: like in most places in south Hebron, we are faced with a hard micro-struggle for every inch.

Abu Khalil Abu Samra tells me: “Even three weeks ago we could only look with longing at our lands, knowing our feet would never again touch them.” You have to hear this sentence in Arabic and let yourself begin to feel what it means for a farmer to watch his fields being stolen in broad daylight. Then you have to imagine all the rest of it–the endless battle in the courts, the continuous hassle with the soldiers, the threats and abuse, the humiliation of being driven off your property at gun-point. It has gone on like this for years, and it will happen again today.

Last week there was a miracle. Ta’ayush volunteers accompanied Palestinian shepherds into the wadi and stood by them while the sheep grazed and the farmers plowed one field. Today we are eager to extend the grazing grounds, to recover another chunk of land, closer to the settlement. We make our way on dirt and gravel roads through Al-Karma and Bayt Al-Imra to Um al-’Amad, and we descend into the valley where the sheep are already grazing to their content. It is spring–a brief burst of green; in two weeks it will be gone. The hills, usually a mélange of browns and yellows, look like Ireland. Whole fields are soaked in the red of poppies and the green-yellow of mustard; here and there you can see sheaves of ripening barley and wheat. Who would believe that they have come up out of this caked and arid soil?

It is still early in the morning under a dense blue sky. These are the moments of blessing that I have learned to cherish–the short overture before the soldiers arrive. The world looks almost livable. There are a handful of shepherds, and Abu Khalil and his brother Abu Khalid are with us, not quite believing that they are standing, like free men, on their own soil.

But how free can they be? The first batch of soldiers is waiting for us. For some time they watch us from the hillside as we move along the wadi with the sheep. We can see them calling some superior on their cell phones; even from a distance they’re already busy photographing us. One officer has a camouflage net incongruously pasted over his helmet, a comic touch in these open spaces, as if it were possible for him to go unseen. They have guns and all the metal trinkets that go with guns.

Finally, since by now we’re only 200 meters or so from the perimeter wall of Otniel, they come striding toward us through the fields. They tell us the Matak–a senior officer from the Civil Administration–is on his way with the police. We wait. We know the law is on our side, there is no question about it, we even have it in writing, but we also know that this means next to nothing in south Hebron.

Matak never arrives. Instead, a detachment of Border Policemen turns up, led by Yusuf, a Druze officer, whom we know all too well. The Border Police are bad news. Now the standard sequence kicks in. We know it by heart; here’s a simple précis.

Yusuf: What are you doing here?

Danny and Guy: We’re here with the shepherds who are grazing their sheep on their land.

Yusuf: Who told you it’s their land?

Dani: They know it, and the court confirmed it. We have the documents with us.

Yusuf: Why should I believe them?

Guy: It’s not a matter for belief.

Yusuf: The only place you and I can argue about this is in court. Definitely not here. No one is allowed to be here without coordinating with the army.

Guy: Wrong. What you are saying is completely illegal, as the courts have ruled over and over. You have no right to tell these people to leave, or to order us to leave.

Yusuf: You’re just here to make trouble.

Danny: We’re here to protect these people and to see that their claim is honored.

Two settlers, one in Shabbat white, have turned up, on cue, to control the proceedings. Yusuf looks at the map and the court order. Surely he must realize that he is facing the truth. He has a problem.

“I tell you what,” he says. “If these men”–he means the two Abu Samra brothers–“want to come with me to the end of the wadi to look at the land, I’m prepared to go.” Turning to Guy: “You, only you, can come, too. The rest of your group waits here.”

So we wait. Ten minutes later they’re back, and Yusuf, with the settlers above him, knows what to do: OK, you’ve seen the wadi, now all of you have to leave. I’ll give you five minutes before I start making arrests.

Danny: No! You’re breaking the law, and you know it. You have no right to drive these people off their land. We’ve been through this many times before.

Yusuf: We have reason to fear a clash between you and the settlers. You’re a threat to the peace. I’m a police officer, and I’m ordering you to leave.

Neriya: That’s very nice. The real criminals are right here on the hill, and you’re accusing us of disturbing the peace.

Me: What about these shepherds? Do they or don’t they have the right to graze down here in the wadi?

Yusuf: Yes they do. Now I’m done talking with you. This argument is over.

For good measure, one of his soldiers, short, stocky, and mean, eager to attack and/or arrest us, looks at his watch and says: “Four minutes.”

All of this takes time, much longer than it takes to read my summary, long enough for the sheep to go on happily feeding. But it’s the usual choice, and unfortunately the decision has been made for us–the shepherds and the two brothers are already 50 meters away, heading back toward Um al-’Amad. Perhaps they came to some tacit agreement with Yusuf. They are our hosts; if they leave, there’s no way we can stay.

“Don’t feel bad,” Abu Khalil says to me. “We’re making progress. It’s like climbing a ladder. You go one step at a time, daraj daraj.”

But I do feel bad. The gun has spoken. The gun lies.

We linger in the wadi together with the sheep and the village boys. Yusuf and his men slowly depart. We want to be sure that the Palestinians’ presence here is seen and recognized, that it turns into fact. It’s not a trivial matter. The whole business is as fragile as the little bud of okra–sown just a week ago–that has pushed up through the brown dirt right here before us. In another week, Abu Khalil says, the shoot will be high, and a few days later they’ll harvest the crop–the first from this soil in many years.

The village boys are into theology. “What’s your name?” they ask me. “Da’ud,” I say. “Named for the Prophet Da’ud! Are you a Muslim?” “No, I’m a Jew.” “Do you know how to pray?” “Maybe a little.” I can recite the Fatiha, the opening to the Qur’an. This makes a positive impression. “Sing it,” they say to me, “like the Mu’ezzin does.” I try. They correct me. It’s not so easy to get my voice to the upper register you need for the second phrase, but they seem happy with my efforts. “So why don’t you become a Muslim?” they ask me. “I don’t want to,” I say; “I already told you I’m a Jew.” “But on the Day of Judgment, yaum al-qiyama, only Muslims will go to Paradise, Al-Jannah, Firdaws; the rest will be burned in fire.” “I like the fire.”

They laugh. This has to be put to the test; they borrow a cigarette lighter and hold it to my finger. I fail the test. “Well, maybe we Jews won’t be thrown into the fire,” I say. “Maybe it will be cold there in Hell.” “No way!” They’re very certain. “Fire means fire. The believers and only the believers don’t get burned.” “OK,” I say, “but couldn’t a Jew also be a believer of some sort?” “Absolutely not.”

Now again: “So why don’t you take on Islam?” I’m having trouble explaining, in halting Arabic, the rationale of my choice. Meanwhile, other questions arise. Ella, for example, wants to know if there are animals in Al-Jannah. “Definitely.” “OK,” she says to me, “maybe we should go for it.” She has two beloved cats. Soon a large, ungainly turtle turns up, on his leisurely way to somewhere via this hill, blissfully indifferent, I would guess, to soldiers, settlers, and theologians. They lift him, cradle him in their hands. Might he, too, get a pass into Paradise? It’s definitely possible, they assure me. Things seem to be looking up for turtles, if not for the Jews. One thing we can all agree on: on the Day of Judgment, the settlers will be sent to the fire. The boys laugh again in the relief that certainty brings. Sinners are sinners, and God knows right from wrong.

