so, i had started working the the NGO "the holy land trust" - Strengthening communities for the future.
so i've been doing a mixture of things at the holy land trust.
For the first few days, after forking out too many shekles for accomodation, I was keen to find somewhere cheap or free to stay - but without forcing myself on anyone. So for the first few days i stayed with Elias, a really nice christian that works with the organisation. His mum is quality, always stuffing me with food - and she is a good laugh even though my arabic at that time was about 10 words and her english about the same standard. Easter was coming up next weekend and the family was quite excited.
They had a really nice shower as well :)
so i went out with Elias and his american missionary friends for one night, we talked this and that, violence and non-violence and it was quite interesting - the need to repect cultures and peoples and how the missionaries blatantly ignored that... I mean the ones i was with, i know there are some really great missionaries out there. So these whacky american evangelical missionaries made me their mission.
Did I mention that Elias collected turtles? He's got at least 12, they're pretty cute - just chilling outside his house munching greenery all day... quality.
the next morning i was taken to a lunch that i didn't really want in a western restaurant paying loads for a salad because it was all meat, and they pushed "the lord, the word, the spirit" on me. One of the guys, John, was an ex-football player that slipped discs and then spiraled down into crack and smack and then found... Shaine Claibourne http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPANKUHabx4 Well, he found God, but Shaine welcomed him into 'the simple way'.
who turned his life into one of the holy spirit etc etc. It was amazing to hear the transformation that he made in his life, and how his pain related to spirituality as well - and I was honoured that he opened up the deep pain that he was feeling before he found Love in his life.
So that weekend i went to Jerusalem to meet up with Alix - a family friend working for the EU in Jerusalem - she was having a diner party and I rocked up in muslim dress, it was hot... and i met these amazing people, beurocrats, security advisors documentary makers and journalists - they were all interesting, had good hearts and good minds. So that was a pretty fun evening and I made some contacts for activism etc. THere was even a vegan journalist that exposed the white phosphorous usage in the gaza strip for the Times by getting some evidence from the IDF through friends of friends... then she wrote an article on the zoo and how the only animals that survived were the lions - because they ate the rest of the animals when the fences were destroyed by the shelling. I love that she went to the zoo - a vegan in a war zone. That made me happy.
then on monday night the Americans held a prayer meeting. So i went with a couple of Palestinians because i've been wanting to explore christianity more an i'd been missing the spiritual connection that i have with my meditation group in Manchester - they did the last supper thing because it wasn't too long since good friday - real bread and punch - then they read some bible, and played a song about how the world should be one nation under god - american. basically gave the impression that american christianity should rule the world, which didn't go down tooo well but was ok. Then, after John speaking in tongues and using special ointment to pray at the feet of the Palestinian christians for their safety and that God would be close to them, we went to the roof to pray. I suggested a native american council circle because the americans had native american roots, and it's nice.
So the idea of a native american council circle is that you sit down around a candle, the candle represents the future generations so if you have any negative thoughts or conflicts then it will be felt by the future... just symbolic I think. And you start by passing round a talking piece, just check in you know, say what's on your mind, but be brief with words and try to let it come from the heart.
Then, when everyone has checked-in you look at each other, and develope a warmth between each other and a love until that heart felt connection spills out of your mouth in the form of words and you pick up the piece to express your heart... the mind is supposed to be disengaged but it's not a strict thing. Anyway, we did a short version and stood up and held hands and just skipped the checking in bit.
it was really nice, the energy was strong except for John and Elias - Elias because i don't think he got the hang of it and John for no know reason... so the general thoughts that are expressed are those of compassion for the world or complements about each other and appreciating each other's individual nature. So that was really nice. But John was like a black hole, you poured in your love and nothing came back, which was quite wierd but I just kept going.
After it was finished he told me that i had experience with the spiritual world and that i had strong energy but that it was slightly demonic so he was using his spiritual power and prayer just to put a stop to it imediately. He said that God told him to tell me to stop my "buddhist power trip"... which was really sad because that's pretty much what i live for. It's the source of everything i do, most of what i say, all of my happiness and joy and I call it love, he calls it partly demonic... So one of us is misguided.... which was a funny thing to think about.
so, then, after staying at Elias', the Holy Land Trust found a family to stay with in Azar refugee camp in the centre of Bethlehem. They were strictly muslim, and had 5 sons and a daughter, but the daughter had found a husband and was living outside the camp. So the boys were cool, the eldest had been to gaol and was studying economics at Bethlehem university - he wanted to understand the current system of control on the planet and was dead set on getting a first - really good lad. The second eldest was full of despair and quite depressed about the whole situation - he was unemployed without a good education and there really isn't work going for the young at the moment, the older men with status get the jobs first - irrespective of merit. So it was really sad talking to him and really difficult when he layed out his hopelessness and thoughts on the situation. I really couldn't offer him any hope or consolidation, and he wouldn't accept my empathy for a long time, thinking that because i was British i would never understand. He also thought that there really wasn't anything that i could do to help palestinians or alleviate the situation and no non-violent struggle was worthwhile. Most of the camp is just waiting to return to their lands in Israel, which is an international law, that refugees have the right to return to their previous land. But they've been waiting for 61 years... So then there was the teenager, he was working hard at school, then two younger ones, both quite hard and older than their age. The youngest had a health problem and his limbs and face filled with interstitial fluid for no apparent reason, he was still undiagnosed after much consultation with the medical profession. There was a hospital stay while i was there but it was short and he was back before i had a chance to go and visit him.
So the one full of despair really opened up to me one night, it was the night before his birthday. He was sad that his family didn't even remember his birthday or celebrate it, he was sad that his Dad was sitting on savings and that his mum often went without food, that he didn't pay for enough medical treatment for his little brother... really depressed, he wanted to kill himself but he couldn't because it was Haram. And even after really trying with him, he ended by saying "just forget, just this, just go back to England and forget. It's easy, forget about me, forget about my brother, my mum, the camp, palestine. Just forget." and wouldn't accept that i couldn't forget and that he and his family and Azar camp and the middle east meant a lot to me. it was tied up with the fact that he wanted to spend the weekend with me but i planned to go to Jenin.
so the next day i woke up early and went to the bakers, and committed a vegan crime! I bought him a big chocolate birthday cake and a funny chinese candle thing that was a flower/firework/birthdaycandles all in one to go on the top. I left it on the cake with a note and packed up to see north of the West Bank. I also put up a load of balloons around the room.
I couldn't contact the person that was supposed to show me around the camp in Jenin, a shop owner in Ramallah from when I was staying with Talal that gave me coffee and had a chat - he's my age. So in the end i spent the weekend with friends of Nasreen, a fantastic young lady working with Action Palestine in Manchester. They are quality, really well educated about the situation and good fun to be around. The guy's house that i stayed at was really fantastic, it had just been built, a 5 story thing - the floors were small but it ws a really nice house with an amazing view of the valley. The valleys here are beautiful, stepped with olive trees and the evening sun makes them even more breathtaking with it's orange glow.
So the next morning I was perched on the edge of the balcony meditating when G came up to me thinking that i was crazy and that i might fall and die from the long drop but it was a really nice session.
the Saturday, I checked out the scouts parade. It's pretty cool. Basically, all the scout groups do a march, bringing light from the place of Christs' birth with 5 candles, taken to various parts of the west bank with this procession. It's a christian thing - when Jesus came back and gave the flames that enabled the disciples to speak in different tongues to tell the world of his coming... but the muslim community embraces it as a celebration. I'm not 100% on the exact account in the Bible but I'm sure you know what I mean.
So the kids come from all different places - from refugee camps or middle class christian areas, you can tell by the way they walk, the way they wear their uniforms, the entheusiasm they put in to the procession and the way that they put on their make up/ if they wear sun glasses etc. which socio economic groups they come from. It was quite interesting and highlighted some of the stark inequalities that are current in the West Bank. There was one really beautiful moment when a little girl no more than 6 years old, held a trumpet up to her lips and blew with her face scrunched up, really exerted, and out came this perfectly timed, perfectly pitched note - and then she took down the horn/trumpet and walked on like nothing had happened... really cute.
Oh yeah, that was the day when I got my head sunburnt....
The night when the brother opened up to me, before that long conversation, they younger ones had questioned why i had long hair... they said that i needed a haircut. Fairdo's; it was a mess. So I said i didn't really want to pay for one, and saw a buzz cut thing - shaver? razor? i can't remember what you call it, my mind's still a bit scrambled from the interview at the police station - more on that later.
So i suggested cutting my hair with that as a sort of joke, then the second youngest jumped up and smiled and grabbed them and said "adventure, adventure!" So, I thought why the hell not - it would mean that i wouldn't have to buy Israeli shampoo.. So I was shown a chair, i took of my shirt and they were amazed at my tattoo but pointed out that it was Haram and that i should remove it if i wanted to become a muslim (not likely). The 3 boys then found a pair of sissors each and started hacking away at my hair - i suppose it was kind of like getting your braids done as a girl or something... attention from the same sex making you look nicer. So after the hacking, they turned on the buzzers and hessitated, so i just took them and ploughed it past my forehead towards the back of my neck, giving them a good start.
I look funny without hair - like a cross between a skinny buddhist monk and ray winstone - if that makes sense.
so the next day I was in Ramallah - the western style drinking/gay/spying/political/consumerist capital of the West Bank and the sun was high in the sky and I was walking everywhere, I went to a law firm to inquire about volunteering on Sundays - but it was all either in Hebrew or Arabic so i wouldn't be much use, then walking back i felt the sun begin to bake my head. By the end of the day it was red and the next day it peeled off, so i got a hat. A red, inconspicuous baseball cap.
So, shaved burnt head and cap, i returned to the camp to excited thanks for the birthday cake and an apology from the brother that he had misjudged me and i wasn't like all english people.
I started arabic lessons with this fantastic woman that's wheelchair bound and has extremely limited mobility due to muscular distrophy. She's pretty amazing.
I wanted to teach an english class a couple of times a week in the camp but the guys running the centre were slow and busy with other things. I met a cool dutch woman that has a project in Silway "playgrounds in the middle east" - she came over here 4 years ago with musicians without borders and just stayed here and is married to a fantastic israeli gentleman that's working hard with the centre in Silwan, we were just writing a funding proposal for a library and creative writing centre - I'm stating at their house for the next half an hour.
So eventually i found a teaching/general kids work post for sundays at Aida refugee camp, which is about 4 times the size of Azar and is coloured with a lot of really nice painting on it's walls - but it's right next to the apartheid wall. There's a big fat gate with a key on top representing the right to return.
So tomorrow was supposed to be my first day, but I can't go back to the West Bank for 2 weeks now.
Various cute and enlightening events happened in the past month but I wont bore you with all of them.
Independence day/the Nakba comemoration was an interesting day actually. On Thursday night i heard an air-raid siren. It was just like the world war 2 sirens you hear in museums etc. it was quite frightnening but no-one seemed to be caring about it. So i asked about it and i got shrugged shoulders. The next day at work, it went off again at lunch. I was told that it was to comemmorate the dead from the Nakba. Ilan Pape's book "the ethnic cleansing of Palestine" has a good account of the Nakba or catastrophe for anyone that's interested.
So I went to see the celebrations in Jerusalem, the police cut off the central area to any arabs and there was dance music, drunkeness and soldiers on leave or settlers hanging around in normal clothes with M16s around their shoulders - it's because they can't leave it anywhere except a liscenced safe - which many don't bother to get. Many settlers just never go anywhere without a few guns..
People hit each other with blow up hammers coloured with the Israeli flag - and the celebration was kind of wierd, like there was a feeling that Israel wouldn't be around long, that there was a funny edge to it... anyway. I went to the alternative independace day where i met the israeli activists - there really weren't many. People say that the whole activist scene in Israel numbers fewer than 500 people, but they're a tight group and go to great lengths for each other.
