We arrived back in Nablus today after a brief visit to Yanoon. Yanoon is not far from here, but we had to pass through the checkpoint at Hurrawa again to get through. There were lines of Palestinian men waiting to get through, but we were able to speed through the "Humanitarian and Women" line on the right. Two Israeli soldiers were standing there nonchantly, asked to see my passport and asked a few basic questions about where I was from, where I was going, why I didn't go to Tel Aviv or Eliat in Israel, and didn't I think Nablus stank? Then they asked if Dave played basketball, and that was the end of the interrogation. A taxi driver who knows Maarouf, our Project Hope coordinator, was waiting on the other side to take us.
The countryside was quiet, with cleaner air than Nablus and lots of silvery green olive trees on rocky, brown hills. Yanoon is a very small village with only about 100people living there, I think. It is divided into Upper Yanoon and Lower Yanoon.
****(I lost the rest of this blog to the Internet gods. I will try to rewrite it.)***
So......Yanoon. Yanoon is infamous for being the first place in Palestine where Israeli settlers completely emptied the village. Israeli settlers are very aggressive, and harrass Palestinians using violence to drive them off their land so the settlers can claim it. It is illegal by international law for an occupying country such as Israel to have settlements in the country which they are occupying, such as Palestine. Illegal by international law but not Israeli law. The more I learn about the UN and international law the more I realize its ineffectiveness. Anyway, Yanoon. A paved road links Lower Yanoon from Upper Yanoon. There is nothing there but olive groves, a few houses and one small school built when it became too dangerous for children to walk to Lower Yanoon to the school there for fear of attacks by settlers. The settlers' houses are built on the top of the hills surrounding Yanoon, and you can see them peeking over the edges of the hills. They have huge spotlights which they turn on at night, directed at the villagers' houses.
We had tea with Rashid, the village mayor, essentially, who had been through the worst of the violence five years ago. After the villagers were driven out, they received support from an Israeli human rights group, and returned to Yanoon to reclaim their houses and land. Many of them never returned, and moved to nearby Aqraba. The IDF is supposed to protect the Palestinians by law, but from what we heard they usually just stand by while the settlers harrass the villagers.
To make up for this lack of security and protection for the villagers, a group called EAPPI formed to invite international ecumenical volunteers to live in Yanoon for 3 months at a time as observers. They do not fight the settlers, they simply watch and document it as best they can. If the settlers see the volunteers with cameras, they will take them away. The have been known to beat the volunteers as well.
The funny thing is, while we were there Yanoon seemed to be very peaceful and calm. Except for the two army tanks that rolled through in the afternoon. But the villagers were there to harvest their olives only, trying to live their lives. Dave and I helped a family with the harvest, they were very generous and we shared their meal of olives, pita, zatar and goat yoghurt. Amir and Ranya were the parents, and didn't speak much English, but had two little boys about 4 and 6 years old, Amir Jamal and Mohammad. Ranya's brothers were also helping out. Amir offered jokingly to sell me Amir Jamal for one shekel (about one dollar) and take him with me to America.
The next morning I woke up and walked down the road to help two women pick olives. They had their small children with them as well. One little boy had a toy gun, and was pointing it at me and everyone else in the grove. His little brother tried to climb out of the highchair and the little boy rushed over, put a gun to his head and shouted at him. We see this scene a lot, chidren playing with toy guns, recreating checkpoint crossings, shootings, drawing pictures with bloody people lying on the ground....
I wonder about how growing up amid this violence affects them. The children we work with in Dave's drama class at one of the refugee camps are undisciplined, unfocused and a bit violent. But they are also playful, friendly, and eager to learn.
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
Monday, October 13, 2008
Waiting Room
This is Margaret writing. I'm just posting an update to let everyone know we are still here. We don't have a computer, so we are at the mercy of the office computers at Project Hope. There are rumored to be internet cafes in town, hopefully we will find one eventually.