I hope He does, though sometimes I’m not sure. Or maybe this is the definition of God, which we’ve arrived at together, gently teasing one another on this hill of rocks and thorns. It’s midday: a fierce sun offers a slight, still bearable taste of hellfire. I promise them that, infidel that I am, I’ll be back here next week or the one after. I climb the hill with Abu Khalil. Suddenly I see he has tears in his eyes. “Two weeks ago,” he says, “there was another officer, not Yusuf; a Jew. He was cruel. He told me I would never walk for even one centimeter on my land. And today you came and I walked the whole length of the wadi. My feet are standing on this soil. Do you understand what it means? And we plowed last week and already the first shoots are coming up. I talked to the elders in the village, they said, Forget it, there’s no hope, we’ll never get back the lands they took. I said to them, God will help us.”

As we do every week, last Thursday April 5 2012 we went to visit several Palestinian localities in the South Hebron Hills, with whom we have been in contact for some years now. Two members of our little group – Hamed and Erella – just got back that day from a Britain tour as representatives of the Villages Group. So this week’s small visitor team consisted of Ehud and Danny.

We began with a short visit to the preschool (nursery school) in the Bedouin village of Umm al-Kheir. This preschool, opened nearly a year ago, is located in an old building with several rooms renovated with the aid of UNRWA, close to the Saraya of Umm al-Kheir (a term that during the Ottoman Empire days designated a government structure). Two local teachers run the preschool with about twenty children, and receive their salary through the Villages Group. The preschool has undergone a significant change lately – one teacher is now in charge of the younger children (two-three year olds) in the room used as the ‘bustan’ (pre-preschool), while her colleague is in charge of the older children (four-six years old), in the other room that serves as ‘rauda’, preschool.

From the hill where the Umm al Kheir preschool is located, the young children can see the present and future prospects arranged for them by the Israeli Occupation regime. Heavy equipment is busy developing and expanding the new neighborhood at the nearby Jewish settlement Karmel (Carmel) – a development doubtlessly paid for by the Israeli and American taxpayer. Together with an additional neighborhood planned to emerge soon, the settlement will eventually surround the dwellings in this part of Umm al Kheir from three directions (north, west and south).

This stranglehold is an integral part of the Occupation’s policy. The “Civil Administration”, that regime’s arm supposedly entrusted with providing services to Palestinians, has issued demolition orders on nearly all structures belonging to the Bedouin families living in this part of Umm Al Kheir – including outhouses, sheds etc. Many of these orders have already been carried out. We have written extensively here, both about Umm Al Kheir’s demolitions and about the vicious, discriminatory and fraudulent nature of the “Civil Administration” itself. Well-known literary translator and humanist Ilana Hammerman wrote a feature article about Umm Al Kheir and Karmel, with interviews of both Bedouin and settlers. The article was published a few months ago in Ha’aretz.

From the relatively new preschool at Umm al Kheir, we drove down the road and dirt track winding into the Judean desert for a short visit to the oldest operating preschool in the area. This preschool opened its doors about six years ago, at the Bedouin locality of Hashem al Daraj.

About 30 children crowd into the rickety one-room structure of this preschool together with their teacher, Huda, a native of Umm al Kheir who lives at Hasham al Daraj. Huda has been devotedly running the preschool since its founding, determined to overcome its harsh physical conditions. We first became acquainted with this preschool over two years ago . Since that first visit we took it upon ourselves to raise funds that would ensure Huda of a regular, decent salary, compared to the irregularly-paid pittance she had earned until then. We also connected Huda and her preschool with volunteers from the MachsomWatch organization. They have been coming to the preschool ever since. Jointly with Huda and the artist Eid from Umm al Kheir, The MachsomWatch volunteers hold an arts and creativity workshop for the preschool children every two weeks. Danny’s gesture in the picture show our reluctance to leave Huda’s place where we were so warmly greeted by the children – as we needed to fit visits to other localities into our tight schedule.

In the picture above, the children of Huda’s preschool look out towards the new and much larger building that UNRWA has been erecting for them nearby. Although it is already in an advanced stage of construction, completion is delayed. It is unlikely that the children and their teacher would move in before the end of the summer vacation, when the next school year opens. Much of the credit for the recent progress in constructing pre-school facilities at the region’s Bedouin localities goes to Hamed.

After visiting Huda’s preschool at Hasham Al Daraj, we left the Bedouin part of the South Hebron Hills (the eastern-most part of the region), and headed towards the small cave-dweller hamlet of Tuba. Jewish settlements Maon and Havat Maon had disconnected Tuba years ago from the road to nearby Yatta town. Nowadays access to Tuba is only possible via a much longer roundabout dirt track that leaves the Bedouin area and winds its way over the rocky hills. As we climbed this track in Danny’s jeep, the magnificent sight of the cave-dwelling hamlet area, locally called ‘massafer Yatta’/ ‘massfarat Yatta’ (Yatta’s hinterland) came into view.

After several drought years, the current winter has been relatively wet and the short spring that is about to end has yielded especially beautiful wild-flower expanses and a healthy growth of crops in the small fields scattered along the central track of the cave region. See previous posts describing the general conditions in this region and its hardships.

Tuba is a typical cave-dwellers’ hamlet – in its small population that hardly exceeds a few dozen, the affiliation of its families to larger clans whose life-center is Yatta, the main town of the South Hebron Hills, and in the ongoing, perpetual threat of the Israeli Occupation rule and its agents – soldiers and settlers – over the inhabitants’ lifestyle. Talk of the day in Tuba was the wandering tank that startled the residents out of their night sleep as it lost its way among the wadis of the region, designated by the Occupation authorities as military maneuver zone.

Life in the cave-dwellers area has many typical characteristics. Here we describe two of them: First, the custom of parents and brothers to build toys for the little children by recycling various objects. On our current visit, our camera caught the toy that Ali Awad of Tuba built for his young son, Ism’ail.

Residents of the cave dwelling region, Tuba among them, had lived without electricity or any refrigeration until recently. The local goat-milk cheese is known for its high salinity, a means of preservation for a lengthy period of time without refrigeration. On our visit, we saw blocks of this traditional salty cheese placed to dry near the solar plates installed in Tuba two years ago by the Israeli-Palestinian team of COMET-ME.

COMET-ME is our sister organization. In 2008, renewable-energy experts among Villages Group activists started installing stand-alone solar and wind electricity generators in South Hebron hills communities. A year later, the initiative began to operate independently as COMET-ME, and quickly attained worldwide recognition and support.

Among other benefits, the renewable power units installed by COMET-ME enable residents to increase production and improve the preservation of their dairy products. Unfortunately, the “Civil Administration” has recently threatened to demolish many renewable power installations placed by COMET-ME. About the international struggle now taking place against this travesty, see the organization’s website.

At the end of our Tuba visit, we returned from the caves dwellers area to the Bedouin part and to Umm al Kheir. Unlike the local rural population that has evolved its cave-dwelling lifestyle for centuries, the Bedouins of the region are originally tent-dwellers and do not live in caves. In view of the consistent house demolition policy applied in the part of Umm al Kheir nearest to the Jewish settlement Karmel, a large number of the local residents are forced to continue living in tents. Among others, we visited the tent of the family elder, Hajj Shueib (photographed alongside his youngest daughter Rana and Ehud).

Later we also visited widow Miyaser, whose straw and stones house has been recently demolished by official thugs of our time. Some of you, especially those who support the Villages Group in Durham, Britain, have already had the opportunity to help Miyaser and her seven children by purchasing her embroidery work (in the photograph, Khulud, Miyaser’s daughter, displays her mother’s new embroidery).

