H2

A busy week, to say the least.

In Tel Aviv we visited several more museums, all of which were fantastically designed and exhaustingly comprehensive. The Israelis definitely know how to put on an exhibit. The Tel Aviv Museum of Art provided some minimal criticism of the occupation, quoting one Israeli modern artist on a wall plaque:

"Think what happens to a guy who grew up in a house where they talked about fences, watchtowers, and fetters, when he comes across similar things while guarding prisoners of war. All of a sudden I realized I was on the other side of the fence. I was neither the victim nor his son. I was the aggressor, I was the abuser."

Other museums we visited, though -- the Haganah and Etzel Museums, both dedicated to Zionist militant groups (terrorist groups, by the modern definition) founded in the 1920s that drove the British out of Palestine, won the 1948 War, and would eventually become the IDF when the State of Israel was declared; and the Museum of the Diaspora, which documents Jewish discrimination throughout the centuries -- were loaded with what could only be described as propaganda. The Etzel Museum described the Battle of Deir Yassin, labeled a massacre by everyone from the Palestinians to Wikipedia to their brethren Haganah fighters, as an important strategic victory.

Each of these museums had half-off prices for IDF. Some gave free admission to those in uniform.

We contrasted these museum days in Tel Aviv by attending the demonstration that accompanied the official jailing of the young refusnik we interviewed a couple weeks ago (I mentioned her briefly in the blog entry "Update"). Her name is Omer, she's about 90 pounds of pure left-wing energy, and she and two of her friends were arrested on the spot for refusing to register for their service with the Israeli Defense Forces.

The demonstration involved much chanting, some juggling, some bubbles. Anarchist Israelis, like anarchists everywhere else, I imagine, certainly know how to have fun at a protest.

Despite the party atmosphere, Omer looked much less energetic than we'd previously seen her. Staring down the barrel of a prison sentence that would in the future limit everything from employment to dating options, Omer described her fight against the system like battling a wall. Despite her sureness of her actions, she seemed unsure as to the good they might do.

We also spent a couple days interviewing some more major human rights organizations, Israeli and Palestinian alike: Stop the Wall, Defense for Children International, and B'Tselem. The Palestinian representative we spoke with from Defense for Children works a lot with teaching Palestinian kids how to deal with torture, and trying to stop Israel from imprisoning more of them -- 6,000 since the start of the last Intifada. He knows well how to handle torture, because he himself has been imprisoned three times. He described for us the various torture positions one gets put in for hours and hours at a time, the hallucinations that come from sleep deprivation ("Usually they keep you awake by playing opera music...and Palestinians hate opera music"), and how he ate a hole through the smelly burlap sack they put over his head so that he could make out the dimensions of his 3 ft. x 1.5 ft. cell.

Funny enough, though, the most interesting part of our week, at risk of sounding repetitive, was probably our return to Hebron (see previous post for details of our first trip there). Gabriella and I decided it was important to go back and talk to some of the Israeli settlers there, perhaps another Palestinian or two, and we had promised our new friend Rafat that we'd return to visit anyway. So this past Friday we grabbed some breakfast at the Aroma Cafe in Jerusalem and made plans to promptly grab the next bus to the biggest city in the West Bank.

Before we could even finish our eggs and Greek salad, though, we ran into a group of four American teenage girls at the cafe who were taking a year to study at a yeshiva in the Old City in Jerusalem. Turns out they visit Hebron often themselves, though not the Palestinian part. They described tours of 30 or 40 people every Sabbath to the Jewish Community in Hebron, and how important it was to go and show their support for the people there who were fighting for the Land of Israel, "our land" they called it. I asked these Americans, who lived in New York and were talking about dieting strategies before I interrupted them, what made them feel it was their land. "You can just feel it," one said.

A couple questions later Gabriella and I wrapped up the interview, said our thank yous and goodbyes, and hopped the bus as planned. An hour and a half later we were strolling through the souk in Hebron's Old City, with the now familiar anti-garbage grid above our heads. We met one Palestinian, Jamal, who spoke impeccable English, and who was better able to describe for us the daily need for the wire nets above us, how trash still rains down, and how every few weeks the shop keepers in the souk peel down one side of the netting, clear all the bottles and rocks and who knows what else that have piled up, so that the sun can still get into the market, and start all over again.

Apparently the settlers have caught on that, try as they might, the netting is too strong for their cinder blocks, so they've taken to dumping dirty water on the Palestinians instead, or at times, bleach, which Jamal said burns the skin, and of course does interesting things to clothes.

We rounded the corner out the souk and came up to the checkpoint that guards the Jewish area within H2. This time we did not have TIPH guides with us, so the IDF troops guarding the small blockade were a little confused by our request for entry.

"What are you doing here?"

"Just touring around."