We were going to do an action to remind people of the Nakba and hand out a load of leaflets explaining it, and go into the celebrations with a blindfold and our hands cuffed like Palestinian prisoners but the guys with the material couldn't show up at the last minute.
The alternative event was really nice - songs from people singing about the sadness of the situation, speaches about the real heroes of israel - the kids that stomach prison instead of going into the army, speeches about projects that were happening - it was a day of sadness and compassion that contrasted starkly with the wild and confused escapism of the independance day celebrations themselves.
So then I met Angela again - a fantastic woman working with ICAHD. I'm going to be doing things with her and living with her rent free for a while in Jerusalem.
OK, so the next week was pretty good, we started doing really productive things with the Holy Land Trust and the study of the villages was really coming together. Then... Friday.
Labour day, May day....
I went to a tour of a valley of land next to the solomon pools with my mate from South Africa - really fantastic woman that worked to lift apartheid and was a white nurse in a white hospital, so she was completely ostracised from the medical community and spent lunch time with the cleaners... She nursed the ANC members that had to be treated at the white hospital because the black hospital in the area was run by the Inkatha, and the patients would be stabbed before they got to the operating theatre, in the lift, in the corridor... the political violence between the black themselves was horrific. If an ANC supporter knew he was being taken to this hospital he would throw himself out the back of the ambulance, wounded or ill or whatever to avoid murder. So the white hospital had to take them.
The white doctors didn't give morphine to the black patients, saying that they were used to pain so it didn't matter, their genes hadn't build up a resistance to milder pain killers - so men with knee caps shot off were given paracetamol and the nurses had to deal with the screams from the black ward all night long, so she is pretty ace, a priest, has a mixed family, has a fantastic community, protects women from rape and gender violence and does other amazing things with her life. It's always a pleasure to spend time with her.
So then we went to a protest at Um Salamouna, one of the villages that I was studying. There were twice as many people there as usual, and it was a non-violent protest. the SA lady was filming from the side and I went to the wire to try and diffuse the situation when people started bussling and attempting to cross the barbed wire.
I went out the group again when it calmed down and was standing sort of near the side when....
Saturday, 2 May 2009
Tuesday, 21 April 2009
week two and a bit
So, I had arrived in Beit Sahour.
The family was lovely, the "Azars" which used to be one of the rulling families in Palestine, they were lovely comfortable middle class Christians with one son studying abroad and the other "Azar Azar" - love the name - had just returned from working as an accountant in Dublin.
They made me nice nosh and they had such a nice shower... Ahhhh... warm and powerful. Such a nice break. I only think I've actually washed 4/5 times since i've been here and it's usually been a cold dribble. I indulged and used their Israeli made shampoo.... felt a bit guilty afterwards but it was nice, and my hair was a greazy lanky mess!
So on the way to the house, I was being picked up by an activist that Adie met on the internet, which worked out just in time. She found me the family, a bit expensive for my liking so i only stayed there two nights.
As I was waiting for her on the high street I sat down with all my baggage to read a book. I got up, unknowingly leaving my - or should I say my mother's, really nice little videocamera on the street.
I had realised that it was gone the next morning, I ran to the road with bare feet, dodging the broken glass and having the kids laugh at me, to find that, at 830am the next morning, of course, it had gone. So I asked at the garage, they gave me more strange looks and said to come back when the security was here incase the CCTV picked anthing up, but they all just missed the spot where i was sat.
So, sorry mum!! I'll pay you back.
I still have the charger and spare CDs... so some lucky palestinian has got some really nice footage! A smashing interview with a female policy writer in a taxi, kids' analysis of the situation, some of the natural beauty, an amazing shot of Nablus from a hilltop that I climed with my rucksack on, and footage of checkpoints and walls and grafiti.
I was quite sad that I had lost it and lost the opportunity to catch some of my experiences on film, but I remain unattached and happy and blessed that I can relax about catching things on film and just being aware of what's going on :)
So back to the Azars. The first night in Beit Sahour, the activist told me about a talk going on, which was the one that inspired the investigation into the prisons, a guy from Al-Haq talking about his experiences. Saw a load of Europeans and Americans. Italians, Swedish and Norwegian, Irish and US. It was wierd. I always find it strange seeing other whiteys here as I probably want to pretend that I'm more a part of the community than I really am. It was good.
So on Monday I started volunteering full time with the "Holy Land Trust". It's motto is "strengthening communities for the future". It works on youth projects - mainly exploring kids' identity and their affiliations. It organises non-violent resistance. It trains local leaders, government officials, political parties, faith leaders etc. etc. in "non-linear thinking" with the aim of finding non-violent solutions to situations in the conflict and showing people that they are more powerful - still left to be 100% convinced but I'm getting there. It also runs what I first thought was a travel agency but is actually a really well respected "travel and encounter" program, exposing the occupation to Americans and Israeli Jews mainly. If you have only a couple of weeks in the summer and fancy a holiday, this may be a good way to do it, you can do vlunteering based, study based or talour it. I still think that the air miles aren't worth it so much but... Hey the truth needs to get out.
So I've been editing English mainly, but also doing a lot of personal organising and random facebook stuff. Which is probably an indication that I'm not totally committed to the progam yet. I know it's a long term approach but it doesn't feel nearly as effective as the kind of organising and activism that you can do in England. And I really have a problem with the formalised set up.
It's an NGO, a Palestinian NGO, and the people that work for it are amazing, they really are. They want an end to the occupation more than anything else, but it doesn't feel like they think that what they are doing is going to have an effect. The talk at lunch is small talk, it's like an office in England, everyone except the founder clocks off at office hours. They work hard and the dynamic in the office is really co-operative, but it is really an office, not an action station. SO i will give it my best but will probably move to an Israeli organisation called ICAHD, Israeli committee against house demolitions. They look fantastic and I met a nice woman from there.
need to go right now but i'll resume in a bit. x
The family was lovely, the "Azars" which used to be one of the rulling families in Palestine, they were lovely comfortable middle class Christians with one son studying abroad and the other "Azar Azar" - love the name - had just returned from working as an accountant in Dublin.
They made me nice nosh and they had such a nice shower... Ahhhh... warm and powerful. Such a nice break. I only think I've actually washed 4/5 times since i've been here and it's usually been a cold dribble. I indulged and used their Israeli made shampoo.... felt a bit guilty afterwards but it was nice, and my hair was a greazy lanky mess!
So on the way to the house, I was being picked up by an activist that Adie met on the internet, which worked out just in time. She found me the family, a bit expensive for my liking so i only stayed there two nights.
As I was waiting for her on the high street I sat down with all my baggage to read a book. I got up, unknowingly leaving my - or should I say my mother's, really nice little videocamera on the street.
I had realised that it was gone the next morning, I ran to the road with bare feet, dodging the broken glass and having the kids laugh at me, to find that, at 830am the next morning, of course, it had gone. So I asked at the garage, they gave me more strange looks and said to come back when the security was here incase the CCTV picked anthing up, but they all just missed the spot where i was sat.
So, sorry mum!! I'll pay you back.
I still have the charger and spare CDs... so some lucky palestinian has got some really nice footage! A smashing interview with a female policy writer in a taxi, kids' analysis of the situation, some of the natural beauty, an amazing shot of Nablus from a hilltop that I climed with my rucksack on, and footage of checkpoints and walls and grafiti.
I was quite sad that I had lost it and lost the opportunity to catch some of my experiences on film, but I remain unattached and happy and blessed that I can relax about catching things on film and just being aware of what's going on :)
So back to the Azars. The first night in Beit Sahour, the activist told me about a talk going on, which was the one that inspired the investigation into the prisons, a guy from Al-Haq talking about his experiences. Saw a load of Europeans and Americans. Italians, Swedish and Norwegian, Irish and US. It was wierd. I always find it strange seeing other whiteys here as I probably want to pretend that I'm more a part of the community than I really am. It was good.
So on Monday I started volunteering full time with the "Holy Land Trust". It's motto is "strengthening communities for the future". It works on youth projects - mainly exploring kids' identity and their affiliations. It organises non-violent resistance. It trains local leaders, government officials, political parties, faith leaders etc. etc. in "non-linear thinking" with the aim of finding non-violent solutions to situations in the conflict and showing people that they are more powerful - still left to be 100% convinced but I'm getting there. It also runs what I first thought was a travel agency but is actually a really well respected "travel and encounter" program, exposing the occupation to Americans and Israeli Jews mainly. If you have only a couple of weeks in the summer and fancy a holiday, this may be a good way to do it, you can do vlunteering based, study based or talour it. I still think that the air miles aren't worth it so much but... Hey the truth needs to get out.
So I've been editing English mainly, but also doing a lot of personal organising and random facebook stuff. Which is probably an indication that I'm not totally committed to the progam yet. I know it's a long term approach but it doesn't feel nearly as effective as the kind of organising and activism that you can do in England. And I really have a problem with the formalised set up.
It's an NGO, a Palestinian NGO, and the people that work for it are amazing, they really are. They want an end to the occupation more than anything else, but it doesn't feel like they think that what they are doing is going to have an effect. The talk at lunch is small talk, it's like an office in England, everyone except the founder clocks off at office hours. They work hard and the dynamic in the office is really co-operative, but it is really an office, not an action station. SO i will give it my best but will probably move to an Israeli organisation called ICAHD, Israeli committee against house demolitions. They look fantastic and I met a nice woman from there.
need to go right now but i'll resume in a bit. x
Thursday, 16 April 2009
Prison
So with 'kidnappings' at check points still happening frequently, prisoners as young as 18 months (Nour, he was actually born in prison as many months ago), over 10,000 Palestinian prisoners in Israeli gaols (out of a population of 3.3 million according to demographer Sergio DellaPergola - which would be the equivalent of France imprisoning 200,000 people from the UK), and Palestinian Prisoner Day tomorrow on the anniversary of the arrest of Nour's mother (I'm sure this is just a coincidence actually but it sounded nice) - I think it's time to write about the Palestinian prisoners inside Israel.
I can only give a brief outline of the problems because there are so many
1) Administrative detention
http://www.btselem.org/english/Administrative_Detention/Statistics.asp
So in England we are concerned and upset about the 42 day limit - well I am anyway, it's a long time to be banged up for nothing - lse your job, potentially miss the birth of a child, an event that you had been planning, hospital check ups... a month and a half. OK. In Palestine the person that has been under 'administration' the longest has wound up nearly 5 years now. 5 years without trial, that's some pretty sluggish administration if you ask me.
And what happens in 'administrative detention' - I went to a talk by a former inmate, arrested because he was politically active at University advocating respect for Human Rights in the occupied territories. Something that I do in the UK - he was in prison for 3 years without charge.
To be fair administrative detention isn't as bad as proper prison in Israel - the other side of the military/quango courts. You are allowed books - you used to be allowed 8, in line with the Geneva convention, but now that has been reduced to 1 and Israel have just made a decision to ban them altogether. You are allowed to make the dorm look nice and decorate it, but all the decorations are ripped down and the place is stripped out every 4 months or so, you are allowed to smoke... but you still get tortured, or 'interrogated with sustained exerted force' - the techniques make the fake daily injections and jump suits in GITMO look tame. Israel has killed dozens of people using torture techniques that have been scientifically refined to minimize physical damage while increase pain.
Torture
http://www.addameer.org/resources/reports/torture-eng.pdf
I met a student at Berziet university that had been imprisoned for 3 years from 16 to 19 because he belonged to a political family - he described 'Shabeh' - or handcuffing your hands and feet to a tiny sloped chair designed to give you back pain and put pressure on your wrists and ankles. He was in this chair for 3 days without having done anything wrong, without and interrogator presesnt. The justification for the use of this technique is so that the interrigator is protected from prisoners lashing out.