Jonathan Pollak going to jail

Originally posted on Rajeefsworld.posterous.com

A lot has been written recently about my good friend Jonathan Pollak’s recent incarceration in Israel for his participation in demonstrations. Understandably, there was international outrage at his sentence—3 months for non-violent assembly. It made me reflect, however, on a totally different incarceration in my life, one that can only further illustrate the extent of Israel’s apartheid. Jonathan’s partner, activist Eilat Maoz, wrote a piece about walking Jonathan to prison, and the glimpse it gave her of the life of the families of other political prisoners. I also got a feel for that life, with one critical difference: my partner is Palestinian.

In December, 2007, I said goodbye to my then fiance (now husband), and left Palestine for a trip home to the United States. I hugged him goodbye in the streets of Jerusalem, where he had entered illegally to see me off. It was the last hug I gave him for a year and a half. I, too, was in a relationship with an activist, a man committed to justice and liberation. He just happened to be Palestinian.

I did not get to say goodbye to Mousa when he was imprisoned on April 11, 2008. I didn’t know he would be going to jail. He was held for 9 days without charge, before his lawyer (the same lawyer who represented Jonathan) was informed that he was going to be held in administrative detention. This meant that he would be imprisoned immediately and indefinitely. His court hearings were held in secret; none of his family (not even me, who holds Israeli ID) was allowed to attend. While Jonathan’s trial and sentencing were a farce of a civilian “democratic” legal system, Mousa’s was not even that. Hearings were held in secret at the prison in the middle of the Negev desert, evidence was presented without his lawyer being present. We spent months guessing what the Shabak might be accusing him of; we still don’t know for sure.

The only physical contact I had with Mousa was a handshake we sneaked at the end of his Supreme Court hearing in May, 2008, the only time he entered a civilian court, and the only hearing his supporters, and myself, were able to attend (his family, of course, were not even allowed to this, since it was held in Jerusalem).

In September, 2008, after just over 5 months in detention, Mousa’s detention was extended for another 5 months. When it became clear that he may spend years in jail, that there was no way to know when we’d be able to continue our lives together, we decided to marry so that I would be allowed to visit him. None of his siblings were given permits to travel into Israel by Red Cross buses, to visit him. His elderly father did receive clearance, and visited him for the first time after Mousa was in jail for three months (common for “security” detainees, who are not allowed contact with visitors or, oftentimes, lawyers, for the first three months of “investigation”). Mousa signed a power of attorney with the International Red Cross and empowered a member of his family to stand in for him in signing our marriage contract; we could not meet even for that.

I visited Mousa for the first (and what ended up being the only) time in December, 2008, a year after I said goodbye to him. As an Israeli ID-holder, I was afforded a few privileges my father-in-law was not. I got to choose where to board the Red Cross bus that takes families from all over the West Bank to visit the families of the nearly 3000 prisoners at Al-Naqab (Ketziot) prison. I chose the bus from Jerusalem, which left at 6am, rather than the one from Hebron, closer to my home and to the prison but leaving at 4:30am because of the time it took to get through the checkpoints. I couldn’t just drive up to the prison to visit. Palestinian prisoners are treated by the International Red Cross the same way prisoners of war are in many ways and visits are coordinated with the military prisons through them.

On the three hour trip down the coast and along Gaza (this was during “Operation Cast Lead” and the dozens of women on the bus looked anxiously at the horizon over Gaza, watching the jets and helicopters flying over), I made quick friends with two women who gave me a crash course on the process of the visit. The entire experience would take 10 hours (plus my 2 hour trip back and forth from our town in Hebron District) for a 45 minute visit. You had to pay close attention to the guards, who call out the names of the prisoners when it is their turn for a visit. I had not brought lunch, and the women, whose husbands, though from Jerusalem, were being held in Israeli military prison, gladly shared food with me.

As we entered the yard outside the visiting hall, I soon realized why this was an all-day affair. Visits were coordinated for several districts on the same day. Over 600 women and children (only a handful of men are given permits for these visits) filled a cement courtyard. I spent most of the next two hours pacing around the fenced-in area, trying to keep an ear out for my husband’s name.

My group was finally called and we went into an indoor holding area where we were strip-searched and led into another waiting area. One man asked me if he was allowed to wash his hands. I pointed him to the sinks, confusedly thinking that he didn’t know where he could wash up. When Mousa’s name was called and I walked through the maze to the visiting room, chuckles rose through the room. An older woman explained they had thought I was a guard, insisting, when I asked, that it was because of my navy-blue jacket, and not because of my light complexion. I sat across a window from Mousa for exactly 41 minutes. We talked about nothing through phones attached to the wall that made it sound like he was a million miles away. I scanned his face for evidence of the event even more horrific than his sudden incarceration—when he narrowly missed being shot in the head by an Israeli soldier in January, 2008 but was hit with shrapnel which cut his eye and head.

The visit was over too soon, and I lined up with the other women to gather our packages (another strange Palestinian tradition, since heads of households are so often in jail, they are allowed to buy gifts from the canteen and have them given to their visitors. Mousa bought me a big jug of my favorite cola and chocolate bars).

For the next 6 months I was prevented from visiting Mousa. His father visited once, and multiple visitors were not allowed, and on three other occasions the military decided he needed to be moved to court dates (sometimes days ahead of time) or other prisons on the days of visits.

The worst thing about administrative detention, even worse than the secret hearings and the security excuses for preventing visits, is the uncertainty of it all. As the day of his current term of imprisonment would approach, his entire family and I would wait, virtually holding our breath, to see if his attorney would be informed of the Shabak’s intention to extend his detention. For Mousa, it was even worse, as the guards would not tell him even when a decision was made. In early January, 2009, we received a phone call from another man in the village who’s relative was also in An-Naqab. Mousa had managed to pass on the message that he was being released. In total disbelief, I called his lawyer, who assured me that Mousa was not being released. But other prisoners had heard the guards telling him he was free, and watched him walk out with a bag of his belongings. His family slowly gathered at the house. Kids were scrubbed, food was prepared, and even though I thought the lawyer would know, I too put on a clean shirt and waited.

At around midnight, when it was clear that Mousa was not coming home that day, I received a call. On a smuggled phone Mousa told us that the guards had in fact told him he was being released, and went so far as to escort him to the gate of the prison, before essentially saying, “just kidding.” This final torture, giving him hope and then tearing it away, temporarily broke him. He agreed to be exiled-to stay out of Palestine for 3 years in exchange for his freedom. Again, hope was dangled in front of him—the prosecution agreed to the deportation, and he was taken to the bridge to Jordan. His father and I raced to meet him, I began making plans for a life in Jordan, or Dubai. After hours of waiting at the bridge terminal, he was put on the bus over to the Jordanians, and was able to sit with his father as they crossed (Israel would not allow me to cross over the same bridge, so I had to travel two hours north to the bridge to Jordan from the Galilee, where Israelis were allowed to cross). Minutes before I crossed into Jordan (I had already paid the tax for crossing, in fact) I received a phone call. Mousa told me to wait, he was not being allowed into Jordan. Jordanian officials said the Israeli government hadn’t coordinated the deportation with them, and he would not be allowed in. Once again, I thought I was hours away from seeing him again, only to be heartbroken.

