The War Over Gaza: A Battlefield Report from the Facebook Front

This title may seem snarky, but it is deadly serious. What the Israeli Defense Forces call Operation Protective Edge, the deadly assault on the population of Gaza, is the most important war so far in the social media era. And this is being forcefully brought to our attention in ways that are both political and personal, but in any case increasingly difficult to avoid.

And the part about a report from the battlefront? That's because I don't pretend this is a definitive or even a deep analysis. It is a quick battlefield bulletin that I hope will get other people to think about this and chip in their own thoughts and experiences.

From the personal

I have been in half a dozen conversations, actual voice to voice conversations, over the last two plus weeks which all centered around a single shared experience. Some friend--an old and dear comrade, or a high school classmate rediscovered in recent years through the magic of the intertubes, an in-law or maybe just some amusing Facebook "friend"--suddenly, unexpectedly, turns out to be a zionist, or perhaps an I’m-not-really-a-zionist equivocator who tut-tuts po-faced over Israel's slaughter of the innocents and suggests that it's really all Hamas's fault.

And how did we learn this? By a news story these friends share, a status report, a comment on a contentious thread. It's jarring, in some instances actually chilling, to find this deep difference. If we explore it, even tentatively, in an online thread or exchange of posts, we can feel the barriers going up. They may not be 20 feet high and made of concrete poured over rebar but they are real barriers, as real as bannings and unfriendings.

To the political

And these lost or damaged friendships, online or IRL, are, in one sense, casualties in one front in the war in Gaza. This not a front restricted to the Raleigh, NC-size, battered hellhole of a ghetto that is both home and prison camp to 1.8 million Palestinian men, women and children. It is a global battlefront, one in which many of us are, willy-nilly, combatants.

At the time Barack Obama took office and moved to ramp down the unjust and unjustifiable occupation of Iraq, there were about 50 million users registered on Facebook globally. Today there are a billion and a third! Twitter use wasn't even on the map.

Blogs, with few exceptions, have been correspondingly diminished as a locale for exchange of news and ideas, while Twitter seems less a replacement for and more of a compliment to Facebook-style social media. As for old skool broadcast news and dead-tree newspapers, they are pale shadows of their former selves. Breaking news comes to more and more people first through social media, particularly Twitter and Facebook.

I'm not saying this is the first war of the new era, Social media was how we tracked the Arab Spring. The continued catastrophic fighting on the Middle East and Ukraine are obvious recent examples.

But this war is one where the battle for public opinion is paramount. Israel is has been exceedingly nervous about social media for quite a while now and devotes considerable effort to promoting her foreign policy on it, though expending only a fraction of the total money it drops on other parts of its coordinated influence buying, lobbying and manifold other public relations (PR) efforts.

Still, those running Israeli social-media efforts, whether in the IDF, the foreign ministry or government-funded think tanks, are faced with a horrific problem. Israel's armed forces, among the largest and best equipped in the world, are engaged in a brutal assault on a poorly armed militia—and on everybody who lives in the same high-security prison camp with them. The photos of shattered children, mourning families, burning power plants, whole neighborhoods reduced to rubble tell a story very different from the one Israel has been promoting.

My neck of the FBosphere

I spend too much time on Facebook and I have a mess of FB "friends." True, many rarely post or even remember they are on. Others have been steered out of my line of sight by restrictive FB algorithms. As a result, most of the people whose stuff I see regularly tend to be folks who share my politics to one degree or another.

And I have found an intense spontaneous response to the assault on Gaza. Comrades and friends around the country have taken up the question in large numbers, posting and linking frequently. In fact, there have been more pleasant surprises, folk I hadn't really expected to see jump in on something like this choosing to stand up, than the disappointing moments I mentioned above.

I certainly have ramped it up, and, in doing so, have tried to develop a more systematic approach, which I will detail in another piece. A couple of my links to articles on the origins of this attack have been shared by dozens of people. And naturally I've tried to promote demonstrations and other protests, and share reports on them.

Israel's strategy

I mentioned the importance the Israeli state and establishment and allied organizations globally place on this battle. The Hebrew term "hasbara" means explanation, but has come to have connotations of PR or propaganda. The IDF maintains a Hasbara War Room (and has for over a year) where college students fluent in a variety of languages sit at 400 computers pretending to be something other than paid advocates of the official Israeli line. Trolls, in other words. Some argue points. Some seek to disrupt threads with ad hominem attacks and nonsensical claims. Some are "concern trolls" who express sympathy for the Gazans and go on to urge capitulation to Israel as the only practical option.