He also described iscolation cells under Jerusalem city, where you are kept in a room that is just too small to stand to lie straight in, you have a mat and a pot and you are given just enough food to live - no sugar or carbs or solids. You are left in the dark for what feels like weeks (probably actually weeks, he knows that his friends were away for about 3 weeks before coming back, having been put in the cell for the whole time) and the bucket for your toilet is only emptied twice a week. You see no-one, you speak to no-one. Some people come out of this experience literaly insane. Again, it is used as a repressive measure but it is also used arbritrarily to crush people's spirits.
You are given "light glasses" which are strapped to your head while your are handcuffed, that shine bright white light directly into your eyes - it is one techniques, along with tying you in uncomfortable positions, playing one extrememly loud rock song over and over and over and over for days, dousing you with hot or icey water - you don't know which until it hits you. People have been deprived of sleep for up to 20 days. You aren't supposed to survive 11. It wrecks your nervous system and makes you more vulnerable and susceptable to the torture techniques used to keep you awake.
They can shake you so hard that you die from nervous damage (this has happened over 6 times), suffocate you with a bag over your head that the guards usually defecate in (shit in), stamp on your balls or apply gradually increasing force until you pass out from the pain - girls, trust us, this really really does hurt.
So apart from the other physical techniques of plain beating, tying you in positions that will damage your back and jumping on you - that one's called the "banana", depriving you of a wash change of clothes or certain nutrients in your food - or indeed taking food away altogether, depriving you of water and "frog squatting", they also employ nasty psychological games. Telling you that they will kill you in a week and counting down, telling you that your wife or children are dead, telling you that your friends have informed on you, telling you that they have clear evidence that you are a terrorist, telling you that you will never be let out of prison etc. etc. etc.
OK, probably spent too long on torture...
Children.
http://www.btselem.org/english/statistics/Minors_in_Custody.asp
As of now there are 54 children under Sixteen, from 18 months to 16 - it's really not all teenagers, there's 7 year old Majeb and 10 Ihab as examples.
I just find this difficult. How could you torture a 7 year old?
Niveen is a little girl in the camp, she doesn't speak and people aren't sure of her age (around 10)
I'm using personal examples here in case people can't be bothered to empathise with the statistics.
The kids are all in administrative detention under 14 because it's illegal under israeli law to keep them in the same prisons under this age. Please bear in mind that the age at which an Israeli becomes an adult is 18, the age at which a Palestinian under their jurisdiction becomes an adult is 14.
Mohamed, a boy that's 22 in his second year of University studying hard to get a 1st in economics so that he can understand the system of control (really like me, we get on well despite the lacking of arabic), spent 3 years in gaol from 16 to 19, I am living in his home in the Azar camp in Bethlehem.
Palestine is littered with young adults that have been tortured as children, I have come accross so many people that have been through prison and I've not even been here 2 weeks!
There were 348 16 to 18 year olds in prison on the 28th Feb this year. I don't know what the number is now.
Trials
OK, so these are a farce. They are military courts, they comprise of 3 judges appointed by the military and no jury. Only one of the judges has to have had legal training and its majority rule, so figure that one out! 'Nuff said.
Family visits
Hygiene
each section of 120 prisoners gets one bar of soap 5 days a week... hmmm.. I'm all up for sharing is caring but this is going a little too far.
Prisoners aren't given a change of clothes, so that if you were arrested in your pyjamas, then you wear only them, if you were arrested in clothes stained in blood from your wife - these are the clothes that you will wear until someone that loves you enough to make the treacherous and tedious journey to visit you brings new clothes.
Healthcare
this is poorly neglected, the waiting lists are longer than the NHS and check ups are done through a fence... but what do we expect, it is prison... but the ICRC(international committee of the Red Cross) really aren't too happy with it.
Phone calls
while mass murderers from Israel are allowed to make phone calls, political prisoners human rights advocates and unfortunate members of the wrong family are denied this, so they smuggle in mobile phones - a practice that carries a HUGE risk in terms of opening them up to maltreatment, but that's the level of love for their families, which often aren't told which prison they're in (there are about 50 around the Middle East)
Unfortunately, they are closing the office now. But the list goes on, there are many issues facing prisoners that I haven't touched upon, the psychological damage that is inflicted, the stunted growth and accelarated aging, the difficulties facing their lawyers or human rights organisations, the stricly controlled mail, the banning of family visits for periods of up to 2 years (I'm talking about all visits here, not just for one person), food, and other forms of abuse such as rape (mainly of female prisoners).
If this has left you drawing comparisons to the nationalist regimes in Europe in the 20th Century, you're not the only one!
I'll put up a little jiffy about how I've been settling myself down here shortly - it's pretty sad to hear about the prisons and having experienced a prolongued period of pain myself i find if incredible difficult to acknowledge that torture is happening, to face the facts, without it kind of scrambling my system a bit. I have such a respect for the people that I have heard talk about their experiences, it really isn't easy - especially as there is no psychological help or rehabilitation when you come out the other end.
I can only give a brief outline of the problems because there are so many
1) Administrative detention
http://www.btselem.org/english/Administrative_Detention/Statistics.asp
So in England we are concerned and upset about the 42 day limit - well I am anyway, it's a long time to be banged up for nothing - lse your job, potentially miss the birth of a child, an event that you had been planning, hospital check ups... a month and a half. OK. In Palestine the person that has been under 'administration' the longest has wound up nearly 5 years now. 5 years without trial, that's some pretty sluggish administration if you ask me.
And what happens in 'administrative detention' - I went to a talk by a former inmate, arrested because he was politically active at University advocating respect for Human Rights in the occupied territories. Something that I do in the UK - he was in prison for 3 years without charge.
To be fair administrative detention isn't as bad as proper prison in Israel - the other side of the military/quango courts. You are allowed books - you used to be allowed 8, in line with the Geneva convention, but now that has been reduced to 1 and Israel have just made a decision to ban them altogether. You are allowed to make the dorm look nice and decorate it, but all the decorations are ripped down and the place is stripped out every 4 months or so, you are allowed to smoke... but you still get tortured, or 'interrogated with sustained exerted force' - the techniques make the fake daily injections and jump suits in GITMO look tame. Israel has killed dozens of people using torture techniques that have been scientifically refined to minimize physical damage while increase pain.
Torture
http://www.addameer.org/resources/reports/torture-eng.pdf
I met a student at Berziet university that had been imprisoned for 3 years from 16 to 19 because he belonged to a political family - he described 'Shabeh' - or handcuffing your hands and feet to a tiny sloped chair designed to give you back pain and put pressure on your wrists and ankles. He was in this chair for 3 days without having done anything wrong, without and interrogator presesnt. The justification for the use of this technique is so that the interrigator is protected from prisoners lashing out.
He also described iscolation cells under Jerusalem city, where you are kept in a room that is just too small to stand to lie straight in, you have a mat and a pot and you are given just enough food to live - no sugar or carbs or solids. You are left in the dark for what feels like weeks (probably actually weeks, he knows that his friends were away for about 3 weeks before coming back, having been put in the cell for the whole time) and the bucket for your toilet is only emptied twice a week. You see no-one, you speak to no-one. Some people come out of this experience literaly insane. Again, it is used as a repressive measure but it is also used arbritrarily to crush people's spirits.
You are given "light glasses" which are strapped to your head while your are handcuffed, that shine bright white light directly into your eyes - it is one techniques, along with tying you in uncomfortable positions, playing one extrememly loud rock song over and over and over and over for days, dousing you with hot or icey water - you don't know which until it hits you. People have been deprived of sleep for up to 20 days. You aren't supposed to survive 11. It wrecks your nervous system and makes you more vulnerable and susceptable to the torture techniques used to keep you awake.
They can shake you so hard that you die from nervous damage (this has happened over 6 times), suffocate you with a bag over your head that the guards usually defecate in (shit in), stamp on your balls or apply gradually increasing force until you pass out from the pain - girls, trust us, this really really does hurt.
So apart from the other physical techniques of plain beating, tying you in positions that will damage your back and jumping on you - that one's called the "banana", depriving you of a wash change of clothes or certain nutrients in your food - or indeed taking food away altogether, depriving you of water and "frog squatting", they also employ nasty psychological games. Telling you that they will kill you in a week and counting down, telling you that your wife or children are dead, telling you that your friends have informed on you, telling you that they have clear evidence that you are a terrorist, telling you that you will never be let out of prison etc. etc. etc.
OK, probably spent too long on torture...
Children.
http://www.btselem.org/english/statistics/Minors_in_Custody.asp
As of now there are 54 children under Sixteen, from 18 months to 16 - it's really not all teenagers, there's 7 year old Majeb and 10 Ihab as examples.
I just find this difficult. How could you torture a 7 year old?
Niveen is a little girl in the camp, she doesn't speak and people aren't sure of her age (around 10)
I'm using personal examples here in case people can't be bothered to empathise with the statistics.
The kids are all in administrative detention under 14 because it's illegal under israeli law to keep them in the same prisons under this age. Please bear in mind that the age at which an Israeli becomes an adult is 18, the age at which a Palestinian under their jurisdiction becomes an adult is 14.
Mohamed, a boy that's 22 in his second year of University studying hard to get a 1st in economics so that he can understand the system of control (really like me, we get on well despite the lacking of arabic), spent 3 years in gaol from 16 to 19, I am living in his home in the Azar camp in Bethlehem.
Palestine is littered with young adults that have been tortured as children, I have come accross so many people that have been through prison and I've not even been here 2 weeks!
There were 348 16 to 18 year olds in prison on the 28th Feb this year. I don't know what the number is now.
Trials
OK, so these are a farce. They are military courts, they comprise of 3 judges appointed by the military and no jury. Only one of the judges has to have had legal training and its majority rule, so figure that one out! 'Nuff said.
Family visits
Hygiene
each section of 120 prisoners gets one bar of soap 5 days a week... hmmm.. I'm all up for sharing is caring but this is going a little too far.
Prisoners aren't given a change of clothes, so that if you were arrested in your pyjamas, then you wear only them, if you were arrested in clothes stained in blood from your wife - these are the clothes that you will wear until someone that loves you enough to make the treacherous and tedious journey to visit you brings new clothes.
Healthcare
this is poorly neglected, the waiting lists are longer than the NHS and check ups are done through a fence... but what do we expect, it is prison... but the ICRC(international committee of the Red Cross) really aren't too happy with it.
Phone calls
while mass murderers from Israel are allowed to make phone calls, political prisoners human rights advocates and unfortunate members of the wrong family are denied this, so they smuggle in mobile phones - a practice that carries a HUGE risk in terms of opening them up to maltreatment, but that's the level of love for their families, which often aren't told which prison they're in (there are about 50 around the Middle East)
Unfortunately, they are closing the office now. But the list goes on, there are many issues facing prisoners that I haven't touched upon, the psychological damage that is inflicted, the stunted growth and accelarated aging, the difficulties facing their lawyers or human rights organisations, the stricly controlled mail, the banning of family visits for periods of up to 2 years (I'm talking about all visits here, not just for one person), food, and other forms of abuse such as rape (mainly of female prisoners).
If this has left you drawing comparisons to the nationalist regimes in Europe in the 20th Century, you're not the only one!
I'll put up a little jiffy about how I've been settling myself down here shortly - it's pretty sad to hear about the prisons and having experienced a prolongued period of pain myself i find if incredible difficult to acknowledge that torture is happening, to face the facts, without it kind of scrambling my system a bit. I have such a respect for the people that I have heard talk about their experiences, it really isn't easy - especially as there is no psychological help or rehabilitation when you come out the other end.
Wednesday, 8 April 2009
Northern West Bank travels day 7/8
Hey hey guys and gals,
I'm going to give you a little run down of the last week and where I've been etc.
