Armed and Dangerous

Getting back home was a long, and somewhat traumatic experience. There are a few days I still have yet to blog about, but I really want to share this before I back track.

On Monday morning, the IDF raided Qalandia refugee camp, killing three and injuring 15. This camp was only a mile or two away from where I was staying in Ramallah. For some lovely photos and reactions, see this blog from my friend from the delegation. It was surreal. Everything was shut down, everyone was mourning. Banners and posters of the faces of the martyrs lined the streets, and the usual sense of urgency and routine that Ramallah had for the previous days I had been there was gone. Stillness and grief was upon us all.

Since there were no buses or taxis allowed through the checkpoint, I got a ride from a friend's roommate to the checkpoint. After an emotional goodbye to a few folks from my delegation, I walked through hoping to find some form of transportation to Jerusalem on the other side. Though I had walked through once before with the delegation, I really had no idea what to do or where to go. Picture four narrow caged hallways with rotating doors at each end, voices shouting on the loud speaker and various stopping points along the way. A teenaged boy passing through kindly pointed to the last hall and said "wrong line!" I hobbled back down the narrow cage with all of my luggage barely fitting through and made my way to the front. I waited a few minutes, and a loud buzzer and flashing light signaled that it was my turn to go through. I showed the border control officers (seemingly younger than I am) my passport, sent my bags through the scanner and I was finally on my way with tears in my eyes.

A sigh of relief rose up inside me when I saw a bus waiting on the other side. I hopped on board and was off to Jerusalem. Since this was a Palestinian bus, it was allowed only to the edge of East Jerusalem. I got off at the last stop and walked to the restaurant where I had arranged for the shuttle to the airport in Tel Aviv. The shuttle is run by an Israeli company, so it would not go any farther into East Jerusalem for "security" reasons. The bus driver was visibly fearful when I boarded the bus. He did not look me in the eye, did not get out to help me with my bags and motioned with his hands to hurry it up. When we crossed over into West Jerusalem, his mood changed. He greeted the passengers, stood outside the bus to wait for them and helped them open the trunk and put their luggage away. Of course, this made me more than a little bit angry.

We arrived at the airport and I made my way to my gate. At the front of the line, a woman waited to check passports and ask a few questions. She looked at me, looked at my passport, looked at me again and furrowed her brow. "Pronounce your last name," she barked. The urgency melted off of her face when I pronounced it in the Anglicized form it takes when I say it. She asked me a few more questions Who were you here with? Do you have family here? Did you pack your bags yourself? Do you have family here? Did anyone give you gifts or packages while you were here/ DO YOU HAVE FAMILY HERE? My answers were luckily exactly what she wanted to hear, though she clearly was not convinced that my kind of brown was not the dangerous kind. I am asking you this for your own safety. She told me. Phew, I feel so much safer!  is what I wanted to condescendingly reply with. Instead I moved on to have my bags checked after having a coded sticker attached to my passport. The code indicated that I was not particularly threatening.

I nervously approached the bag-checking area, knowing there were a few things in my bags they would not be happy to see. Sure enough my nervousness was founded. They saw my "Visit Palestine" poster and some keffiyehs wrapped in "Made in Palestine" packaging. The man checking my bag looked up disdainfully and called over his manager. When she arrived she scoffed and began another series of questions. Why are you here? Do you have family here? What group were you here with? Do they have a political agenda? I see you were in the Palestinian territories, where exactly were you? Who gave you these things? I answered honestly. It is not illegal for me to be in Palestine, there is no reason for me to be evasive. They already knew I was there, and that was threatening enough. They proceeded to question me and look through every single one of my items for the next 2 hours. They took everything out to be x-rayed separately. They searched my computer, went through my photos and email, and swabbed samples of everything. They took me into a separate room to be patted down, frisked, and swabbed by a White American woman who was apparently no older than I and was also apparently Israeli now. They took the olive oil and coffee I had purchased in Jerusalem and Bethlehem and wrapped and packaged it separately. "Don't worry, you don't have to pay to check this box." OH I AM SO RELIEVED NOW, THANKS FOR YOUR KINDNESS is what I wanted to sarcastically scream. Each of my bags and my passport was then labelled with a new code. The bad-girl code. I was finally escorted through passport control to my gate by security personnel.

