The soldiers raid the wealthiest looking home in the village because they want to see how rich Palestinians live, and they also want to watch the soccer game. They enter the home at 3am, detain the entire family, and turn on the television to watch the game. After discovering before they leave an artistic photo on the wall depicting a child throwing a stone at an army tank, they trash the house, claiming the photo as cause for plausible terrorist involvement. They break and slash the furniture, childrens' toys, under the claim of searching for weapons. The game finishes, they find no weapons, release the family, and leave the house in time for the family to go to work and school...
Jerusalem
As I begin to write, I have not even been here 36 hours and already the stories are pouring into my eyes and ears. I feel a wonderful sense of comfort as I walk the streets of the beloved and addicting Old City of Jerusalem with a mix of familiar bitter-sweet emotion as the cardamom coffee begins roasting with the rising of the day. After being sadly ripped-off on my first falafel (which I redeemed with a cheap and delicious one later - oh my love at long last!!), I encounter a new acquaintance (friends and enemies can be swooped up here without so much as the flick of a fava bean). Joseph, a shop owner in the Old City, is clearing out his hand-made jewelry business for an Arabic restaurant, and needed to translate a sign that will help him clear out all his goods, so he recruited me off the street for the task. His efforts are in hopes that this change will bring in more money, as tourism has decreased significantly due to fear built up in regards to the portrayal of risk in the region.
Joseph's fingers move with ease around beads and wire as he forms for me an earring as a gift for helping him, and we get to chatting. I am spending the day getting logistics and my cultural transition adjusted, so I have nothing more to do than to hear him out.
He shares his own stories and life of battles that are his life simply because of where and what skin he was born into. While he speaks, my own internal struggle is with the nodding and smiling to the rhythm of this story that I have already heard hundreds of times, though Joseph and I just met. My reaction is all too easily dominated by the normalization of his pain and experience. I could have recited his story to him before he even spoke - or at least my assuming thoughts go in that direction. The repetition of a story that is all too real for all too many people is unfortunately no longer shocking to me, no longer horrifying.
How do we face the normalization of pain and injustice?
How do we learn to cope without becoming numb or building barriers around our hearts to cope, like the concrete apartheid walls that are called "security fences" surrounding much of Palestine...?
I crave the stories, but my heart here is cautious. My mind and brain know these realities to be detestably wrong, and work has and will continue to be done to take down the literal and physical walls, though it is taking decades. It is not irrational to acknowledge an important task when we see a connection to it. It is not irrational to believe that the impossible can be chipped and chiseled away by the collective. So this time, I enter back into this mess with my mind, because my heart cannot handle what it encounters here.
I ask Joseph if he is sick of repeating his brokenness and desires for freedom and legitimacy of the Palestinian people to want peace and to live on their land, like a broken record to tourist after human rights volunteer after tourist. Hundreds of times have I heard of the babies dying as their mother's are forced to give birth at a check point. Hundreds of times have I met a young Palestinian boy or man or woman who has been in prison three times or four times or two times or six times, held with no proof or trial. Hundreds of times have I heard of settlers murdering or mutilating a Palestinian on their own farm land. They go on.
The more I hear the stories, the more I lack being able to feel them deeply, like an overly emotional World Vision commercial, the human rights abuse this time around almost seems normal, not surprising, expected, not even all that bad at times, when I start to compare. But just because we learn to joke about slave labour, and skim over rape headlines if they even make the paper, doesn't mean we don't care, but it means we cannot handle everything if we fully enter into empathy with it. But how do we become people who connect even without full empathetic emotion? How do we lovingly hold each other accountable to move and act out of our many capacities for relating and knowing?
What have we normalized at home? In some ways, we choose what we see... underneath it all is some truth that must be faced so that the joy can be the tradition and friendship the habit, instead of frustration, trauma, and prejudice. In other ways, we need to choose to open our eyes to see truth - for some of us, we need to acknowledge the brokenness that needs healing around us, sometimes right under our nose or down the street - and some of us need to acknowledge joy, and the incredible beauty that truly does exist, and is vital to life and healing, love, and justice.
