The Struggle for Being in the Wild South

In the insane, maniacal strive to live life at its fullest I have found the most meaning in the perseverance and generosity of the Palestinian strugglers in the South Hebron Hills. The mechanics of disenfranchisement are so horrendously well-oiled, that the strugglers of the Wild South resist simply by being. And so, the rest of us, that come from safe(r) surroundings and secure(r) socioeconomic backgrounds, resist simply by being with them. That is the meaning of Ta’ayush – living together, living the end of apartheid and separate-ness.

Waking up at 5 AM on Saturday June 15^th, 2013, the body is drowsy but the spirits are high as the sun rises gloriously on the horizon above the old city of Jerusalem and the fresh breeze of dawn washes the lungs. We arrive early near Susya to help clear a dirt road of boulders thrown from the settlement above. We work quickly, because any Palestinian labor may be deemed illegal according to the whims of the military ruler. Vehicles and tools may be confiscated; people may be detained on counts as ridiculous as “assisting terrorism.” Often times, the military erects the roadblocks, using big boulders to block everything from private driveways to main roads to Yatta. It is one of the many means of apartheid, meant to make life impossible, to make being a struggle, and conducted with impeccable coordination with local settlers.

Clearing the road to Susya. Photo: Guy

The settler guard spots us from the colony on top of historical Susya and the army soon comes sprinting down with jeeps, but we already finished removing the largest boulders. A Druze commander of the Civil Administration comes out of a jeep and tells our Palestinian hosts that if they want to complain on roadblocks they have to do it alone, without us. Of course, that would be a waste of time and paper. But some useful work has been done and we proceed.

We go to accompany our friends to their land in Umm al-Ara’is, where recently 15 were arrested and among them a woman with her 18 month old baby (watch the too real video here). The Border Police comes to bully us as we arrive. A woman soldier stands silently by the side of the men. In front of us stands the illegal outpost Mitzpe Yair. Avidan, the settler that attacked us numerous times (introduced in this post), is there with a herd, grazing on Palestinian land. He leaves soon after our arrival, but we’ll see him again. The military declares a closed military zone – the grazing is forbidden from the beginning of the barley field all the way to the greenhouses of Mitzpe Yair. Those greenhouses, as a friend tells the soldiers, are to be demolished by recent order of Israeli court. But not today, if ever, and the sheep and goats will be limited to their usual mouthful of thorns. Ironically, it is forbidden even by Israeli Supreme Court to declare a Closed Military Zone in order to block shepherds access to their land.

The shepherd, Abu Amr (aliases throughout), greets us with a grand ear-to-ear smile. “Ahala wa-sahala,” he welcomes us loudly, enunciating every syllable. As the Arabic-speaking Druze commander of the Civil Administration comes to warn him again to refrain from coming with us, he protests. He tells him his full, real name, and the history associated with it, that his family has worked this land for five hundred years, and that all authorities until the present one have respected his family’s customs. The human may be listening but the authoritative position is bounded.

Abu Amr shares interesting things that I only half-understand – that his clan is part Jewish in tradition, that the land is owned by a thousand people that share it in ways unlike the contemporary rule of private property. But the machine of segregation has a very particular language. The land is officially “in dispute,” or as David Shulman writes in an important post about the area, “settlers have open access, Palestinians have none.”

We sit with our hosts on the border of the forbidden zone, another imagined, grotesque concept that may have very real consequences for those who cross it with the wrong ID. The women collect herbs that grow wild on this fertile land. Guy brought sugar. They cook sweet tea of Gurni and Nana on a small fire. I look ahead on the vast empty lands across the green line, the lands on which settlers won’t receive free water and electricity, and on which Palestinians could be shot for trying to reach by foot. Sun in the zenith, we talk, and protest by being.

Tea in Umm al-Ara’is. Photo: Guy

We hear from our friends in Operation Dove that Jenbah in the 918 Fire Zone has suffered some harassment. I wrote about it here previously. Last Wednesday, at night, a helicopter landed near the village, and raised dust that filled the air and the houses.

Abdallah, an activist from Beit Ummar, is limping, though he was impressively lifting boulders off the road earlier. He was shot in the knee last week, working on his land near the settlement Karme Tzur. The soldiers shot him with a rubber coated steel bullet from a distance of five meters. He shows me the wound, a recovering red bullet hole in a blue mark. He says he’s been shot six times beforehand and points at his chest, arms, and back, the knee is the seventh. An Arabic cat has seven lives.

Beit Ummar is a village with a long history of resistance to the occupation. The weekly demonstrations I’ve been to have often been lively and zestful in reaction to ever-worsening brutality. Other atrocities happened last week. Soldiers kidnapped and interrogated a young man and forced him to drink hard liquor in attempt to have him name people. He was taken to a hospital with alcohol poisoning.

Back in Umm al-Ara’is. “Last Saturday was more interesting,” Elai says. The group went into the land, the soldiers were confused and settlers came out. The herd got a good bite of the barley by the time the closed military zone was in effect. “It felt more like resistance,” he concludes. Suddenly, as if by a spell, the herd starts running, uncontrolled, down the hill, across the invisible line and into a spontaneous feast on the barley field. The befuddled soldiers weren’t trained in shepherdry. But the spectacle ends as Abu Amr runs down to drive the herd back. A moment of livestock insurgency.