I'm the one waiting, Dave is a busy man. I don't have any classes set up, so I'm just waiting to see if one is scheduled for me. There are a lot of English teachers volunteering, and classes have just resumed for the Palestinians after Ramadan so it has been slow going. Dave is one of two Drama teachers, and he has four classes scheduled at two different refugee camps, plus he will be helping teach at the circus, and helping a guy with his play, AND going to the drama club at a university maybe? He can explain it all in greater detail. I'm just going with him to his classes to help out, as I have nothing else to do. I feel like there should be something more to do, that the fault is with me, I guess I'll just do my best to help wherever I can.
There is so much more I want to write about being here, as well as our earlier travels, but I'm not in the right frame of mind right now.
Tomorrow we are going to Yanoon to watch the olives be harvested. This is supposed to be a contentious area, as the Israeli settlers clash with the Palestinians trying to collect the olives. I'm not sure what will happen. Not much was explained to us, just that we are there as observers.
I'm going to let Dave get on the computer before class. More later.
...............................
And now it's later! It's funny how things can turn around very quickly here. I was just talking with Maarouf, the Volunteer Coordinator, and I might be able to do an Art class with the kids in the refugee camps, which would be great. I want to give them a chance to do something fun and express themselves. Hs wife is a psychotherapist focusing on children's reactions to violence and war. I'm interested in this area, so I can't wait to talk to her more about it.
The taxi driver that just dropped us off was asking Maarouf about what we do here at Project Hope, and he said to say thank you to us for leaving our "clean" countries and coming here. Life is a balancing act of men like that versus men ogling us on the street, kids throwing rocks at us and kids giving us flowers.
I'll write a more interesting post later.
I'm the one waiting, Dave is a busy man. I don't have any classes set up, so I'm just waiting to see if one is scheduled for me. There are a lot of English teachers volunteering, and classes have just resumed for the Palestinians after Ramadan so it has been slow going. Dave is one of two Drama teachers, and he has four classes scheduled at two different refugee camps, plus he will be helping teach at the circus, and helping a guy with his play, AND going to the drama club at a university maybe? He can explain it all in greater detail. I'm just going with him to his classes to help out, as I have nothing else to do. I feel like there should be something more to do, that the fault is with me, I guess I'll just do my best to help wherever I can.
There is so much more I want to write about being here, as well as our earlier travels, but I'm not in the right frame of mind right now.
Tomorrow we are going to Yanoon to watch the olives be harvested. This is supposed to be a contentious area, as the Israeli settlers clash with the Palestinians trying to collect the olives. I'm not sure what will happen. Not much was explained to us, just that we are there as observers.
I'm going to let Dave get on the computer before class. More later.
...............................
And now it's later! It's funny how things can turn around very quickly here. I was just talking with Maarouf, the Volunteer Coordinator, and I might be able to do an Art class with the kids in the refugee camps, which would be great. I want to give them a chance to do something fun and express themselves. Hs wife is a psychotherapist focusing on children's reactions to violence and war. I'm interested in this area, so I can't wait to talk to her more about it.
The taxi driver that just dropped us off was asking Maarouf about what we do here at Project Hope, and he said to say thank you to us for leaving our "clean" countries and coming here. Life is a balancing act of men like that versus men ogling us on the street, kids throwing rocks at us and kids giving us flowers.
I'll write a more interesting post later.
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
Prison Week
Despite my unease over the ubiquitous presence of loaded M16s being shouldered by 18 year old kids everywhere I go, there are no shortages of political conversation to be had with the casual Israeli, since practically everyone from the bus driver to the CEO has served in the IDF. [1] Israelis I've spoken to during the past month or so I've been here share the commonly held view that their military service is at worst, a necessary evil. Naturally, everyone has some fascinating stories about their time in service to impart to foreigners struggling to understand just why the hell things are the way they are here.