Obviously this was incredibly annoying, frustrating and demoralizing (which is the point), but it was also strangely empowering. They obviously did not find anything that threatened anyone's physical safety in my bags or on me. What they did find was evidence of what I saw, and that scared them. I was not armed with weapons, but with ideas. I am armed with the truth, and I am ready for combat.

Existence is Resistance

On Monday morning we met with Zoughbi, the director of Wi'am Palestinian Conflict Transformation Center. The name is pretty descriptive of what they do there. Occupation not only creates tension and conflict between occupier and occupied, it creates tension and conflict amongst the occupied, and Wi'am aims to work through those conflicts. We all sat around the table over coffee and tea and absorbed Zoughbi's wise words. "Instead of cursing darkness, we light a humble candle," he tells us. He believes in non-violent, transformative and restorative resolutions to conflict that will heal people, families and communities. He addressed power imbalances that occupation amplifies, and acts as a third party to "empower the weak and bring the strong to their senses." He believes in restorative reconciliation, not punitive, and is working to foster this approach to Palestinian youth. "We need collective human security," he told us, and this resonated very deeply for me after constantly being bombarded with Nationalistic jargon about security in a way that is never inclusive of all humans. What an inspiring talk!

After Wi'am we went to meet with Lubnah who works for Badil, an organization that provides resources and does advocacy work for the Palestinian refugee/IDP (Internally Displaced Persons) population. Lubnah is very knowledgeable, we learned a ton from her presentation. A few notable tidbits:

• 66% of Palestinians are refugees, mainly from the British mandate (1922-1947), the Nakba (1948) and the Six Day War (1967)
• During the latter two periods, Palestinian communities were attacked from three sides, with a fourth open for forced flight to a particular destination.
• Only 1% of building permits are approved for Palestinians each year (this includes schools, hospitals, houses... etc.). Any building without a permit is eligible for demolition.
• There are over 140 recognized Nationalities in Israel. "Israeli" is not one of them. 
• Judaism is defined by maternal inheritance under Israeli law, not by religion. In the 1990s, 1 million Russian people migrated to Israel. 200,000 were Christian, but they were all granted Jewish Nationality, so as to increase the Jewish demographic.
• Tax money for the West Bank is granted to the Palestinian Authority in exchange for their complicity.
• 60% of Jordan's population is made up of Palestinian refugees. 

Check out their interactive website here for more information on the ongoing displacement of Palestinians.

After our meeting with Badil, we went to a restaurant to meet with Nora Carmi, representative of Kairos Palestine, a coalition of Palestinian Christians who put together the 'Moment of Truth' document to share with the Christian community worldwide. It starts with:

We, the Patriarchs and Heads of Churches in Jerusalem, hear the cry of hope that our
children have launched in these difficult times that we still experience in this Holy Land.
We support them and stand by them in their faith, their hope, their love and their vision 
for the future. We also support the call to all our faithful as well as to the Israeli and 
Palestinian Leaders, to the International Community and to the World Churches, in order 
to accelerate the achievement of justice, peace and reconciliation in this Holy Land . We
ask God to bless all our children by giving them more power in order to contribute 
effectively in establishing and developing their community, while making it a community 
of love, trust, justice and peace.

They have a faith-based approach to justice in Palestine and are doing excellent work. Nora told us "even though I do not like every Israeli, every Palestinian, or every American, I love justice, and I love the human being." I definitely encourage anyone who is working in communities of faith to look in to this document more, it is very inspiring. Nora was born just months before the Nakba (literally "catastrophe," it refers to the ethnic cleansing and displacement of Palestinians in 1948 upon the creation of Israel) to an Armenian father who survived the Armenian genocide. Displacement is something she lives and breathes, and she spoke with such eloquence, such faith and such kindness.

After lunch, we left Bethlehem for Bil'in! I was super excited for this one. Bil'in is the town known around the world for its non-violent resistance movement against the wall. The Oscar-nominated "Five Broken Cameras" was filmed here. We heard from Iyad Burnat about the successes the community has encountered. They were able to have the wall moved about 200 meters! Much of their land has still been appropriated for the projected 3600 subsidized settlers moving in next door.

Iyad shows us IFPB's name on the wall!

