ICAHD

Dear everyone,

I've got some good news - Mahmuud Hassan and Azir have been released.

The bad news is that they managed to hike up the price of bail (bale?) to 50,000 shekels for all of them. Azir's family have been able to pay is 20,000 (4000 in GBP), don't ask me how! For the other two the Israeli activists cobbled together the money through other really amazingly generous people. Does make my heart sing a little bit when I see that level of dedication and committment, and they act normal - it happens all the time. They go through extraordinary things for each other all the time. That's the real peace work.

What have I been doing with myself?

Good question.

I've been working with ICAHD's "action advocacy officer" Angela Godfrey-Goldstein. She's a British Israeli, her father was a doctor and she grew up in Africa and England and then moved to Israel a long time ago. She's seen it change and morph and progress and twist into the bitter sinew of racism and superiority that it is now, calls herself a post-Zionist and works harder than anyone else I've seen so far.

I'm staying at her house for the moment, typing up speeches, finding funding for ICAHD with KIOS and the EU Comission etc., reading, thinking about it all, I accompanied her on a tour of the Negev and the bedouin there

I'll say a little something about the bedouin

They are the most obvious poor, they live in shanti like houses in the desert, there are over 20 unrecognised villages, many of which have had land fill sites or chemical factories or NUCLEAR POWER STATIONS set up right next to them, they don't have access to primary healthcare and the roads don't accomodate ambulances, plus they aren't in the Israeli welfare or insurance systems because they're unrecognised. They are the nobodies of the nobodies, not even worth mentioning, at least to the staunchly ant-arab government. That's something that Israel and Egypt can agree on - how not to treat the Bedouin.

I'm also seeking out 40,000 for a school bus for a year and 35,000 so they can finish building and start running a small school there.

There was a women's group there run by a bedouin woman in her 20s that was taken out of school at a young age to do the house work, and fought a tough battle with her family and her community to be allowed to return to her studies, she is 27ish now and just finished high school. She has just embarked on an open University degree, and has refused to marry as she didn't want to marry the man they arranged for her, she did this by just staying engaged and saying 'later' 'later' 'later' until, 7 years later, he got bored and found someone else to marry, taking some of the blame. Fantastic, really strong and enlightened woman, a real joy to see. She made some nice Tommy compatable food as well... And ran a women's centre to help women generally, hear their concerns and help themin the community, to promote the place of the woman in the local community, to give them somewhere to chill out, somewhere so that they can share baby-sitting, hold small events, I think they probably kept women there if husbands needed a bit of time to cool down but possibly not. So that was an inspiration. All done with pure sweat, no external funding.

The state of the villages was just too sad next to the industrial sites, business and the government seem to just use the Negev desert as a dumping ground for pollution etc. that they don't want to have to deal with around Jewish communities, with complete disregard for the ancestral lands of the Bedouin and what their tribal areas mean to them.

One village has been razed to the ground 22 times. Can you imagine a community in England that had their houses torn down and they had to rebuild them 22 times in 60 years? So moving.

What else...

lots of paper work and computer work...

The Pope's here now and he's coming by my road tomorrow morning so I might pop out and see him in his funny car.

Last night I went to meet with Anat, a girl that Kevin, a friend from Rusholme brought to my goodbye drinks.

She invited me to see some "jewish culture" - it was the equivalent of Guy Fawkes night, there was a Judean revolutionary figure that was unsuccesful against the Romans and he was burnt alive, except this guy is really celebrated openly, not like Guy Fawkes which has always been to me, as a child at least- Dammit, he was so close! Not because of the consequences just because there was so much unexploded gunpowder underneath a bunch of politicians...

So I arrived, after she told me the name of the 'village' and the bus number - the bus' windows were double perspex, a 'security measure' - I swear they have all the security equipment on the wrong side of the wall, anyway, I couldn't see where I was going.

Everyone on the bus was suspectly orthodox or military, I mean it's a highly militarised society and you see army uniforms everywhere you go but this was a bit too much.