Of course, most of the defenders of Israel one finds on the net are not necessarily paid or sitting in a "war room." Rather they are individual zionists who feel their cause passionately and put it forward with varying degrees of coherence. The arguments do have a certain sameness to them, though. This was masterfully summed up six years ago, by the anti-zionist website Jews sans frontieres who lay out a four point template for  pro-Israel argument:

1. We rock
2. They suck

3. You suck
4. Everything sucks

Besides being extremely funny, in the "If you see me laughing, well, I'm laughing just to keep from crying" sense, it touches on something very profound. Israel's minimum program is to get people to turn their heads away from the suffering of the Palestinian people. Israel holds the military whip hand. If global public opinion doesn't bring pressure to bear on their government and on the US government, Israel's main enabler, they can keep committing these crimes indefinitely.

The Palestinian side

So in a sense our job is to keep the suffering of the Palestinians front and center. Supporters globally have been doing this in recent weeks, but let's not forget that we are functioning as allies of those who live on the real life battlefront.

There are no 400-computer war rooms under central government direction in Gaza (or anyplace else) but there are people with cell phones who can take pictures and post reports, and they have truth on their side. I was reminded of this by a courageous young woman from Ramallah with whom I've had several on-line exchanges on Facebook, We'am Hamdan has been promoting the Palestinian cause on the internet since long before the assault on Gaza, "because the conflict affects my being as a Palestinian living in the occupied territories of the West Bank."

We'am works with an informal crew in Gaza and the West Bank who had a brilliant idea. They started a Facebook page entitled Humans of Palestine. The name tells the story—it was based on the hugely popular internet phenomenon Humans of New York, which couples a snapshot of a person or two and a comment about their life in their own words.

The idea of the page was to reflect the dreams of Palestinian people and their daily lives. But since the offensive started, the page aims at restoring the humanity that is often stripped away when Palestinians are reduced to calculative deaths, forgettable names, and burned and mutilated bodies, rather than people who shared loved ones, stories, dreams and aspirations.

This is a goal that I, for one, intend to learn from and to promote in my little section of the battle front.

Is it worth it?

We'am Hamdan can have moments of self-doubt about the value of her efforts. "Sometimes I feel that it's a stupid virtual battle and it won't change much. Sometimes I feel, No! It's very important to raise awareness within the international community."

Like her, like many of us, I sometimes wonder how much is being accomplished. But until I find a better way of tackling the job, I plan to continue, just as I plan to continue going to demonstrations that the media and the political establishment do their level best to ignore.

One way I hope to do that is with two follow-up pieces to this, one on how I am currently approaching the battlefield in practical terms and one on what happens when, inevitably, the IDF pulls back, leaving ruins in its wake, and Palestinian suffering continues while the world's gaze drifts elsewhere…

I welcome your thoughts on this topic.

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Racism and Railroads--The US Experience and Israel's

It's difficult to track the crimes of the Israeli state and Zionism against the Palestinian people. I don't mean hard to keep count of, true though that may be, but painful. It hurts to keep focusing on them, because they are so unrelenting--another olive grove bulldozed, another protester shot in the head with a tear gas canister, another bombing raid on Gaza, another house demolished.

Sometimes, though, a small outrage jumps out at me and I feel I have to do something, even if it's just share my anger.

The trigger for this piece is a new policy initiated by Israel Railways. In March, 2009, management moved to lay off 150 Israeli Arabs who worked as guards, monitoring and maintaining railroad crossings. A new policy was put in place--only those with permits to carry weapons could hold the job.

And only veterans of the Israeli Defense Forces, in which few Arabs serve. get these permits. In fact, management stated explicitly that the program is designed to give employment to young veterans in Israel's shaky economy. The workers have a case before the Labor Board there, but Israel Railways has already started hiring for their positions.

I realized immediately why I grew so angry. This is a direct parallel to what happened to Black railroad workers again and again in the years from the civil war to the victory of the modern civil rights movement.

The issue was the fireman's job, the backbreaking and filthy job of shoveling coal into the engines of old steam locomotives. Think of Blind Willie McTell, “Statesboro Blues”:

Big Eighty left Savannah, Lord, and did not stop
You ought to saw that colored fireman when he got that boiler hot.

Or the old country tune "Wreck of the Old 97”:

So he turned and he said to his Black greasy fireman
"Shovel on a little more coal..."

But when the economy got real bad, suddenly the “Black man's jobs” started looking pretty good to Southern whites. In 1911, for instance, 10 Black railroad workers were shot on the New Orleans & Texas Pacific line because the railroad gave them equal seniority with whites. Climbing on the locomotives to pull the spout down from the water tower and position it to refill the boiler, they were sitting ducks for snipers.

In the Great Depression of the '30s, the same thing happened again. A deadly one-sided war took place, with the all-white unions of the Railroad Brotherhoods complicit in the terror when they weren't actually organizing it. On the Mississippi division of the Illinois Central from 1932 to 1933, Frank Kincaid, Ed Cole, Aaron Williams, Wilburn Anderson, Frank Johnson and Will Harvey were shotgunned to death. Elsewhere, mob action by “concerned citizens” living along the railroad lines stopped trains and savaged Black firemen and the few white railroad workers who took their backs. The companies filled these sudden “vacancies” with white workers.