After a good amount of sitting that characterizes most of our activism, we head back, and at the top of the hill see that a group of settlers in white shirts is headed towards us from the outpost. The military blocks their way, though. They’re too late.

Soldiers following activists and disturb Twaneh. Photo: Guy

We meet our friends for a falafel in Twaneh. A military jeep follows us into the languid village. We’re told that Umm al-Amad hasn’t been as quiet. The brutal military treatment described so well by Shulman in his +972 article didn’t occur, but a fanatic settler came out and attacked the shepherd and the herd. Please watch and share this video that says it all:

In solidarity with our friends in Umm al-Amad and the rest of the Wild South. The ridiculous monkey clown is back in the blogosphere. The half-frenzied half-languid struggle for being persists.

The Missing Word

It is not surprising that the word “occupation,” was not mentioned in Dennis Ross’s lecture at Middlebury College on Tuesday night. It doesn’t exist in the discourse of the Israeli government, it wasn’t mentioned during the farcical elections for the Israeli Parliament recently, nor does it exist in the language of American policy makers.

As Noam Sheizaf showed with his article on 972mag.com, Ross’s agenda for the peace process accepts the Israeli leadership’s conditions “before negotiations even began.” There can be no peace process without an acknowledgement of the reality of occupation and apartheid. As Martin Luther King Jr. said, “peace is not the absence of conflict, but the presence of justice.”

Ross operates under a false assumption that Israel and Palestine are equal sides of a symmetrical conflict. In the same way that there has been no symmetry between white people and African-Americans during Jim Crow, between white Afrikaners and natives during South African Apartheid, between colonialists and indigenous Americans during the past 500 years of European Colonialism, thus there is no symmetry between Israeli occupiers and occupied Palestinians.

The everyday reality of racism, systemic inequality, and brutal apartheid, is purposefully ignored, clouded by statements about policies and the region being already too complicated. Perhaps after years of yielding so much power and influence, Dennis Ross is incapable of understanding life within a Palestinian refugee camp. What was particularly astonishing, however, was his misinformation about the reasons for which these refugee camp exists.

In an astonishing feat of deception, Ross blamed the Palestinians for maintaining refugee camps. He suggested that the Palestinians should end the refugee situation and build houses in the “vast” spaces south of Bethlehem to house the refugees. He did not acknowledge that it is virtually impossible for a Palestinian to get a building permit from the Israeli Occupation Administration. He did not acknowledge that almost 1,100 Palestinians, most of them children, were displaced by house demolitions in 2011 alone.

Significantly, he ignores or is not aware of Israel’s responsibility for Palestinian refugees. In the systematic ethnic cleansing of Palestine at 1948 (the Nakba), over a million Palestinians were forced out of what Ross considers as Israel. This continues today to be one of the most neglected acts of ethnic cleansing in the 20^th century, and its aftermath of human devastation still bears effect on the lives of millions in the Middle East and across the world.

In his version of the two-state option, Ross envisions a Palestinian State that is butchered and divided by gigantic, oppressive walls, with no control over resources (the separation barrier annexes the water aquifer to Israel) and no freedom of movement, very similar to the South African Bantustans during the apartheid regime. He ignored the fact that the occupation of Gaza has never ended, despite the disengagement in 2005, and that IDF control over sea, land and air turns Gaza into the largest open-air prison in the world, still recovering from the deaths and injuries of thousands, and without a non-violent avenue to protest its pains. Having Ross share his agenda on campus is like having a speaker endorse South African Apartheid during the 80’s.

But now, as Middlebury’s environmental leanings lead it in Gulliver steps to divestment from fossil fuels and arms manufacturing, we recall that we have divested from Apartheid, and that no pro-apartheid speaker would receive a microphone in our halls in the same way that no white supremacist or eugenicist would. As we embrace the values of environmental justice, it is imperative we recognize that divestment from fossil fuels and arms manufacturing is the first step towards divestment from Israeli Apartheid.

The 15^th article of the Principles of Environmental Justice asserts that “Environmental Justice opposes military occupation, repression and exploitation of lands, peoples and cultures, and other life forms.” By claiming the principles of Environmental Justice as we move forward on divestment, we therefore take a step towards Boycott Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) on Israeli occupation. BDS is a nonviolent tactic and a global call, drawing from the struggle against South African Apartheid, to end the occupation. To engage in these efforts join Justice for Palestine, the new student club, by sending an email to jfp@middlebury.edu. Continue the discussion at 4:30 PM in Dana Auditorium today (Thursday, 03/21) with the screening of the Academy Award Nominee “5 Broken Cameras” and the following discussion with Palestinian Professor Ahmad Almallah.