I cannot imagine the ride back over the bridge, Mousa having to get off the bus and return to the prison guards. I know his father returned home broken. When Mousa and I spoke again he told me the shabak at the bridge terminal was very interested to know about this strange American girl with Israeli ID who had come all that way to see him. When told that I was his wife, they laughed, telling him no international girl would ever wait for him, and he should give up on ever having a life with me.

His family and I returned to waiting. In February, 2009, when the Shabak requested and received a third extension of his detention, another lawyer was able to get the court to reduce the time from 6 months to 4 months, and a commitment that it would not be renewed. Even with a court order indicating his day of release, we were not convinced. On June 14, 2009, the family once again began to gather at our house. We studiously discussed anything other than Mousa. Just after 5pm, I received a phone call.

“I’m free”. He said.

3 hours later he was home. He had been in jail for 14 months and 3 days. I hadn’t seen him free in over one and a half years.

When I read Eilat’s piece on Jonathan’s incarceration, I thought it would be a good idea to present the experience of the spouse of a Palestinian prisoner. I asked friends of mine in Beit Ommar why no one wrote an article for the newspaper about the experience of Palestinian wives of prisoners, and if they’d like me to help them write one in English. Everyone of them laughed. “Ya Bekah”, they said, “who would read it? It’s not news, it’s life.” The wife of a Popular Committee member in Beit Ommar asked me if I’d like to write something about how to cook chicken “the Palestinian way”; it would be more news-worthy.

My experience was entirely average for Palestinian women. It is estimated that over 90% of the Palestinian adult male population has been in prison, often several times (this was Mousa’s 3rd imprisonment). Palestinian women carry their households and maintain hope in the face of unbelievable odds. Even for the majority of Palestinians who are sentenced to fixed periods of time, their release is not a given (as is the case with two activists from Bil’in, who were detained after their release dates and had their detentions extended). Life in Occupied Palestine is marked by uncertainty. An entire society lives in limbo, never knowing when a family will be torn apart, and when it will be reunited.

There has been quite a bit of Israeli and international media attention around the imprisonment of Jonathan Pollak, as well as other signs of increased repression of left-wing Jews inside Israel. 10,000 people, some wearing stickers of Jonathan, marched in Tel Aviv against the Israeli Knesset’s plan to investigate Israeli human rights and other progressive organizations last month. Yossi Sarid, a former Israeli cabinet member and now journalist with Haaretz, wrote about a recent visit to Jonathan while in prison, lauding Jonathan’s commitment to justice and activism. The attention is well-deserved: Jonathan has been one of the most hard-working, dedicated activists I have ever known. And yet I can’t help but feel a little frustrated with all the attention his case has received. Israel didn’t ‘finally’ cross a line when it started oppressing Jews. Jonathan’s case should be used as a plum line, to measure just how racist, how undemocratic Israel really is. He is the worst there is of the unarmed variety of Israeli political activists (a designation he should be proud of), and he is getting a third of his sentence reduced for “good behavior”. No one should be held in prison, least of all for fighting the injustice of a state, but let’s not forget the greater outrage: how Israel treats the 4.5 million non-citizens, and 1 million more second-class citizens, under its control.

Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren Visits Annapolis. Oren enjoys high credibility among Jewish elites and the Washington establishment (photo: Jay Baker / CC BY 2.0)

Originally posted on the 972Mag Website

In a piece recently published, Israel’s Ambassador to Washington Michael Oren rejected claims regarding anti-democratic trends in his country, and compared the legal status of Palestinians in the West Bank to that of American citizens in Washington DC and the U.S. territories. A response.

When Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu appointed Prof. Michael Oren – a historian and researcher at the conservative Shalem institute, author of a popular book on the 1967 war – as his ambassador to Washington, he was probably hoping to capitalize on the latter’s name-recognition and credibility, especially with the political establishment and the Jewish elites. And indeed, as criticism of the occupation and of various Knesset legislative initiatives intensified, Dr. Oren has published numerous articles in leading publications, defending his government policies. In doing so, he has enjoyed the credibility of the scholar, while doing purely political advocacy work.

Ambassador Oren’s latest’s piece, titled “Israel’s Resilient Democracy,” is a good example of this fact. I decided to review some of the main problems with this text, due to the considerable attention it received, as well as the credibility people give to Professor Oren’s work.

Prof. Oren opens by citing some of the criticism over his government and its policies, before declaring his intention in writing this piece in an academic-like tone:

…are the allegations justified? Is Israeli democracy truly in jeopardy? Are basic liberties and gender equality — the cornerstones of an open society — imperiled? Will Israel retain its character as both a Jewish and a democratic state — a redoubt of stability in the Middle East and of shared values with the United States?

These questions will be examined in depth, citing comparative, historical, and contemporary examples. The answers will show that, in the face of innumerable obstacles, Israeli democracy remains remarkable, resilient, and stable.

So let’s go in depth.

_______________

One of Ambassador Oren’s major points is that democratic principles were upheld in Israel and minority rights were respected even in times of war. He writes:

Israeli democracy is distinguished not only by its receptiveness to public opinion but, perhaps most singularly, by its ability to thrive during conflict. Whether by suspending habeas corpus or imprisoning a suspected ethnic community, as the United States did in its Civil War and World War II, embattled democracies frequently take measures that depart from peacetime norms.

What Michael Oren doesn’t say is that Israel didn’t have to change its laws in wartime because it adopted upon inception – and still retains – the British Mandate’s emergency regulations, which allow the state to shut down newspapers, detain people in secrecy and/or without trial and much more at any given moment. The state of emergency was never lifted.

Furthermore, in the last 45 years (amounting to two-thirds of the country’s history), the Palestinian population in the occupied territories has been under military law, which grants the state even more power.

Israeli legal scholars I consulted on this matter tended to agree that habeas corpus, mentioned above, does exist under military occupation (due to the Supreme Court’s extended jurisdiction), but they also said that in the military court system, this fact is all but meaningless. Over the years, Israel has held between hundreds and thousands Palestinians under administrative detention at any moment (the current number is roughly 300), without trial. Detainees under administrative detention are brought before a military judge – an officer in uniform – only after seven days; the evidence against them is confidential and the hearing takes place behind closed doors. They are not tried, so they have no real way to defend themselves. At times, Israel also held Palestinians as “enemy combatants,” with even fewer rights. There is one person held with this status even now.

Even when Palestinians are brought to trial, the burden of proof resting on the prosecution in Israel’s military courts is extremely low, and the result is an astonishing 99.7 conviction rate. (It should be noted that the conviction rate in the Israeli criminal system is also in the high 90s; that’s not an excuse, but rather a different problem.) Again, these are not temporary measures, but the permanent system under which all Palestinians – including hundreds of minors – are tried. Their Jewish neighbors living in the settlements are tried in Israeli courts, where they enjoy full rights as citizens.

Professor Oren knows all this. He also knows, but somehow fails to mention, that upon its creation in 1948, Israel placed all of its Palestinian citizens under military rule, which was lifted only in December 1966. The six-month period that lasted from that date to the Six Day War comprises the only time in Israel’s history when a majority of the Arab population under its control was not subject to military rule.

“The litmus test for any democracy is its ability to protect the rights of its minorities,” writes Oren. But does subjecting millions of people – the largest minority under the state’s control – to the arbitrary and often abusive control of the army, and be that “the most moral army in the world,” constitute a success in this test?