So, to round of Jerusalem, on the last day I asked this girl for where the nearest cash mashine is (they're a bit of a nightmare) and she asked me where I was from 'Manchester', she was a journalist from Mancheser and she went to the University as well, so she asked me if I'd like to join her friend and her for diner, which I did. Her friend happened to be Sarah Hudson, married to a mutual friend of Adie, Patrick and Andy's called Mark. It's a small world after all hey?
So I ended up going to Bethelehem with them, I still owe her some money for diner, which was nice. She gave me a lonely planet as well(guide book).
So I crossed the wall and the checkpoint peppered with quality graffiti asking for peace and justice by Blublu, Banksy and a couple of other artists.
So then I was shown around the Holy Land Trust with Sami Awad, a Martin Luther King kind of person, with pictures and quotes of and by the Dalai Lama, Ghandi, and Martin Luther King. There were three projects that I liked and was happy to get involved with but I wanted to check out the rest of the West Bank first because Bethlehem is really a middle class christian town with very few problems compared to Nablus, Hebron or Jenin.
So then, after getting completely lost looking for their TV network called Peace News Network, stumbling into a human rights organisation to ask for help (there are hundreds of Non-Governmental Organisations trying to alleviate the situation here, to a debatable effect) and picking up a load of quality literature on the human rights situation here - which, needless to say is awful, I took a 'service' which is kind of like a big shared taxi, to Ramallah.
In the taxi, a smiley Jordanian Jewish girl sat down next to me and started a friendly rant about everything under the sun. Her name was Rowa, which means blessed water or something similar, and she explained half a dozen times that she was hyper because she was so tired...
I ended up being taken to an ice-cream place and having some tea before going back to her flat to meet the guys that she stayed with; Talal, Mohammed and an Egyptian gentlemen that had a nice chat to me about being a 'leftist' and lementing the demise of Egypt under Mubarak and Nasser's former glory...
So a couple of hours later, I was nackered and there was some debate as to where I would sleep and the social things were making it all impractical, so I went back to stay at Talal's, who I spoke a bit of French with and we made jokes that the others couldn't understand... He studied in Tunisia.
So the next day I ended up going to his village, after going to his flat, which was littered with litter and shared with his cousin who is a forty something business man, Abbuomar.
So after he finished work at 4.30pm at the Yellow Pages office (doing translation and consulting) we went to his village for the weekend - Al Zaowia, which means 'the corner' in Arabic. We went through some of the more grim check-points with bloody histories, which I got a little bit of on film, before getting to the village. It was beautiful and I said how I loved seeing all these hills after being in Holland, which is flat as a pancake, at which point Talal said 'do you want to see my hill?' 'yeah, of course, YOU HAVE A HILL?' I thought that was amazing.
The village was lovely, I started the visit with a chat to his Grampa, and a little consultation about his shakiness and inability to hold a glass of tea without spilling it, as we sat there and drank tea. His main concern was not for his health but for what the other villagers thought fo his shaking. I recommended that he watched his diet for strange amounts of sugar and that he had a good balance of potassium calcium and salt, and that if he was worried go and see a doctor... He was quite old with a beautifully weathered face,he worked in the fields all his life with wheat, olives, herbs and sheep. He now enjoyed his retirement sitting in the sun all day, literally dawn till dusk, still and pensive. Everytime I passed his house he was sitting either in the morning position or the afternoon position. People came to him to chat but he just sat there - of course his wife, diabetic, was doing all the house work and preparing his meals and tea etc. At least he wasn't making too much of a mess!
Then I lost a game of pool to Talal, saw his mates, went back and spoke to his family, went to his Father, who was living alone on top of a half constructed house that he was watching over, the ground floor filled with hundreds of chicks in warm red glowing light, with their musky smell.
The scenery was beautiful.
I met the three Imam's of the village and prayed at the mosque the next day after having a beautifully prepared vegan dinner ready for me when I got in the last night. I met more of Talal's friends and we discussed his film, he showed me the script and towards the end of the weekend offered me the part despite my not being able to be here after September, which was nice.
I spent a good part of the weekend sitting in the family court yard chatting to people and drinking tea and having shisha, with the women and girls of the house peeping from the window, hiding whenever I looked up and said 'salam uilaikum' or 'quifahaluk?'
On the saturday we went to watch the village football, and Al-Zawia won! Get in!
There were 2 Fiat Uno's with their top halves sworn off, looking like funny soft tops, I saw one ofthem filled with 3 women and 5 kids, half of them dangling off the back. Funtimes!
Then it was off to see the Sheikh, who rabbited on a bit about the British mandate in Arabic, and how the British treated the Palestinians less like dogs and more like people but still not human, and how Britian was responsible for the state of Israel. But after that was out of the way he was lovely. I ended up having him on the floor and showing him some back exercises and up against the wall showing him some knee exercises in front of his wife, cousin, nephew, grandchildren and so on... Might have undermined him a little bit but it was all good fun!
That night three Israeli Defence Forces Humvees pulled up close to where we were walking back from having more tea with Talal's Dad, the soldiers got out and started pointing their guns at everyone, I wanted to go and check it out(it was 40 meters away and there were some other youths with their hands up being shouted at) but Talal shouted through a wisper and grabbed my arm and we went to the basketball court where his mates were practicing. I had a shot and hit the ring from the D line, but no one else got it in so I didn't feel too stupid...
Then it was goodbye to everyone, which was sad, and I didn't know how to say thanks because it's kind of taboo to be polite like in England...
So Nablus the next day, I arrived, it was beautiful and very early in the morning because Talal had to go to work in Ramallah and we left at the same time (we worked a six day week but got Saturday off this week - the holy day in the Muslim world is Friday - which makes for a strange working week when you co-exist with Christians). The sun was rising on the crowded town and, sincei ti was in a valley and everything was shut on Sunday (tourism wise anyway) I decided to just walk up the nearest hill to get a view of the town.
It was breath taking, literally. The climb up (with the back pack, which was quite stupid) was increadibly steep but I did get a little lift in someone's car after walking up past the plethora of flats and posters of kids that had died resisting the occupation in one way or another, past the graveyard with grave stones painted in the colours of the flag (black red white and green that stand for black-suffering red-blood/the price of liberation white-peace green-either holiness/Allah or the land depending on who you ask...)
The hill was nice, full of wild flowers and herbs and olive trees, and it was a steep climb to the top, I filmed a bit of a monologue and did a span of the town in the morning light, well worth it. Then I satdown under an olive tree to read about violence and conflict.
By now the sun had risen to a level where I was hot just lying there with my top off. Then I decided I had better climb back down before I get too thirsty. Oh. Pants. I forgot that going down hill was exceptionally bad for my knees. B*gger. So, with the heavy backpackof books, I went down the steep slope one step at a time, and I did it without falling down! Yes! A nice little challenge and that proved to me how good the improvement has been with my legs. They were hurting at the bottom though so I just sat down in the nearest eaty drinky place which was pretty much a big tent with a gas burner, I said 'atash' which means thirsty, and he could probably see the sweat on my face, so he gave me a cup of water, then refilled it. He was nice but couldn't speak any English, he gave me some food and refused payment - it's really crazy how the people with the least here in Palestine give you the most.
I then was called at by a lively group of kids outside a shop. The shop owner was a boy my age with no parents, I didn't want to repeat 'what happened to your parents' to loudly and clearly in from of his mates as he didn't understand, so I don't know, but he insisted I sit down next to him at the counter and we had pigeon talk arabic chit chat and I mucked around with the kids a bit, they wanted to show me where to get a haircut... Maybenot such a bad idea!
Then it was back to Ramallah.
Back in Ramallah, I fancied a banana after putting my stuff back at Talal's, so the shop keeper, smoking some shisha in the back room with his mates, poured me a drink, gave me some shisha, insisted on me not paying for the fruit and gave me some more.... GENEROSITY, it's really excessive here. I love it!
So then I met up with Anan, a friend of Nasreens and he gave me a run down of the Marxism in Palestine and was having drinks with Mohamed's brother - who practically runs the organisation Action Palestine in England. So that was really nice, I ended up going back to his house and meeting Mohamed's parents in Tul Karim which is right on the border with Israel, after having drinks with some other people from Birzeit university or in that group of athiest communist fun loving students or ex-students.
I went around Tul Karim and to a nice shisha place and watched some TV, there was Hamas TV, BBC arabic, Sudanese chanell, they had everything, and my friend was kind enough to translate.
The next day I went back to Ramallah, after Abbas, Mohamed's brother, gave me a brief commentry on the history of Israel and the Palestinian politics and the peace processes since 48. I was amazed to find out that there had been no serious organised resistance for 20 years after Al Naqba by the Palestinians themselves until the creation of the PLO(Palestinian Liberation Organisation) in 65.
So then, after making friends with a blind gentlemen on the corner selling a cold and not so yummy drink, I went back to sleep as we had to get up at 5am to commute in to Ramallah - something that Abbas does 6 days a week, because his father is unwell. His parents were lovely though, and liked hearing about Mohammed's activities in Manchester, saying that that's what they sent him to England for, not to study!
So after having a little snooooze at Talal's I went into the University. Really stupidly I forgot my phone, so I didn't know that Anan wanted to meet up in the Uni and he must have thought that I stood him up, I haven't beena able to contact him since =(
Anyway, it was only a few days until election day at the University and most students were either sporting white and black Kaffir's, symbolising Fatah, or Green silk things that symbolised Hamas (which I was given, it's in the bottom of my bag but it I get caught with it I think I'll have a tough job explaining that I'm not a terrorist to the IDF or indeed the Palestinian Fatah Police), or they were wearing a red Kaffir which meant that they were socialist or democratic or 'leftist' or marxist or something. It was interesting.
I went to the Right to Education Campaign, went to the water resources study group to pick up their publications, and was shown the library by a friend who had spent 3 years from 16 years old until 19 years old and again for 3 months when he was 20 (he was my age, 20, but was shorter, looked older and really good posture, and had an aura of distance or hardness) in 'administrative detention' which basically means Israeli prisons where you don't need to have a trial and you can torture prisoners pretty much willy nilly.
He gave me a run down of the torture techniques that they used on him and the cell that he stayed in under Jerusalem that was pitch dark for a month - no bed, no toilet, not high enough ceiling to stand up... no body speaks to you and you get just enough food to survive but never anything with sugar or simple carbohydrates in because it would give you energy... etc. etc. etc. but I will post something on the prisons specifically as it deserves more than a passing mention. The torture sounds bad, it's called 'moderate restrained force' http://www.addameer.org/resources/reports/torture-eng.pdf
then I came to Beit Sahour and I'm staying with a family that wants me off the computer because I've been on it too long!
Chiao
more to come:
The wall and checkpoints
prisons + human rights
resources, water + agriculture
the settlements
demgographics
the right to resist and the occupation + international law
education in the west bank gaza and jerusalem
healthcare in the west bank gaza and jerusalem
aid and the economics of palestine and israel
the cost of the occupation
economic dependance and Oslo
the peace processes
the settlements
the history of resistance
hope for the future and successful campaigns.
Refugees and their right to return.
Hopefully I'll be able to keep these interesting and readable!
I'm going to give you a little run down of the last week and where I've been etc.
So, to round of Jerusalem, on the last day I asked this girl for where the nearest cash mashine is (they're a bit of a nightmare) and she asked me where I was from 'Manchester', she was a journalist from Mancheser and she went to the University as well, so she asked me if I'd like to join her friend and her for diner, which I did. Her friend happened to be Sarah Hudson, married to a mutual friend of Adie, Patrick and Andy's called Mark. It's a small world after all hey?
So I ended up going to Bethelehem with them, I still owe her some money for diner, which was nice. She gave me a lonely planet as well(guide book).