The road to the left is where the wall used to be. It was rebuilt to the right. A huge victory for this community!

Inside the main office

An olive tree on the hill. Many of them are burned down, or destroyed by tear gas.

You can see the settlement over the wall when you stand on top of the hill.

Tear gas canisters shot by IDF soldiers during their weekly protests.

The spot where Bassem (known in the movie as Phil) was killed.

We had the privilege of staying with a family in Bil'in that night and hear about their lives, and their hopes for their community. We had a delicious meal and such nice company. Unfortunately that night I got some kind of flu or virus, which was unfortunate. I had to miss all of the next day's activities, so I won't be posting anything about Tuesday.

Who holds the key?

On Sunday we journeyed to Nablus after a home-stay at the New Askar refugee camp (see my post about Ana for more on the camp). In Nablus, we first visited the Human Supporters Association who work especially with Palestinian children in Nablus. Dani and Mohammed talked to us about how the idea of safety and security has largely vanished from the hearts and minds of Palestinian children. There is no place where they feel safe. This is, again, something that sounds familiar when talking about young children of color in the US, especially in cities. We talk about security constantly. Whether the NSA, the apartheid wall in Palestine, Trayvon Martin's murder, we also use this narrative about protecting ourselves or our state. But what does this really mean? Who are we protecting ourselves from and who is protecting those people? Is this polarization, useful, accurate and necessary or does it breed dissent and more violence?

The Human Supporters Association uses artistic methodology to fight against this dissent that occupation breeds and provide a safe space for children (or as safe as it possibly can be). They are active in the non-violent resistance movement. One action that they often do is have picnics at checkpoints to protest the lack of normalcy their lives have been stripped of. They get taken away after no more than a few minutes every time.

We took a short tour of Nablus as well. Here are a few notable moments:

Mural outside of the Human Supporters Association

The door of an old soap factory that was closed down. Nablus is famous for its soap.

Nablus city center

The poster of someone buried in the "Graveyard of Numbers," where Palestinians killed by IDF soldiers are buried and imprisoned. Their families are not permitted to keep their remains or to visit them. After 20 years and some DNA testing to prove the body's blood relationship to the family, the remains are released and they are allowed a proper burial. For more on this, read my friend and fellow delegate's piece in Mondoweiss here.

Outside of what used to be the largest soap factory in Nablus, but was destroyed, Dani tells us that his ID specifies that he is Muslim, making profiling easier.

Next we went to meet with Noor women's empowerment group and had a cooking lesson with them. Noor is located in the Aida refugee camp in Bethlehem. They work to empower the women in their community in various ways. For more information on what they do go here. We made some delicious sambousek and had an amazing lunch with them.

 

We had a tour of Aida refugee camp, which is under UN aid. Many of the refugees from Aida fled to Bethlehem after the infamous Deir Yassin massacre in 1948, some say this is what started the war that ended in Israel's "independence." The families first lived in tents, thinking they would be able to return to their homes after the war was over, but it became apparent that this was not going to happen. In 1953 the UN provided aid to build units (one unit per family of five) with shared kitchens and bathrooms. Due to movement restrictions and permit issues, they can build only up, and not out. Since they must keep water in tanks on top of their roofs, building up is limited as well since the buildings will crumble under the pressure of too many tanks. The tanks are necessary since their water is turned on only 6 hours every 2 weeks. When people want to get married and start families, they are essentially stuck with no where to go.

Many refugee families still have the original keys to their houses, even though most are demolished. The key has become a symbol of the right of return for refugees and internally displaced persons.

In 2002, the UN school was attacked by IDF soldiers. One teacher was killed. There are still bullet holes in the door to the school.

We had some free time to explore Bethlehem as well:

I found Bethlehem to be a much less visibly political space, save for this sign in the square calling for the release of political prisoners.

The Church of the Nativity

The Journey Continues

Saturday began with a tour and debrief of what is happening within the Bedouin community in Jerusalem. It was led by Angela, a representative of Jahalin, an organization that defends the rights of the Bedouin people and helps empower them to fight against their encroaching displacement under the Prawer plan (which will not be the first time that this community has been forced off their land).  We also spoke with Eid, a man of the Bedouin community about his work to help provide the children with the schooling that they need.