My friend Omer, whom I'd met in Southern China last year [2] graced me a bed to sleep on in his apartment in Tel Aviv for nearly a month. Along with his roomate Tomil (who had served in the Special Forces) they both filled my head nightly with sheesah (sic?) and stories from the army before I fell asleep to the busy traffic of Salame Street. Tomil's command of English is generally quite good with the slight exception of a few Spoonerisms [3], so I'll attempt to transcribe one of his stories from my notes as best as I can:
"In the Special Forces, they tell you, after you finish all their tests and you get in, you will do a special exercise, and that is the first and last time you hear about it and you don't get any explanation. I had been training for nearly 8 months after this, completely forgetting these words. One day I was doing a field exercise up in the Golan (bordering Syria) with some of my fellow soldiers, and then like out of thin air all of them had disppeared and I could not get them on the radio. Four men wearing black masks and clothing knocked me to the earth and then put a bag over my head and dragged me to a helicopter. I screamed but could not be heard over the chopping of the helicopter, and all I could make out was Arabic words. After an hour I was thrown in a car or van and was driven around for some time how long I cannot say. When the car stopped, I walked for a while then I was beaten and had my hood removed. I was at a cave and was thrown into a small corner which had steel bars around it like a makeshift cell. I tried to sleep but every time I fell asleep on the ground someone would come by and yell at me in Arabic and beat me in the head or throw water on me. They had a megaphone in the opposite corner of the cave which randomly blurted out Arabic, which also kept me awake, but I learned to drown it out. After some time I was masked again thrown into a car and driven around. Then I walked for a while and then I was made to sit into a chair when my hood was removed. The room was white and a man wearing a Syrian officer uniform began speaking to me. There was another man, also Arab, who translated for me into Hebrew. The officer said to me: "We already know everything about your operation and division, we just need you to tell us whatever you know to confirm the details." I complied, and told him everything I knew. [4] This pattern of going to the cave and going to the white room continued for like months. I could never sleep in the cave because they would beat me and you shit in a corner of the cell and ate some bread and water every few days. Eventually I was released and brought back to the Golan Heights base, where I was greeted by my commanding officer, who told me I had successfully passed Prison Week."
Apparently, all Special Forces recruits go through this, and it is in fact exactly 7 days to the hour of simulated prison. Tomil told me it felt like months and months of imprisonment, and even 3 years later, the effects of this 'training' have had a longstanding impression on him. I gather that as my fourth footnote explains, the Israeli army must maintain a strong reputation for doing absolutely everything in their power to bring soldiers back if they are ever captured. Otherwise, more potentials would find ways to avoid service, or once enlisted, decide to desert once tensions got too high when engaging the enemy. Interestingly enough, there is a story that has been recirculating in the Israeli news regarding an Israeli soldier named Gilad Shalit who was captured during the 2006 Lebanese War. He is currently being held in Gaza. (http://www.imemc.org/article/52587 ) Hamas is asking for the release of several political Palestinian refugees in exchange for his safe return.
Look at his picture on the link I posted above - he's a kid. And that's the situation here: you have to deal with the fact that men and women (biologically speaking) are immediately drafted into the army after high school. For some of my friends reading this now, and for the baby boomer generation also reading this, I want you to think long and hard about the person you were, and friends and fellow graduates you knew when you graduated from high school. Did anyone really grasp the gravity of the world they lived in at such an age or even really comprehend the depth of their own insecurities? How could you possibly be armed with a gun and told to shoot to kill at such an age?? This is the world they live in where they feel they have to do it, the necessary evil. Go through simulated prison, and gain the fortitude to know that somehow everything will be all right if they put their trust in the nation.
1. Israel requires all males and females, once they are 18, to join the Israeli Defence Force (its national military service) for a minimum of 2-3 years. Only those who are deemed psychologically unfit, dedicated to special Torah studies, or can prove they are pacifists are exempt.
2. The attitude of Israelis, post-service, is to pack up their shit and go backpacking for approximately 8-12 months anywhere in the world that isn't Arab or Israel. When I backpacked through South-east Asia and China, the most common nationality of backpackers I met in hostels and on buses/boats where Israelis. Upon questioning many of the post-Army Diaspora as to why so many Israelis decided to go backpacking after their service was completed, the general response was: 'you gotta clear your fucking head or you'll go crazy.'