When I got off I thought that it looked quite nice but a bit wierd, and after popping in to see one family where she told them I was a peace activist and the father grumbled a lot and never gave me eye contact, it was a bit surreal, the whole place was like desperate housewives suburbia. Like a film set. Anat told me that this road was more extreme, I asked her what she meant and she went "you know...." like she couldn't name it because of her English rather than because it was completely unacceptable - I offered "zionist?" and she said, "don't be silly everyone here is a zionist" I thought, right, well, we are in Israel but I didn't know that everyone wanted a theocracy... (Zionist means someone that wants a Jewish State - like an Islamic State or a Christian State, nor a State for the Jews but a religious state, or a state with a vertain "demographic balance" ranging from 68/32 to 100%) and she settled for the word religious.

So we walked around, she showed me a small group of quiet shops and said that this was the site of a terrorist attack where someone she knew through someone she knew got killed. I think it was during the first or second intifada but I couldn't tell.

Then we went out of a fence that imitated childrens fences, you know with the overlapping half circles at the top, usually in green or a primary colour, except that it was really adult size. There was a secret door/gate and Anat led me through down to a bench and arm chair where we had a chat about the arab/israeli situation and Manchester and Kevin and the other people she met and what she did in England. We were sat close to a fence and on the next hill there was a village that looked like a settlement.

"Are we in a settlement?"

"of course! I told you in Manchester."
"did you?"
"and I told you today"
"did you? Sorry, I must have thought you said something else."

So there I was, in the heart of it. Karney Shomron. Settlers.

My previous experience of settlers had been when I recieved what I thought was a panicked phone call from some Christian observers saying that they were surrounded by IDF and settlers near Beit Sahour south of Bethlehem so I drove down there to find them but they were alright, the settlers were going for a picnic where it was illegal for them to go under international law, but it was OK because they were protected by a ring of IDF soldiers. A picnic, seriously? It's such a psychological game here.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GQVgwkjSzEw&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qYtvb8OW_cg&feature=related

this is what i've seen of the settlers so far. Driven by God to do as much as they possible can to 'transfer' the 'violent corrupt hateful untrustworthy arabs' out of Palestine. Violent. The scary thing is that the ideology behind the violence is one of naked ethnic dominace - if there was ideology of liberation or equality or a better life for everyone then I could start to go along with it, but just to keep millions of darkies down to secure what you think God promised you? Come on, this isn't the 1600s...

So I was introduced, to my great peril and fear, as a peace activist to every settler that we encountered.

One woman looked very shocked and blurted out while giving me an intense stare "throw him in the fire"

it was bonfire night and I was right next to the fire...

Thank goodness they never took her up on that imperrative :) - it would have hurt.

So then Anat brought forward 3 men, one by one, to explain to me "intellectually" why it was OK to be a settler and why the whole of Palestine should be Jewish.

I was never scared of losing the argument, it was foolish, childish and made no sense. I was scared of physical violence though and was walking a very thin line between holding my ground that it wasn't OK to kill arabs or to generalise about arabic society in the way that they were doing, or to be racist "but they're different, if you lived with them you'd know" "they're all lying to you" "all the refugees are lyers, they're from Jordan and Iraq, there were only 500,000 Palestinians in 1950 how can there be 10 million now? It's pure mathmatics, it's all a lie" (even though 750,000 Palestinians alone where ethnically cleansed/removed from the land given by the quango UN delegation to create a new Israel)

They were making a real effor to try and put on a good face, to attempt to be as lovely as possible to show that they were people too and to try and win my support with manipulative emotional bribary.... it was really horrible, but I can see why these dutch ministers that go over to the settlements come back with islamophobic rhetoric. It's kind of - I'll give you an extra slice of tomatoe for your pitta bread if you admit that arabs are at least a bit horrible... and a bit more for a bit more. I wasn't having any of it, but I was warry of the stick side of things, I still had to spend the night there and Anat had left me with her cousins. I young father and mother, they were zealous and she was attractive and they really tried to be sweet, but I just couldn't take it seriously.

There's a childish ignorance to racism and that transposes quite neatly into a naivity about their own government. Oh my days. It was an experience. That's all I can say.

There's so much happening out here that it's difficult to process, I suppose I'm doing most of the processing as a write and I'm sure I'll look back on it in a years time and be able to tell a more accurate story but things are just so extreme here.

Talking about solutions and this racist settler's experience in the army he said that he wouldn't except anything except a full Israel, and that he thinks that in war it's OK to kill children and women and do anything that you need to do to win the war and he hates Bt Selem, one of the human rights groups.