_______________

The following paragraph is probably the most upsetting for me as an Israeli. Ambassador Oren writes:

In fact, Israel has tolerated acts that would be deemed treasonous in virtually any other democracy. Ahmed Tibi, who once advised PLO Chairman Yasir Arafat andrecently praised Palestinian “martyrs” — a well-known euphemism for suicide bombers — serves as a member and deputy speaker of the Knesset.

Context: Knesset Member Ahmad Tibi (Raam-Taal / United Arab List) was recently accused by a rightwing watchdog group of giving a speech more than a year ago in which he praised suicide attacks on Israeli civilians. When the full video of the speech was released, it turned out that Tibi was referring to Palestinians who were killed in protests and to civilians who lost their lives. The version released by the watchdog group was heavily edited to create a false impression.

As a result, journalist Ben-Dror Yemini of Maariv and The Jerusalem Post, a well-known critic of the Arab Knesset members and one of those who broke the shahid (martyr) story, retracted his accusation both on his blog and in the printed paper. Yemini even went on Israeli public radio, saying: “I admit I was wrong. We owe an apology to [MK] Tibi.” The leading Israeli paper Yedioth Ahronoth also published an apology for running this story in its printed edition.

Not only did MK Tibi never praise suicide bombing, he is extremely consistent in denouncing the killing of Israeli civilians. Tibi is also a passionate critic of Holocaust denial in the Arab world, and can often be heard saying that “there is nothing more immoral than Holocaust denial.” There are two options here: Either Prof. Oren knowingly repeated a blood libel against the deputy speaker of his own Knesset, or he failed to fact check the issue before repeating those accusations. Both cases say something of the nature of Prof. Oren’s work, and demonstrate how easy it is to demonize Palestinians in Israel today.

_______________

In the very same paragraph, Oren writes:

Israeli Arab parties routinely call for dismantling the Jewish state, yet only one party was ever barred from Israeli elections: Kach, a Jewish party that preached hatred of Arabs.

So many problems in one sentence: Israeli Arab parties call for a “state for all its citizens,” meaning equal rights for everyone; “dismantling the Jewish state” is not on the platform, to the best of my knowledge. And there is a difference between the two positions. Second, an Arab party called Al-Arth was in fact prohibited from participating in the elections to the 6th Knesset (a famous case and a strange factual omission, coming from a historian). It is also worth noting that Israel’s Central Elections Committee disqualified Arab parties Balad and Raam-Taal from participating in the last elections; the decision had to be overruled by the High Court. At the same time, the committee has stopped disqualifying former Kach members from participating in the elections, and one of them – Michael Ben Ari – is even serving in the current Knesset. These facts are omitted from Ambassador Oren’s article.

_______________

The main rhetorical method Ambassador Oren uses is citing one or two pieces of criticism against Israel – usually placing them out of context, ignoring the heart of the matter – and then responding, preferably by citing praise Israeli democracy won in the past.

Take, for example, the part in the piece is titled “Democracy’s Litmus.” Oren deals here with two issues, and briefly touches on a third. He writes about (a) the NGO bill intended to heavily tax the support of foreign governments to local human rights organizations, (b) the issue of sexual equality in Israel and (c) the infamous boycott law.

Issue B is a red herring. Its sole intent is to divert attention from more structural faults. Nobody seriously argues that the (very real) problem of sexual inequality, evident especially in ultra-religious circles, is what lies behind the recent criticism against Israel. The question marks around Israel’s democracy have to do with the occupation and the status of the Palestinian minority. By “answering” the criticism regarding sexual equality, Ambassador Orem tries to blur the center of the debate, and makes the people voicing concerns – or criticism – look less serious, if not completely ignorant.

Regarding the NGO bill, Oren writes:

European governments contribute more to NGOs in Israel than to similar groups inall other Middle Eastern states combined. Eighty percent of those funds are directed toward political organizations that often oppose the government’s policies or, as in the case of Adalah and Badil, deny Israel’s legitimacy as a Jewish state.

The first figure Ambassador Oren cites is an oral estimate given to a journalist by rightwing professor Gerald Steinberg, head of the highly politicized group NGO Monitor. The second number – the 80 percent allegedly directed at opposition organizations – simply does not appear in the text Ambassador Oren is linking to, so there is no way of verifying it. Even so, Ambassador Oren conveniently forgets the important part: European support for government-sponsored Israeli institutions, such as universities, exceeds the support for human rights NGOs. The support for several NGOs is part of an engagement with Israeli civil society, from which all Israelis benefit.

In all likelihood, this – and not “the keen debate” regarding the law Oren mentions – was the reason Netanyahu froze the bill. According to some sources who were involved in the behind-the-scenes discussion, foreign diplomats made it clear to the prime minister that if the bill was to pass, support for all civil society in Israel, and not just the human rights NGOs, would likely suffer.

As for the third issue – the boycott law – Ambassador Oren abandons the attempt to find equivalents in other Western democracies. After all, even the Knesset’s own research institute didn’t come up with any. He concludes the debate with a remark (hope?) that “the Supreme Court may yet pass judgment on the bill.”

Ambassador Oren also writes:

To call Israeli democracy into question because of one suggested bill that never made it into law is unjust. Democracies consider many laws, some of them imperfect, without compromising their democratic character. In Israel, as in America, legislation is tabled, deliberated, and often rejected without impugning the democratic process. In fact, that is the democratic process.

It’s not “one bill.” The erosion of democratic rights of Israeli citizens (Palestinian residents, it should be remembered, never had any) has to do with many recent and not-so-recent initiatives: The boycott law, mentioned above, which limits effective political opposition to the occupation; the Nakba law, intended to prevent Palestinians and Palestinian institutions from remembering their national catastrophe; the segregated communities law, allowing small municipalities to reject applicants based on race and religion; the legislation in process regarding the Supreme Court, meant to limit juridical supervision of government actions and Knesset legislation; and the Citizenship Law, forbidding Arab citizens from bringing Palestinian spouses to live with them in Israel, and ultimately breaking up families.

This partial list is mostly from the recent Knesset. It doesn’t include the structural discrimination of the Arab minority in citizenship procedures or in acquisition of land – for example the fact that the JNF, a quasi-government agency, controls 13 percent of the land in Israel and leases it only to Jews.

Regardless of all of Ambassador Oren’s mistakes and omissions, by discussing one law, one bill, and one unrelated issue, he is not engaged in an effort to answer real concerns over Israeli policies, but quite the opposite: He is part of an effort to hide, dismiss or blur them.

______________

“Anomaly or Non-Democracy” is the title of the part in Oren’s piece dealing with the occupation. Israel’s ambassador to Washington opens with a quote from Peter Beinart, before moving on to his response (the fact that Beinart got the Jewish and Israeli mainstream to discuss the occupation again is perhaps his greatest achievement):

“Israel,” argues Peter Beinart, “is forging … an entity of dubious democratic legitimacy” that bars “West Bank Palestinians … from citizenship and the right to vote in the state that controls their lives.” Beinart’s reasoning is based on the assumption that the West Bank Palestinians are denied democratic rights, legal recourse, or any say in their future, and that Israel has taken no serious measures to facilitate Palestinian statehood.

In reality, the majority of the Palestinians in the West Bank reside in areas administered by the Palestinian Authority. Together with the Palestinians living under direct Israeli control, they vote in the Palestinian elections. These were scheduled for January 2010, but have been delayed by the Palestinian leadership — not by Israel. The Palestinian inhabitants of East Jerusalem, for their part, have also voted in the Palestinian elections.

