Nazareth, 6/19/13 Wednesday #6

Blog 6/19/13 Wednesday Nazareth,

The logic of Israeli citizenship and nationality, down the rabbit hole again

The Al Mutran Guesthouse  in Nazareth is a charming old Arabic home transformed into an simple but elegant guesthouse with open patios, pink geraniums and embroidered wall hangings.  Journalist and author Jonathan Cook arrives filled with energy and a wealth of knowledge about history and politics. Originally from the UK and now an Israeli citizen, he is married to a spunky Palestinian woman with Israeli citizenship, who interjects, “No, I am ’48 Palestinian.”  He explains that he works as a journalist so his children who are Israeli Arabs will not have to live as second class citizens.

Jonathan notes that discrimination inside in Israel is not informal; it’s systematic and institutionalized with practical implications that are obvious today. Nazareth is a unique Palestinian city, the only one inside of Israel that is not “mixed.” As we have learned, Haifa, Akko, and Lydd are Jewish cities with Palestinian ghettos.  They also have Palestinian citizens who are primarily not native to the city, ie, many in Lydd are Bedouins brought in to build Tel Aviv after the ’48 expulsion.

In 1948, Nazareth was the only Palestinian city with the potential to become the Palestinian capital inside of Israel and thus it represented a huge threat. After the war, approximately 200 Palestinian villages remained, but Nazareth was the only city standing.  The villages survived sometimes because they were Christian (and Israeli leaders were concerned about their international reputations), and some had work relationships with the local kibbutzim and moshavs.

The 1965 Planning and building law identified 124 Palestinian communities, leaving 80 unrecognized villages where all housing was declared illegal, and there were no services, electricity, or roads.  These harsh conditions were the reality for 10% of Palestinians with Israeli citizenship. Jonathan notes that Nazareth is different, and enjoys privileges that the state has been unable to eradicate, largely due to the important Christian churches. There are three hospitals founded by religious orders so there are qualified medical personnel and a supportive middle class. There are a dozen high quality private schools also founded by religious orders, so Arabic children can be well educated and then they become the doctors and the lawyers that maintain the middle class. The segregated public Arab schools in Israel are so underfunded that the average Jewish student receives 4 to12 times more funding.  The state controls the curriculum which is so narrowly Zionist that there is no chance for a foundation in Palestinian identity, culture, history, international literature, or ancient Islamic poets. The children in Nazareth are spared that intellectual and emotional death.

He discusses a host of other laws that mirror the Israeli behavior that later occurred in the Occupied Territories after ’67.  In Nazareth, Israeli citizens lived under a military government for 18 years, they needed permits to travel and there was a network of collaborators that provided the eyes and ears of the Shin Bet. Once a person became a collaborator, (often out of fear), then the family and children became involved as well. With the Fallow lands law, if land is not attended for three years, the state seizes the land, thus Palestinians were also incentivized to become collaborators to protect their lands.  In the public schools, both teachers and students were informers, producing “a reign of terror” in the classroom. 

Jonathan had a friend teaching English in a nearby village, one pupil asked, “What is the PLO?” This was a dangerous question so she answered in a neutral manner. The next morning, she received a call from the Shin Bet who knew everything and she lost her job.  This also can happen if someone goes to a demonstration or a march.  This degradation of pride and respect erodes any sense of pride in the education system.  Your head teacher may be the biggest collaborator in the school. Since the majority of Christian and Muslim children attend the dozen private schools in Nazareth, they are spared this humiliation and leave with a solid education.

For me, the most eye opening part of Jonathan’s comments revolve around the issues of citizenship; this gets a little crazy, so bear with me.  The Law of Return states than any Jew from Brooklyn to Mumbai can become an Israeli citizen because he is Jewish. Jonathan became a naturalized citizen because he wanted protection from expulsion or deportation and he did not want to wait for the threatened loyalty oath requirement. His wife, Sally, is an Israeli citizen because she is a Palestinian whose family stayed within the ’48 borders and in 1952 the citizenship law declared such people citizens. When they got married, it took Jonathan eight years and a host of legal threats to obtain citizenship.

Now take a deep breath.  In Israel, there is a difference between citizenship and nationality, everybody here is a citizen but there are *137 nationalities* per the interior ministry.  The courts refuse to recognize an * Israeli nationality*, but there is a *Jewish nationality*. So why is this?  If there was an *Israeli nationality* then this would be a state of its citizens who are all recognized equally and Jewish exceptionalism would disappear.  By maintaining the different nationalities along with citizenship, Jews can continue to have rights that are not granted to other citizens.  To add to the craziness, Israeli nationality is listed on Israeli passports, but that is only for the benefit of the border guards.  The blue Israeli ID card is also secretly coded: there is no mention of Israel: if are Jewish your birth date is written using the Hebrew calendar, if you follow Jesus or Mohammed, the date is in the Gregorian calendar.  If you are confused, then read this again very slowly.

So who exactly is really a Jew? Under the Law of return, a person is recognized as a Jew if one grandparent is Jewish.  Perversely, this is the same criterion the Nazis used. Jewishness as defined by religion, requires the presence of a Jewish mother.  With this contradiction, many “Jews” arrived claiming to be Jewish, but then were not recognized by the rabbis who control Israeli Personal Law. This came to an explosive crisis in the 1990s when one million Russians arrived on Israeli shores, but think about it.  The husband is Jewish a la the Jewish mother definition, but his Christian wife and four children are not.  Suddenly the state is faced with one new Jew (yippee) and four non-Jews (not yippee). This has caused major social problems and it is currently estimated that more than 350,000 “Jews” from the Soviet Union are actually not really Jewish.  Confused yet?

Jonathan reminds us that this is really different than, let’s say, Britain which is a Christian state (God save the Queen!) but also a state of citizens with equal rights under the law.  In Israel, there is no symbolism to the Jewish in Jewish state. In the 1990s, post-Oslo, the mantra for this dilemma was all about separation and the logical outcome was the building of the wall and a tightening permitting system that made it increasingly difficult to marry across the Green Line. Palestinians have struggled to obtain citizenship when marrying partners in Israel, but have faced a judicial maze, endless delays, and changing laws that have ultimately functionally outlawed marriage between lovely Israeli Juliettes and their West Bank Romeos on the grounds of “security” (a reason second only to God) and to stop the right of return, “through the back door.” This has to be understood through the mindset of the ever present threat to the “Jewishness” of the Jewish State and the perception that Palestinians are not just fellow human beings trying to follow their hearts and minds, but actually conniving Trojan horses, ready to set off the demographic time bomb. So remember that “Jewish” is a nationality to make sure that state resources stay in the hands of the Jewish population and the system is designed in mind boggling detail to keep it that way. In Israel, according to Jonathan, in 1992 the Law of dignity and freedom was passed, but there is no law of equality. Anyone have problems with this out there in the modern democratic world?

Extremely loud jets repeatedly streak across the sky and we wonder if we have missed some important news item. Jonathan explains they are spying on Lebanon and Hezbollah, most likely trying to decide when to make their next moves.