So I crossed the wall and the checkpoint peppered with quality graffiti asking for peace and justice by Blublu, Banksy and a couple of other artists.
So then I was shown around the Holy Land Trust with Sami Awad, a Martin Luther King kind of person, with pictures and quotes of and by the Dalai Lama, Ghandi, and Martin Luther King. There were three projects that I liked and was happy to get involved with but I wanted to check out the rest of the West Bank first because Bethlehem is really a middle class christian town with very few problems compared to Nablus, Hebron or Jenin.
So then, after getting completely lost looking for their TV network called Peace News Network, stumbling into a human rights organisation to ask for help (there are hundreds of Non-Governmental Organisations trying to alleviate the situation here, to a debatable effect) and picking up a load of quality literature on the human rights situation here - which, needless to say is awful, I took a 'service' which is kind of like a big shared taxi, to Ramallah.
In the taxi, a smiley Jordanian Jewish girl sat down next to me and started a friendly rant about everything under the sun. Her name was Rowa, which means blessed water or something similar, and she explained half a dozen times that she was hyper because she was so tired...
I ended up being taken to an ice-cream place and having some tea before going back to her flat to meet the guys that she stayed with; Talal, Mohammed and an Egyptian gentlemen that had a nice chat to me about being a 'leftist' and lementing the demise of Egypt under Mubarak and Nasser's former glory...
So a couple of hours later, I was nackered and there was some debate as to where I would sleep and the social things were making it all impractical, so I went back to stay at Talal's, who I spoke a bit of French with and we made jokes that the others couldn't understand... He studied in Tunisia.
So the next day I ended up going to his village, after going to his flat, which was littered with litter and shared with his cousin who is a forty something business man, Abbuomar.
So after he finished work at 4.30pm at the Yellow Pages office (doing translation and consulting) we went to his village for the weekend - Al Zaowia, which means 'the corner' in Arabic. We went through some of the more grim check-points with bloody histories, which I got a little bit of on film, before getting to the village. It was beautiful and I said how I loved seeing all these hills after being in Holland, which is flat as a pancake, at which point Talal said 'do you want to see my hill?' 'yeah, of course, YOU HAVE A HILL?' I thought that was amazing.
The village was lovely, I started the visit with a chat to his Grampa, and a little consultation about his shakiness and inability to hold a glass of tea without spilling it, as we sat there and drank tea. His main concern was not for his health but for what the other villagers thought fo his shaking. I recommended that he watched his diet for strange amounts of sugar and that he had a good balance of potassium calcium and salt, and that if he was worried go and see a doctor... He was quite old with a beautifully weathered face,he worked in the fields all his life with wheat, olives, herbs and sheep. He now enjoyed his retirement sitting in the sun all day, literally dawn till dusk, still and pensive. Everytime I passed his house he was sitting either in the morning position or the afternoon position. People came to him to chat but he just sat there - of course his wife, diabetic, was doing all the house work and preparing his meals and tea etc. At least he wasn't making too much of a mess!
Then I lost a game of pool to Talal, saw his mates, went back and spoke to his family, went to his Father, who was living alone on top of a half constructed house that he was watching over, the ground floor filled with hundreds of chicks in warm red glowing light, with their musky smell.
The scenery was beautiful.
I met the three Imam's of the village and prayed at the mosque the next day after having a beautifully prepared vegan dinner ready for me when I got in the last night. I met more of Talal's friends and we discussed his film, he showed me the script and towards the end of the weekend offered me the part despite my not being able to be here after September, which was nice.
I spent a good part of the weekend sitting in the family court yard chatting to people and drinking tea and having shisha, with the women and girls of the house peeping from the window, hiding whenever I looked up and said 'salam uilaikum' or 'quifahaluk?'
On the saturday we went to watch the village football, and Al-Zawia won! Get in!
There were 2 Fiat Uno's with their top halves sworn off, looking like funny soft tops, I saw one ofthem filled with 3 women and 5 kids, half of them dangling off the back. Funtimes!
Then it was off to see the Sheikh, who rabbited on a bit about the British mandate in Arabic, and how the British treated the Palestinians less like dogs and more like people but still not human, and how Britian was responsible for the state of Israel. But after that was out of the way he was lovely. I ended up having him on the floor and showing him some back exercises and up against the wall showing him some knee exercises in front of his wife, cousin, nephew, grandchildren and so on... Might have undermined him a little bit but it was all good fun!
That night three Israeli Defence Forces Humvees pulled up close to where we were walking back from having more tea with Talal's Dad, the soldiers got out and started pointing their guns at everyone, I wanted to go and check it out(it was 40 meters away and there were some other youths with their hands up being shouted at) but Talal shouted through a wisper and grabbed my arm and we went to the basketball court where his mates were practicing. I had a shot and hit the ring from the D line, but no one else got it in so I didn't feel too stupid...
Then it was goodbye to everyone, which was sad, and I didn't know how to say thanks because it's kind of taboo to be polite like in England...
So Nablus the next day, I arrived, it was beautiful and very early in the morning because Talal had to go to work in Ramallah and we left at the same time (we worked a six day week but got Saturday off this week - the holy day in the Muslim world is Friday - which makes for a strange working week when you co-exist with Christians). The sun was rising on the crowded town and, sincei ti was in a valley and everything was shut on Sunday (tourism wise anyway) I decided to just walk up the nearest hill to get a view of the town.
It was breath taking, literally. The climb up (with the back pack, which was quite stupid) was increadibly steep but I did get a little lift in someone's car after walking up past the plethora of flats and posters of kids that had died resisting the occupation in one way or another, past the graveyard with grave stones painted in the colours of the flag (black red white and green that stand for black-suffering red-blood/the price of liberation white-peace green-either holiness/Allah or the land depending on who you ask...)
The hill was nice, full of wild flowers and herbs and olive trees, and it was a steep climb to the top, I filmed a bit of a monologue and did a span of the town in the morning light, well worth it. Then I satdown under an olive tree to read about violence and conflict.
By now the sun had risen to a level where I was hot just lying there with my top off. Then I decided I had better climb back down before I get too thirsty. Oh. Pants. I forgot that going down hill was exceptionally bad for my knees. B*gger. So, with the heavy backpackof books, I went down the steep slope one step at a time, and I did it without falling down! Yes! A nice little challenge and that proved to me how good the improvement has been with my legs. They were hurting at the bottom though so I just sat down in the nearest eaty drinky place which was pretty much a big tent with a gas burner, I said 'atash' which means thirsty, and he could probably see the sweat on my face, so he gave me a cup of water, then refilled it. He was nice but couldn't speak any English, he gave me some food and refused payment - it's really crazy how the people with the least here in Palestine give you the most.
I then was called at by a lively group of kids outside a shop. The shop owner was a boy my age with no parents, I didn't want to repeat 'what happened to your parents' to loudly and clearly in from of his mates as he didn't understand, so I don't know, but he insisted I sit down next to him at the counter and we had pigeon talk arabic chit chat and I mucked around with the kids a bit, they wanted to show me where to get a haircut... Maybenot such a bad idea!
Then it was back to Ramallah.
Back in Ramallah, I fancied a banana after putting my stuff back at Talal's, so the shop keeper, smoking some shisha in the back room with his mates, poured me a drink, gave me some shisha, insisted on me not paying for the fruit and gave me some more.... GENEROSITY, it's really excessive here. I love it!
So then I met up with Anan, a friend of Nasreens and he gave me a run down of the Marxism in Palestine and was having drinks with Mohamed's brother - who practically runs the organisation Action Palestine in England. So that was really nice, I ended up going back to his house and meeting Mohamed's parents in Tul Karim which is right on the border with Israel, after having drinks with some other people from Birzeit university or in that group of athiest communist fun loving students or ex-students.
I went around Tul Karim and to a nice shisha place and watched some TV, there was Hamas TV, BBC arabic, Sudanese chanell, they had everything, and my friend was kind enough to translate.
The next day I went back to Ramallah, after Abbas, Mohamed's brother, gave me a brief commentry on the history of Israel and the Palestinian politics and the peace processes since 48. I was amazed to find out that there had been no serious organised resistance for 20 years after Al Naqba by the Palestinians themselves until the creation of the PLO(Palestinian Liberation Organisation) in 65.
So then, after making friends with a blind gentlemen on the corner selling a cold and not so yummy drink, I went back to sleep as we had to get up at 5am to commute in to Ramallah - something that Abbas does 6 days a week, because his father is unwell. His parents were lovely though, and liked hearing about Mohammed's activities in Manchester, saying that that's what they sent him to England for, not to study!
So after having a little snooooze at Talal's I went into the University. Really stupidly I forgot my phone, so I didn't know that Anan wanted to meet up in the Uni and he must have thought that I stood him up, I haven't beena able to contact him since =(
Anyway, it was only a few days until election day at the University and most students were either sporting white and black Kaffir's, symbolising Fatah, or Green silk things that symbolised Hamas (which I was given, it's in the bottom of my bag but it I get caught with it I think I'll have a tough job explaining that I'm not a terrorist to the IDF or indeed the Palestinian Fatah Police), or they were wearing a red Kaffir which meant that they were socialist or democratic or 'leftist' or marxist or something. It was interesting.
I went to the Right to Education Campaign, went to the water resources study group to pick up their publications, and was shown the library by a friend who had spent 3 years from 16 years old until 19 years old and again for 3 months when he was 20 (he was my age, 20, but was shorter, looked older and really good posture, and had an aura of distance or hardness) in 'administrative detention' which basically means Israeli prisons where you don't need to have a trial and you can torture prisoners pretty much willy nilly.
He gave me a run down of the torture techniques that they used on him and the cell that he stayed in under Jerusalem that was pitch dark for a month - no bed, no toilet, not high enough ceiling to stand up... no body speaks to you and you get just enough food to survive but never anything with sugar or simple carbohydrates in because it would give you energy... etc. etc. etc. but I will post something on the prisons specifically as it deserves more than a passing mention. The torture sounds bad, it's called 'moderate restrained force' http://www.addameer.org/resources/reports/torture-eng.pdf
then I came to Beit Sahour and I'm staying with a family that wants me off the computer because I've been on it too long!
Chiao
more to come:
The wall and checkpoints
prisons + human rights
resources, water + agriculture
the settlements
demgographics
the right to resist and the occupation + international law
education in the west bank gaza and jerusalem
healthcare in the west bank gaza and jerusalem
aid and the economics of palestine and israel
the cost of the occupation
economic dependance and Oslo
the peace processes
the settlements
the history of resistance
hope for the future and successful campaigns.
Refugees and their right to return.
Hopefully I'll be able to keep these interesting and readable!
Tuesday, 31 March 2009
Jerusalem day 1
I've arrived!! Yes! It was touch and go - the boats stopped because of the invasion of Gaza and I thought they would resume again, but they aren't doing so until May - so I just got a plane... A huge apology to all those in the global South that will lose out on food and water because of this.
So, after quite an intense entry into Israel and a few hiccups with the flights and not having a visa and not having enough cash available to buy the 'necessary exit ticket', I had to rely on the sympathy of seriously unsympathetic security guards - but I pursuaded them that I had to leave the country because i start at uni in September etc. and they eventually got bored of me (big 'phew' feeling after that one).
Caught a shared taxi to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv with some friendly French Jews going to see their family in a settlement near Hebron and a few Jewish academics from America.. I asked them about the political situation but really didn't want to cause a stir in case they handed me in to the police or something - after all we still had to cross a checkpoint (which was fine, they just waved us on). They seemed really concerned that I was going to stay in the 'arab' area, thinking that i would get kidnapped or terrorrized in some other way! (I'm pretty sure that that was delusional)
So I booked a room for a couple of nights before wandering out to buy a falafel and check out what was happening. Sunshine, brightness, big clean Israeli buildings, tiny old monuments in a tiny old city with huge old and new centres of power, both religious and political. There are just under 6 million Israelis and 6 million Arabs, with a few christians thrown in the mix, such a small population for the headlines that it recieves - if you compare it to Indonesia that has just as much going on in terms of oppression, conflict, jihadist terrorism, and the desire for segments of it's population for autonomous statehood, which gets hardly any coverage despite its 237.5 million population according to an estimate for July 2008. It's all about proximity and history.