Angela talked about some familiar struggles with minority groups in the US. While they are struggling for survival and the resources which have been denied them, they are also building the houses of the settlements that are displacing them. We’ve heard this story all too many times.

Eid talked about what he saw to be the most important issue facing their community. Education. The schools that their children could go to (beyond the settlements) are an 18-22 kilometer walk away from their homes. Eid said this is an especially impossible for the young girls. Because the must cross the settlement-only highways by foot, 5 have been killed in car accidents and 4 injured. They were told that a bus would come pick them up, but this has yet to happen. Many of the children would hide out in the hills 3 km away and come home at the end of the day to avoid having to tell their parents that this was too much to bear. Eventually, they applied for permits to have their own school built, but they were denied. In general, the Bedouins are forbidden from building with brick and cement, so they gathered together to collect tires and clay from around them to build themselves a school.

We had the chance to visit this school and listen to Eid’s stories. Hey are receiving some aid from the UN, but they still have a demolition order out for the school. This is the case for many, many buildings all over Palestine, and the fight continues.

The next stop was the Freedom Theater in Jenin refugee camp. It was incredibly inspiring to see all the work that they do for their community. One thing, among many, that is missing from the youth of Jenin’s education is a cultural one. The theater was built in 1988 by a Jewish Israeli, Anna and her son Juliano. It served as a center for kids to come together and create. To create community and to create art. It was destroyed in 2002, during the second intifada, after Jenin was marked as a place that creates terrorists. The theater was later rebuilt, and is picking up where it left off. They have programs for kids of all ages to be able to express themselves through theater. They renamed the theater “Freedom Theater” to emphasize the ways in which theater can be used to lift that occupation of the spirit. They told us that the third intifada should be a fight of ideas, which is more dangerous and more effective!

Ana en mi corazón

Friends, this is a difficult one for me. So much has happened over the last few days, but there is one thing laying unbearably heavy on my heart. A memory rushing to the surface.

Yesterday we spent some time in the Aksar refugee camp. Walking through the streets felt like home. It felt like Haines street, it felt like Mexico City, it felt like Santo Domingo. Everybody knows each other, everybody cares for each other, and everybody knows what it means to be displaced in one way or another. This felt warm and safe, which was ironic seeing as this is one of the places many people would be shocked to hear I visited. It's what they refer to when they say Lauren, stay safe.

Amjad gave us some background on the history of Aksar and all of the programs they have. "We are simple people" he said, "but there is not anyone hungry here. There is not anyone homeless." For everyone we passed by, he would say this man was in jail for five years, this one for ten. Towards the end of the tour he took us to the grave sites of seven people who were killed by rockets, bullets or in one case, sadness. He told the story of each one. How one was blown to pieces, his arm found atop a restaurant umbrella days later. A father who suffered from asthma and died shortly after his son was killed by a rocket. One of these was Amjad's best friend. Through all these stories I could think of only one thing. My great-grandmother, Ana. She was a fierce, loving, intense 98 year old who had seen so much joy and sorrow in her life it could fill a city. She was murdered in her own house in 2010 by a 15 and 17 year old in a standard robbery. I still remember getting that phone call from my dad, hanging up the phone, collapsing to the ground and sobbing uncontrollably. When I heard Amjad telling this story, I wanted to collapse again. I can't imagine this happening to my family seven times over. Or to my best friend, or my sister. Ana's death was dehabilitating for me for weeks after it happened, and it still makes me cry whenever I think of her. I only had the pleasure of meeting her a few times in my life.

How can people go on living their lives when this is happening? It is not only their land, their movement, their water that is being occupied, but their spirit. This community has banded together and allowed all the things that are trying to tear them apart actually bring them together. This gave me a sense of incredibly deep and profound hope and admiration.

Ana, you are not forgotten. Palestine, you are not forgotten.

Never Again.