Like a broken record, over and over
and over...
The stories are drawn to the colour of my skin, as those who wish to
speak crave any new ear that will listen, especially those who are often perceived to have power in this world – aka rich white people, the class I (somewhat) basically belong to. They are told to me in broken English over
lemonana and questions about my nose ring. They are told to me at
the bus stop, in the streets, in the homes I have been invited to
stay and eat in. They are told over shai and khawa. Over and over and overwhelmed, I become
underwhelmed by the crazy stories that I have heard ten thousand
times before... I struggle not to see all these strangers as the same
story I have heard before, but as unique lives with unfortunately all too familiar
experiences to their fellow Palestinian brothers and sisters.
Repeated and continuous restrictions of movement and oppression of
life. Resistance is now tradition, and pain is in the air of
day-to-day breathing. Yet they feed me. Very literally, and very figuratively.
Deaf and mostly unable to speak, a
Palestinian woman lives alone in the middle of the shut-down part of Hebron, surrounded on all sides by settlers, who spit on her and physically attack
her often, in addition to the harassment of soldiers when they check
her every time she leaves her home and wants to re-enter it.
Hebron
Shock Trauma and Shock
Therapy = same old, same old.
He shares his story to the crack of
sound grenades and shots fired on the streets below us. We laugh
when he says, “don't worry, just day-to-day living,” it's normal.
We laugh because over time one cannot cry every moment they
experience the dump-age of life; because we must learn to cope, even
to the point of joy and laughter at certain times of ridiculous
reality. But his story is no laughing matter, despite his smile,
despite his jokes. They do not replace the trauma, only sooth it so
that the trauma doesn't take over his body in the same way the
occupation that caused the trauma in the first place has.
Day-to-day, the same story, just different words, different scenes
and sometimes different characters, but always the guilty Palestinian
in the role of the one who is limited. But so many of the people refuse to let this
be their story, their history.
“Death to
Arabs” “All Arabs to the Gas Chambers” “Stop the mixing of
Jews and Arabs, Keep the Purity...” “Get out, you Niggars" -
Graffiti in Hebron, in addition to stars of David all over
Palestinian doorways. This is all from the self-proclaimed holiest
people of G-d. Gah, my heart...
Yes, David, this is real life
We listen to his story after spending a
day walking through the city of Hebron, the largest city in the West
Bank, at 180 000-some Palestinian population. The city is known
widely for three major reasons: 1) it is one of the most holiest
sites for Jewish people, 2) it is one of the most holiest sites for
Muslims, 3) it is a hot-bed and microcosm for understanding the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It is the only city within Palestine where there is a settlement in the heart of a Palestinian city.
And these settlers did not just pick a random plot of land that was
empty to take over, or purchase property and slowly populate a
neighborhood by buying and building there, but by literally taking
over buildings, homes, and streets of Palestinians, including the
main strip and former commercial hub of not only Hebron, but the
region, as the city used to be a major business center for Palestine.
Between 500 and 2100 soldiers are deployed at any one time for
around 700 settlers who have taken over areas of the city. This conflict has been a hot-cancer-bed for the last thirty years. These
settlers specifically are fundamentalist ideological (unlike
some other areas of Palestine, where some move to settlements for
economic reasons, which is a whole other discussion). The havoc that
these people (who often travel from other parts of the world, many who have converted to Judaism and then use it as justification for invasion) wreak in this area, as a hellish apartheid
system has been enacted for decades now in the city, due to this
festering wound from the heart of the city. The problem is not just the settlers, but the government who has the cure, but chooses to keep the cancer inside the body.
The truth hurts less than the lies.