Similarly, the legal situation in the West Bank cannot simply be reduced to democracy or non-democracy. Palestinian law applies to those Palestinians living under Palestinian Authority auspices. In Israeli-controlled areas and for Palestinians arrested for security offenses, Israeli military law, based on British and Jordanian precedents, is enforced. Such a patchwork might confound any democracy…

The denial of citizenship and all subsequent rights to Palestinians is not an “assumption” but a reality. Had Oren provided the entire story for his examples, this would have been clear.

As Oren says, Palestinians did get to vote for their elected council. International monitors stated that the procedures were fair and clean, but Israel didn’t recognize Hamas’ victory and imprisoned its elected officials. This is the reason elections weren’t held again – Israel will not let one of the two major parties participate. Regardless of what we might think of Hamas and the way to deal with it, the elections that took place and those that didn’t were the proof that Israel has the final – one might say only – word in the procedure. If this is a democracy, Ambassador Oren and the rest of the world have very different views of the word.

Furthermore, the president of the Palestinian Authority holds the title of an international leader but not the authority of so much as a United States mayor. Israel collects taxes for him (and keeps the money when it doesn’t like his attitude); Israel controls the territory between and around Palestinian cities and has the final word on every road that Palestinians want to built; Israel invades Palestinian towns and villages and carries out arrests; Israel controls the resources, and even electromagnetic frequencies. The PA was established under the Oslo Accords as a temporary body for the duration of the negotiations on the final agreement between Israelis and Palestinians, which were supposed to end in 1999. The sole sovereign in the West Bank is Israel. Palestinians have no say over their future. Correction: They have no say over their present.

Yet Ambassador Oren writes:

The existence of partially democratic enclaves within a democratic system does not necessarily discredit it. Residents of Washington, D.C., are taxed without representation, while those in the U.S. territories — Guam, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands — cannot vote in presidential elections. Anomalies exist in every democracy, and Israel’s is not voided by the situation in the West Bank.

I am not very fond of comparing countries to one another, let alone Israel and the United States – which are different in almost every way, from political culture to legal system to civil society tradition – but this is the analogy that lies at the heart of Ambassador’s Oren’s text, which intends to portray Israel as a tiny America, a bastion of civil rights in a hostile and strange environment.

So, following the ambassador’s suggestion, let’s imagine the Palestinians as the equivalent of American citizens living in Washington DC or in U.S. territories. But let’s take this analogy all the way: Imagine that those citizens are under military control, where no warrant is needed to invade their houses at night and arrest them. Let’s imagine that 7 percent of all prisoners are currently held without trial for months and years. That everyone, including children, are tried by military tribunals. That complaints of torture – there have been more than 700 of these in the previous decade – could be sealed at the order of an internal security officer.

Let’s imagine those citizens surrounded by walls and fences and a system of dozens of roadblocks, some of them permanent with many appearing and disappearing every day, between the various suburbs and towns, so a route that could take 10 minute to drive regularly turns into a journey of hours. Let’s imagine them unable to relocate or travel abroad without a special permit, notoriously hard to obtain, from the military authorities.

And on top of this, they can’t vote.

And now let’s imagine this unique situation applied to a third of the population under the United State’s control – say 100 million – for two-thirds of the country’s history, meaning over 150 years. This would be the proper analogy, if we were to follow Ambassador Oren’s logic. It doesn’t sound very democratic.

_____________

There are many other problems, half-truths and misrepresentations in Ambassador’s Oren text. I didn’t touch here on his interpretation of the collapse of the diplomatic process (“Prime Minister Netanyahu has made the two-state solution the cornerstone of his diplomatic platform” – seriously?), nor his claims regarding the state of the Christian minority under Israeli control (see more here). In one of my future posts I might touch on the implications of some of the deeper arguments he makes – for example Israel being a unique historic case and at the same time a “classic” Western democracy.

Except for the story involving MK Tibi, in which the ambassador to Washington helped spread a slanderous lie about his own parliament’s deputy speaker, one could argue that Ambassador Michael Oren is simply doing the job he was hired to do. Yet this much should be clear: Professor Michael Oren would not have dared to submit his Foreign Policy article to a proper academic review. It is a propaganda piece in the service of the occupation – not “analysis” – and it should be treated as such.

Click here for the Facebook page of Al Quds educational TV (mostly in Arabic.)

Dr. Jamal Nusseibeh
Vice President for Jerusalem Affairs
Al-Quds University
April 2, 2012

For the second time in two months, the Israeli authorities have invaded, searched and prevented the functioning of Al-Quds University’s Institute of Modern Media. This time, they prevented skype contact for an event taking place simultaneously in Jerusalem and Ramallah.

Today, at 12:55 pm local time, plain clothes police arrived at the offices of the Institute of Modern Media, at Al-Quds University, in the old city of Jerusalem. University faculty and students and invited guests had gathered at the location to launch Hona Al-Quds (“Jerusalem is Here” an online multi-media community network focusing on Jerusalem. After mingling with the guests for about fifteen minutes, without any warning, the police locked the office doors, shutting some guest inside and some outside, ransacked the offices, and collected the identification documents of all those inside the building. The building was by that time surrounded by soldiers. They presented those outside with an order in Hebrew, signed by the Israeli Minister for Internal Security, forbidding the launch event on the grounds that it was a “PA” event, i.e. organized by the Palestinian Authority. This was despite the fact that Honaalquds is clearly a part of Al-Quds University, since 1996, recognized as an independent NGO by the Israeli authorities. The Israelis arrested two Al-Quds University employees: Adel Ruished, Administrative Director of Jerusalem Affairs, and Mohannad Izheman, University security guard. Since then, Mr Izheman has been released with a summons to return tomorrow and Mr Ruished is being held at the central Israeli police station.

The University condemns this action as a violation of principles and agreements which protect free speech, academic freedom, and the freedom of the press. This is the second such invasion in recent weeks. On February 29, in the middle of the night, an Israeli military unit invaded the main office of the Institute of Modern Media in Ramallah, searched the offices, and removed the transmitter which the university used to broadcast educational TV programs, including Sesame Street and other programmes for very young children, and a wide variety of programmes for the benefit of the community. The University is an independent institution, neither administered nor governed by the Palestinian Authority. The Institute’s primary mission is to educate and train undergraduate students in media studies and to share university and local news with area residents, and to serve and educate the broader community.

Tuesday, 3 April 2012

“Youth Against Settlements’” Badia Dweik: “While we were violently evicted, the army treats settlers with kid gloves.”

While Israeli PM and his ministers scramble to prevent the eviction of a Palestinian-owned house in Hebron that was taken over by Jewish settlers last week, a video documenting the violent eviction of Palestinian activists from a nearby house owned by the Hebron municipality two days ago, shows extensive use of force.

The eviction, which took place on Sundayy in the Old City of Hebron, was carried out by a large force of Israeli Border Police officers. During the eviction, the force heavily employed the use of tear-gas and a foul smelling liquid called “The Skunk”. Additionally dozens were physically assaulted, with at least five of the activists ending up at the hospital. The activists, members of the local group “Youth Against Settlements”, intended to renovate and take residence in the house in order to prevent it from being taken over by Israeli settlers.

The video documents Israeli Border Police officers storming the house, dealing blows to the completely peaceful activist using batons and their rifles. While a Dutch who was arrested was already unconditionally released yesterday, the detained Palestinian activist who is a coordinator of the Youth Against Settlements movement, Issa Amro, was only released today after depositing a 1,000 Shekels bond as bail.