You breath the history here - you can almost hear the cries of the Bedouin at the hands of the Jewish clans, the cries of the Jesuits against the hands of the Romans, the cries of the Jews at the hands of the Muslims, the cries of the Muslims at the hands of the cruisaders, the cries of the Mulsims at the hands of the Jewish settlers. In fact, you really do hear the last one.
I was walked back falafel in hand when an Israeli soldier nicked a sweet from a stall, on his way past, the shop owner proclaimed a few words of probably offensive language, to which the solier turned around and started shouting at him. Soldier number 2 watched with finger over the trigger while the first Soldier kicked over his stall of sweets, shouted at him some more, and then swaggered off. I know it's only a small thing, and the sweets had wrappers on so it wasn't too bad, but it just shows the underlying tension of this strange city that preaches peace and practices conflict.
'it's a jungle' the hardline christian that does the washing at the hostel and fulfills his purpose of telling travellars his stories of God and what God says to him 'I grew up in the real jungle in Peru, it's not a physical jungle - it's a jungle of ideas'. Indeed that it is - on one side of the 'Western Wall' Jewish men bow and rock praying to a wall, while their tax money goes on constructing walls to keep out people they believe threaten their chosen community. The other side of the wall is the Temple Mount complex on which the Islamic faith has built several mosques in testament to the ascention of Mohammed when Allah called him up to have a look around heaven. The feeling is very different either side. The muslim side is like a big garden of peace - although you have to be muslim to worship there - the Jewish side of worship has a feeling of supremacy with people displaying their wealth laughing and shouting, but it's inclusive and anyone can worship there (although I'm not sure what would happen if you rocked up with a kafir and prayer mat).
So the place is small, really small, oozing with historical significance under everyone's hunt for money in the markets and the sweaty tourist's loud voices complaining about the hotel or taxi driver or shop owner.
There is stark contrast between the muslim quarter, and the jewish and modern quarters. The former displaying over crowded relative poverty, with colourful grafiti, smells of various foods and kids laughing and playing marbles or football. The latter being pristine, perfectly gardened, clean, full of shops that match Oxford/Bond street and smart cafe's, with beautiful empty parks and fountains. The former littered with army personell the latter guarded by private security. Job allocation, though it may just happen naturally, seems to be clearly done along racial lines, with the Arabic population building and cleaning and driving and selling junk to tourists - the Jewish population providing services etc. But bear in mind this is my first day and I'm generalising but it's based on what I've seen.
As I was walking up to the ancient walls of the old city, I passed a Jewish gentleman shouting angrily at some Arabic grave diggers, to see two Arabic gentelmen next to a smashed up car - this had been done by hand. The probable owner of the car was on the point of tears, the other was having a concerned smoke, staring at the ground. I asked if he was ok "quai fahaluk?" and he replied with a big soft smile "allhamdullah" or "praise be to God" which I think translates as I'm really good thanks to God, certainly a positive response anyway. It really melted my heart - he showed real gratitude for me asking and refused any help in the most graceful way that i can think of. A police car was on the opposite side of the road but I don't think that arabic property is protected by the state in quite the same way that Jewish or Christian Israeli property is. I could really feel his despair and hopelessness - I don't know what insurance is like here but I don't think that he had comprehensive cover...
After that I returned to the roomy and characterful hostel with carpets hanging on the wall and a gentle African American strumming a guitar that he had just started learning at the reception desk, carpets hanging on the wall, chunky desktop that I'm writing on now, dirty windows and amazing view from the roof looking past the spires of the Christian and Armenian quarters, Al-Aqsa and the Dome of the Rock which is a gold plated dome sitting on an intricately painted blue and white mosque - to the mount of olives, which is a hill that is covered in graves of Jewish people that want to be there for the sake of being close to the happenings on the day of judgement, and Christians who want to be buried there as it is the place of Christ's supposed ascention to heaven. The white graves reflect the sun off the hill like scales. It is beautiful. Jerusalem is beautiful, even the piles of litter you occasionally come accross in the Muslim quarter have their charm.
I returned to sleep at 6pm, as I'd been travelling for around 3 or 4 days that kind of blurred into one with snatched hours of sleep getting me through and really not much to eat. I was pretty nackered. But before I got ready for bed I had a short exchange with my room mate - a 40 year old Israeli. He started talking about how educated all the British were, and then he mentioned that General Allenby stayed in this hotel, then said that Palestine was British since the Second world war until Independance. I had to correct him that it was during the first world war that it became British mandate - to which he gave me a fist to punch. "the sun never set on the British Empire hey" and gave me another fist - to which I said that I was more of a Ghandi than a Churchill (what I meant was that I prefered Ghandi to Churchill but I always mince my words hey?) - he took a step back and said "wow, I like that. I'd marry Ghandi you know" - "yeah?" "yeah, peace is so beautiful man. I served in the Israeli army for 5 years, I had to do that as an officer, but that was 20 years ago. Do you know what we could do with all the money that goes on war? Can you imagine?" "well, you're supported by America $6 billion a year - and wouldn't the money disappear?" "what do you think wars are, cheap? one missile costs $1 million" "yeah, only 6000 missiles hey?" "60 percent of our GNP goes on the war - we have really high taxes" "wow 60 percent?" "yeah, and Israel still refuses any solution. 60 years, we have all the power but no solution. Don't change man, be a Ghandi, the world needs more Ghandi's. You'll go far, but whatever you do don't change man." He said as he walked off to go to the hostel two doors down that charged less than half the price if you were jewish but 10 sheckles over the price if you're not "racist bastards" is what he called them before going to sleep under their roof.
I'm off to the west bank tomorrow - wish me luck!
So, after quite an intense entry into Israel and a few hiccups with the flights and not having a visa and not having enough cash available to buy the 'necessary exit ticket', I had to rely on the sympathy of seriously unsympathetic security guards - but I pursuaded them that I had to leave the country because i start at uni in September etc. and they eventually got bored of me (big 'phew' feeling after that one).
Caught a shared taxi to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv with some friendly French Jews going to see their family in a settlement near Hebron and a few Jewish academics from America.. I asked them about the political situation but really didn't want to cause a stir in case they handed me in to the police or something - after all we still had to cross a checkpoint (which was fine, they just waved us on). They seemed really concerned that I was going to stay in the 'arab' area, thinking that i would get kidnapped or terrorrized in some other way! (I'm pretty sure that that was delusional)
So I booked a room for a couple of nights before wandering out to buy a falafel and check out what was happening. Sunshine, brightness, big clean Israeli buildings, tiny old monuments in a tiny old city with huge old and new centres of power, both religious and political. There are just under 6 million Israelis and 6 million Arabs, with a few christians thrown in the mix, such a small population for the headlines that it recieves - if you compare it to Indonesia that has just as much going on in terms of oppression, conflict, jihadist terrorism, and the desire for segments of it's population for autonomous statehood, which gets hardly any coverage despite its 237.5 million population according to an estimate for July 2008. It's all about proximity and history.
You breath the history here - you can almost hear the cries of the Bedouin at the hands of the Jewish clans, the cries of the Jesuits against the hands of the Romans, the cries of the Jews at the hands of the Muslims, the cries of the Muslims at the hands of the cruisaders, the cries of the Mulsims at the hands of the Jewish settlers. In fact, you really do hear the last one.
I was walked back falafel in hand when an Israeli soldier nicked a sweet from a stall, on his way past, the shop owner proclaimed a few words of probably offensive language, to which the solier turned around and started shouting at him. Soldier number 2 watched with finger over the trigger while the first Soldier kicked over his stall of sweets, shouted at him some more, and then swaggered off. I know it's only a small thing, and the sweets had wrappers on so it wasn't too bad, but it just shows the underlying tension of this strange city that preaches peace and practices conflict.
'it's a jungle' the hardline christian that does the washing at the hostel and fulfills his purpose of telling travellars his stories of God and what God says to him 'I grew up in the real jungle in Peru, it's not a physical jungle - it's a jungle of ideas'. Indeed that it is - on one side of the 'Western Wall' Jewish men bow and rock praying to a wall, while their tax money goes on constructing walls to keep out people they believe threaten their chosen community. The other side of the wall is the Temple Mount complex on which the Islamic faith has built several mosques in testament to the ascention of Mohammed when Allah called him up to have a look around heaven. The feeling is very different either side. The muslim side is like a big garden of peace - although you have to be muslim to worship there - the Jewish side of worship has a feeling of supremacy with people displaying their wealth laughing and shouting, but it's inclusive and anyone can worship there (although I'm not sure what would happen if you rocked up with a kafir and prayer mat).
So the place is small, really small, oozing with historical significance under everyone's hunt for money in the markets and the sweaty tourist's loud voices complaining about the hotel or taxi driver or shop owner.
There is stark contrast between the muslim quarter, and the jewish and modern quarters. The former displaying over crowded relative poverty, with colourful grafiti, smells of various foods and kids laughing and playing marbles or football. The latter being pristine, perfectly gardened, clean, full of shops that match Oxford/Bond street and smart cafe's, with beautiful empty parks and fountains. The former littered with army personell the latter guarded by private security. Job allocation, though it may just happen naturally, seems to be clearly done along racial lines, with the Arabic population building and cleaning and driving and selling junk to tourists - the Jewish population providing services etc. But bear in mind this is my first day and I'm generalising but it's based on what I've seen.
As I was walking up to the ancient walls of the old city, I passed a Jewish gentleman shouting angrily at some Arabic grave diggers, to see two Arabic gentelmen next to a smashed up car - this had been done by hand. The probable owner of the car was on the point of tears, the other was having a concerned smoke, staring at the ground. I asked if he was ok "quai fahaluk?" and he replied with a big soft smile "allhamdullah" or "praise be to God" which I think translates as I'm really good thanks to God, certainly a positive response anyway. It really melted my heart - he showed real gratitude for me asking and refused any help in the most graceful way that i can think of. A police car was on the opposite side of the road but I don't think that arabic property is protected by the state in quite the same way that Jewish or Christian Israeli property is. I could really feel his despair and hopelessness - I don't know what insurance is like here but I don't think that he had comprehensive cover...
After that I returned to the roomy and characterful hostel with carpets hanging on the wall and a gentle African American strumming a guitar that he had just started learning at the reception desk, carpets hanging on the wall, chunky desktop that I'm writing on now, dirty windows and amazing view from the roof looking past the spires of the Christian and Armenian quarters, Al-Aqsa and the Dome of the Rock which is a gold plated dome sitting on an intricately painted blue and white mosque - to the mount of olives, which is a hill that is covered in graves of Jewish people that want to be there for the sake of being close to the happenings on the day of judgement, and Christians who want to be buried there as it is the place of Christ's supposed ascention to heaven. The white graves reflect the sun off the hill like scales. It is beautiful. Jerusalem is beautiful, even the piles of litter you occasionally come accross in the Muslim quarter have their charm.