3. Schools in Israel, like most of the non-English speaking countries of the world, introduce English grammar and vocabulary in elementary and high school, however they generally don't end up using it until they go backpacking or host Canadians like myself in their homes. Needless to say, Israeli English is excellent, but for some reason, Spoonerisms pop up everywhere and constantly keep me in stitches - "Go and shake a tower" ("take a shower") and "a well-boiled icicle" ("well-oiled bicycle") are some of the most memorable ones I've heard Tomil say to me. I'm going to Hell I know.
4. IDF Special forces soldiers, upon capture, are taught to tell the enemy what they know rather than play it tough. The first 48 hours of capture are the most crucial hours for Israel to bargain with hostile forces to get their soldiers back. If a captured soldier refuses to cooperate, they are most likely immediately killed. Once intelligence has been given to the enemy, there is an interim period where the information must be confirmed. Once validated, further questions might be asked of the captured soldier, which in turn could buy more precious time.
My friend Omer, whom I'd met in Southern China last year [2] graced me a bed to sleep on in his apartment in Tel Aviv for nearly a month. Along with his roomate Tomil (who had served in the Special Forces) they both filled my head nightly with sheesah (sic?) and stories from the army before I fell asleep to the busy traffic of Salame Street. Tomil's command of English is generally quite good with the slight exception of a few Spoonerisms [3], so I'll attempt to transcribe one of his stories from my notes as best as I can:
"In the Special Forces, they tell you, after you finish all their tests and you get in, you will do a special exercise, and that is the first and last time you hear about it and you don't get any explanation. I had been training for nearly 8 months after this, completely forgetting these words. One day I was doing a field exercise up in the Golan (bordering Syria) with some of my fellow soldiers, and then like out of thin air all of them had disppeared and I could not get them on the radio. Four men wearing black masks and clothing knocked me to the earth and then put a bag over my head and dragged me to a helicopter. I screamed but could not be heard over the chopping of the helicopter, and all I could make out was Arabic words. After an hour I was thrown in a car or van and was driven around for some time how long I cannot say. When the car stopped, I walked for a while then I was beaten and had my hood removed. I was at a cave and was thrown into a small corner which had steel bars around it like a makeshift cell. I tried to sleep but every time I fell asleep on the ground someone would come by and yell at me in Arabic and beat me in the head or throw water on me. They had a megaphone in the opposite corner of the cave which randomly blurted out Arabic, which also kept me awake, but I learned to drown it out. After some time I was masked again thrown into a car and driven around. Then I walked for a while and then I was made to sit into a chair when my hood was removed. The room was white and a man wearing a Syrian officer uniform began speaking to me. There was another man, also Arab, who translated for me into Hebrew. The officer said to me: "We already know everything about your operation and division, we just need you to tell us whatever you know to confirm the details." I complied, and told him everything I knew. [4] This pattern of going to the cave and going to the white room continued for like months. I could never sleep in the cave because they would beat me and you shit in a corner of the cell and ate some bread and water every few days. Eventually I was released and brought back to the Golan Heights base, where I was greeted by my commanding officer, who told me I had successfully passed Prison Week."
Apparently, all Special Forces recruits go through this, and it is in fact exactly 7 days to the hour of simulated prison. Tomil told me it felt like months and months of imprisonment, and even 3 years later, the effects of this 'training' have had a longstanding impression on him. I gather that as my fourth footnote explains, the Israeli army must maintain a strong reputation for doing absolutely everything in their power to bring soldiers back if they are ever captured. Otherwise, more potentials would find ways to avoid service, or once enlisted, decide to desert once tensions got too high when engaging the enemy. Interestingly enough, there is a story that has been recirculating in the Israeli news regarding an Israeli soldier named Gilad Shalit who was captured during the 2006 Lebanese War. He is currently being held in Gaza. (http://www.imemc.org/article/
Look at his picture on the link I posted above - he's a kid. And that's the situation here: you have to deal with the fact that men and women (biologically speaking) are immediately drafted into the army after high school. For some of my friends reading this now, and for the baby boomer generation also reading this, I want you to think long and hard about the person you were, and friends and fellow graduates you knew when you graduated from high school. Did anyone really grasp the gravity of the world they lived in at such an age or even really comprehend the depth of their own insecurities? How could you possibly be armed with a gun and told to shoot to kill at such an age?? This is the world they live in where they feel they have to do it, the necessary evil. Go through simulated prison, and gain the fortitude to know that somehow everything will be all right if they put their trust in the nation.