Some define education as the ability of making connections between concepts. Middlebury Students have made the connection between war on people and war on the climate. The same economic forces benefit from both. It is time to head the call, listen to the voices of those oppressed by our endowment and by the figures of authority we somehow continue to welcome, and take a step for justice. Coming back to Martin Luther King, “injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”

Between Gaza, Nigeria, and Middlebury

Photos from the motherland take over my mind my heart is pounding. A man called to serve in reserves talking on his phone. A car with broken window shields in Be’er Sheva. A destroyed apartment in Ashdod. Siren goes off in Jerusalem for the first time in 30 years. Three dead, a dozen injured. Jenny called from New Orleans and told me that rockets were shot at Jerusalem, my hometown. Impossible, I say, no one would bomb Jerusalem with all of the holy places and all. I call my friends Mori and Ruth. Mori, a Midd alum, just got out of prison for refusing to serve in the military. The rocket was aimed at the Israeli parliament, close to where my friends live. It fell somewhere in the open, nothing happened. Except panic. And I can feel this panic like I felt it during the second intifada when I couldn’t take buses to school out of fear of suicide bombers.

And then I look at Gaza. I stare right into the screen and can’t take my eyes off it. A huge explosion of fire behind a mosque. Women in hijabs screaming in front of flattened buildings. A girl crying, her head covered with blood, carried out of a burning building by a paramedic. 126 people dead since Wednesday (and counting). Hundreds injured. Many children too. And I imagine standing on a hill near Sderot, where my sister and my nephew lived not so long ago, and looking at Gaza and seeing the smoke and the airplanes above the city, and I feel the pain and I hear the screams of terror and I start to cry my tears drop heavily on my laptop and I try to brush them off with shaky fingers but they trickle into the keyboard. And in their shielded headquarters and huge villas the generals and politicians responsible for this dread stay protected. Like kleptomaniacs, their thirst for power knows no end. They are willing to drop cluster bombs on neighborhoods and risk their own constituencies to win the next election. Responsibility, but only for profit. Respect, but only for the Dollar. Like corporate kleptomaniacs, turning a blind eye to displaced communities and executed activists, it happens all over the world, like in Nigeria, like Royal Dutch Shell, the largest multinational corporation in the world, which got a stage and student support and applause here in Middlebury.

And I call Olivia, another amazing Midd alum, who’s in Ramallah, and she’s going to daily protests with Palestinians in solidarity with Gaza but there are so few people, she says, and it’s a routine and nothing happens. And I feel the frustration as I felt it every week in Sheikh Jarrah, Bil’in, Nabi Saleh, South Hebron. As I feel it when trying to mobilize the student body here in Middlebury. As I feel it trying to get people to attend the open Friday Assmebly to talk about how they feel it. But feelings are normally irrelevant. We’re emotionally illiterate. Feelings are not taught in our classrooms. Maybe that’s why we’re able to publicly denounce our friends without giving them constructive criticism in person.

And protesters that are not under occupation, my friends from Yasamba band, they feel it too, because there are so few of them every day in Jerusalem’s Paris Square protesting against the war. And the authorities don’t have to do much about the dissidents because the Israeli public is doing it all for them and beats my friends up as they go out to protest. And I feel their pain the way I felt it on my own skin numerous times the way I felt when I went with Yaniv, another ex-prisoner of the military, to film illegal construction of an outpost built to oppress the Palestinians of South Hebron Hills and Israeli settlers came out and beat us up and broke our cameras and the soldiers just stood there and watched it. And Middlebury authorities don’t need to do much either about dissent. Students do a fine job holding their peers accountable, accusing them publicly, shutting them up, stepping on them as they lay on the floor in a hopeless representation of the voices that are silenced by our endowment and our unquestioning corporate tendencies.

And I feel the frustration in the way that my Israeli middle school friends gang up on me on Facebook and say that I don’t understand the wider picture because I refused to serve in the army and I only see one side of things and I twist reality and how dare I say the names of the murdered Palestinian kids – Ranan Yousef Arafat, 3 years old, Omar Jihad al-Mashrawi, 11 months old, and more and more –  and what about my own people and my own privilege and my own home in Jerusalem. And of course they want peace too, and they think I’m a smart guy but my means are disrespectful and I’m in the wrong direction. And I received murder threats by anonymous responders on my blog, and passers-by on demonstrations call me a fifth column and I am a traitor. I make people uncomfortable sometimes, but I feel constantly uncomfortable in Israeli society. And here I’m accused of not attempting to grow with the community, of not working with love, of demanding attention and waking up every morning to villainize whoever stands in my way. And we are “entitled children” or “children of anarchy looking to stir up chaos.” Anonymous responders on Middblog call me and the friends I love and admire “a bunch of losers” and “an embarrassment to the college.” I make people uncomfortable sometimes, but I feel constantly uncomfortable in this college.

Students and administrators have said repeatedly that they agree with the message but disagree with the means. To me this is a commitment to keep things as they are, in status quo, in “peace,” meaning that there is no disorder, disruption, doubt, discomfort, no justice. “War is peace,” as Orwell said, right? So let’s break the ends and the means and see what’s going on here. With our means we disrespected the $470 billion corporation’s right to express its opinion (of course, here Shell had more than enough time and space to express their stance, unlike at the University of Vermont, where the whole talk was disrupted). Our message is for divestment from unjust corporations and apartheid regimes in order to contribute to a world in which Arabs and Jews live in peace and equality and multinational giants like Shell Oil and Exxon Mobil don’t exist and resources are shared equally by all people regardless of their color and gun power. Divesting from Shell is disrespectful to Shell which in itself is disrespectful to humankind and the planet. The ends are as disrespectful as the means. Both means and message are about respect for basic human dignity and the environment and all living things. Therefore, if you don’t believe in our means, you don’t believe in our message. Separating the means from the message is intentionally misleading and disrespectful to victims of corporate crimes.

