didn’t have the equipment for that smooth tracking shot, but you get the idea…
BDS
I really meant it when I said that you are all complicit. But the good news it that you can rid yourself of that guilt very easily, no hassle whatsoever. Just boycott Israeli goods.
The ‘only democracy in the Middle East’ has made it an offence for Israelis to call for a boycott, which should not only tell you something about the government there, but also about its fears regarding the impact of a far-reaching BDS (boycott, divestment, sanctions) program.
And I just discovered that Ms Naomi Klein couldn’t agree more, hah!
“Economic sanctions are the most effective tools in the nonviolent arsenal. Surrendering them verges on active complicity.”
The boycott movement against South Africa was instrumental in bringing about the end of apartheid, I dare say this might be the only way to end Israel’s occupation. If we all stop munching Israeli mangetout, our pop stars will soon feel the need to join the cultural boycott of Israel, our big corporations will have to review their trade agreements and our government will face the fact that we care about its foreign policy stance on the matter. Palestinians have been stripped of their voice internationally, let your actions speak on their behalf. Israel continues to violate international law and the Geneva convention on human rights and the government’s actions have repeatedly been judged by various independent international bodies as amounting to operating a system of apartheid. A long list of countries are subject to UK and EU trade restrictions and arms embargoes in response to comparable behaviour, but in the case of Israel we continue to look the other way. Here’s a list of products to avoid. The website also has some really good general information.
a singer from Haifa, a Bedouin from the Negev, a hand-cycle enthusiast, a group of kids on their way to the kibbutz, a frozen-meat salesman from Eilat and one manic Egyptian cab driver later….
… our hitch-hike ends in Cairo. The month is over and there are still photos and films to post from the last few days in Palestine.
I have grown very, very fond of the land and the spirit of its people. I am leaving so much richer than when I arrived, having been given knowledge and precious insight, shown such warmth and dignity, whilst having been able to offer so little in return.
What is being done across the territories is a heinous injustice. There are no valid excuses. And we are all complicit.
Cairo is mad, loud, dirty - it’s a beautiful city. Probably won’t have time to visit the pyramids, but seeing the courage of the people here moved me to tears.
Wise cracks (1)
IT ALL COMES TUMBLING DOWN
Turned up in Idnah today to a grim spectacle of destruction. Amidst the sunken rubble of a former home to a stretched family of ten I wondered what I was standing on… the children’s bedroom? a kitchen perhaps?
The family sat placidly on the breeze blocks that so recently amounted to shelter, cigarette smoke pouring over thick moustaches, salty cheeked children learning the hard way that a smile isn’t always a smile. Questions of the future hang heavy in the mountain air, heavy with the smell of shit dug and piled up by the Israeli bulldozers. I wondered at the family’s stoicism, was this the brave face of faith? Or perhaps the resigned face of routine.
In this beautiful, wilting land these crimes are a daily occurrence. For many the question is not if, but when. The family before me hadn’t the opportunity to consider either question, the favoured method of notification (a piece of paper under a rock) had failed to reach them, offering them little more warning to plan and remove their belongings than the roar of diesel engines as the doom bearers approached. In the Islamic world ‘Salam Alykom’ is the standard greeting when entering a home, awkward with impotent sympathy and a house under foot, today the words failed me.
In the fertile fields below, the sole identifiable means of income apparent, yet more destruction sullied the peaceful landscape. Two dead wells, choked with earth and brutalised beyond conceivable repair. Such vandalism constitutes governmental policy in these parts. Climbing the hillside, a vine of grapes collapses into what I’m told is a tool shed, the land workers’ office, now an abstract mess of contorted metals and concrete boulders. The well, the tools… the message is clear: No Palestinian life is to be sustained on this land — no water, no work, no shelter. After seventeen years of working this land, the family have been forced out.
House demolitions
At 5am this morning, soldiers showed up at a house on the outskirts of Idhna, west of Hebron, which had been built without permission, gave the family an hour to remove all their belongings and then razed their home to the ground.
Building permits in Area C (about 65% of the West Bank, the area is that is under Israeli civil and military control) are impossible to obtain. So people go ahead and build on their land without the necessary paperwork… and then, one day, the demolition order arrives and a few months later, the bulldozers turn up. (B’teslem, the Israeli Human Rights organisation has more detail here)
The small, 2-room house was home to a family of 10.
Figures for 2011 across the different districts of the West Bank (Source: B’tselem).
Killing a few birds with one stone, the contractors and their army bodyguards then moved down the hill and destroyed a stone shed and two wells used for the irrigation of a small plot of land.
O Hebron
A settler tour through Hebron’s old town on Saturday brought unease to a city already on edge. When a spotty young man, plagued by complexes about his appearance, sexual experience and memories of being bullied at school, points an M16 at you and asks you to stop filming, well, you comply. But, looking back, I wish I hadn’t.
On Sunday we visited two families whose lives have been made miserable by sustained abuse and attacks by settlers from the nearby Kiryat Arba settlement, the very first of Isreal’s illegal settlements, built shortly after the Occupation began in 1967. The first family showed us a video, shot the day before, documenting a mob of racists besieging their home for several hours.
Then just up the road, a tent or ’synagogue’, has been erected on the land of another family. This is what is called an outpost, the taking of land illegal even under Israeli law - the police have dismantled the tent three times now, but the settlers just put it back up, as they do not need to fear any repercussions. In trying to defend their property, every member of the family has been arrested repeatedly over the years, including the three disabled sons. Farming of the land became unfeasible years ago, as any plants are destroyed by the settlers. Two of the sons had just been released from yet another police detention, this time accused of having jumped the 8-foot high, barbed-wire fence surrounding the settlement and beating one of the settlers. Their disability means that they are severely stunted in their growth and struggle to walk.
On Monday, we travelled to the nearby al-Arrub refugee camp - with 10,000 inhabitants, close to 300 of its children (aged 12-17) are currently in Israeli prisons for throwing stones. I want to return and talk to some of the families affected by this and write more about children being sentenced by military courts, but right now I am in Jericho, 300 metres below sea level, it is warm here and time for falafel.
Hebron:
al-Walaja.
al-Walaja
This Friday’s demonstration didn’t involve getting pelted with tear gas, and there was a definite feeling of freedom as the march took us along a road normally off bounds. Jubilant shouts and whistles of teenagers jumping in the air upon reaching the forbidden tarmac under the skeptical, cautious gaze of the village elders; a sense of empowerment to ignore the soldiers and walk on; and the claps of the villagers left behind greeting us upon our return, made for a very uplifting day. Victory uses different scales in Palestine.
(I am in Hebron and the internet connections is pretty rubbish - it says the video will take another five hours to upload…)
Arabian Magic Lantern Show
(The view from Kifl Haris at dusk last night)
To illustrate the point below. That round cement structure you see at the end has something to do with the settlement’s sewage system - whose land is this?