1. Israel requires all males and females, once they are 18, to join the Israeli Defence Force (its national military service) for a minimum of 2-3 years. Only those who are deemed psychologically unfit, dedicated to special Torah studies, or can prove they are pacifists are exempt.
2. The attitude of Israelis, post-service, is to pack up their shit and go backpacking for approximately 8-12 months anywhere in the world that isn't Arab or Israel. When I backpacked through South-east Asia and China, the most common nationality of backpackers I met in hostels and on buses/boats where Israelis. Upon questioning many of the post-Army Diaspora as to why so many Israelis decided to go backpacking after their service was completed, the general response was: 'you gotta clear your fucking head or you'll go crazy.'
3. Schools in Israel, like most of the non-English speaking countries of the world, introduce English grammar and vocabulary in elementary and high school, however they generally don't end up using it until they go backpacking or host Canadians like myself in their homes. Needless to say, Israeli English is excellent, but for some reason, Spoonerisms pop up everywhere and constantly keep me in stitches - "Go and shake a tower" ("take a shower") and "a well-boiled icicle" ("well-oiled bicycle") are some of the most memorable ones I've heard Tomil say to me. I'm going to Hell I know.
4. IDF Special forces soldiers, upon capture, are taught to tell the enemy what they know rather than play it tough. The first 48 hours of capture are the most crucial hours for Israel to bargain with hostile forces to get their soldiers back. If a captured soldier refuses to cooperate, they are most likely immediately killed. Once intelligence has been given to the enemy, there is an interim period where the information must be confirmed. Once validated, further questions might be asked of the captured soldier, which in turn could buy more precious time.
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
Empire of Dirt
I can't believe the amount of stories I've amassed since I arrived in Israel in mid-August. I know Margaret has accumulated a lot of interesting stories as well since she arrived here two weeks ago, because I saw her notebook when I rummaged through her bag looking for some hand lotion. I SWEAR it just lay there open accidentally! We have so many things to write, and yet I hesitate to post any of them for this first posting because I want for our first blog post to be some kind of profound introduction to what I feel is a very conflicted and similarly profound area of the world right now. The best I can do is to at least give you some of the general impressions of a few things we've both seen in the short time we've been here. The great thing about traveling and living with Margaret is that #1: she didn't get mad at me for reading her notebook and #2: she takes short showers. I guess there's a third thing as well, which is that her list of things she wants to write on our blog is completely different than my list of things. Well duh, right? But spare my insolence for a moment: reading her list, I was compelled that I had seen the same things as she had, but different memories had stood out for her. This I feel, will strongly balance our blog in the coming months because I predict I'm going to write more heavily on the political aspects of living in Israel/Palestine, while I think Margaret will write much more humanely about her own personal reflections regarding the people we've met. So there you have it; macrocosm and microcosm, Yin and Yang, bubble gum and cashew nuts, chalice and sword, and whatever quasi-phallic metaphors there are. I think I'll leave you all with a non-hiearchically important list of 5 things we've seen/done that stood out for us while we've been here, and leave it at that. So for now, let the good times roll.
1. Along Jerusalem Street (the main street in Tel Aviv that runs along the beachfront) there is a massive poster of Sawyer's beautiful, gruff head from 'LOST' posing for a cologne of some kind. The photo looks as if it was taken on set because he's right by the beach and as scruffy and charming as ever as he stares down on us humble folk with his gem-like steel blue eyes. Margaret took a photo of this, and its in one of her facebook photo albums.
2. In a small Arab town called Akko along the Mediterranian coast in Northern Israel, we walked through several neigborhoods in the old city early one evening
that was full of small children running around playing. Many broken toys littered the alleys and stonewalkways. However, what almost all the broken toys had in common
was that they were all toy guns that had been discarded or smashed. As we passed through an archway leading onto the promenade we watched two boys stand about 50 feet apart from each other, unloading their cap guns at each other without moving their bodies, smiling and laughing.
