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!

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.

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

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/

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!

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???)

"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

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

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.