Yad Vashem (the Holocaust museum) was not something any of us was looking forward to. Suffering is never fun to watch. Around every corner of the museum was something horrifying and disturbing. Photos and testimonies and journal entries and letters memorializing and documenting the horrendous and appalling acts that were committed against Jewish people and other non-white non-christian non-heterosexual people during the Holocaust. It was a lot to take in. It was also very emotional because every time I saw a quote on a plaque that said some thing like "A country is not just what it does, it is also what it tolerates" (Kurt Tucholsky), or the words of St. Augustine "slay them not, but scatter them abroad" I cringed inside at the the thought of the implications of these words for Palestinians as well. It was difficult not feel desensitized and angry. I found myself constantly thinking about all of the acts of violence, structural and physical that have been and are still being committed throughout the world that have not and will not have a museum to commemorate them. Part of this is because our education system legitimizes talking about the holocaust in a way that it does not legitimize talking about many, if not most other instances of systematic oppression and violence. Unlike many other instances of genocide, this was a story I had heard before, and much of what I saw and read about was not new information. After spending about an hour and a half walking through the museum, the last room talked about the importance of Zionism and spit you out onto a beautiful view of Mt. Herzl. HARK, what we have created for you! The hills seemed to call out, but for many of us, there was a steady whisper which shouted HARK, what you have destroyed! 

View of Mt. Herzl from Yad Vashem

We walked a bit outside until we reached the Children's Memorial. You walk inside and are tunneled underground into dark depths, surrounded by candles and mirrors, in remembrance of the 1.5 million children murdered in the holocaust. Here, emotion came rushing up inside me in a way that it had not been so present before. Ah, sadness. Here you are old friend. I felt a relief to feel emotional about this and as my eyes swelled up with tears, I felt increasingly angry. HOW? How does this happen? The six million jews slaughtered and millions of others with their spirits destroyed have been reduced to propaganda by the Israeli government. The memory of their suffering is being used to oppress other people. This is so unfair! Not only to those being oppressed today, but also to their memory. This is so shameful. I felt ashamed at myself for not allowing the victims of the holocaust their own space in my processing, for automatically going there with my thought process and not allowing the space for grieving. We should never feel like we have to stop talking about injustice, like it's reached some kind of saturation point. That's not it at all. It's when the horrible injustices one people has witnessed become a tool for oppressing another that we have a problem.

After Yad Vashem, we spent some time walking around West Jerusalem, which is in Israel proper (as opposed to East Jerusalem, which is occupied Palestinian land and where our hotel is). It certainly has a much different feel, and I felt very uncomfortable being there. Every block or two, you would see a soldier with an M-16. I felt a distinct sense of not belonging.

Some of us made a stop at the weekly Women in Black vigil in the center of town. They have protesting there since 1988, in solidarity with those participating in the first intifada (literally "shaking off," uprising). They come  every Friday afternoon and hold signs saying "stop the occupation in Arabic, Hebrew and English. A few of the people here have been doing this for 25 years, since its inception. We faced small opposition of one woman standing across the street with sign saying "The people of Israel will be in the land of Israel forever." This, of course, is not the issue. We simply want all the people of this land to be treated with equal respect.

This gentleman immigrated from Hungary in 1946, and has been coming to these protests every Friday since they began. He says he came after WWII, and he hates the occupation.

One of the founding members of the group (left) with Sandy, a member of our delegation. Sandy goes to the same vigils in NYC.

Oh look, it's me!

When we returned back to the hotel, some of us took a walk to an awesome educational bookstore with many, many awesome resources. We also went to a fair trade Palestinian crafts store called Sunbula, which was also great. This was an adventure. The walk was much longer than any of us realized. On the way back, we came across the weekly protest outside Sheikh Jarrah, where we had been just a few days ago. 

People protesting the settlements in Sheikh Jarrah.