It is intriguing that Nazareth should be a major tourist city (remember the Angel Gabriel and the immaculate conception?) with graceful churches and a charming Old City. But this was thwarted through the mechanics of Israeli tourism, (read Jewish tourism). The authorities created tourism zones and nearby Tiberias was given a Zone A with big tax breaks for building fancy hotels which were then not built in Nazareth where the real tourist attractions are actually located. This also means that the profits from even Christian tourism go mainly to the Jewish tourism industry so people stop at the local kibbutz, swing through the Basilica of the Annunciation and then spend their tourist shekels in Tiberias.

This only changed in the 1990s when the Pope decided to visit when Nazareth was spiffed up, but not without resentments and conflicts between Christians and Muslims manipulated by the Israeli government, the Pope, George Bush, and Ariel Sharon. Then the Intifada broke out and the hopeful Renaissance Hotel was converted into a prison.  This was also a useful temporary prison for the foreign workers imported during the Intifada to replace the banned Palestinians.  These folks married Israelis, and when they got deported, they needed a temporary place to stay as well.   Only recently has there been a rejuvenation of tourism in the Old City, for visitors and the growing middle class, but it continues to be fraught with legal barriers. The old souk is mostly filled with cheap products from China and Taiwan and it is still recovering from being shut down for three years for renovation.  The temporary market was set up in adjacent Nazareth Illit and is now a permanent and competitive fixture for that town. 

Walking briskly along Jonathan’s wirey frame, we learn more about the 57 laws overtly discriminating against Palestinians.  There was a recent report on higher education that found 14 obstacles designed to prevent Palestinians from reaching higher education. `He talks about the current state of political parties and comments that there is basically a Revisionist, Jabotinsky, Netanyahu type politics that acts more colonial and plans to beat the Palestinians into submission and then give them minimum rights. He feels that the Labor party and its allies are actually more racist since they openly admit Palestinians will never settle for this life of discrimination, they want equality, so they must be separated and walled in. This brings us to the next phase of our day with Jonathan, a fascinating tour of Nazareth Illit, translated as “upper” ie up the hill, and “morally superior,” translated as Jewish only.

Love and sex in the age of apartheid #5

Blog Tuesday 6-18-13 Haifa

Love and sex in the age of apartheid

We arrive in the stunningly beautiful port city of Haifa, a muggy heat descending over steep hills winding to the port, towering cranes like gigantic blue  flamingos perched along the shore, the over the top Bahai Temple and Gardens shimmering up the terraced mountain at the end of the German Colony area where we are staying.  Our first stop today is with a group of dynamic women from Muntada: The Arab Forum for Sexuality, Education and Health, and Aswat, Arabic for Voices.

Safa Tamish  (www.jensaneya.org)  is the intense and lively director of Muntada, a community based, feminist group founded in 2000, devoted to working on sexuality and sexual rights for Palestinians in Israel.  This started as a project within an Israeli family planning organization, but became independent due to the complex intersections of sexuality, national identity, cultural sensitivity, occupation, and the consequent spoken and unspoken dynamics of power.

I suspect that most readers share the Western view of a repressive patriarchal Palestinian/Arab culture where women are characteristically dominated by their fathers and husbands and sexual issues, let alone queer issues, are off the agenda.  We learn quickly that the culture is far from monolithic and there is a tremendous amount of nuance and complexity that needs to be understood.

Safa has a huge dose of chutzpah and creative energy.  She describes going into different settings, starting with student councils, working on projects based on listening and respect for the local community, learning from each other.  Once there is obvious mutual respect then much is possible.

Working in a Bedouin community, she understood that every mother has to explain to her child the predictable questions about sex, birth, etc. Using nonthreatening interactive training, with techniques such as role playing, she never encountered opposition, despite working in conservative villages.  In the course of her work with girls in tenth to twelfth grade, she found that almost 90% of the tenth grade girls were engaged and by twelfth grade, many were married.  After Safa’s program, none of the girls married while still in school.  She believes in community empowerment, done respectfully and quietly.

The projects and conferences grew and by 2006 Muntada became an independent Arab association.  She found that Zionist funders had no interest in Arabic projects and Arabic funders had no interest in working with Israelis.  The original name was associated with family planning, but due to all the talk about the demographic threat from procreating Palestinians, this name also became political poison.  Additionally, contraceptives were already available through the national health insurance.  The group also wants to work with Palestinians in the West Bank and Arab world and thus became an independent organization with 28 volunteers.  Their first funding came in 2007 through the Global Fund for Women and later other internationals, the European Union, Oxfam, local ministries for social welfare, and the Ministry of Education.

They are now developing culturally sensitive school programs; there are no models in the Arab world, and the western models are sometimes useful but culturally tone deaf.  So how does this work in the real world?  Safa told us that it is often tough, men are often gender insensitive; they need to be challenged without being imposed upon.  The tolerance of the women gets tested and this then  challenges the men.  Last year, there was a two day training on sexuality in Nablus.  All the men sat on one side, all the women on the other, two women were completely covered and two men were sheikhs with long beards.  They stated that Sharia Law has all the answers and this project is funded by the west, with a western agenda.  Safa thanked them for their comments and began the program unintimidated. The next day they were role playing and she asked the sheikh to explain to his daughter, “What is  masturbation?”  When he refused, “I cannot do this!”she explained, “But she is your daughter, do you want her to learn this from the internet?” He replied no, blushed, and then finally did the role play. Others in the program reported that this experience has created dramatic changes in the school and the sheikh is now recommending the program to everyone!

With her lively expressive face she tells us another story.  The group wanted to teach puberty to seventh graders. First they got the permission of the principal, then invested in training the teachers, obtaining credits from the Ministry of Education.  After the training, they evaluated the program and found that little had changed. So they developed a questionnaire for the students asking them what topics were of interest and who and what were their resources.  The sixth and seventh graders asked questions about oral sex, anal sex, contraception, and pornography!  The next step was to develop a letter for parents explaining the need for the program.  When the outraged parents objected, Safa presented the parents with the results of the children’s questionnaire! So the strategies include developing the training, working with teachers, children, parents, and following up to check the outcomes.

When she asked the teachers, what was most useful outcome, one reported that she had been teaching the poetry of love in an intellectual way, but now she began talking more comfortably.  During these discussions she discovered that one of her 15 year old girls was involved in a “casual marriage,” an arrangement with an older man, and many girls were having sex with taxi drivers.  The teacher was really able to talk about love and relationships and felt she had reclaimed her educational role as a teacher in this course.  She also reported that she was now hugging her husband in front of her children and that the family was much less cold and more physically intimate. Such are the many surprises in this work.

The group, Muntada, develops manuals and materials for schools and last year created a youth program for 16 to 19 year olds on sexual rights as human rights.  The students made films on the topics which included premarital sex, and wanted to have a big public launching ceremony.  Safa admits she was terrified at the community response, but the films opened in the cinema in Nazareth in front of over 2000 people.  The audience responded positively and one parent told her, “I am so proud you.”