The activists were evicted despite having acquired a written permission to use the premises from the Hebron Women’s Charitable Society, which rents the house from its owners – The Hebron Municipality. Only days earlier, when settlers took over a nearby Palestinian house, Israeli Authorities refrained from employing force, allowing the settlers to remain in the house. Badia Dwaik, an activist with “Youth Against Settlement”, who was inside the house during the eviction said, “The recent takeover of a nearby house by settlers brought about further restrictions on the already heavily constrained Palestinian movement in the area, including for those families living there. While we were violently evicted from a house we had legal rights to, the army treats settlers who took over a Palestinian house with kid gloves”

Background
Over the years, Israel established a number of settlement points in and around the Old City of Hebron, which had traditionally served as the commercial center for the entire southern West Bank. To perpetuate the settlements in the city, Israeli authorities impose a regime intentionally and openly based on the “separation principle”, as a result of which Israel created legal and physical segregation between the Israeli settlers and the Palestinian majority.

This policy led to the economic collapse of the center of Hebron and drove many Palestinians out of the area. The findings of a survey conducted B’Tselem and ACRI in 2007, show that at least 1,014 Palestinian housing units in the center of Hebron have been vacated by their occupants. This number represents 41.9 percent of the housing units in the relevant area. Sixty-five percent (659) of the empty apartments became vacant during the course of the second intifada. Regarding Palestinian commercial establishments, 1,829 are no longer open for business. This number represents 76.6 percent of all the commercial establishments in the surveyed area. Of the closed businesses, 62.4 percent (1,141) were closed during the second intifada. At least 440 of them closed pursuant to military orders.

The main elements of Israel’s separation policy are the severe and extensive restrictions on Palestinian movement and the authorities’ compliance with settlers violence directed at Palestinians. The city’s residents also suffer as a direct result of the actions of Israel authorities.

Restriction on Palestinian movement and the closing of businesses
During the first three years of the second intifada, Palestinians in the city center of Hebron were put under curfew for more than 377 days total, including a consecutive period of 182 days, with short breaks to obtain provisions.In addition, the army created a contiguous strip of land in the City Center along which the movement of Palestinian vehicles is forbidden. The middle of the strip contains many sections of road that the army forbids even Palestinian pedestrians to use. The strip blocks the main north-south traffic artery in the city, and therefore affects the entire city.The extensive prohibitions have led to the closing of hundreds of shops, in addition to those that were closed under military order.

Settler violence
Settlers in Hebron have routinely abused the city’s Palestinian residents, sometimes using extreme violence. Throughout the second intifada, settlers have committed physical assaults, including beatings, at times with clubs, stone throwing, and hurling of refuse, sand, water, chlorine, and empty bottles. Settlers have destroyed shops and doors, committed thefts, and chopped down fruit trees. Settlers have also been involved in gunfire, attempts to run people over, poisoning of a water well, breaking into homes, spilling of hot liquid on the face of a Palestinian, and the killing of a young Palestinian girl.Soldiers are generally positioned on every street corner in and near the settlement points, but in most cases they do nothing to protect Palestinians from settlers’ attacks.

Institutionalized aggression
The increased presence of Israeli soldiers and police in the Hebron city center regularly brings with it violence and harassment towards Palestinians. Violence, arbitrary house searches, seizure of houses, harassment, detaining passersby, and humiliating treatment have become part of daily reality for Palestinians and have led many of them to move to safer places.

Many times, these conscientious objectors (COs) are imprisoned for refusing to serve in the army, as the military service is mandatory in Israel for all youth at the age of 18 for a period of 3 years for men and 2 years for women (There are parts of Israeli society that are automatically exempted from military service such as the Palestinian citizens of Israel and most Jewish-religious women).

In the coming month, two 18 year-old youth (one male and one female) will refuse to serve in the army, declaring that they can not take part in the violent oppression of the Palestinian people.

These brave youth each wrote a declaration explaining why they refuse to be drafted into the Israeli army, and would rather sit in prison than implement the violent policies of oppression of the Israeli army and government:

Noam Gur, an 18 year old women from the north of Israel, expected to refuse and be imprisoned on April 16th, explains:

For 64 years Israel is implementing a policy of Apartheid and occupation in all territories under its control, that includes among other things, ethnic cleansing, house demolitions, ongoing siege, violent attacks, discrimination of the non-Jewish citizens of Israel and so on. When I understood all of this, I decided to refuse.

My refusal comes as an act of support and transition to a non-violent struggle to promote a just peace in Palestine-Israel, that will be based on full human and civil rights for all residents and refugees. I choose to refuse publicly and am willing to pay the price that the Israeli army will choose to lay upon me, in order to try and raise awareness to this injustice both in Israel and in the rest of the world.”.

Alon Gurman, a 19 year old man from Tel Aviv expected to refuse and be imprisoned on April 16th, explains:

We have always been told that the Israeli military is meant to defend the citizens of Israel, when in reality, living in security has nothing to do with occupation and apartheid. The Israeli military acts in a way that is meant to embitter the lives of Palestinians, oppress any resistance to the occupation, and perpetuate a rule of terror, by applying extreme violence against civilian population, upholding an oppressive military “justice” system, a siege on Gaza, vast military operations and random house demolitions.

My refusal is an opportunity to raise awareness of the Israeli military’s racist crimes and to call upon the people of the world to stand by Palestinians in their nonviolent struggle against occupation and apartheid, and support their call for BDS – boycott, divestment and sanctions on Israel, in solidarity with a society under occupation, striving for freedom, justice and equality.”

As Israel does not recognize the act of refusing military service, the army will sentence them as soldiers who refused an order: the order to become soldiers. They will be sentenced for disobeying an order in a military court, and sent to a military prison for a period of a few weeks after which they will be ordered again to become soldiers, refuse again, be sentenced again and imprisoned again. This my repeat itself for months.

Joining them is a reserved service officer who after serving in both the second Lebanon war and the attack on Gaza in 2009 (Operation Cast Lead), decided that he can no longer be a tool in the hands of the government implementing this injustice, and has declared his refusal to continue serving in the reserved service. Today, after ignoring his last order for reserved service, he is considered a deserter and plans to turn himself in with the two other young refusers.

Yigal Levin, a 25 year old man, burn in Ukraine and raised in Israel, expected be imprisoned on April 16th, explains:

Part of my ideology was that the state has to be wise, responsible, decent and protective. In Lebanon, I saw a war that started for no clear reason, where soldiers died in vain while also committing a massacre against the Lebanese.

The Israeli army is commonly considered to be ‘the people’s army’, an army of the people protecting the people,” writes Levin in his own statement. “But in fact, the Israeli army is simply a bourgeois army – a tool in the hands of a small clique, which does not give a damn about the people… Not willing to remain a mere tool, a traitor, and a hypocrite, I decided to terminate my participation in it.”

We will update about their imprisonment and ways to help in the coming weeks. For more information contact shministim@gmail.com.

For farther information about the refusers:

J’accuse: Israeli youth headed to prison for refusing the draft – Haggai Matar on +972 Magazine

Four young Israelis refuse army draft in new refusenik wave – Haggai Matar on +972 Magazine

Two Israeli refusers on why they support BDS –  Noam Gur and Alon Gurman on Mondoweiss

Interview with Israeli refuser Noam Gur  - Annie Robbins on Mondoweiss

“I can’t take part in these crimes”: Israeli refusenik interviewed – Jillian Kestler-D’Amours on The Electronic Intifada

The reality (Trayvon’s killer was a Latino man) is that the tendency to see someone else as a threat out of all proportion, sense, and empathy knows no nationality, ethnicity, or religion. It’s only a question of what uniform people wear, what security systems they have access to, what weapons they carry, and what laws privilege them over others or encourage their worse impulses. Add those things together and no group is immune. Take them down, disband them,  and more kids like Trayvon and Iz al-deen can grow up.