He delivered all this in a very very calm way, unlike the older men the night before.

He's an activist on the other side of the fence. He believe's he's serving God by bringing as many jews as possible into settlements, from abroad as well, and making everyone who is Jewish a Zionist.

I was thinking destructively. I had just stayed the night in this mans house, I had seen him play with his baby in a really loving way and saw that he had a good relationship with his wife, and it pissed me off. Why do I know so many good people that are finding life so much more difficult than this arrogant tosser? He's making life miserable for so many people, and he's enjoying it as a duty, how can he be so happy? How can he enjoy hate and fear? Is it real? That must afflict you in some way.. The older men were certainly very grumpy and bitter, but there are some bitter and grumpy old men in every community and society.(sorry Roddie...)

Eventually I got him to acknowlendge that Israel's lack of respect for the UN and international law, human rights and the idea of the universality of humanity was hampering those very institutions and delegitimising human rights and interntaional law and the UN at a very important time. We are facing climate change and peak oil and water problems and a globalised world where we need international co-ordination and a respect for the human being more than ever, especially as non-Western powers are rising to the level of super-power, and had little to do with the creation of the UN and human rights after the 2nd World War, and if little Israel could get away with so much what do you think these guys are going to get away with? So he said that he cold never accept the Right of Return for the refugees, but he did finally concede that he would have to accept a two state solution so long as he had a promise from the international community that the moment that the first bullet was fired against Israel, Israel could transfer the whole arab population out of Palestine. I thought that that was a little unrealistic but at least a start! "we wont ethnically cleanse you if you really really really really behave yourselves and never once murder us no matter what we do to you" I suppose is better than "we need to kill or remove you all now". But he was just saying it for me and he still has a long way to go...

God.... Urghh.... What have You done! How have You pitted off one fan-base against another and another... How is that worship? How is killing each other a good way of saying thank you for the life that we have?

So then I hitch-hiked to Tel Aviv, went to the Jordanian Embassy, met a really attractive French TV journalist in the lobby, got my Visa - the guy behind the glass didn't think I was the same person in thw photo - that how different I look without hair...

Then I went to drop off 2,000 shekels to Shai for the bail money for the others, an Israeli documentary maker about the popular struggles in the West Bank, he came to the same protests and is a really sound man, he's getting the mouuulaaa together with a friend and driving people to and from hospital and is actually one of the general mother geese of the Palestinian non-violenct resistance movement.

Then I went to the beach to read about the ethnic cleansing of Palestine by Ilan Pappe, it's a really good book and although difficult to read if you are an Israeli, very well written and well researched. I'd recommend it as the best book I've read on the 1940-present history of Palestine, but apparently Whalid Kalili is also great, and said all of this ages ago but got no recognition because he was Palestinian and not Israeli. RACE! It works on so many levels.

Oh, one more exciting thing, I got to sit in on an UN OCHA (Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs) meeting. My days there is soooo much stopping you! We went round in circles for three times before we got started, just talking about what we were going to talk about. Too many egoes and not enough structure - but I wasn't in a position to take the lead so I just kept quiet. The aim is to freeze house demolitions immediately and then to create a legal framework for dealing with displaced people in ISrael-Palestine and also to change policy about planning to accomodate the needs of the Palestinians ~(I put the last bit in because they were getting stuck but they left it hanging. It's difficult to use any words because a big team of lawyers is working on the other side to manipulate language and encode it into law before youve even opened your mouth.... it's tricky)

And... I've cooked a lot of Miso soup and pasta and aubregenes and yummy tasty things now that there's a kitchen to do it in. As much as I respect the quality of Palestinian homous, I was needing a bit more variety in my diet.

Oh yeah, and I met the circus from Iraq, I'm sure I said that before? THey had a whole mock prayer about Jade Goody and a Hym about her... it was funny. It was also great hearing some British banter, I loved it.

The day after they left they performed their last show in Israel-Palestine in front of 1500 Bedouin children in the Negev desert. Amazing. Unfortunatly I have nothing but a picture - again, not with me, I'll have to get it up soon.

OK, it's 3 in the morning and I need an early start so goodnight and be well and merry and free :)