Their website is growing and includes professional questions and answers, sex therapists, gynecologists, and Arabic translations of scientific articles.  They had 370,000 hits last year, the majority from Saudi Arabia.

Safa has started similar work in the West Bank and Muntada has just graduated their third group. West Bankers were once open minded but have become increasingly conservative. The youth have lost their ability to dream; not only are they physically occupied, but their minds are occupied as well, there is a sense of internalized defeat.  Safa does not believe in partial liberation.  She sees personal and national liberation as equally necessary.  During the Arab spring, young people demonstrating in Ramallah demanded personal and national liberation.  Sexual liberation she explains is intimately tied to fighting checkpoints, apartheid laws, and repressive family reunification prohibitions.  It seems the personal is political, even in Palestine.

Things are even more challenging for the LGBT community.  A woman I will call Suhair explains that the organization, Aswat, means Voices, and is a feminist social change organization of gay Palestinian women that is also part of the overall political struggle.  The group was started in 2003 by eight women to create a safe space and address challenges and aspirations. Cofounding members were activists in Israeli LGBT organizations and other progressive organizations.  They were at first welcomed in Israeli organizations but had to keep their national identity closeted. They found that the vast majority of LGBT organizations, (despite the Israeli branding of tolerant gay tourism), do not support Palestinian rights.  These women  did not feel they could prioritize their rights. Thus they created a discourse that combines resistance to all oppression including occupation and homophobia.  At the same time while Palestinian queer women are not unique in the challenges they face, they cannot begin to think of sexual freedom without the right to be free of occupation.

Suhair shares her own personal story as a teenager, questioning her sexuality, without any venues, Arabic sources, supports in school, at home, or with friends.  She discovered a phone support in Tel Aviv called White Line which was important to her, but their only suggestion was to get out of Haifa and come to Tel Aviv. She finished high school, got into Tel Aviv University, had “the best time in my life” out of the closet, but still felt she was the only lesbian Palestinian in the world. She had many Jewish friends, but then something weird happened. When invited to parties, friends told her she didn’t look Palestinian and suggested she change her name to sound Israeli.  She tried to be cool, but was choking inside.  Her friends advised they just wanted her to have a good time, no hassles. One day, she packed up her stuff and went home to her more conservative family and culture.  “Gay haven Tel Aviv is not a gay haven for Palestinians.” “The soldier at checkpoint does not care if I am gay or straight.”

As a high school teacher, Suhair notes that Palestinian society has been living at the margins of marginality for decades. The total investment in education for Palestinian students is 1/3 of their Jewish counterparts, from age three to 18.  The budgetary discrimination affects how kids are exposed to sexual education, what manuals, directories, and websites are written in Arabic, what opportunities are available for the educators and the educated. This is further complicated by a generally conservative society and segregated schools.

A woman I will call Layla, also a member of Aswat, agrees that Palestinian society is far from monolithic; but that it is difficult to be a lesbian in a Palestinian organization, or a Palestinian in a Israeli Jewish gay organization.  She always felt a need to hide one of her identities until she found Aswat. She talked about the complexities of the Palestinian community, the homophobia and realities of occupation that are embedded in her mind, the lack of modern writings on homosexuality, the fact that sexual freedom is only possible with economic freedom.  She works with women to write and publish their personal stories, to join with intellectuals and other feminist organizations like Muntada to support each other in solidarity and sisterhood. There are also joint efforts with the boycott, sanction, and divestment campaign, Palestinian Queers for BDS, Al Qaws, and the promotion of the rights of queer Palestinians by the BDS movement.

As the three women talk, we learn that amongst Palestinians, their language has been transformed into a shallow mix of Arabic, Hebrew, and English that is the consequence of settler colonialism and occupation.  In this Arabic, most women have no name for their genitals, that vague “down there” place, unnamed, untouchable. “Everything starts with words,” Safa exclaims. “In Arabic literature there are 990 names for the genitals, each animal has a different name for its genitals, poets in the ninth century wrote about homosexuality and bisexuality and it was acceptable.”  In Amman same sex marriage is allowed!  Fortunately people are being transformed by what is happening around them.

They also reflected on issues related to men who are part of their work. In a male dominated society, to believe in your partner’s rights requires a willingness to give up some of your own privilege; not all men are ready to do that. But male privilege for Palestinians is extremely complex for they too lack privilege; suffer from economic discrimination and humiliation, much like marginalized men of color in the US.  Thus the conversation quickly encompassed issues that included gender, race, and class. This provocative discussion ended with a comment from one of our Black women delegates about the need to build a more just society, “But it is not your responsibility to build that in a dominate culture.  It is my burden as a Black women to educate my oppressors, but white men need to hold white men accountable.”  In Israel/Palestine, where Palestinian men are far from the dominant culture, the rude reality of second class citizenship and occupation makes that struggle incredibly more difficult. 

The occupation lives at home #4

Blog Monday 6/17/13, The occupation lives at home

Sami Abou Shahadeh, Tel Aviv-Jaffa Municipal Council Member and semi permanent graduate student in modern history at Tel Aviv University, notes with a mixture of bluntness tinged with irony, “Our state is killing our people since its establishment as part of daily life and it didn’t stop in ’48.” So much for the happy co-existence fantasies for the “mixed cities” in Israel.

Sami explains that until the Second Intifada, the one million Palestinians with Israeli citizenship were largely invisible, despite being 20% of the population and living under military occupation until 1966.  Only 9% of such Palestinians currently live in mixed cities. Jaffa, like Lyd and Haifa, have Arabs and Jews demographically living together, but not in actuality and there is minimal public conversation about the racism fundamental to this reality.

Jaffa joined Tel Aviv in 1950 as a southern suburb of one combined municipality, but the city is one of the oldest in the world, dating back some 6,000 years. During the past 200 years the city was transformed by the Jaffa orange export economy, becoming one of the largest Arab cities in the world with a population in the vicinity of 120,000 with thousands of unregistered Arab workers from all over the world.  The southern neighborhood of Ajami developed in the 1800s and was a center of economic, cultural, and intellectual activity.  Tel Aviv was founded in the early 1900s by several Jewish families as a northern Hebrew neighborhood of Jaffa and exploded in population over the decades. The story of Jaffa and Tel Aviv is a microcosm of the story of the Nakba, the Palestinian experience of 1948.

Jaffa was occupied in 1948 and many terrorized inhabitants fled, leaving a few thousand “present absentees” herded into the fenced in ghetto of Ajami. The street names were all changed to Jewish leaders and religious references, the wealthy Palestinian homes were seized as absentee property although the owners were often living a few blocks away, some Arab homes were subdivided to absorb Jewish refugees from Rumania or Bulgaria, leaving the original Palestinian family in one room with a shared bathroom and kitchen with the Jewish immigrants.  

As we walk the old stone streets, passing massive gentrification projects, gorgeous purple bougainvillea cascading over walls, I am struck by the rows of bike rentals and the big recycling bins; coming from East Jerusalem it is amazing to see what a funded and functional local government can actually accomplish.  We stop by an old pharmacy dating back to 1924. The pharmacist’s grandfather graduated with a degree in pharmacy from Istanbul and came to Jaffa in 1919. In 1915 he joined the Ottoman army.  His father graduated in pharmacy from Beirut and now the son Yusif is carrying on the family tradition. 