Maybe we are losers. We have been losing for 500 years since the beginning of colonialism since the beginning of capitalism we have been losing for 45 years since the beginning of the occupation and more. But we have some hope in humanity and that keeps us going. Some hope in people’s ability to work with each other for more than themselves with mutual aid and compassion and solidarity. That war is not part of human nature, that we can embody the change we want to see in the world as we go, that we can question what we’re told to do even if white men in suits tell us not to. We believe we can live that in our everyday struggle and that carries us on. And that is very anarchist to me. And I don’t mean anarchy as synonymous to chaos, but rather as the struggle for the lack of oppression in all aspects of life. I mean anarchy not as the lack of order, but as the presence of justice. I believe in getting educated without displacing Nigerian people and destroying the planet. I believe in eating without exploiting animals. I believe I can live in the Middle East in coexistence with my Palestinian comrades. And I seek to embody this in my actions. And I am a hypocrite, hell, I ate an omelet just yesterday, but I recognize it and I want to do something about it and figure out how to do things right as I go and that is very anarchist to me. But some people have no privilege to say this and recognizing that is also very anarchist to me. My mom just said she saw a convoy of tanks going south.

November 1st Community Judicial Board Hearing - DLWC Opening Statement

Reblogged from The Dalai Lama Welcoming Committee:

Opening Statement - Molly Stuart, Jay Saper, Jenny Marks, Amitai Ben-Abba, Sam Koplinka-Loehr

Hello, Friends and Community Members.  We are the Dalai Lama Welcoming Committee. We have been asked to discuss our activism from October.  We’d like to start with a quote from the late Senator Paul Wellstone. He said “If we don't fight hard enough for the things we stand for, at some point we have to recognize that we don't really stand for them.” We appreciate being heard together, as a group of students who have worked in a deliberative and consensus based process to do our part in honoring the words of the Dalai Lama.

Read more… 4,320 more words

Clown Monkey on a different kind of performance. Only during the hearing it occurred that what we did was a version of Augusto Boal’s idea of “invisible theatre”, designed for an audience that doesn’t know it is participating in a play for situational purposes aimed at shifting the discourse. A bunch of people came up to us in the end and said they were different people six hours beforhand, with entirely different opinions on activism and the idea of divestment from the destruction of human beings and Earth. Words, words, words are powerful.

Press Release Authors Come Clean: A Call for Middlebury College to Do the Same

Reblogged from The Dalai Lama Welcoming Committee:

On Friday, October 12, 2012, Middlebury College welcomed His Holiness the Dalai Lama to campus.  An announcement was made that in honor of the visit from the 1989 Nobel Peace Prize Recipient, the College had chosen to demonstrate ethical leadership in divesting its endowment from war and environmental destruction. In reality, the satirical notice about Middlebury’s divestment was written by us, a group of students concerned that the College embraces practices inconsistent with its own proclaimed values.

Read more… 550 more words

Coming clear about our recent tactic-media culture-jamming Yes Men-inspired action. Please share and follow us to pressure Middlebury College to divest from war, occupation and environmental destruction