I am here in Hebron this time with an
organization called “Breaking the Silence,” who are an incredibly
strong, brave, and intelligent group of ex-soldiers from the IDF
(Israeli Defense Force/Military) who do quite a lot of work to
literally “break the silence” in their own country about what is
really going on on the ground in occupied Palestine, and giving
soldiers a chance to speak, advocate against the occupation and their experiences in it, and to refuse to serve.
Many Israeli’s disagree not only with how the occupation is being
conducted, but that it exists at all, and with mandatory service
implemented in Israel, these would be individuals who for the most
part, are not forming naive beliefs about what their own country is
doing, but have been raised in Israeli society, and
trained and given orders from their own countrymen. Breaking the Silence
has interviewed and cataloged over 900 soldiers' testimonies from
over the last 10 years: www.breakingthesilence.org.il (amazing!).
“I was trained to fight tanks and
soldiers from Syria, not Zionist Settler mothers.”
The leader of the tour is 31, and spoke
of his own childhood in a very typical Israeli family - not
religious, well educated, liberal, and militant. He wanted to be
like his father and brothers who fought before him. The stories he
would hear from the West Bank, a place he had never set foot in until
he was holding a gun there, were all headlines like “25 suspected terrorists
arrested today from Jenin,” or “5 suspected terrorists killed in
Gaza today,” or stories like that that did not outline what
soldiers were actually doing to come to these conclusions, if they
existed (such as kidnapping 12 year old boys, or detaining fathers
for months and at times years on end with no proof, etc), let alone
the day to day harassment and (lack of) quality of life that has been
pressed into the daily lives of Palestinians through systemic and
arbitrary violence.
When he was 18 and entering his mandatory service, Avichai chose to be a combat
soldier, was trained for 8 solid months to fight battles like he would against the Syrian military for example, and then was given a one week crash course on how to “deal with” civilian Palestinians in the West Bank,
before he was then stationed there for two years. He talks about not
having been trained to deal with the control and power he was given as a 19
year old. A high commander in the IDF gave a number of soldiers
completing their training a speech, before presenting them with a
series of photos of nameless dead Palestinians: “there is no better
feeling in the world than killing a terrorist - this is the mountain
top for you to reach for.” And so with this dream in mind, Avichai
went into the "battle field" against the enemy – the farms, homes, hills, and roads belonging to civilians of the
Occupied Territories.
The Israeli Supreme Court was taken to trial for their implemented apartheid system in Hebron specifically, where the order was given to seal off the major streets of the integral business centre of the city of Hebron, which resulted in extreme unemployment, limitations of movement as the central region of the city was now a giant circle that one can only go around and not through. The segregation system was formed as the zionist settlers took over the centre of the city, or top portions of Palestinian people's homes, and were granted full access to these sealed off areas where Palestinians and Muslim Israeli's cannot go. A "sorry" was issued by the Court stating that this order was an "accident." The order still stands today, and the streets have turned into a ghost town for soldiers and settlers to meander through, and on top of that, the Court implemented "Sterilization Policies" for the area. But as a "sorry" to the Palestinians for this "error", the Court issued an order to the military to allow a chicken market to be opened again to Palestinians. They opened the market, but sealed off the entrance with a concrete wall (pictured above). Perhaps this move was to save the chickens...
"Sterilize the Area"
This region was given
“Sterilization Policies,” which were and still stand with this
title to ensure that certain areas around the settlers in Hebron are
kept clean and clear of Palestinians. To create a buffer zone for the
apartheid system to continue, these policies are put in place with
all-too-similar language to 'cleansing' to do just that, clear out
Palestinians from their homes (without any compensation... not that that would make it better) to make way for extremist settlers that
are not only invading and taking over Palestinian homes, but
harassing them on a day-to-day basis. Day-to-day. Over and over...
like a horrible routine and culture that children are raised into,
that the military play their real-life video games in.