 We returned to the hotel for a meeting with some young Israeli activists. This was very inspiring, especially after the disheartening conversation with Ido yesterday. One particular story that really tied everything together for me was the story of Eran. Eran's grandmother was a holocaust survivor, who was in Auschwitz during the war. He remembers living with her and hearing her scream in the middle of the night, and not understanding why. As a teenager, he went on a pilgrimage to Europe to visit Auschwitz and other sites of concentration camps. He even got the chance to see the bed she slept in. At the end of this tour, the leaders told him that in order to ensure this would never happen again, he must continue on to fulfill his duty to protect the state of Israel. So he went on to do so. During his second week as a combat soldier, his troop was a-fluster as they realized that they had shot and killed a young boy. This of course was disturbing to Eran and others in the group, so they returned the next day. When they returned, there was commotion because a funeral procession trying to leave the home where they had been, and was not permitted to do so. The father of the child who had been killed placed a hand on the shoulder of the soldier, trying to push him out of the way so that they could go on grieving. When the soldier became more forceful, a scream escaped the mouth of the child's mother. Eran thought to himself, where have I heard this scream? and he suddenly remembered this is the same scream as my grandmother. It all began to click for him. The next day he saw in the free newspaper Israel Today the claim that his troops had victoriously killed a terrorist. A few years later, when his service had ended, he joined Breaking the Silence, and began collecting stories and testimonies from IDF soldiers. When he gathered a good number of them and submitted them to the newspaper, they were not allowed in. The government was censoring the voices of their own soldiers. IT was then that he realized that while Breaking the Silence is doing what they can to spread the word about the terrors of the Israeli army, it is simply not enough. "We need your help." He told us. "I am asking you to join the call for BDS." It couldn't have been more clear. It is not only oppressive to the Palestinians, but to every person who is part of this system.

Sahar, Uri, Maya and Eran telling us their stories. Sahar and Maya were imprisoned for refusing to serve. They also talked about he socioeconomic implications of the service. People are profiled based on their socio-economic status in order to determine where they are placed. Lower class people are placed in less desirable positions, making it more difficult for them to find good work after their service. This reinforces the internal social hierarchy as well, and many refuse to service for this reason. 

A History Rewritten

Today we focused a lot on narrative. Who gets to claim truth, how they do it, and how it gets reinforced for generations. This is especially pertinent for me as a citizen of the US, thinking about all the aspects of our history that have been rewritten or not told. From the indigenous people whom we wiped out from the get-go, to slavery, to the rich culture of resistance that exists among our people.

We went on a tour of Jaffa this morning, which was originally the capital of Palestine before 1948. Our tour guide was Sami, a Palestinian writing his dissertation on the history of Jaffa during the British Mandate. He is also a self-proclaimed political activist..  It was a port, and therefore central to the Palestinian trade economy (Palestine exported oranges and soap, to a name a few). In 1948, 120,000 Palestinians were expelled from the area to make room for Jewish refugees. About 3% of them stayed, and still are living there. We talked about all the aspects of these people's lives that have been erased. Like most historical cities, Jaffa is littered with plaques telling a story of something which was once there. We never once saw one that mentioned the people who were here already when Israel was created, or what/whom exactly they were being freed from when it was supposedly "liberated" in 1948.

The thing that disturbed me most was my sense of comfort when I walked over cobblestone and gazed at the infamous teal of the Mediterranean, Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants style.  It felt like any other vacation in many ways. I found myself looking at the little shops and restaurants, or the lights hung through the trees and thinking how beautiful this place must look at night! or boy do I wish I could lay on the beach right now. As I took a moment to reflect on these feelings, I felt disgusted. Disgusted at how easy it was for me to look around and feel a sense of normalcy, a privilege I have in most of my day to day life. Though I do try to push myself to do so regularly, it certainly does not come naturally for me to look around and thinking about what has been erased on every street corner. The only history we see in the US on plaques like these is a history of white colonialism. A story over which I have no ownership and feel no connection. It made me think of my own neighborhood at home in Philadelphia. Recently the public high school down the street was closed, along with over 20 others in Philadelphia after budget cuts this past winter. Now it is just an empty building and we have no idea what it will be filled with. Across the street from that is a beautiful old court house or city center that has been abandoned and locked up. There hasn't been any widespread attempt at telling the story of this place, or what happened in it. What will my own neighborhood look like in 20 years when I bring my kids back. Will it be gentrified in the ways that much of my city has? WHo will be displaced and forgotten? Will I be here to put up a fight?

Sami showing us a map of Israel and telling us about the use and relevance of geography and maps in this issue. 

Enjoying the comfort and beauty of dipping our toes in the Mediterranean

The streets of the Old City of Jaffa. This seemed very familiar.

View of Tel Aviv from Jaffa

After Jaffa we headed in to Tel Aviv to speak with Kobe, an Israeli professor who works for Boycott from Within. His emphasis was on solidarity with Palestinians an using the privilege they have to be supportive of the boycott movement from within Israel (though they represent less than 1% of Israeli society) it was great to hear from him about the work that is being done internally.