We turn on to Sha’rev Nik Anur Street, formerly Talamas Street and stand in front of a graceful villa, once the Talamas home, a wealthy Christian Palestinian family active in the orange trade.  They even sent oranges to the Pope! Oranges were the most important commodity in the Palestinian economy.  In the 1930s, five million boxes of oranges were shipped per year with over 400 million oranges picked, sent to warehouses for individual wrapping in silk paper, and then sent to the port to waiting ships.  (Didn’t I learn in Hebrew school that the kibbutzim brought agriculture to the region and Arabs were  shiftless and unproductive? But I digress.)  Because there was not enough local labor, starting in the late 1800s, thousands of workers from Egypt, Morocco, Algeria, and all over the Arab world were brought in. After the Nakba, Palestinian workers were dispersed all over the Arab world and this elegant old mansion was turned into eight apartments, “A travesty,” comments Sami.

We continue wondering towards the majestic Mediterranean and Sami explains that there are 17 neighborhoods in Tel Aviv/Yafo and Ajami is the “weakest.” We snap photos of magnificent mansions, old wealthy Palestinian homes facing the sea, now gentrified and selling for many millions as the locals  are priced out of existence with nowhere to go. This is clearly expulsion via the free market.  One of the for sale signs on a gorgeous seaside apartment is being sold by a company appropriately misnamed, “Home Land.”

Sami reviews the attack on Jaffa in 1948, the lack of any Arab army defenses, the violent siege and expulsion, and the clear Zionist intent to create a Jewish state without any of the bothersome indigenous inhabitants.  Jaffa went from 120,000 people to 3,900 with the remainder killed or scattered all over the Arab world. For those who remained, the trauma is unimaginable.  Street signs were Judaized, children and parents separated, lost, injured, mothers gave birth in the midst of the fighting, friends disappeared. (Perhaps Jews should be able to empathize with this history?)The remaining Arabs were rounded up and fenced into the neighborhood of Ajami which European Jews fresh from their own catastrophe, aptly named “the ghetto.” Those who fled beyond the state borders were now declared “enemies,” although Sami remembers his grandfather taking a train to Beirut which he considered part of his world. The survivors were not allowed to ask what happened to their lost relations, “Where is my mother?” because she was now part of an enemy state, if she was alive at all.  The physical and emotional trauma and loss were profound.  Normal social expectations like weddings, court systems, dressmakers, carpentry shops, five hospitals all disappeared in the war and its aftermath.  Sami exclaims ironically, “Now we are a minority in our homeland and the Israelis are immigrating to us.”

For Sami, the second Nakba was the seizing of all Palestinian property, libraries, possessions, “The biggest armed robbery in the twentieth century.”  Under the Absentee Law, all Palestinian property was counted as “neglected property” if the owner was not present in the home from which he had just been expelled and tossed into Ajami ten minutes away. Even more painful for the Jaffa Palestinians was seeing their homes, their furniture, their gardens, occupied by newly arrived Jewish immigrants. Poverty stricken locals would go back to the now Jewish homes and beg for a blanket or some personal item.  Wealthy factory owners became impoverished workers in their own factories.  Wealthy businessmen like the Hassouneh family, major orange exporters, became workers in their former orchards.  The psychological humiliation was as great as the physical loss. 

The third Nakba, states Sami, is coexistence.  He asked us to imagine the Arab family sharing their home with the new immigrants who periodically go off to the Israeli military for a mission in Gaza where that Arab family’s relatives now live.  “Maybe they will kill my brother?”  And then the soldier returns and shares the bathroom and the kitchen. With this further psychological catastrophe, many men became dysfunctional, drug addicts, alcoholics, (probably supplied by Israeli soldiers and Bedouins), while the women coped as women will do.  In the course of three terrible years, Ajami was transformed into a small, poor, criminal neighborhood.

From the 1960s to 1980s, Ajami was slated for destruction, 3,000 apartments were razed, engineers planned a park along the water and hotels.  The garbage from the demolished homes was thrown along the beach creating a huge mountain of toxic materials. Ultimately the plans were scrapped because the chemicals kept exploding and the area was unsafe to build.  It is now a lovely park with bright new playgrounds and palm trees hiding this dark secret past.

Similar to West Bank Palestinians, folks in Jaffa were unable to obtain building permits, renovations occurred with growing families and no place to go, and now the State is claiming that not only were fines due 40 years ago for the transgression, but with interest, the fines are now millions of shekels.  Thus 400 Arab families (who are by the way, citizens of Israel), are under demolition orders due to the crime of renovation. Sami described a host of other Kafkaesque situations. For instance, the state owns all the houses from 1948 in Ajami, the “owner” pays for 2/3 and the state owns 1/3.  The Palestinian children cannot inherit the house unless they are living with their parents at least six months before their deaths.  But it is also illegal to live with their parents if they are married, so it is unlikely they will be there with their dying parents.  If I made this stuff up, you wouldn’t believe me.  

Since the 1990s gentrification and neoliberal market policies have dominate the scene.  Since the welfare state cannot “fix” these problems, let the free market take over.  The wealthy move in and the locals cannot afford to stay, then schools close, local markets close, “We are a beautiful cemetery of thousands of houses.” While 5-10% of local Palestinians are doing well, 50% are on welfare.

The latest threat is the plan to build national religious Jewish settlements in the Arab neighbors to “strengthen” the Zionist ideology of lax secular Jews and to change the demographics of the neighborhoods.  Thus the ultra Orthodox want to “settle in the heart,” ie within the Green Line, and if any settlers are removed from the West Bank, these right wingers will “burn the State from within.” Interestingly the Yossi Beilin left agrees that demographics are a problem, but disagrees with this solution, while the Avigdor Lieberman right is ready to transfer Palestinians without any further charades.  Sami muses, “So my beautiful eight year old and five year old are demographic bombs,” while large Jewish families are, “Blessed by children.”  He describes a recent tortured political fight between Palestinian activists and businessmen versus the settlers.  The fight went to the High Court and involved illegal dealings by the Israeli Land Authority and court decisions wreaking of racism and cowardness.  Mixed cities are now considered the “greatest danger to Zionism,” and people talk openly of “clean kindergartens, clean schools, clean neighborhoods.”  Racism? Fascism? Echos of the Third Reich? 

As Sami reflects, “We are trying to survive, we lost in 1948 and we have nowhere to go.”  The housing issue is critical but all the city planning is done by Jews for Jews with no concern for the social impact on the local community.  The problem is, “Most of the wars, we are here and they are there.  Our wars ended but we are here and they are here and this is the cultural reality.” Sami wonders, what kind of multicultural reality is possible in this racist reality. What are the rights of the Jews in this situation?  What kind of society do we want to create?  He suggests that a mixed educational system instead of the current Arab, (ie poorly funded and inadequate), secular Jewish, and Orthodox might be a start.  He notes that already 20-25% of Arabs send their children to secular Jewish schools to get a better education.  But then what kind of history would be taught?  Do you tell Jewish children that their grandfathers ethnically cleansed a whole city? These are not popular questions to be asking, but that has never stopped Sami from asking.  I do not know whether to scream or cry. 