אום אל עמד ובירבורי טחינת הדיכוי

פארס מאום אל עמד הוא אחד האנשים העדינים ביותר שאני מכיר. עיניים בהירות מעל חיוך אמיתי ורחב שמרוח על הפנים מעל מבנה גוף שרירי ומוצק של פלאח. איזה יום בקיץ האחרון ירדו עלינו שני מתנחלים מעותניאל בעת מרעה. המתנחלים רצו לעברנו וניסו לפזר את העדר. צעקתי לעבר החיילים מהצד השני של הוואדי שהם מחוייבים ע”פ חוקי מדינת ישראל להגן עלינו ולאפשר לנו לרעות. בזמן שאני קראתי “האלו, חיילים!” לואנה האמיצה הציבה עצמה בין המתנחלים לעדר והגנה בגופה על המרעה. אני זוכר שפארס ואני דיברנו על היום ההוא ופארס שיבח את נחישותה של לואנה בתנועת יד רחבה מהחזה החוצה וסימון עם אצבע ואגודל ושלוש אצבעות מתנופפות על ידן כמו כרבולת התרנגול או סימן הסמבה לטמבורים. היא מגיעה לאום אל עמד כמעט מדי שבוע וכל הרועים מכירים ומוקירים אותה. לפעמים איזה מתנחל נקם-אל יורד מעותניאל ודם בעיניו וסכין בין שיניו. החיילים מסרספים ונרדמים בג’יפ דויד הפועל תמיד. במהלך השבוע כאשר הפעילות לא נמצאות, החיילים עצמם יורדים להיטפל לרועים ולהעיף אותם פעם חמישים מטר מדרך הביטחון של עותניאל ופעם מאתיים. בהתנחלות מספרים שאנחנו, פעילי תעאיוש, מתסיסים את בני הכפר ויוצרים מהומות. בנוכחותנו מתעורר הרצון להתעקש להגיע לאדמה ששייכת לפלסטינים על פי חוקים בינלאומיים ומסמכים עותמאנים למיניהם. להתעקש, בסומוד, בהתמדה ובנחישות לאורך זמן, לעבור כבישי ביטחון שרירותיים ותיחומי שבת שערורייתיים. ביום שבת ה-25 לאוגוסט, 2012, התקרבנו במיוחד לכביש הביטחון וירדנו לכיוון הוואדי. כתיבה בזרם תודעה היא תהליך מדיטטיבי. בשלב מסויים חוויית הכתיבה מתחברת לזיכרון והכתיבה נשפכת בזמן הווה במקום עבר. זה קורה עכשיו. הג’יפ הצבאי נמצא על הגבעה לידנו אך החיילים מסתכלים במשקפות ולא יורדים לעברנו. אני רואה טרנזיט לבן יורד לכיוון הוואדי בתוך ההתנחלות. כמובן שמותר למתנחלים לנהוג בשבת, התעמרות ברועים פלסטינים היא בגדר פיקוח נפש. היה לי דיון תיאולוגי על פעילות תעאיוש ושמירת שבת עם חברי מוריאל, רב מרטין בובריאני לזכויות אדם. הגענו למסקנה שהתמדה בתעאיוש היא בחזקת שמירת שבת בגלל שמדובר בבניית קהילה, בעיסוק בפעילות בעלת משמעות שהיא שונה מחיי היומיום, שמדובר שמשהו שמצפים לו במשך ימי החול ושזה הדבר שהכי נכון, לי לפחות, לעשות בזמן נתון. אני חושב שמתנחלים באים, אני אומר לפארס. חשש מופיע בעיניו החייכניות לרוב. הוא מפחד שחיילים יבואו עם המתנחלים לעצור את הילדים. זו אסטרטגיית הפחדה המוכרת לכל הרועים. לפני חודשיים היינו עדים למעצר של שלושה ילדים בני 9, 11 ו-13 שליווינו באל-ריחייה ליד התנחלות בית חגי. פעילי תעאיוש רדפו אחר הג’יפ הצבאי אל תוך ההתנחלות וראו איך החיילים כופתים את הילדים באזיקונים ומכסים את עיניהם בפלאנליות. הפעילים התעקשו והתקשרו לעורכי דין והילדים שוחררו כעבור שעה. לא ניתן לשער איך חווייה כזאת משפיעה על ילד. קורא/ת יקר/ה, שיהיה ברור, דברים כאלה מתרחשים מדי יום במחסומים בערים בכפרים על כבישי אספלט ובאזורים חקלאיים. במקרה הטוב מדובר בבילוי של כמה שעות בשמש בתנוחה לא נעימה. עיכובים כאלה לא יוצאים לתקשורת על פי רוב. במקרה הרע מדובר בבילוי של כמה חודשים בכלא ללא משפט בגלל האשמה של זריקת אבנים או משהו כזה. אז תפסו כמה ילדי מתנחלים בני 12 מבת עין שהטילו בקבוק תבערה על משפחה עם שני ילדים, אבל על התעמרויות, זריקות אבנים והשחתת עצי זית על בסיס יומיומי בדרום הר חברון לא נפתחים תיקים בכלל. את התוקפים של חג’ איסמעיל לא יחפשו. המתנחל אבידן אופיר וחבריו שכמעט שברו לי את היד במאחז אביגיל וריסקו לנו שתי מצלמות לעולם לא יזכו לפשיטה לילית והשפלה על פשעיהם. בזבוז נייר. קיבינימט. חזרה לאום אל עמד. החשש של פארס מוצדק אבל מתנחלים לא מגיעים וחיילים לא יורדים. אלה הימים הכי יפים בתעאיוש, כשלא קורה שום דבר. מדי שבוע מלמד אותי פארס שמות של צמחים בערבית. כך אני לומד בלהג הפלאחי שמות של עשבים שמעולם לא הייתי מכיר משיעורי של”ח. פארס שם בידי לקט של עשב בניחוח שמזכיר מנטה. זה נקרא גורני, הוא אומר, סוג מסויים של זעתר שהולך טוב בתה. בסוף היום נזכה לטעום מהתה הדליקטסי הזה בריח מנטה. הרמדאן נגמר לפני שבוע, תודה לה’ שהיא בראה לרמדאן סוף. תה מתוק כמו ממתק שמרווה עטאש, אחלה סרט. פארס ומשפחתו אוספים את כל המים שלהם בבארות, בניגוד לתושבי הכפרים הבדווים שאנחנו עובדים איתם בדרום הר חברון שנאלצים לקנות מים מהעיר יטה כי אין מספיק גשם וכי הצבא דואג להרוס בורות מים עם בולדוזרים. ביום רביעי ה-29.8.20120, אתמול או משהו כזה, הרס הצבא חמישה בארות בח’ירבות זנוטה ועניזאת בדרום הר חברון. הם הרסו גם אוהלים בסוסיא, כך כותבת עמירה הס. במסעות ההרס שלהם אתמול כוחות הבצע הרסו מכלי מים יקרים, דירים ומחסנים למזון. וואליד, נער הפלא של אום אל עמד (שכתבתי עליו כאן), אומר שכשחיילים שואלים אותו מה גילו הוא מסמן עשר עם אצבעותיו ואומר באנגלית six. פעם אחרת ראיתיהו אומר שתיים-עשרה. גילו האמיתי נותר תעלומה ואולי עדיף שיישאר ככה. הפעילה הספרנית שלנו מביאה לו ספרים מדי שבוע. הוא רוצה להיות רופא. הפעם היא הביאה לו ספר עיוני בערבית על ארצות באירופה. הוא יושב על סלע בצד ומעיין בו בעניין רב. לפארס ומשפחתו בית אבן קטן על גבעה. העדר חי במערה גדולה ומרווחת בקרבת הבית. קשה להתפרנס מרעיית צאן. בתחילת שנות ה-90 הותר להרבה פחות פלסטינים להיכנס לתחומי מדינת ישראל כדי לעבוד בבניין ובחקלאות ורבים נאלצו לחזור לחקלאות מסורתית. רבים לא מסוגלים להתפרנס רק מצאן וזיתים וחוצים את הקו הירוק תוך סיכון חייהם. האימרה שחומת ההפרדה הורידה את כמות הפיגועים היא שקר. חומת ההפרדה לא משפרת את הביטחון, מטרתה, מעבר להקטנת חופש התנועה של הפלסטינים, היא סיפוח אקוויפר ההר ושטחים  ומשאבים נוספים. יש אינספור דרכים לעבור את הגדר. מאות פועלים עושים זאת מדי יום. אם יימשך הדיכוי ויחמיר כפי שהוא מחמיר עכשיו, יש להניח שישוב המאבק המזויין. בחייאת רבכום, כמה הפלסטינים עוד יכולים לסבול? אתמול ע’סן, קומוניסט מבית כהיל, דיבר איתי על מחוייבותו לאי-אלימות. דיבוריו היו כנים ויפים ונכונים על התועלת הטקטית והמוסרית באי-אלימות (זריקת אבנים, אגב, היא לא אלימה מנקודת מבטו). אבל נראה שהתשובה לאדישות האלימה של מדינת צה”ל תגיע בצורת מעבר מדיבורים על מרטין לות’ר וגאנדי לדיבורים על מלקולם אקס וסבקומנדנטה מרכוס.