 |
| 4 or 5 shops are kept open beside the Abraham mosque, so that when media and tourists come in, they see co-existence that is fabricated and covers up the reality behind the scenes... |
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| Grates over windows is not this wonderful Palestinian design, but a coping mechanism to block the rocks, garbage, sewage, and other items that the extremist settlers choose to through through their home's openings. |
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| Often, Palestinians are not given much warning when they are forced to evacuate. And even when they are, most choose to not leave until forced, staying and returning as long as they are able to stand the struggle |
Blocked entrance ways, and gardens planted
along the barren streets by settlers,
taking over more and more.
along the barren streets by settlers,
taking over more and more.
 |
| Another garden planted in the middle of a courtyard, created by a concrete wall separating Palestinians from settlers. |
[left] box where the control panal to the town's security camera's wires were connected too, that was ripped and completely destroyed when soldiers tried to use the footage to prove Palestinian innocence, and settler violence. The Palestinians are guilty until proven innocent. The settlers are innocent even when proven guilty - even when the military proves them guilty. [right] settler and soldier wandering streets in front of a home who has a complete cage around their entrance way.
Three settlers were kidnapped and killed by Palestinians (not representative of most Palestinians, just like in our country murderers are not supported by most of the population). The Palestinians were imprisoned for life, their friends who were not related to the situation were put in prison, and all of their families homes were demolished as a form of collective punishment.
A Palestinian was kidnapped, tortured, and murdered by Three Jewish Settlers (also not representative of Israeli's). Only one of the three who were directly responsible for the torture and murder are in jail, the other two are free. No action has been taken against their friends or their families...
Accountability?
What is more important; a biblical interpretation of land claim for individuals around the world who can then come and justify their claim to the land with a religion they converted to, without any deed, exchange, permission - or the human rights of thousands? The question is not 'can the land be shared' but 'how can the land be co-inhabited in peace.' The answer is not occupation, which has not stopped the violence but grown it, and the answer is not by bombing schools and hospitals in Gaza.
Violence breeds violence, he tells his prison guards, who are kicking blind-folded teenage boys on their knees who have done no more than throw a stone at a tank (if even that)... “stop breeding terrorists.”
...I struggle... we are lost in the repetition. The story is the same everywhere... where do we begin to work, to hope? The relationships, how can they spark when there is so much physical and mental separation?
We are shocked, mortified, horrified. Our distance lets us see other's mistakes. Yet how many reserves do we drive by every day? How many times do we not think about healing the relationships that were and are so broken between indiginous and non-indiginous at home? Those that were pushed aside, killed, abused, or repressed and now so often are still not acknowledged in our government or day-to-day life? Day-to-day... over and over... we walk on stolen land, with much of the evidence having been cleared away - are we as horrified? 
Yet, identities are still being fought for, and there is not only a place for relationship with one another, with those that Canada continues to disrespect, but a desperate need for it - and such things are possible. Perhaps it can start with going to a soup and bannock meal at your neighborhood's Aboriginal centre? Trust me... it's a tasty good thing for the world :). Lunch could shift your world-view! How bad is that?
The scary part though, is that this is just scary. It is sad, it is real. It makes me think of what stories I just let play on without engaging in their plot line – how many abuse or bombing headlines I skim over if they are even still printed, or the indigenous land I camp on without thinking of who's been pushed off for me to have that right, how sex slavery rarely makes me wince or blink or think thrice anymore. My own struggle with anxiety says my mind must react this way... but how do we hold these stories out with open palms – not letting go, but not putting all on our own shoulders? Though many of these settlers are said to be mentally ill in their extremism, many settlers in general are not. Most soldiers are not psycho... at least not until they are put in certain environments...
Love love love, over and over and over,
Tradition of Laughter and Light taking over,
This dream, day-to-day enacted, is not naive, is not impossible.
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| This photo was awesome because I accidentally over-exposed it, and in the heart was a Star of David, meant to mark a Palestinian building over the heart, but the colour of the spray paint did not show up, and only the heart remains in the photograph... |
[Jerusalem again, Old City]:
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| Amsterdam, on layover... I just liked this :). |
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