The prisons within 6-16-13 #3

The prisons within  6-16-13

Randa from Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights, (www.addameer.org) has a cheerful, youthful enthusiasm that contrasts with the grim experiences of Palestinians within the Israeli court and prison systems. Established in 1992, Adameer is a human rights organization supporting prisoners and working to end torture and human rights violations through monitoring and solidarity campaigns, with seven lawyers and a dedicated staff.

I have always been struck by the number of doctors, teachers, ambulance drivers, students, farmers, activists, etc who report being detained in Israeli prisons at some point in their lives and I have read  Physicians for Human Rights Israel studies of torture within these jails, but Randa had the numbers behind this troubling story.

There are currently 5,000 Palestinians in prison, 20% of the total Palestinian of population has been arrested, 40% of the male population, over 800,000 Palestinians since 1967. The key issues include torture during interrogation and raids, administrative detention, (no charges, no trial, renewable for years), child prisoners, the use of prolonged isolation, medical negligence, arrests of human rights activists,  and hunger strikes and their health implications. As of May 2013, there are 4,979 Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails, 139 of them less than 18, 16 women, half of them mothers.  The number of administrative detainees is actually low at 158, but these folks can be held indefinitely with no charges, no trials, and secret files.  Think Guantanamo. There has been an uptick in imprisoned journalists with 13 currently detained, half between January and May.

There are four interrogation centers: three detention centers (including Ofer just outside of Ramallah), 17 prisons, mostly inside of Israel.  This is actually against international law as Palestinian families cannot access these prisons due to an inability to obtain permits and this further isolates and demoralizes the prisoners.

Many arrests occur at home in the middle of the night with a massive military presence, military jeeps surrounding the home, soldiers breaking down the door, sleepy family members corralled and interrogated one at a time including small children.  The prisoner is taken, blindfolded, shackled, and put into a military jeep which will either go to a settlement or interrogation center. The interrogation can last for 90 days and is renewable; the prisoners can be denied a lawyer for 60 days, a renewable restriction as well.

During interrogation there are regular reports of physical and psychological torture, 20 hour sessions, isolation cells 2 x 4 meters in size with a hole in the floor for bathroom needs.  The prisoner may be tied up in stress positions for hours during interrogation, experience physical abuse, sleep and sensory deprivation which is very disorienting, and threats of sexual violence, especially against children and their family members. As expected, forced confessions are common and 73 prisoners have died in custody since 1967, due to torture. This year, Arafat Jaradat died during his first arrest.  He was accused of throwing stones. He requested a medical exam due to severe back pain and was rewarded with an extension of his interrogation.  At autopsy, he had severe bruising and fractured ribs and no action was taken against his torturers. Even more frightening, Randa reported that when he was originally arrested, the security forces told him to say good bye to his wife and children as he would never see them again. 

Interrogation is followed by the farce of a military court where innumerable international laws are violated.  Randa describe temporary buildings, an intrusive search for all attending the trial, inadequately  trained military judges, and a court inundated with soldiers.  The proceedings are conducted in Hebrew, the translators deplorable, misinterpreting and injecting their own opinions, the shackled prisoner has often not met his attorney before, and the average hearing lasts three minutes.  Needless to say there is a 99+ conviction rate.

So for what are Palestinians languishing in jail? There are 2,000 military orders in the West Bank but #1651 is the most common, and includes participation in demonstrations, destruction of public order, raising the Palestinian flag in Jerusalem, belonging to an illegal party  (all PLO organizations are illegal), etc, etc.

The military frequently goes after political activists who are convicted of writing slogans on walls, throwing stones (10 years imprisonment towards a nonmoving object and 20 years towards a moving object).

90% of children are accused of throwing stones, 60% ripped from their beds at night in front of terrified and powerless parents, and children older than 14 are tried as an adults, (Palestinian childhood appears to  be an ephemeral and brief experience thanks to occupation). There are 700 child detainees per year, over 8,000 since 2000. Randa described a number of tragic cases of young children detained, strip searched, mentally and physically tortured (for instance, ripping off braces one tooth at a time), interrogated, and pushed to be collaborators in order to protect their families. Families are also forced to pay huge court fees.  These traumatic experiences in children have major long term implications.  Some children stop speaking, refuse to attend school or leave home, suffer from bed wetting, a loss of interest in life and fear of participating in any future political activities. 

With the females in detention, there have been several births, the women shackled during delivery, the children removed after the age of two, and no extra food provided after childbirth.  The women report sexual harassment, and repeated strip searches

There has been public information about recent hunger strikes protesting issues like repeated strip searches, extended administrative detention, extreme overcrowding, lack of hygiene and inadequate medical care.  There are often eight prisoners per cell and they are given three hours in the open yard per day.  All of these basic requirements are treated as privileges that can be easily revoked.  Because of the increasing privatization of the prisons (much like the US), prisoners now have to pay for the canteen, cleaning products, clothes, and the money raised by often poor families is split between the private company (ie Dudush) and the Israeli Ministry of Prisoner Affairs.

Prisoners are economically exploited and can sometimes exchange a month of sentencing for 2,000 shekels.  And then there are repeated examples of medical negligence; 52 prisoners have died from deliberate negligence, such as denial of cancer treatment, and less egregious issues such as malnutrition, deliberate errors in the clinics just as pulling the incorrect tooth, lack of treatment for chronic disease, lack of adequate treatment of injuries that then become even more serious medical problems.  Apparently the health care is often “provided” by soldiers in white coats with some first aid training.  A recent hunger striker developed hepatitis when non-sterile instruments overtly contaminated with blood were used for a tooth extraction.  I wonder where are the doctors, the psychologists, the professionals who above all are trained to do no harm? Where is the outcry from the Israeli Medical Association? When is blindness and ignorance a symptom of racism and growing fascism within a country that claims to operate according to democratic principles? 

Randa explains that clearly Adameer,  “does not have a whole lot of wins in military court,” but they continue to provide free legal aid, work in the Jerusalem high court to reveal these gross injustices built into the system, provide advocacy work, and put pressure on international governments. 95% of their work is with political prisoners and their office has been repeatedly raided, computers and records removed by Israeli soldiers.  They have also attracted the ire of the Palestinian Authority which increasingly collaborates with the Israeli military court system.  Adameer works closely with the UN and with the Israeli organization, Adalah, and has begun contacts with prisoner support groups in the US, drawing obvious parallels.

We ask if there are any signs of hope and Randa tells us of a new campaign (www.stopadcampaign.com) against the British/Danish security company, G4S, which owns child detention centers in the US, provides security in Israeli prisons, runs immigration detention centers in the UK, and provides security for the Hajj in Saudi Arabia. 