לאחר ששבעו הכבשים מתגודדות זו לצד זו כדי ליצור הגנה מפני השמש הקופחת. בסוף המרעה עולים חזרה לכפר. העדר גועה בצמא ומצטופף על יד הבאר. פארס שואב מים במיומנות. שלוש משיכות, יד ימין עולה עד הסוף למעלה ומטילה את החבל הצידה. הוא אוחז בדלי ושופך את המים במכה אחת. אטיין דקרו, איש התיאטרון הרדיקאלי מצרפת, אמר שבגלל ההתקדמות הטכנולוגית אנשים יבואו לתיאטרון כי רק שם ניתן יהיה לראות בני אדם עובדים. אני צופה בתנועות המדוייקות של פארס ומרגיש שאני צופה בהצגת תיאטרון אך יודע שנבואתו של דקרו עוד רחוקה. חברינו מאום אל עמד לא מחוברים למים וחשמל. לפרבר מבודד זה של יטה לא הגיעו צוותים של קומט עם לוחות סולאריים. פארס בכל זאת מדבר על שיפור. לפני שנתיים, הוא אומר, בכלל לא יכולתי להתקרב לוואדי. למרות שהזקנים בכפר אמרו לו שלא יוכל להשיב את האדמה הגזולה, הוא עכשיו מצעיד את הכבשים על אדמתו מדי שבת.

במצפה יאיר היה מרעה מוצלח ושקט. באביגיל שוב העיפו חיילים את הרועים מרחק שרירותי מתיחום השבת. שווייה שווי, סנטימטר ועוד סנטימטר ונפדה את אדמתנו, בינתיים הכי חשוב שהעדר שבע, אומרים הרועים. בטוואנה הייתה פעולת מחאה בעקבות השחתה של עוד 200 עצי זית על-ידי מתנחלי הגרילה של חוות מעון. פעולת שאיבת מים מבאר בה המתנחלים רוחצים בעירום בימות הקיץ החמים. הצבא הגיב בסגירת השטח לישראלים בלבד.