After speaking with Kobe, we spoke with Ido. Ido is a pretty moderate, mainstream, 32 year old Israeli living in Tel Aviv. We spoke with him to get a sense of how our average Israeli views their situation. To summarize, these were his main points:

• After a while you start to get warn out of the politics and the negotiations, so you lose interests
• Palestinians do not want peace in the same way that Israelis do, and if they wanted it badly enough, they would get it. They do, after all, have more motivation to achieve it since most Israelis are doing just fine. 
• He wouldn't want these thing to happen to him, and many of the policies are unjust, but it is not a fair world, and in the end, the strongest will win. 

This was not surprising, and certainly not alien to me. This is very similar to the reasons why anyone lets any system perpetuate. They are living the benefits of it. It has been set up for them. It is about maintaining the comfort of every day life, just as I was feeling walking around the ghosted streets of Jaffa. 

Living Loudly

I have so many notes from today it will be difficult to fit everything in! I've already gone through half of one of the notebooks I brought... Regretfully I, was so enthralled, I did not get as many good pictures today as I wish I could have, so please forgive me...

Our first meeting today was a video conference with young Palestinian activists in Gaza. This was truly a privilege to hear a narrative that many people are not privy to. Three of the women we spoke with emphasized their lack of mobility, describing their lives as living in a prison. The three women (Aya, Sama and Ruba) talked about their work as coaches for young women in Gaza. They work to empower these youth (the three of them youth as well, between the ages of 20 and 23) to become informed and engaged and working to get their voices heard and to end the siege of Gaza. They talked about their work inspiring BDS campaigns in students around the world through these type of video conferences and finding ways to build the movement among young people. We often hear criticisms of Hamas, and assume it must be representative of all the people of Gaza. While they were certainly all critical of Hamas' religious-centric tactics, they were clear in stating that Israeli blockades, restrictions on trade (including vital things like medicine and food) and mobility restrictions in the larger context of military occupation are really what is to blame. Aya said "we rely on people like us-- we do not rely on government." This is so similar to the narrative of minorities in the US fighting for their liberation as well, and it was cool to be able to draw this connection. She was so poised and articulate, even after spending the first 22 years of her life in the world's largest open air prison. SHe described living in Gazaas "dying slowly in this very small space" describing how farmers can't access their own farms, fishermen are not allowed to travel far enough into the sea to get a fruitful catch, there are not enough jobs to go around, or medicine for sick people. Brahim, another young activist with AFSC described the psychological effects. More than 90% of Gazans say they wish to leave but cannot, and many suffer from PTSD and depression. Through all of this they were hopeful that there will be an end to this system, and that there are ways we can stand in solidarity with them.

Next we heard from Sam Bahour. An Ohio-born Palestinian whose father left the region in 1956. He described all of the ways in which the systems of classifying Palestinians is playing a part in their oppression. He moved to Palestine in the 1990s with his Palestinian-born wife in order to start a telecommunications business-- to fill a gap that left 200,000 people without telephone access. He had to leave the country and reenter every three months so as to get his visa renewed. One day, after 15 years of this process, he was told that his visa would no longer be valid, and was forced to apply for residency of the West Bank. After months of paperwork and jumping through hoops, he was finally granted residency, but this was still not enough to grant him the mobility he needed. He needed to apply for two more forms of identification and is still waiting on the third. Becoming a resident of the West Bank actually made it more difficult for him to exist. He is no longer allowed on many of the main highways, making it very difficult for him to be a normal, thriving business person, parent, and husband. Or at lest normal in the ways that we assume, this lifestyle is normal for Palestinians. Despite all of this, he is still fighting and speaking out, and still working on his telecom efforts. Check out his website: www.epalestine.com.

Sam Bahour sharing with all of us. "We have so much sympathy, we could package it and export it. We don't need your sympathy. We need people to be aware of of what their own country is doing to perpetuate this, and take action." Sam helps people start and sustain BDS campaigns as educational and tactical ways to do this.