It seems that once again, we are all in this together one way or another.  It seems also that in Israel/Palestine, military might tramples the rights of the powerless, the youth, the activists, the Arabs, the very human people engaged in a struggle for survival that is easily visible if you choose to see.  Let their voices be heard.  

Divide and Conquer 6-16-13 #2

Blog Sunday 6/16/13 Divide and Conquer

The posters in the offices of Stop the Wall grab our attention immediately: three hulking men hack the concrete barrier with pick axes; a cartoon elderly woman lifts a tiny boy off the main gun of a menacing Israeli tank; “To exist is to resist” floats above walls crisscrossing between crowded Palestinian houses, a helicopter hovers above; a disembodied head, mouth screaming, emerges from the wall with a fist in chains.

           

Jamal Juma (www.stopthewall.org) begins his powerpoint and we are immediately washed by a torrent of bad news. The northwestern city of Qalqilya was the first city to be completely encircled by the separation wall in 2000.  It took one year to build, imprisoning 41,000 people and separating them from 32 surrounding villages, their agricultural lands, and ground water sources.  Once a commercial hub for both Israelis along the border and local Palestinians, in less than six months, 4,000 inhabitants left in desperation and 600 stores closed.  In the first winter, the city was severely flooded by mountain water that flowed in but had no place to drain.  Jamal explains ironically, this is the future for the West Bank.

By 2005 it became clear that the Israelis planned three main encircled areas, northern, central and southern, using a combination of walls and the strategic insertion of Jewish settlements. Jamal reviews the long history of Palestinian struggle against a variety of colonial projects dating back to the 1900s and the emergence of Palestinian nationalism. Things took a major down turn with the signing of the Oslo Accords in 1993.  This divided the West Bank into area A (the ghettoized cities theoretically under Palestinian control), area B, (villages under joint control) area C, (the 61% of the West Bank, less developed, under Israeli control and the location for much of the Jewish settlement project.)

Jamal informs us that in the early 1990s with the Iraqi invasion and decrease in the power of one of Israel’s main enemies, the country turned its attention to its internal affairs. In 1992, the government gathered scientists and thinkers to create a 20 year strategy for the future of Israel, in case of war and in case of peace, in cooperation with more than 30 international research institutions.  By 1997 the 18 volume Master Plan was completed, 9,000 pages devoted to Jerusalem alone. The current state of the Occupied Territories is the direct result of those plans.

Then in 2000 the Herzliya Conference launched a study to plan four major projects that have also impacted the appalling fate of the Palestinians:

1.       For Palestinians with Israeli citizenship in the Galilee, a program of development aimed at Judaization of the area

2.       For Palestinians in the Negev, a similar development/Judaization program

3.       For Greater Jewish Jerusalem, settlement expansion into the West Bank and depopulation of Palestinians

4.       For Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, increasing disengagement

The plan is based on controlling Palestinian demographics and increasing the Jewish presence. In the Galilee, major studies figured out how to move Jews from the coast to the mountains by investing in high tech industrial zones with housing, schools, and economic opportunity. In the Negev, 100,000 Bedouins, were collected and brought to five reservations (the word in Hebrew, “concentrating them”). This threatened to destroy their life and culture and Bedouins responded by settling to protect their ancestral lands, creating a host of unrecognized villages, without any services, in abject poverty, constantly under threat of repeated demolitions.

In Jerusalem, a combination of Judaization and ethnic cleansing seeks to decrease the Palestinian population from 35% to 12%. With almost scientific precision, Jamal describes how that will happen. 

1.       The first step is to expand the boundaries, frame Greater Jerusalem to include the Jewish settlement blocks and surround it all with 181 kilometers of wall snaking deep into the West Bank. Thus, the Adumin Bloc adds 33,000 Jewish settlers, the Etzion Bloc 43,000, and the Givon Bloc another 12,000.  Throw in the controversial E1 area to complete the ring and then ghettoize the local Palestinians.  22 villages with 225,300 people once part of Jerusalem are, voila, now outside of the Holy City.

2.       The second step is inside Jerusalem, in the Old City.  Start in 1967 by destroying the historic neighborhood along the Wailing Wall. Then allot millions of shekels to Judaize the Old City, moving in Jewish families house by house.  There are now 90 Israeli outposts inside the Old City, with plans to displace all 50,000 residents of  Silwan (now officially the City of David) and fully Judaize the Holy Basin, creating a (racially?) pure area all the way to the Mt of Olives where 4,000 settlers await their happy co-religionists. Top this off with a highly political and heavily criticized archeological excavation in the City of David, (designed to prove Jewish exclusivity to a city that has been occupied innumerable times over thousands of years), displacing 1,500 Palestinians to make space for the parking lot for tourist buses.  Continue in a similar process in the neighborhoods of Shufat and Sheikh Jarrar, link them all together with a light rail that ends at the Damascus gate, thus gradually eliminating all Palestinian identity in the area.

Jamal highlights the multiple well funded new projects: museums, hotels, tunnels under the ancient walls, car parks, tourist overviews, 63 new synagogues including one to be built next to the wall of the Old City, taller than the Al Aqsa Mosque, in my view, the architectural equivalent of giving everyone the finger.

At this point we are all sunk in a strange combination of depression, horror, shame and outrage.  I can only wonder if there is any historical memory left amongst the power brokers in Jerusalem, descendants from the ghettos of Europe and the survivors of the racist, ethnic cleansing of the Holocaust. Jamal continues undaunted.

He focuses on the growth of Jewish settlers in the West Bank, up to 650,000 since it all began in 1997. He talks about the geopolitical impact of the wall, the 14,000 kilometers of apartheid roads with 48 bridges and tunnels to keep Palestinians and Jewish settlers from actually seeing each other, the increasingly privatized checkpoints, (now called terminals, like your local friendly airport terminal) and the industrial zones.  I will explain the zones, since that was news to me.  Apparently after traversing multiple roads to avoid the bypass highways, and waiting since early morning to stuff through humiliating turnstiles at checkpoints, Palestinian workers now face a new employment opportunity: industrial zones.  Israel, in conjunction with the World Bank, is working on 92 zones along the borders created by the wall, which Jamal refers to as “do-it-yourself apartheid.”  There are currently industrial zones in 12 of the largest Jewish settlements where 30,000 Palestinians work under oppressive conditions with no labor protections for 50-70 shekels per day.  Joint industrial zones are planned with the help of Germany and Japan, to name a few internationals that have taken a concern for the local economy and what is now called “immigrant capital.” The Israelis are busy attracting international investment from Jenin to Jericho; 58 companies have invested in the settlements.  He reminds us that the barbed wire that runs along this barrier is made in South Africa.

To give this a sense of reality, we are soon bouncing along in yellow taxis heading for the town of Kalandia,

a village totally encircled by wall, separated from the nearby refugee camp, crowded up against the industrial zone for the Jewish settlement of Atarot. Between us and the nearby town of Al Ram are two more walls. All of this was once part of Jerusalem, but now exists in a kind of no man’s land, unclaimed, ungoverned, no taxes are collected but neither is the sewage.  Drug gangs terrorize people at night.  Jamal  moved to this area from Beit Hanina in East Jerusalem after his imprisonment (he was accused of organizing demonstrations) and release when he could no longer tolerate the military vehicle sitting outside his house and frightening his children.