The graphic pictures of Iz al-deen can be seen here. 

you can take action for Trayvon here on his parent’s Change.org petition. 

and here is an Arab man calling for solidarity with Trayvon prior to Iz al-deen’s shooting.

Update: here is another shooting from my home state of Wisconsin, which apparently has a similar law sponsored by ALEC.

A

By Wendy Elisheva Somerson
My friend Selma and I were gripping each other’s hands tightly last Thursday night, March 15th, as Seattle’s LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender) Commission voted on whether to cancel an Israeli pinkwashing event that was scheduled to happen the next day at Seattle City Hall. We had both spoken in favor of cancelling the event, and I knew that Selma, a queer Palestinian American activist, couldn’t help but feel like they were deciding on the legitimacy of her personal history.

For a few weeks prior to this eventful night, activists in the Pacific Northwest were mobilizing to respond to the March pinkwashing tour, “Rainbow Generations: Building New LGBTQ Pride & Inclusion in Israel,” which was coming to our region. StandWithUs and the Israeli Consulate sponsored four leaders of Israeli LGBT organizations to visit the Northwest to “share the innovative work they are doing in Israel, learn from counterparts in the US, and build relationships for future collaboration.”

What could be wrong with inclusion, pride, and collaboration? Nothing until you realize that this warm and fuzzy rainbow disguises a cynical government campaign. Events like this are part of “Brand Israel,” a public relations program launched in 2005 to promote Israel as the progressive center of cultural advances in the Middle East in order to deflect criticism of Israel’s violations of Palestinian rights.  Pinkwashing refers to the arm of this campaign that positions Israel as an oasis of gay freedom surrounded by uncivilized and homophobic Arabs, particularly Palestinians.

Right Wing militant Israel advocacy organizations, such as StandWithUs, use racist language and imagery to highlight the violence that gay Palestinians face. However, they never mention the daily violence, persecution and restriction all Palestinians, whatever their sexual orientation, face from the Israeli government under Occupation.  Claiming that Palestinians find refuge in Israel, StandWithUs conveniently ignores the fact that Palestinians in the West Bank, Gaza Strip or refugee communities are specifically ineligible for asylum under Israeli law. Pinkwashing invisibilizes the work of queer Palestinian activist organizations al Qaws and Aswat who simultaneously fight homophobia and Israeli Occupation.

When we heard about the pinkwashing tour, queer anti-Occupation activists across the Puget Sound quickly started making phone calls, writing letters, organizing teach-ins, and holding protests. And we were gaining momentum: An event at a youth center in Tacoma was cancelled, and an event in Olympia that was forced to switch venues at the last minute was poorly attended.

In Seattle our chapter of Jewish Voice for Peace and other groups were preparing to hold a protest to educate folks about pinkwashing at the major event of the tour—a reception hosted by Seattle’s LGBT Commission for the “Rainbow Generation” speakers on March 16th at Seattle City Hall.

Then we found out that the Commission was holding a public meeting the night before the event. A coalition of Jewish and Palestinian American queer activists, who have been doing anti-Occupation work together for years, attended the Commission meeting. In the time for public comments, three Jewish Voice for Peace activists (Stefanie, Katie and I), explained that we were not opposed to hearing from individual gay Israelis, but that we could not support a tour backed by the hateful group StandWithUs and the Israeli government. We also differentiated between being critical of Israeli government propaganda and actual instances of anti-Semitism that discriminate against Jewish people.

After a couple folks in favor of holding the event argued that we should never close the door on dialogue, several of us pointed out that a true dialogue was not possible in an event where Palestinian voices were not only absent but invisiblized. As queer Jewish activists, we demonstrated that we were doubly refusing to let our queer AND Jewish identities be used to justify the Israeli Occupation. By addressing objections to cancelling the event, we worked as allies to our Palestinian American friends, Selma and Laila, to create space for each of them to tell their stories.

Selma read from her letter to the Commission about how her father became a refugee when their home in Palestine was ethnically cleansed in 1948. She linked this dispossession to how pinkwashing covers up Israeli policies that hurt her and her community and explained that her queer and Palestinian identities are inextricably linked together. Then Laila, a queer Palestinian whose family has Israeli citizenship, explained that her family members are treated as fourth-class citizens within Israel. She described how her visits to Israel are accompanied by government harassment simply because of her ancestry.

In spite of the emotional effect these powerful stories appeared to have on everyone in the room, one of the Commission co-chairs thanked us for coming and informed us that the event would take place as planned. I thought to myself wearily that this was “business as usual.”

But then something extraordinary happened. With tears in his eyes and a voice shaking with emotion, one of the Commissioners said that he felt they had made a huge mistake because they had no idea that holding this event meant marginalizing and invisibilizing Palestinian LGBT folks. Another Commissioner followed this brave lead by saying he felt nauseous just thinking about how they were being used to promote government propaganda. Many Commissioners described their own naiveté when they agreed to host this event and their subsequent confusion.

Next Stefanie jumped in to point out how it was no coincidence that they felt confused because pinkwashing propaganda is designed to obfuscate the truth, but nonetheless they still had the opportunity to make things right. Selma spoke eloquently about how hosting this event would mean a betrayal of the city’s Race and Social Justice Initiative because it supported covert racism. She demanded that they listen to their consciences:

By being courageous and taking a stand and canceling this event, you will be standing alongside many other national and international organizations and leaders who have said no to the exploitation of our queer community to wash away war crimes that continue to subjugate and oppress my family and my community.

After they put forward the motion to vote, we watched as six out of the eight Commissioners raised their hands in favor of cancelling the event. My grip on Selma’s hand tightened, and I just kept repeating, “it was a majority, a majority!” We hugged in joyful disbelief. Something momentous and unusual happened that night in City Hall: Palestinian American stories were put at the center. The Commissioners listened to Selma’s and Laila’s moving testimonies about their experiences and activism as queer Palestinians, and these stories prompted them to change their minds.

On our way out of the room, we exchanged hugs with the Commissioners who voted to cancel the event, and they thanked us for showing up and telling our stories.
Outside of city hall, our small group of activists and supporters literally jumped up and down with excitement and joy to celebrate a victory made possible by years of working together in coalition.

The next day while listening to Brene Brown’s TEDx talk where she re-categorizes our willingness to be vulnerable as strength, I realized that many people in the Commission meeting that night demonstrated this truth. Laila and Selma were willing to be vulnerable and share their own stories of pain and resilience. Moved by these heartfelt stories, the Commissioners were willing to be vulnerable enough to admit that they had made a mistake. Most importantly, they took the additional step of attempting to repair the damage of their mistake by refusing to be complicit in pinkwashing.

When the LGBT Commissioners took the courageous stance of cancelling this event, they privileged the voices of individual queer activists in our communities over StandWithUs and the Israeli consulate, who want to use our queerness to forward their pro-Occupation agenda.  This time around, as anti-Occupation activists, we got to call off our protest and instead celebrate how we made our queer Jewish and Palestinian voices heard.