השכנה מלמעלה מאכילה את החתולים נגדם כלבתנו הקטנה ועזת הנפש מנהלת מלחמת חורמה. יש משהו נורא עדין ויפה בנשים מבוגרות שמאכילות חתולים. קשש פש-פש-פששש, היא מסננת, והחתול הג’ינג’י יפה-התואר שמסתווה לנו היטב בגינה נענה לקריאתה. חרם, אמר סטוקלי קארמייקל בסרט הנפלא Black Power Mixtape, הוא שיטת מחאה פסיבית. זה נכון בעיניי, אבל המשמעות הסימבולית של חרם צרכנים רחב-היקף היא חשובה. חברה אמרה לי אתמול שהייצוא הישראלי לארה”ב ירד ב20%. מעניין באיזו מידה השפיעה תנועת הBDS על המספר האדיר הזה. האם האיום מפני בידוד בינלאומי יכפה על החברה הישראלית לכבד את זכויות האדם של הפלסטינים? אני בספק. אני מרגיש לבד מול כל העולם, אמר לי חבר אחרי המשט הטורקי לעזה. באותו זמן עזרא השתחרר מהכלא בגלל שהשתטח לפני בולדוזר שהרס בתים באול אל ח’יר, אך זה היה לפני שהכרתי גם את עזרא וגם את גיבוריי אום אל ח’יר. הבעתי סימפטיה לתחושות חברי באותה שיחה נעימה בבירמן. חודשים ספורים לאחר מכן שפכתי על אותו חבר-חייל כאלה ערימות של הטפות מוסר שלא ראיתיהו מאז. כיום, אני גורם לאנשים לא פעילים רבים אי-נוחות בנוכחותי בלבד. תחושת בדידות נפקדת מול כל העולם.

בפלאייר שחילקנו בפעולת הסמבה וחלוקת הפלאיירים מיום שישי האחרון (לסרטון המוצלח הקליקו כאן) כתבנו שבין היתר, משמעות הבחירה בשטח אש 918 היא בידוד החברה הישראלית בקהילה הבינלאומית. וכתבנו שמדובר בבחירה בכיבוש יקר על פני תקציבים לרווחה וכן הלאה וכהנה. מה הדרך האפקטיבית ביותר להנחיל לציבור הישראלי שהבחירה בגירוש 1500 פלסטינים מאדמתם והחזקה של 300 נוספים (ורבים אחרים) בצורת חיים בלתי אפשרית בשטח אש היא מנוגדת לאינטרסים שלו (או שראוי שתהיה מנוגדת לאינטרסים שלו)? קוראות בעלות תושייה מוזמנות להעלות הצעות כאן למטה בתגובות, ועדיף בהקדם כי צריך לנסח פלאייר לקראת פעולה דומה נוספת שתתקיים ביום חמישי הבא. קורא ביישן מוזמן/ת לאותת לי במורס. קוד מורס. הפענחת את הנגחה שנתן לא נתן עובר האורח למחלק הפלאיירים האמיץ? לא פראיירים, הם לא פראיירים של חרדים רק פלאיירים של עשירים ששולחים אותם להתפוצץ ובעיקר לפוצץ בני אנוש אחרים בשם תאוות הבצע המוסווית למחצה בביטחונות לסירוגין. בשמונה פעמות בבקשה. בבקשה. ביצה קשה. דוכן שלם של דוח’אן פלאחי ירקרק וריחני. טחינה. וביצה קשה. וטחינה גולמית ענוגה מרוחה על שטיח פרסי. ותה פלאחי מתוק כמו ממתק. וחציל חצילי אצילי עסיסי. מה שנקרא בית – ואחרי כמה דקות מגיע ה – תינג’אן. וטחינה ירקרקה בגלל כורכום, לא פחות, לפחות, עשר מנות ועשר כוסות. יין.

מחר ייערך סיור (הקליקו כאן) לשטח האש. עוד לא מאוחר להירשם. מומלץ במיוחד לפעילות ופעילים שכבר היו בדרום הר חברון. זו הזדמנות נדירה להגיע למקום מבודד שזקוק לתמיכה.

אמיתי בן-אבא.

Thoughts on Ethnic Displacement and Other Things

Interesting developments with Syria. Now Israeli media is bombarding its public with a new scare. “Chemical weaponry is falling to untrustworthy hands”, and as a friend deduced, we seem to be on the verge of war with Syria, not with Iran. Iran is a spin, but there still must be war before the elections. Nuclear Iran or Chemical Syria, we see the same old technique of “war is peace” that Orwell talked about. This upcoming November the interim order regarding the eight villages in the 918 Firing Zone will expire and Israel might need a diversion for the expulsion of 1500 people. War with Chemical Syria, with Assad the baby killer or perhaps with his successors, will be easily justified. At 1999 there was an expulsion of 700 residents from the military training area in the wild south. Every cave was sealed, some were demolished by drilling straight into the fucking hills. All tents, toilets and living structures were destroyed to the ground. Wells with precious water were clogged up. On aerial photographs taken on the year 2000, the 918 Firing Zone looks like an empty patch of desert. High Court allowed the residents to go back to their lands. Now the colonialists take the photos from destroyed 2000 and the photos from half-rebuilt 2012 and say that the residents are invaders. In lieu of a scorched land. We still have aerial photographs from 1945 and 1967, proving that the villages existed long before the State of Israel, so doublethink will not prevail as of now.

Aerial photo of Jenbah from 1945. The villages existed long before the State of Israel and its Firing Zones.