From there we go to the once vibrant Bir Nabala, since 2006 a ghost town, completely emptied by the economic impact of the wall, houses locked and deserted, stores shuttered, homes demolished, raw sewage running near the wall where pigeons roost in once elegant homes and a few souls hang on with a couple of goats and a horse.  At night this street becomes dangerous and infested by gangs of drug dealers.  I sense not only the overall cantonization of the West Bank, but also these micro isolations, village by village, family by family, son by son, the silent expulsion, the ongoing invisible Nakba.

Back in the taxi, the undulating voice of Mohammed Assaff sings on the radio.  He is one of the three contestants left on Arab Idol, a spinoff of American Idol, where he is competing with an Egyptian and a  Syrian.  He sings a beguiling song about a magic kuffiyah.  I am told that everyone in the West Bank is rooting for him.

Through the Looking Glass #1

Friday 6/14/13
by Alice Rothchild

After weeks of anxiety and worrisome emails about security at Ben Gurion Airport, possible demands for passwords, email addresses, and various troublesome questions, the 18 year old at passport control barely made eye contact. I could see her ipod dangling from her ears.   I don’t think she saw me at all.

This is day one of the American Jews for a Just Peace - Health and Human Rights Project and we begin in the Old City of Jerusalem, in the Al Quds Community Action Center established in 2000 to serve the needs of the Palestinian Jerusalemite community. Hamad Shihabi is an attorney who works on the tortured legal issues facing East Jerusalemites, Palestinians who since 1967 have the unfortunate combination of an Israeli residency ID, but no citizenship.  They are faced with a myriad of challenges including home demolitions, barriers to family reunification, lack of adequate national insurance (which includes medical, disability, social security), taxes without adequate local services, and face offs with the malignant Department of Antiquities.  Their precious IDs can be easily revoked by Israeli authorities and in 2008, more than 4000 East Jerusalemites lost their IDs out of a population of 250,000. At that point they became stateless, and began a byzantine and circuitous legal struggle to nowhere.

Under a gracefully arched ceiling, the heat permeating the thick walls, Hamad takes us through the Queen of Hearts kind of world that is East Jerusalem.  For instance, if an East Jerusalemite takes another nationality, she loses her ID; if he builds without a permit (which is virtually impossible to get) he loses his ID. Fines are based on each meter of non-permitted building done, 600 shekels ($180) per meter, accumulate on a daily basis, and are only getting harsher. There are legal ways to request extensions but little possibility of ever obtaining one. He talks about families that “self demolish” to avoid fines. He mentions the extensive zoning and permitting rules, (but only Jewish families ever get permits to build in the Muslim quarter). Palestinian lands are unregistered in East Jerusalem according to the Israeli Land Authority, so there are always conflicts about the evidence for ownership. In 2011 Israeli authorities revoked the IDs of all Hamas members in parliament and reserve the right to revoke IDs whenever it is “reasonable.”

Hamad’s personal story is equally disturbing: a father who is an originally from East Jerusalem but has a West Bank ID, family lands lost in 1948 and 1967.  His mother has an East Jerusalem ID, but their home which was once in Jerusalem is now outside of the city so they rent in Beit Hanina which is in the city.  Because of the different IDs and the lack of family reunification, his father has to travel separately and go through different checkpoints than the rest of the family.  I listen to all of this in my post travel exhaustion and think, once again I have arrived in a land of official insanity!  Then I remember the over arching goal: to force Palestinians one way or the other, to leave their historic and ancestral homes.

We make our way through the winding streets of the Old City, up and down stairs, through dark dusty stone tunnels and glorious snatches of sun to the Shehaba family quarters.  100 people from 22 families live in 120 rooms, curling around dark stairways, opening into bright courtyards, kids tumbling and playing, a kitchen tucked behind a door, a glimpse of a living room. Their papers date back to 400 years of documented ownership as a waqf, a form of Islamic trusteeship designed to protect the family from dispossession.

In the 1960s a group of ultraOrthodox Jews claimed that the entry to their quarters was a “religious site” and began praying and performing Bar Mitzvahs and blocking the entry into their homes.  The numbers and aggression increased and then came the demands to knock down walls, to make a male and female prayer area, and to connect to the tunnels under Al Aqsa.  The local residents complained and the authorities put up police barricades along their entry to separate them from the meshugas and also installed a “security camera.” The nearby sign says in English and Arabic, “Small Wailing Wall,” but in Arabic it says, “Shehaba Quarters.”

We wend our way up the ancient stones and in classic Palestinian fashion we are soon sitting in another  Shehaba home where our host was born and raised.  We are soon sipping sweet juice, and enjoying his curly haired two year old daughter.  The only sign of tension is his cigarette. He studied antiquities in Italy and now works at the Khalidi Library, founded in 1725, but his true passion is restoring old documents.  He shows us an elegant book of Islamic laws he restored, the pages dating back 420 years.  The living room is filled with stuffed chairs, an Oriental rug, plastic white lilies, paintings of Al Aqsa Mosque, and a Muezzin calls in the background. He is dignified and calm in this sea of disordered behavior.  As we leave him graciously smiling and reassuring us about the intrusion, he repeatedly states: “You are most welcome.”

As if this is some kind of bad movie, by the time we get to the bottom of the stairs at the entry to the family quarters, a large crowd of ultraOrthodox Jews has gathered to pray, loudly and boisterously in their self assured religiosity.  They are guarded by a cluster of soldiers with large automatic weapons and a clear intent to use them if needed.  Dropped down the rabbit hole again. Welcome to the Holy Land.

Making your presence felt 10-21 - A. Rothchild

The insanity in Hebron does not happen by accident; someone has to make and enforce the policies we see.  (Ironically I am writing this on the shuttle from New York to Boston, sitting next to a clean shaven Jewish man from Long Island, wearing a yarmulke, and holding a prayer book and legal article in his hand.  He is praying. I cannot help noticing an insert in bold type in the legal document: Check your ego at the door. Your job is not to know all the answers. (I definitely need to sharpen my spying skills as well as my glasses.) I guess my trip home has just begun.

But I digress. Sitting on the dusty steps of a Palestinian home just beyond a checkpoint in Hebron, we meet Nadav Bigelman, an earnest young man born in Jerusalem from a lefty family and now a member of Breaking the Silence, an organization that started in 2004 and now has 850 members, mostly combatants.   As a young high school graduate, Nadav wanted to serve his country and he wanted to serve in Hebron where he was stationed in 2008. He felt he was sent by his own society as a soldier and he now feels he has to show his society the truth of the occupation. Breaking the Silence collects testimonies from fellow soldiers about their experiences in the occupied territories.  They examine several aspects: governmental, legal, IDF behavior, orders, and the mindset of the soldiers, and they have taken thousands of Israelis on tours.