3. Perhaps because this was the first thing I (Dave) saw when I got to Israel, and because it is quite literally history in the making, seeing the entirety of the notorious Barrier Wall from South to North that made so much spoken division all the more cemented in reality to Israelis and Palestinians alike still remains the most memorable structure I've seen since I've been here.
4. Staying a few days in Safed/Tzfat, the center for Jewish mysticism in the mountains of northern Israel. Women wear long skirts to their ankles and headscarves, and men have sidecurls and wear heavy black coats even in the heat. Their passion for their religion and their unrelenting defense of their culture was striking. I (Margaret) struggled with their insistence on maintaining the Jewish family lines (not marrying people from other religions) and conviction that they were God's chosen people. Learning about the Jews' history of displacement and attacks upon them, I understood a little more how they came to have these views. We have been on this side of the wall for a bit, and understand a little more of the Israel side. Now I want to see the other side, and know how the Palestinians live.
5. Last night in Dahab, Egypt, we were invited to smoke shisha with a friendly shop owner who wanted to "smoke, drink tea, talk with friends, practice English..I like everything!" After smoking, talking, laughing, learning to say thank you in Arabic, he asked Dave if I was his wife. Dave laughed nervously while I quickly answered, 'Yes!" in order to make it clear that I was not available. Being someone's girlfriend while traveling isn't always enough. He then told Dave he was a lucky man, and asked, "How many camels?", wanting to know how many camels I was worth. Dave wisely answered, "As many stars that are in the sky." I would much rather be compared to a star than a camel. I don't spit on people and I'm not as furry.
peace and love to you all,
Margo & Dave
1. Along Jerusalem Street (the main street in Tel Aviv that runs along the beachfront) there is a massive poster of Sawyer's beautiful, gruff head from 'LOST' posing for a cologne of some kind. The photo looks as if it was taken on set because he's right by the beach and as scruffy and charming as ever as he stares down on us humble folk with his gem-like steel blue eyes. Margaret took a photo of this, and its in one of her facebook photo albums.
2. In a small Arab town called Akko along the Mediterranian coast in Northern Israel, we walked through several neigborhoods in the old city early one evening
that was full of small children running around playing. Many broken toys littered the alleys and stonewalkways. However, what almost all the broken toys had in common
was that they were all toy guns that had been discarded or smashed. As we passed through an archway leading onto the promenade we watched two boys stand about 50 feet apart from each other, unloading their cap guns at each other without moving their bodies, smiling and laughing.
3. Perhaps because this was the first thing I (Dave) saw when I got to Israel, and because it is quite literally history in the making, seeing the entirety of the notorious Barrier Wall from South to North that made so much spoken division all the more cemented in reality to Israelis and Palestinians alike still remains the most memorable structure I've seen since I've been here.
4. Staying a few days in Safed/Tzfat, the center for Jewish mysticism in the mountains of northern Israel. Women wear long skirts to their ankles and headscarves, and men have sidecurls and wear heavy black coats even in the heat. Their passion for their religion and their unrelenting defense of their culture was striking. I (Margaret) struggled with their insistence on maintaining the Jewish family lines (not marrying people from other religions) and conviction that they were God's chosen people. Learning about the Jews' history of displacement and attacks upon them, I understood a little more how they came to have these views. We have been on this side of the wall for a bit, and understand a little more of the Israel side. Now I want to see the other side, and know how the Palestinians live.
5. Last night in Dahab, Egypt, we were invited to smoke shisha with a friendly shop owner who wanted to "smoke, drink tea, talk with friends, practice English..I like everything!" After smoking, talking, laughing, learning to say thank you in Arabic, he asked Dave if I was his wife. Dave laughed nervously while I quickly answered, 'Yes!" in order to make it clear that I was not available. Being someone's girlfriend while traveling isn't always enough. He then told Dave he was a lucky man, and asked, "How many camels?", wanting to know how many camels I was worth. Dave wisely answered, "As many stars that are in the sky." I would much rather be compared to a star than a camel. I don't spit on people and I'm not as furry.
peace and love to you all,
Margo & Dave
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