The Chosen Ones

...freaking strange sights...

...This night is going to be difficult to write…

Village of Kfar Harris, the location of this post's story...

We are chosen,
and we are crazy...

...Chosen...

Who chooses the chosen?

Do the chosen choose the chosen?

…Are the chosen choosed by the chosen or the chooser?

Who chooses who is chosen, 

                                                denied chosenness, 

                                                                                                  and who is unchosen?

If I choose myself, all others who are not me, are not chosen.

And,

Who chooses the chooser if not the chooser?

Until we 

choose the chooser,

Until we 

see that by choosing me, we disagree

- Before I, the chosen one, 

choose to eliminate you, the unchosen,

Before you, the chosen one, 

choose to dominate me, the unchosen

- Let us choose each other.

...Let the chosen choose one another,

Until the chooser of us all, is revealed. 

Fervour of an unusual variety...

Chosen.

I have learned that when you stamp the name of “God” on something, it is yours, 

and the actions involved are justified and blessed without question.  

By claiming God, you deny your human action the necessary step of questioning.  

By claiming God, you make yourself irrefutable - from both others and yourself - for who would dare question what God has said, or intends to do?

I hope you note the cynicism.

My days have been filled with hundreds of the faces of the occupation.   

There is no single story, narrative, experience.

There are no two sides.  

My mind is racing to process all of what I see, who I meet, all that I learn in such a short time, before returning to a place where much of this does not apply, yet can be translated through our human experiences and used when I return, as I relate what I can to folks back home.

The pride and arrogance that is being bred in many of the settlers/colonizers has been the most difficult to face. 

People back home (and all over the world), especially those of the Zionist variety

(Christian, Jewish, secular, etc.), must see the danger of this ideology in practice. They must remove their romanticized blinders, and see what this concept of chosen is doing to our “holy land.”

On Thursday June 14, the IWPS team received a request for our presence overnight in the Palestinian village of Kifr Haris in the Salfit region.  The Zionist military shuts down the village twenty-six (somewhat sporadic) nights a year at 10pm, forcing every person into the walls of their homes to make way for Zionist Settlers who come in the name of prayer piety, but with the intent of making their presence known in the land they take over. The target in this village is at Joshua’s tomb, which is located in the centre of the village, a place they do not desire to share in remembrance, but use to declare their dominion over non-Jews (zionists, once again, this is not antisemitic!!).

Pictures from this night are lacking in quality and quantity, as it wasn't exactly an environment that fostered proper documentation! But I tried.

The zionist Colonizers admire Joshua as the figure who conquered the ancient Cannonites and brought the Jews from thousands of years ago into this land. These gatherings supposedly occur for pious reasons, yet often result in thousands of Settlers wreaking havoc in the village, through means of vandalism, waste skewed about, defecation, and obnoxious noise sent echoing through the gagged and silenced town into the wee hours of the morning.  Palestinian villagers watch silently from their darkened homes, unable to sleep, as their town is taken over and trashed. Our presence was requested so that we could not only take pictures and document this frequent display of violence and colonization, but to hopefully keep the vandalism to a minimum, with our international outsider eyes.

Our venture began with our team quietly leaving our Palestinian host’s home, where we had laughed and ate much, and making our way to the centre of the square. We joined the over half-dozen military trucks and security vans while getting a sense for things. We made sure the soldiers were convinced of our persona as innocent conservative Christian pilgrims who were claiming to be there at Joshua’s tomb to pray, who had heard about the celebration in Jerusalem.  One soldier even invited us not only to get him if any others caused us any problems, but escorted us to the tomb to pray before the settlers began their evening – he clearly was unimpressed by the extremist behaviour and actions of Settlers. 

We entered down into the little concrete tomb through its one entrance, surrounded at the beginning of our night, by soldiers.  We became comforted as we prayed not only because our persona called for it, but due to our vulnerable state - giggling both at the ridiculousness of the events before us, and at just how vulnerable we were to the soldiers, some of whom made clear they suspected our presence in the village as foreigners (questioning us to see if we were “peace” groups – how dare we! ;)).

We spent some time huddled around a special little blue prayer book that one of our teammates had on her, while soldiers popped their heads in and out of the underground concrete tomb, until we made our way out, thanking the soldiers as we exited, to a patch of ground in the centre/edge of the square, in clear view of the nights activity. Dozens of settlers began to arrive and set up food tables, mingle about the closed-down town, and sometimes pray.  

Inside Joshua's Tomb, where a soldier let us in to pray before the Israeli settlers came. And pray we did, surrounded in this vulnerable spot by soldiers who were leery of our presence. 
We prayed, laughed, and prayed.


One of our teammates, who had observed such an event before, noticed a significant difference on this night from her last time witnessing it: there was a major lack of religiosity in the majority of settlers’ behaviour, which is supposedly why they take over the village.  What became apparent (and was even confirmed by one of the more orthodox Settlers) was that there was a lack of spiritual fervor amoung the young people, which comprised most of the numbers of the mobs, as well as settlers of all ages.  A need to pray at Joshua’s tomb was trumped by the lure of a chance to be obnoxious and make their colonizing presence known to the Palestinians who were forced to silently watch and/or and listen from their darkened windows.

Over the course of a few hours, the mingling about consisted of a number of Settler boys barking at us; asking where we are from, condemning us for our Christian beliefs, and making it clear that we were not welcome there – that we were inferior in their eyes.  

We witnessed young boys attempt to size up the observing and disenchanted soldiers; try to tamper with Palestinian property (which was thankfully under control of the soldiers because the numbers on this particular night were significantly less than other when Settlers come; aggressively ripping fig branches off their trees and throwing them on the ground.  In waves throughout the night, crowds mobbed a road trying to reach Jonah’s tomb off to the side of Joshua’s, pushing against the line of soldiers blocking them.  The boisterous yelling, pushing men were clearly not seeking somber time in prayer and relation with the Divine, but loud and obnoxious trouble making. As the evening played out, our presence as internationals with intentions beyond our own prayers and innocent piety, was made more clear as we took pictures and stood more obviously and alertly within the action.

Settler praying from door to door, 
claiming rights to the land and 
homes of his Palestinian cousins.

- C

To our pleasant surprise (relative to the circumstances), a soldier right in front of us at one point began to clean up some of the garbage that was being chucked on the ground by the Settlers. As we followed suit, a gang of young male Settlers made it loudly clear that they thought we should leave the trash on the ground for the Palestinians, cursing Palestine and the town that we were in.  They spit out "F*$! Philistine, put the trash on the ground, we put it there, it is for the philistines." It was difficult to stand there and not be able to fully argue back the way that I would have without such circumstances surrounding us.  Somewhat refreshingly, one soldier who was clearly disgusted by the Settlers, told us to “Never listen to what they say, ever.”  This is important to note - not all Israeli's want the occupation or settlements, and not all soldiers want to be there... many of whom wake up to what is going on at the hands of their state and themselves while they serve their mandatory time in the zionist military (www.breakingthesilence.org) 

At about 2:30/3am we began to make our way out of the village, down the only road we could walk on, lined with soldiers.  At the based of the village, we curved in the opposite direction of the settlers, past the soldiers, and along a smaller road within the olive groves, headed for Harris.  We walked home for two hours through to morning, with Army trucks whizzing past us along the main road.

The Settlers take-over and presence in Kifr Haris proved to be a demonstration of their self-proclaimed power and ideological arrogance.  Both those who came to pray at the tomb of Joshua (the figure who brought the Jews from the Torah into this land) and those who came to declare their status as settlers, did so through colonial acts of imposing on, controlling, and taking over a Palestinian village. God wonders what they were praying for.