After we met with Sam, we had lunch with some young Palestinians who are actively working to empower their communities. We met in small groups. Our group spoke with Rawan who works for the organization Palestinian Vision (www.palvision.ps). She brings young people together to talk about issues of belonging and identity, and helps them understand their history in a way that the school system does not allow them. SHe described how it is sometimes difficult to motivate them because they just want to live their lives and not think more than they already have to about all the ways in which they are oppressed. She told us that she went to a summit for Palestinians and Israeli entrepreneurs to start businesses together but quickly rejected the idea. "How am I supposed to work with someone who served in the military who could have killed my family members in Gaza in 2008/2009? This is not going to work." She told a story of how her family took a case to the courts when the wall was planned to be built over her grandparents' graves, but to no avail. There it stands. Just as the women in Gaza, or Sam Bahour, all of this is normal everyday life for her, and she is not living up the fight. This made me realize that there is absolutely no reason why I should not be putting up a fight as well. There is no one killing my family,  no one restricting my access to my hometown, no one defining my identity by a piece of plastic that allows me only certain rights. 

We had lunch with young Palestinian activists outside the AFSC Ramallah office in this garden area. 

From here we took a walk around Ramallah. Ramallah has this reputation of being a haven of normalcy for Palestinians, and from what I observed this is true. People are living their lives as we do, with little IDF presence or mobility restrictions in the city itself. People did not have fear in their eyes. When Micah was looking for a place to buy a shirt, several shop owners pointed him in the direction of other storefronts that might have what he was looking for. This is not information shop owners in New York or Philadelphia would freely share without at least asking them first. When we found a shop that sold sandals made in Jerusalem, Micah asked if they were made in Palestine, to which the owner replied "of course!" as if it were an impossibility for Jerusalem to be anywhere else. 

Street art on the sidewalk in Ramallah. It says "grassroots revolution" in the bottom right. 

 After walking around Ramallah, we made our way o the office of Defense for Children International (DCI) which gives children who are imprisoned and interrogated legal help and works to change some of the military rules that any Palestinian (as opposed to their settler counterparts) is accountable to (http://www.dci-pal.org/english/home.cfm).  Brad spoke with us about the interrogation process, which is not video or audio recorded. Many times these children (99% boys) are harassed into confessing either by being told they will be let go, or by forcing them to sign a confession written in Hebrew, without telling the what it is, landing them in prison for at least a few months. While these are certainly traumatic experiences for any child (the charges will not be expunged when they become adults), Brad stressed that their guilt or innocence is of little relevance. DFI works for the rights of children whether they are guilty or not, to a fair trial, attorney representation and to respect and dignity.

We then had the pleasure and privilege of meeting with Omar Barghouti, who started the BDS movement in Palestine (http://www.bdsmovement.net/). If you don't know anything about BDS, definitely check out the website. I don't have a ton of time to go into the basics here. Omar talked to us about the importance of BDS' commitment to the RIght of Return for Palestinians, since 69% of them are refugees or internally displaced persons. He also emphasized that BDS does not aim to boycott individuals, but to boycott institutions that are complicit in creating and perpetuating the systematic oppression that exists here. He told us that after the Brand Israel campaign began in 2005 (http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-1.536556), any artist who performs in Israel must sign a contract which ensures that they will portray Israel in a positive light and will not criticize any of its policies, obviously a blatant disregard of freedom of speech and artistic expression. FOr this reason there is a call to boycott any concerts, movie screenings... etc. that come to Israel to normalize the occupation A worldwide BBC poll showed that Israel is the fourth on the list for least popular nation, competing with North Korea, though this is not our perception when we look at American media. But let's be honest, it is not Israel's image that is the problem, it is its policies. 

Omar speaking to the group at the DCI office.

"Free Barghouti" graffiti on the wall.

We left Omar to return to the hotel in Jerusalem. On our way back, we walked through the Calandia check point. This was a very emotional experience. My eyes swelled up as we walked through small caged queues to be herded towards the front to have our passports checked. There were a series of gates to walk through, and ominous voices on the loudspeaker yelling at passersby. It was incredibly dehumanizing, even as someone who is seen as more human than many as an American citizen. After seeing all of these powerful young people speaking out, it was very enlightening to have even a tiny taste of what it is like to have your morale slowly chipped away at. They are working against so much more than we are (or at least I am, with all of my privileges). It is time to take action.

Watch tower outside of the check point.