"Where have you been before this?"

"You know, just Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Eilat..."

"Are you part of an organization?"

"Nope, just touring."

Cue skeptical eyebrow. "Okay." Cue sarcasm. "Have fun."

And we were in. As internationals the IDF can't really bar us from any place in the West Bank, and they're not supposed to harass us too much either, in case we're journalists who will go squealing back to our readers about yet more human rights violations. The Palestinians of course aren't so lucky. Behind us the IDF started yelling at one who was trying to get through the checkpoint with several bags of vegetables, cooking ware, etc., to get to his home which unfortunately happened to be in the Jewish area itself. The metal detector went off as he passed through with the bags, making a beeping noise, and the IDF started demanding rather impatiently what had set off the sensor. Unfortunately the Israeli soldier's Arabic was somewhat limited, and the Palestinian's inability to understand what on earth was being demanded of him only made the soldier madder. The conversation went something like this:

Soldier: "Shu toot?" ("What toot?")

Palestinian: [shrug in confusion]

Soldier: "SHU TOOT?" ("WHAT TOOT?")

Palestinian: [cower in confusion]

Soldier: "TOOOOT! TOOOOOT! SHU TOOT!" (TOOOOT! TOOOOOT! WHAT TOOT!")

"Toot" I believe was his interpretation of the metal detector's beeping noise. You understand the difficulty here.

If the IDF soldiers wanted, the only way they could have kept us from passing through the checkpoint would have been on grounds of security. Which may have been legit in this case. As we walked down the street (our tour with TIPH the other week had taken us along a Palestinian bypass path rather than down the main street in the Jewish area itself) we first came across a young Israeli child, maybe six, seven years old, meticulously wrapping a large, black night stick (some call it a police baton) with red tape. Next we came across an Israeli man walking casually down the street with a gigantic assault rifle. He wasn't in any sort of uniform, and my limited knowledge of firearms told me this was not an army-issued weapon. We later passed another man walking around with an even larger gun. I'd heard the settlers were armed, but I didn't realize they were armed.

After walking around the ghost town for a while, we finally came across a small crowd of Israeli men and children, none of whom spoke English. We explained as best we could that we were just looking for someone to talk to about what it was like to live in the famed community. One of them gave us a phone number -- "Call this guy. He speaks English, sometimes he gives tours."

"This guy" turned out to be David Wilder, Spokesperson for the Jewish Community of Hebron (www.hebron.com), which produces propaganda about the city, participates in various community projects, and provides tours in bullet-proof buses. He was in a rush to pack up his office and get home before the Shabat, but he offered to talk to us for a few minutes if we liked.

David Wilder went to my elementary school in the 1960s. He's from my home town of Cresskill, NJ.

I kid you not.

David Wilder now walks around with a pistol in his belt, and told us that this conflict is not one of land, or politics, but rather a religious war that the Muslims were waging on the Western World, and how the first step to a 'solution' to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was for the Palestinians, Jews in denial, and the rest of the world to recognize the Biblical legitimacy of the Jewish people to be in Israel -- not just Israel as it is currently politically defined, but Judea and Samaria as well (known to the rest of us 21st-century dwellers as the northern and southern West Bank, Occupied Palestinian Territories, etc.). He told us about how he was living in Israel when he received news that a respected rabbi in Hebron had been stabbed to death by a Palestinian 'terrorist.' He moved to Hebron two weeks later to take up the fight, and has been there for fourteen years now.

We ended our day in Hebron with a reunion with our friend Rafat, who introduced us to several more of his friends. One of them, Mohammed, hasn't been able to see his wife and children in Jenin for two and a half years because he can't get through the checkpoints.

"Why?" I asked him.

"Because Israelis say I am big problem."

"What's the problem?"

He shrugged.

Another of Rafat's friends chimed in with the answer. "He is Palestinian man. That is the problem." He proceeded to point to every Palestinian man standing around us. "Him big problem, him big problem, him big problem, him big problem." He pointed at me. "You? Welcome to Israel!"

After dinner we met an English teacher friend of Rafat's who spoke poetically, though tragically, about the hopelessness of the conflict, and also about the right of all peoples to this land, be they Christian, Jew, or Muslim. It was a nice counterpoint to Mr. Wilder and the teenage Americans.

Saying goodbye to Rafat et al. was tearful. One of his friends, a cab driver, gave us a lift to the Bethlehem checkpoint at evening's end. He spoke nearly no English, but managed to get out, "Welcome Palestine, welcome Hebron, welcome my car."

Today we arrived back in Nablus for the last leg of our trip -- more teaching. Classes don't start for another week, though, so we hope to take a few more day trips in the meantime. It's good to be back. Had the first rain we've seen since we got here. Colder now. Four weeks left.

Much love,
John