I returned to sleep at 6pm, as I'd been travelling for around 3 or 4 days that kind of blurred into one with snatched hours of sleep getting me through and really not much to eat. I was pretty nackered. But before I got ready for bed I had a short exchange with my room mate - a 40 year old Israeli. He started talking about how educated all the British were, and then he mentioned that General Allenby stayed in this hotel, then said that Palestine was British since the Second world war until Independance. I had to correct him that it was during the first world war that it became British mandate - to which he gave me a fist to punch. "the sun never set on the British Empire hey" and gave me another fist - to which I said that I was more of a Ghandi than a Churchill (what I meant was that I prefered Ghandi to Churchill but I always mince my words hey?) - he took a step back and said "wow, I like that. I'd marry Ghandi you know" - "yeah?" "yeah, peace is so beautiful man. I served in the Israeli army for 5 years, I had to do that as an officer, but that was 20 years ago. Do you know what we could do with all the money that goes on war? Can you imagine?" "well, you're supported by America $6 billion a year - and wouldn't the money disappear?" "what do you think wars are, cheap? one missile costs $1 million" "yeah, only 6000 missiles hey?" "60 percent of our GNP goes on the war - we have really high taxes" "wow 60 percent?" "yeah, and Israel still refuses any solution. 60 years, we have all the power but no solution. Don't change man, be a Ghandi, the world needs more Ghandi's. You'll go far, but whatever you do don't change man." He said as he walked off to go to the hostel two doors down that charged less than half the price if you were jewish but 10 sheckles over the price if you're not "racist bastards" is what he called them before going to sleep under their roof.
I'm off to the west bank tomorrow - wish me luck!
Friday, 20 March 2009
The Dam
So, I'm on my way. Teaching qualification in one hand and my thumb stuck out of the other... Well, OK, I took the coach to the Netherlands and have been chilling here with my good friend, checking out the flower markets, going to a couple of talks, I even helped teach my first lesson to some Dutch children. It would have been nerve racking but it was in such a chilled out school, based on Dalton with a splash of Montesoury to it. IT WAS AMAZING. What a good school, a little primary with its own gym teacher doing the rings judo and vaulting all at once, children joining in with lessons when they want to but mainly studying voluntarily, no bullying in the playground, smiles allround. And this was a state school. I just kept asking myself; "why didn't I grow up in a school like this? Why don't we all do something more like this? How has Britain's education system become so pants?" Apparently if you have a group of 40 interested families living in proximity they will get enough funding to collectively educate their children with state funds, or start a school of their own.
It has been sunny loveliness since I've been here, and I spent a day in the tropical museum - which pretty much documents the main cultures of each continent with a special vodou exhibition (now spelt vodoo) with some real human skulls, which is always fun - reminded me of medical school and the mostly compassionate sanitised and evidence based modern day shamen that use skulls there. Also had a quick look around the Van Gogh gallery - not such a pretty name when you pronounce it in Dutch, the Japanese stuff was cool.
This is the last stop before I charge down to Jerusalem hopefully for the 5th of April or something. I was thinking about hanging around for the G20 and Climate Camp and the Put People First march in London, which will be amazing. The gentleman with which I was supposed to be hitching with to Palestine has been held up until then, but I just want to get there now - it's been too long and the more time I've got there the better I'll know what's going on etc.
So the plan is leave Amsterdam around the 21st, then hitch down through France and Italy to Naples where I'll catch the boat to Egypt then shimmy up to Jerusalem. I am tempted to go through Germany as well... Hmmm... Lotsh of exshiting poshibilitiesh (Dutch accents are lovely).
Amsterdam has treated me so so well, I've been to a little party on a big boat (where you can live in little cabins like an apartment block - housing is in short supply here so you see containters with windows in and many many house boats along the canals) two people have cooked me up some vegan pastry things, a vegan pie... mmmm. Ok Tom, focus. So, I'm off to see a trial at the Hague of Lukunda of the Lord's Resistance Army in the Eastern side of the Democratic Republic of Congo - this was thought to have been a paramilitary wing of the Tutsi government in Rwanda taking revenge for the Hutu massacre in the Genocide in the '90s on the Hutus that fled the country for the Congo accross the border. But the Rwandan Government had a large hand in turning him in after tacitly not condeming what he was doing for a considerable time. He used a militia whose front line was mainly comprised of co-erced and manipulated child soldiers. I don't know how many of them are still fighting looting and raping on his behalf at the moment. The trial is ongoing for about a week or so - so I'm not sure how good it will be. I'm a bit aprehensive of it having a bit of a public execution feel, but I'm going mainly to find out what he did rather than boo and hiss.
OK, so, I'll put another post up in a few weeks.
It has been sunny loveliness since I've been here, and I spent a day in the tropical museum - which pretty much documents the main cultures of each continent with a special vodou exhibition (now spelt vodoo) with some real human skulls, which is always fun - reminded me of medical school and the mostly compassionate sanitised and evidence based modern day shamen that use skulls there. Also had a quick look around the Van Gogh gallery - not such a pretty name when you pronounce it in Dutch, the Japanese stuff was cool.
This is the last stop before I charge down to Jerusalem hopefully for the 5th of April or something. I was thinking about hanging around for the G20 and Climate Camp and the Put People First march in London, which will be amazing. The gentleman with which I was supposed to be hitching with to Palestine has been held up until then, but I just want to get there now - it's been too long and the more time I've got there the better I'll know what's going on etc.
So the plan is leave Amsterdam around the 21st, then hitch down through France and Italy to Naples where I'll catch the boat to Egypt then shimmy up to Jerusalem. I am tempted to go through Germany as well... Hmmm... Lotsh of exshiting poshibilitiesh (Dutch accents are lovely).
Amsterdam has treated me so so well, I've been to a little party on a big boat (where you can live in little cabins like an apartment block - housing is in short supply here so you see containters with windows in and many many house boats along the canals) two people have cooked me up some vegan pastry things, a vegan pie... mmmm. Ok Tom, focus. So, I'm off to see a trial at the Hague of Lukunda of the Lord's Resistance Army in the Eastern side of the Democratic Republic of Congo - this was thought to have been a paramilitary wing of the Tutsi government in Rwanda taking revenge for the Hutu massacre in the Genocide in the '90s on the Hutus that fled the country for the Congo accross the border. But the Rwandan Government had a large hand in turning him in after tacitly not condeming what he was doing for a considerable time. He used a militia whose front line was mainly comprised of co-erced and manipulated child soldiers. I don't know how many of them are still fighting looting and raping on his behalf at the moment. The trial is ongoing for about a week or so - so I'm not sure how good it will be. I'm a bit aprehensive of it having a bit of a public execution feel, but I'm going mainly to find out what he did rather than boo and hiss.
OK, so, I'll put another post up in a few weeks.
Friday, 13 February 2009
Hello!!
Hello everyone and welcome to the blog.
You have to start from the bottom and work up, but I wouldn't bother unless you like the way I rant. I'll start posting the traveller's tales up in April.
See you then! xx
You have to start from the bottom and work up, but I wouldn't bother unless you like the way I rant. I'll start posting the traveller's tales up in April.
See you then! xx
Monday, 9 February 2009
Too much time to blog
So here's one that's a little more general and a little more abstract and radical... A bit more honest, I don't have that much opportunity to really express what I'm thinking just because most people think it's loopy! (Despite the fact that I am a bonafide chatterbox!!)
http://smashthepower.blogspot.com/
http://smashthepower.blogspot.com/
Sunday, 8 February 2009
English!!
I'm starting a month long super-subsidised intensive TEFL - Teaching English as a Foreign Language course that starts on the 16th, then I'm off to Amsterdam for a week on the hitchhike down to see a close and valued friend, and explore some of the things that the Dutch have going for them (transport, bicycles, wind-power, schools you can set up with government money if you have 40 families that want it a certain way.... Lots of niceness) and some of the nastier aspects of liberalism - mainly prostitution. Well, I probably won't get a chance to explore the prostitution things because you have to be quite old to volunteer with anything like that I think, and dipping in for a week would probably be a bit destructive (with Stop the Traffick or something... but they seem to be tied up with cocoa farmers on the Ivory Coast at the moment..) so I'll probably mill around having a nice time before hitching hard to Israel and the territories.
Once there I'm going to start with teaching - I think that this will be a good platform in terms of connecting with people, making friends and sussing out what's going on. If anyone has any better ideas taking into account what I can do without any qualified skills, then please leave a comment!
So there are over 650,000 official refugees in 27 official refugee camps in Palestine among a tiny population of 3.7 million. That would be the equivalent to about 12 million refugees in our population if you took it as a rough percentage (600,000 * (60million/3million)). I don't know what help teaching a few of them English is going to do to be honest. It is viewed by some as counterproductive I'm sure - making more people reliant on Western economies and culture to provide for them in exchange for labour rather than just organising themselves. But I think this is a unique situation and these people are asking for it, and it's pretty much all I can do until I get settled there and ken what's going on :)
I'll try and keep the posts short - I know how annoying reading from a screeeen is!
Once there I'm going to start with teaching - I think that this will be a good platform in terms of connecting with people, making friends and sussing out what's going on. If anyone has any better ideas taking into account what I can do without any qualified skills, then please leave a comment!
So there are over 650,000 official refugees in 27 official refugee camps in Palestine among a tiny population of 3.7 million. That would be the equivalent to about 12 million refugees in our population if you took it as a rough percentage (600,000 * (60million/3million)). I don't know what help teaching a few of them English is going to do to be honest. It is viewed by some as counterproductive I'm sure - making more people reliant on Western economies and culture to provide for them in exchange for labour rather than just organising themselves. But I think this is a unique situation and these people are asking for it, and it's pretty much all I can do until I get settled there and ken what's going on :)
I'll try and keep the posts short - I know how annoying reading from a screeeen is!
Friday, 6 February 2009
Disputed Territories
So, there's an occupation going on in Manchester at the moment. This was a real surprise to here about, apparently it was organized for months by my friends but I only vaguely heard about it. It feels like a shame that I'm not there - it looks like great fun, documentaries, talks, education in general, and what fantastic demands! Especially 5) "That the university divests from all companies involved at all in the arms trade & end all research with these companies on campus." and 3)" All furniture & surplus supplies from building that are being renovated to be sent to Gaza on the Viva Palestina convey ….". I think that curtailing the arms trade in any way is a good thing - there isn't much room to argue for arms exports:
a). They come back to hit you anyway
b). There is a direct positive correlation (surprise surprise) between arms sales and internal repression or external aggression
c).The more conflict there is, the more poverty + infectious diseases - which come back to get you!
d). It takes resources away from developing governments' budgets for health education welfare and
e). Guns kill people, and de-personalise the killing. I think that the more removed that the killer is from the experience of killing, the more horrific it is - this might be slightly unorthodox, but I think that fighting someone to death with your fists is infinitely better than sniping someone from a roof-top, or dropping a bomb from a plane, or sending a 'drone' out to do the bombing for you. The more guns are sold, the more this technology is progressed, the easier it is to take life away, the cheaper life gets, the more conflict starts, the more guns are sole, the more...... Many very vicious cycles going on here
f). They are bad for the global economy in terms of providing utility from our skills, training, effort, resources and finite materials, engineering technologies that could be developed by pouring money into useful things, like alternative energy generation, pharmacies and treatments for AIDs TB Parasites and Malaria.
g). They don't provide security!!! They may mean that the government which is arranging the sale of the weapons will get a good deal for oil or another resource in the short term, but if you are selling guns to boths sides of a conflict (Britain sells arms to 11 of the 13 sovereign states in "major conflict") we will not make friends long term! Russia had a booming arms trade, massive military complex second only to the US (now third, with UK climbing to second position) - but that hasn't given it any security, poverty is rampant, and the US waged an economic war until Russia was ground into dust - mainly because of its arms trade and because it was seen as a threat! If you want security, then just stop treading on everyone and keep quiet about any natural wealth in your country, and be a good example in terms of how you treat yourself. Will anyone invade Botswana? No, they aren't aggressive and they don't have too big an army. Spot on.
f). For the above reasons it is seen as hypocritical of someone signed up to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and discredits it so that it is a weaker lever against abuse of humanity abroad. They teach the world that violence is a justifiable means to resolve coflict - leading to more war.
g). Nearly all arms sales are illegal under both EU law and international law, as no arms can be sold that are likely to contribute to internal repression or external aggression - WHAT ELSE ARE THEY USED FOR? Defence? Defending your country in modern warfare requires "external aggression" or you will lose faily rapidly.
h). There are enough guns in the world, there is roughly one small arm for every 7 people, I don't think providing any more is a wise move, do we want to grow these industries and provide more jobs? So that there are 7 arms for every person?
i). If violence is unjustified (unless you are in very special circumstances, such as protecting other people from iminent death), then surely selling the means with which violence becomes easier is also unjustified
j). I think that peace, co-operation and stability for one nation relies on an appreciation of other nations and their differences, from a sound education into why people are the way they are, what needs need to be met by either side, what we can help each other with. As it says on a postcard given to me by someone very special "Peace cannot be kept by force; only by understanding" - Albert Einstein. Or an even earlier quote "Peace cannot be achieved through violence, it can only be attained through understanding" Ralph Waldo Emerson. Can't we put our technological efforts into peacework - how best to resolve conflicts, create stability abroad, arrest the cyclones of violence and anger before they come back around to us?