He explains that from an Israeli point of view, this is a very religious area and repeats much of the history we have heard. I learn several new details: Jews and Moslems lived peaceably in Hebron for hundreds of years; the 1929 massacred of Jews was done by Palestinians mostly living outside of Hebron. When Jews returned in 1967, the Israeli government initially denied their request to (re)settle, understanding that this would set a precedent for dispossessed Palestinians demanding their return home.  He also discussed several murders of Yeshiva students in the 1980s by Palestinian militants.  Hebron is unique because it is the only settlement inside a Palestinian city. He has a fascinating map in a pamphlet called Ghost Town which categorizes areas in H2, the old city, in relation to Palestinian use: 1. Closed shops, 2. Travel forbidden, 3. Shops closed and travel forbidden, 4. Completely closed to pedestrians, cars, and shops. 42% of the Palestinians living around the settlements have left H2 due to the horrific difficulties in conducting a normal and safe life. There are nightly Israeli incursions; the army is everywhere, on street corners, on roofs, on patrols, at checkpoints. There have been hundreds of days of curfew where Palestinians are confined to their homes.

So what is life like for an Israeli soldier?  Nadav recalls times when settlers attack soldiers and then invite these same nice Jewish boys to their homes to celebrate holidays, so it is complicated.  He did 17 days of six to eight hour shifts, and then had a few days home and then would return to do it all over again. Like many soldiers, he stopped caring, “80% of my shifts I was sleeping.”  He had always been against the occupation, but this was the first time he felt it so closely, was part of it, realized that it was being done on his behalf with his (and my) tax dollars.

He explains that from the start of the Second Intifada (2000) until 2007, Palestinians killed five Israeli civilians and 17 soldiers.  During the same period, Israeli security killed at least 88 Palestinians, 46 were not involved in hostilities at the time of their death.  Two Palestinians were shot by Israeli civilians.  Shuhada Street was closed in 2000 to decrease the friction, (mostly settler attacks on local Palestinians), there were some brief attempts to have the IDF escort Palestinians in the area, but that conflicted with their primary job of protecting settlers, and ultimately the Israeli Supreme Court declared the closure legal.

As we walk, Nadav seems a bit edgy, hustling us along.  He had to get police permission to do this Breaking the Silence tour.  As we pass a police vehicle with four officers just hanging and watching, he points out that we have reached a spot where Palestinians can no longer walk.  This was a corner where settler children would clash with Palestinian children when they all got out of school at the same time, (last year I witnessed settler children here throwing rocks at Palestinian children while the Jewish parents stood passively).  Now the Palestinian children have to walk up several flights of stairs and around the area of previous conflict. Only approximately 100 of the original 500 students remain. In the parking lot there is a military van parked with brightly painted lettering and stencil like pictures: “Hebron Hospitality.” This is basically a mobile coffee house with the inscription: “To the Israeli Soldiers in Love from the Settlers of Judea and Samaria and Gaza.”

He takes us to the once thriving gold district which has been completely smashed and trashed, piles of rubble and decimated dreams, and then we sit in front of his old military base.  There are three settler families that actually live on the base, the children growing up with military equipment and IDF in their community. In 2010 on one Friday night, settlers wanted to enter and told the soldiers that since it was Friday, the Sabbath, the soldiers were not allowed to use electricity to close the gate, so they demanded that the gate be left open.  A huge argument ensued and the settlers got angry and pulled the gate down. (I wonder if this is appropriate behavior for the Sabbath, but what do I know about God’s commandments.) No arrests were made (on an army base!!!) and a separate open entry passage was built for the orthodox settlers.  This is how the system works; problems are bypassed and the settlers get more and more entitled and out of control. Even more frightening is the settler policy of instituting a “price tag.” If Palestinians resist (let’s say demanding to harvest their own olive trees), then the settlers will commit an act of violence in retribution called the price tag. The Educational Minister (remember it is the Palestinians who “teach their children to hate” and the Israelis who have a modern tolerant educational system) has developed a program to bring high school students to Hebron to understand the (I am at a total loss here….) the most racist, intolerant city in Israel…no that can’t be right, I’ll try again, to understand Jewish exceptionalism and fascism….no… Sorry, you can fill in the blank.

Suddenly a large frightened goat, its udders bulging, bolts down Shuhada Street. My first thought is I hope it is a Jewish goat, given the rules around here. I can’t imagine a goat could get a permit. Later we see a Palestinian shepherd, escorted by five soldiers, in search of the animal that apparently refused to stay on the segregated road, the goat equivalent I guess, of the back of the bus. (I secretly name her Rosa!)

Nadav explains that a critical role of the military is to make their presence felt, to remind people, “We are in control.” He explains that this is done by mapping the houses. At 2:00 am he and his fellow soldiers would get into (break into?) someone’s house.  He was told to bring his camera.  They would pick an ordinary family and do five to six houses a night. They would search the house, closets, upturn furniture; the officer would write down the ID numbers and names of each person in the house and draw a map of the house.  Nadav was asked to take a photo of each person (remember, people have just been awaken by a big commotion, they are scared, in their night clothes, probably young children are crying and teenage boys are seething, the soldiers are in full military gear,) and Nadav would match the photos to the names.  By the end of the mapping, he usually had about 20 photos.  He waited for weeks, but no commander asked for his photos and he finally realized that this was the meaning of making your presence felt, of spreading suspicion. The taking of photos was part of the intimidation. (Why did the soldiers pick that family? Are the family members collaborating?  Is a big operation being planned?)  Then there are mock arrests. The soldiers would arrest a random Palestinian for two hours, just for training purposes. This kind of psychological warfare goes on all the time and is quite effective in intimidating the entire population.

We ask Nadav how he felt as a soldier. He said he was following orders; he never enjoyed being a bully. He tried to be a “nice” soldier, handing out candies at the checkpoints, but then he would find himself breaking into a house at night and terrorizing an entire family.  “The occupation cannot be nice.  The issue is not the soldier in the checkpoint, it is the checkpoint itself.” He recommends a book by Breaking the Silence: Our Harsh Logic: Israeli Soldiers' Testimonies from the Occupied Territories, 2000-2010.  (yes is it on amazon) He feels the soldier testimonies contribute to the discourse within Israeli society.  He prefers not to discuss his plans regarding his annual military reserve obligations.

We head back to the bus parked near the Tomb of the Patriarchs. Hungry children are begging, selling trinkets.  Finally one of our delegates reaches into his pocket for a few shekels and we are swarmed by a small crowd of desperate kids. As we try to back out of this sorry moment, a large armed military policeman rapidly moves into the crowd and violently grabs one of the little boys by  his tee shirt.  The policeman is aggressively yelling, the boy is screaming in fear, wriggling out of his shirt, we are trying to hold on to the child, the policeman tells us off to back off and a thin withered man who has been peddling cheap bracelets yells, “Leave us alone, get in the bus. You are no better than settlers.” The child’s face is filled with such a fierce terror it is seared in my memory; soon ?his mother and other women are involved with more arguing.  Everything exploded so suddenly, so brutally. We get on the bus, shaking.  I think the boy got away, this time.