We in the Left have thrown numbers at people for centuries. “You must understand! 60% of this and that for only 15% of so and so, doesn’t it ring a bell?!” And yet, there are some numbers that must penetrate, right? So here are some numbers that pierced my mind tonight. 60% of the West Bank was declared Area C that is managed exclusively by civil and security control of the State of Israel. 30% of Area C is designated as a Firing Zone. A fifth of the West Bank is designated as a Firing Zone so that kids with oversized guns and sci-fi equipment can play war. The Jordan Valley is a Firing Zone with safe islands for Jews in shape of outposts and settlements and army bases. Since 1967, roughly 320,000 Palestinians were expelled from their homes in the Jordan Valley. The IDF Firing Zones are probably the most effective strategy for Palestinian displacement in the West Bank. “It’s for security”, they say. “We need to prepare for the next war so we don’t repeat the mistakes from Lebanon”. Here’s a funny number: demolishing over 80% of a village is a war crime. In the little South-East corner of the West Bank, in the beaten South Hebron Hills, we have a chance of stopping this tendency of ethnic displacement.

You see, I just received an email from one fascist bloke called Bennett. Somehow his extreme rightist propaganda has reached my inbox as well. He has a plan of officially annexing all Area C. He says he’s willing to give citizenship to 50,000 Palestinians in the area. The other 100,000 Palestinians in Area C will have to be forced into the ghettoes slash bantustans of Area A. I don’t know if there are any two-staters slash European diplomats that read my blob, but Bennett’s plan would make the situation irreversible in terms of two-state partitions so please rise up. Damn, it would make the situation irreversible in terms of one-state that is not apartheid, so one-staters rise up as well. “One state, two state, green state, blue state” let’s get disillusioned with the statist non-solutions and work to enable people to live in peace and dignity from the grassroots. With the 1500 residents of the 8 villages in the 918 Fire Zone we might be able to stick a thumb into the hole of the dam. It doesn’t stop here. 300 residents of four other villages in the Northern sliver of the 918 Firing Zone face impossible living conditions. I wrote about one of them, Maghayer al-Abid. All motor vehicles (some actually ride beaten bicycles on the rocky hills) driven by non-settlers in the Firing Zone are confiscated so people must go on donkeys to get basic goods from Yatta. On the way they must get stoned by guerrilla settlers and show IDs to ego-tripping soldiers.

The connection must be made between the ethnic displacement in the West Bank and the aggressions against Middle Eastern neighbours. As we fight for Jenbah and its sisters, we must remember that any day now the military might execute its authority, given to it by the High Court of Justice, to demolish Dkeika or Susya. Arab boys are lynched every Thursday and Saturday evening by fanatic blood-thirsty Beitar fans, last week one boy was hospitalized in a severe case. Settlers from the Bat Ayin terrorist cell, well acquainted to Israeli authorities after trying to blow up a girls school, threw a Molotov cocktail last week on a Palestinian family with two children. No arrest was made, everyone’s talking about the lynch in Jerusalem’s Center. Now rightists distribute flyers in both Hebrew and Arabic telling Arabs to stay away from Jewish neighborhoods for their own safety. I remember what Ezra said before I went to file the complaint after I was beaten up at Avigail, “only one thing will come of this complaint – a big waste of paper”. By the by, Jewish cars pass through the Firing Zone to Avigail outpost but never suffer confiscations.

And yet, we keep our spirits up for the pearls of experience and the belief that something can be done and the knowledge that since Taayush started at South Hebron Hills no village was evicted from the area that is called a Firing Zone. On our anti-oppression journeys we meet amazing persevering gentle people right and left. Mahmoud from Mufaqara, another one of the four villages of the northern sliver of 918, that tried, quite militantly, to make me dance debkah. I was promised a proper lesson. Like Fadel from Umm al-‘Amad that gave me a terrific botany class teaching me the names of all kinds of different plants in this beautiful landscape. Ear tickling names such as Zuheif that looks like Za’atar or Dardala that stings. People survived the Ramadan and on the end of last Saturday, right before the last Iftar, barely had energy to reply “alekum salaam” to our greetings. The communist shabab of Beit Kahil laughed in solidarity with their hungry mumbles. “Haram”, the practicing Muslims say worriedly for the souls of the non-believers. Beit Kahil is a highly politicized village North of Hebron covered with graffiti of Handala and Che. A kid comes up to my friend Olivia (who just set up a blog about her adventures in Ramallah) and says, “I’m for PPP [Palestinian communist party], what about you?” The boys point on a small Ghandi looking guy that walks with a smile on his face and a bucket. They greet him with the utmost respect and tell us that he’s the one that brought communism to the village. They say he suffered Israeli imprisonment and torture and a hit that was a little too hard on the head. Folk says he’s been walking 24 kilometers every day to Hebron and back without talking to anyone for the past 20 years. The PPP is not defined as a nationalist party (they do support Palestinian national liberation) and is the only Palestinian party that never had armed forces. During Iftar we talk to our hosts about Marx and international solidarity between all freedom fighters and how the hierarchy in both Israeli and Palestinian society comes from the same source and how communists and anarchists must be comrades. At dusk at Ramadan’s closure the sun goes down and one looks West on a beautiful view with mysterious trees that who knows who planted at British Mandate times and on the horizon one’s mental eye forgets that the apartheid wall is still there.

[הקליקו כאן כדי לקרוא מאמר חשוב וענייני בעברית על שטח האש וכרוניקת הגירוש]