When I talk about visions for social change, many people say "you're just young and idealistic, life just doesn't work like that" or "you just don't get human nature" - but whatever human nature is like, I know that it is possible for Britain to stop exporting arms, and I know that human nature will be better for it. So that is something that everyone (except for the 55,000 employees in the whole sector being subsidised by the government by around £10,000 to £14,000 for each employee depending on which variables you take into account, probably the most heavily subsidised sector in the country per job) can get involved in, whatever background, whatever outlook on life, I think that not to care about arms exports isn't apathetic, it's positively psychopathic.
OK, so the arms demand makes me happy (and a bit preachy... Sorry about that, it's a bad habit!), but the demand about furniture I think is fantastic. Really fun, which is what is needed really. I can just imagine a large polished mahogany desk with that green felt on the top sitting in a teaching room in Gaza with 2 walls left and steel structuring sticking out from the grey and crumbling building. Genius. Send a bit of opulence and refined workmanship to where it will be wholly appreciated, and stick out as a strong bold reminder that there are people that back in the UK that value people. There are people that are prepared to take time out of their day to arrange something to help. That makes me happy too! There is a tide of people doing their best, not just for themselves, their familly, their friends, immediate community or nation, but actually for people in a distant land. Humans are just fantastic, aren't they? Everyone is doing their best, even the arms dealers, they just get a bit blinded by ego perhaps, but they are still doing what they think is right for them - I think that's how the mind works, so there's hope.
To close off this rather long rant, about things that I haven't made the connection to the Middle East with, but hopefully with something worth reading in there, I thought I'd leave you with another quote from one of the many prophets and wise-men that seem to have hit the nail on the head over the past few centuries (how many do we have to have before we start changing???)
The Dalai Lama
a). They come back to hit you anyway
b). There is a direct positive correlation (surprise surprise) between arms sales and internal repression or external aggression
c).The more conflict there is, the more poverty + infectious diseases - which come back to get you!
d). It takes resources away from developing governments' budgets for health education welfare and
e). Guns kill people, and de-personalise the killing. I think that the more removed that the killer is from the experience of killing, the more horrific it is - this might be slightly unorthodox, but I think that fighting someone to death with your fists is infinitely better than sniping someone from a roof-top, or dropping a bomb from a plane, or sending a 'drone' out to do the bombing for you. The more guns are sold, the more this technology is progressed, the easier it is to take life away, the cheaper life gets, the more conflict starts, the more guns are sole, the more...... Many very vicious cycles going on here
f). They are bad for the global economy in terms of providing utility from our skills, training, effort, resources and finite materials, engineering technologies that could be developed by pouring money into useful things, like alternative energy generation, pharmacies and treatments for AIDs TB Parasites and Malaria.
g). They don't provide security!!! They may mean that the government which is arranging the sale of the weapons will get a good deal for oil or another resource in the short term, but if you are selling guns to boths sides of a conflict (Britain sells arms to 11 of the 13 sovereign states in "major conflict") we will not make friends long term! Russia had a booming arms trade, massive military complex second only to the US (now third, with UK climbing to second position) - but that hasn't given it any security, poverty is rampant, and the US waged an economic war until Russia was ground into dust - mainly because of its arms trade and because it was seen as a threat! If you want security, then just stop treading on everyone and keep quiet about any natural wealth in your country, and be a good example in terms of how you treat yourself. Will anyone invade Botswana? No, they aren't aggressive and they don't have too big an army. Spot on.
f). For the above reasons it is seen as hypocritical of someone signed up to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and discredits it so that it is a weaker lever against abuse of humanity abroad. They teach the world that violence is a justifiable means to resolve coflict - leading to more war.
g). Nearly all arms sales are illegal under both EU law and international law, as no arms can be sold that are likely to contribute to internal repression or external aggression - WHAT ELSE ARE THEY USED FOR? Defence? Defending your country in modern warfare requires "external aggression" or you will lose faily rapidly.
h). There are enough guns in the world, there is roughly one small arm for every 7 people, I don't think providing any more is a wise move, do we want to grow these industries and provide more jobs? So that there are 7 arms for every person?
i). If violence is unjustified (unless you are in very special circumstances, such as protecting other people from iminent death), then surely selling the means with which violence becomes easier is also unjustified
j). I think that peace, co-operation and stability for one nation relies on an appreciation of other nations and their differences, from a sound education into why people are the way they are, what needs need to be met by either side, what we can help each other with. As it says on a postcard given to me by someone very special "Peace cannot be kept by force; only by understanding" - Albert Einstein. Or an even earlier quote "Peace cannot be achieved through violence, it can only be attained through understanding" Ralph Waldo Emerson. Can't we put our technological efforts into peacework - how best to resolve conflicts, create stability abroad, arrest the cyclones of violence and anger before they come back around to us?
When I talk about visions for social change, many people say "you're just young and idealistic, life just doesn't work like that" or "you just don't get human nature" - but whatever human nature is like, I know that it is possible for Britain to stop exporting arms, and I know that human nature will be better for it. So that is something that everyone (except for the 55,000 employees in the whole sector being subsidised by the government by around £10,000 to £14,000 for each employee depending on which variables you take into account, probably the most heavily subsidised sector in the country per job) can get involved in, whatever background, whatever outlook on life, I think that not to care about arms exports isn't apathetic, it's positively psychopathic.
OK, so the arms demand makes me happy (and a bit preachy... Sorry about that, it's a bad habit!), but the demand about furniture I think is fantastic. Really fun, which is what is needed really. I can just imagine a large polished mahogany desk with that green felt on the top sitting in a teaching room in Gaza with 2 walls left and steel structuring sticking out from the grey and crumbling building. Genius. Send a bit of opulence and refined workmanship to where it will be wholly appreciated, and stick out as a strong bold reminder that there are people that back in the UK that value people. There are people that are prepared to take time out of their day to arrange something to help. That makes me happy too! There is a tide of people doing their best, not just for themselves, their familly, their friends, immediate community or nation, but actually for people in a distant land. Humans are just fantastic, aren't they? Everyone is doing their best, even the arms dealers, they just get a bit blinded by ego perhaps, but they are still doing what they think is right for them - I think that's how the mind works, so there's hope.
To close off this rather long rant, about things that I haven't made the connection to the Middle East with, but hopefully with something worth reading in there, I thought I'd leave you with another quote from one of the many prophets and wise-men that seem to have hit the nail on the head over the past few centuries (how many do we have to have before we start changing???)
"Responsibility does not only lie with the leaders of our countries or with those who have been appointed or elected to do a particular job. It lies with each of us individually. Peace, for example, starts within each one of us. When we have inner peace, we can be at peace with those around us.
When our community is in a state of peace, it can share that peace with neighboring communities, and so on. When we feel love and kindness towards others, it not only makes others feel loved and cared for, but it helps us also to develop inner happiness and peace. And there are ways in which we can consciously work to develop feelings of love and kindness. For some of us, the most effective way to do so is through religious practice. For others it may be non-religious practices. What is important is that we each make a sincere effort to take our responsibility for each other and for the natural environment we live in seriously."The Dalai Lama
Wednesday, 4 February 2009
Calm before the storm.
So, this is quite exciting - publishing something on the internet, albeit the equivalent to putting a post-it note in the dusty neglected cellar of your house...
Right now I am doing very little, as I have been for the last 2 months. Mainly just reading, cooking, the occasional bit of housework, and ending up glued to the biggest time-waster in history - TV. Having said that, there was a good program on the other day "around the world in 80 faiths", and although it only gives 3/4 minutes to each faith (not exactly doing it justice), you do hear a little window into each one. The episode that I watched was exploring Christianity, Judaism and some different forms of Islam in Jerusalem, Damascus, and Iraq.
As some people might know, I have dabbled very lightly in Sufism - the way of Love
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mevlevi
So. Faith. Religion. Spirituality... Wisdom.. Do we still need these cultural quirks and seemingly irrational ways of life? Of course!! Should we be absolutist about which way is the best? Well that completely contradicts the concept of love - which I define as "wholly desiring the other person's freedom and well-being, and appreciating their qualities in a positive way" in its most mature form, rather than the more Western idea of "I want you all for myself, I want to drink you, to mold you, to know what's best for you, to see you as mine, and be proud that you are mine". Of course I feel both, but I know which is destructive. Most tribes in the world are saying "this is the way to love, this is the way to the lord, this is the way to live because it's better. I'll kill you or steal your land or ostracise you if you don't play along". And there we get the problem. A metaphysical problem as much as a physical problem. I expect to encounter more of this in the Middle East. I look forward to exploring and seeing what I have to offer, how I can make anyone's life more wonderful or fulfill their needs (in the language of non-violent communication).
Sorry for all this irrelevant babble! I'll get writing the hard gritty fun exciting challenging hysterical illuminating accounts of my travels when I set off - I just thought I'd warm up, it's been a while since I've done any writing.
Right now I am doing very little, as I have been for the last 2 months. Mainly just reading, cooking, the occasional bit of housework, and ending up glued to the biggest time-waster in history - TV. Having said that, there was a good program on the other day "around the world in 80 faiths", and although it only gives 3/4 minutes to each faith (not exactly doing it justice), you do hear a little window into each one. The episode that I watched was exploring Christianity, Judaism and some different forms of Islam in Jerusalem, Damascus, and Iraq.
As some people might know, I have dabbled very lightly in Sufism - the way of Love
Passion makes the old medicine new:
Passion lops off the bough of weariness.
Passion is the elixir that renews:
how can there be weariness
when passion is present?
Oh, don't sigh heavily from fatigue:
seek passion, seek passion, seek passion!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mevlevi
So. Faith. Religion. Spirituality... Wisdom.. Do we still need these cultural quirks and seemingly irrational ways of life? Of course!! Should we be absolutist about which way is the best? Well that completely contradicts the concept of love - which I define as "wholly desiring the other person's freedom and well-being, and appreciating their qualities in a positive way" in its most mature form, rather than the more Western idea of "I want you all for myself, I want to drink you, to mold you, to know what's best for you, to see you as mine, and be proud that you are mine". Of course I feel both, but I know which is destructive. Most tribes in the world are saying "this is the way to love, this is the way to the lord, this is the way to live because it's better. I'll kill you or steal your land or ostracise you if you don't play along". And there we get the problem. A metaphysical problem as much as a physical problem. I expect to encounter more of this in the Middle East. I look forward to exploring and seeing what I have to offer, how I can make anyone's life more wonderful or fulfill their needs (in the language of non-violent communication).
Sorry for all this irrelevant babble! I'll get writing the hard gritty fun exciting challenging hysterical illuminating accounts of my travels when I set off - I just thought I'd warm up, it's been a while since I've done any writing.
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