Israel's crimes draw a lot of comparisons. We talk about the “apartheid wall.” David Rovics, in an essay reprinted here at FotM, drew a very careful but pointed set of connections with the Nazi regime in Germany. Well, by me, these folks are today's segregationists, white supremacists, KKK, and they should be understood and dealt with as such.

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Eight Points on Gaza

1. Who won? In an immediate military sense, Israel. What do you expect? The Israeli Defense Forces made 2,500 plus F-16 and 'copter air sorties against a densely populated urban area where the only opposing armed forces possessed no anti-aircraft guns, no surface to air missiles and no planes. It is estimated that repairing the damage suffered by the already desperate inhabitants of this colossal open air prison, the ones who survived, will run over $2 billion. 80% of the agricultural infrastructure of Gaza is reported to have been been destroyed.

Beyond the horrific destruction visited to the Palestinian people, though, the Israelis appear to have picked up a stone only to drop it on their own feet. They will have an uphill slog in the battle for summation, with direct political consequences in increased isolation as sympathy and even material support from people around the world flow to Gaza.

2. Despite careful timing--to take advantage of reduced attention to news during the Christian holiday season and to finish before administration change in the US--Israeli aggression caught world attention. Some analysts have pointed out that Israel dominated the "war of words," banning foreign journalists from Gaza and working to see that discourse was laced with terms like terrorism, Islamic fundamentalists, security and the like. However, it decisively lost "the war of images" as photos and video provided by the Palestinian news agency Ramattan appeared on al-Jazeera and other news outlets, even CNN. This showed the people of the world the carnage, and the agony of those still living, and it documented IDF attacks on homes, schools, hospitals, mosques and UN facilities.

3. At the level of international government, Israel pretty much got a free ride at first, due in part to splits among Palestinians and between Arab states, and in part to US intransigence in blocking meaningful action in the UN Security Council. But while governments started out largely sitting on their hands, an unprecedented outpouring of mass anger and protest in country after country forced institutions like the news media and the international Red Cross and then governments to speak up in criticism of Israel. (Still, only Venezuela and Bolivia broke ties with Israel over the attack).

Three choice examples of the popular struggle, from Europe alone:
Norway, where over 85 pro-Palestinian protests and broader peace marches took place in 59 towns (in a country of 4.5 million!), saw the most intense rioting in recent memory in central Oslo as police tried to repress militant young protestors. (See the nifty interactive map--in English--from Frontlinjer magazine here.)

In the United Kingdom, even after the truce/ceasefire, students at sixteen (16, count 'em, 16) universities seized campus buildings around a series of anti-Israel and pro-Palestine demands. Most are still on. Students at the London School of Economics and Oxford report victories in negotiations with administrators.

In Greece, a January 9 news story from Reuters sent Greek activists and bloggers into research mode. They were able to identify a contracted shipment of GBU-39 bunker buster bombs scheduled to go from Sunny Point, NC through the port of Astakos en route to Israel. They started organizing for an embargo of US and Israeli shipping including outreach to dockworkers. By the 16th, one week later, the contract was cancelled!

4. In the United States, the astonishing power of the Israel lobby once again gave it unchallenged sway in the media and government. The Senate passed by unanimous voice vote and the House with a total of 5 courageous Nays (Dennis Kucinich, Gwen Moore, Maxine Waters, Nick Rahall and Ron Paul) a resolution hailing the aggression and blaming Hamas for all the Palestinian deaths. Candidate Obama last July signaled his stance, saying, "If somebody was sending rockets into my house where my two daughters sleep at night, I'm going to do everything in my power to stop that. I would expect Israelis to do the same thing." (No one in the media asked him about whether he had stolen his house at gunpoint and was keeping the former residents and their children in a concentration camp in his back yard.)

Considering the propaganda barrage and the "conventional wisdom" in the very air we breathe here, the fact that Americans generally (according to a Rasmussen poll) "are closely divided over whether the Jewish state should be taking military action against militants in the Gaza Strip" (44-41%, with 15% undecided) and that non-Republicans oppose it solidly is a remarkable development

5. A more advanced pro-justice and anti-imperialist sentiment was reflected in the high tide of demonstrations here in the US. During the fighting there were almost daily protests in NYC, the Bay Area, Boston and other cities. Even more important was the eruption of demonstrations in places that hadn't seen actions on this scale before, or at all--Lexington, KY, Ft. Lauderdale, FL, Charlotte, NC, Fayetteville, AR, Sioux Falls, SD and dozens more. Additionally, progressives made good use of the blogosphere to circulate material exposing the criminal character of Israel's aggression, and explain the background to the crisis in Israel's longstanding violation of international law and humanity.

6. The core of the protests in places like NYC and the Bay Area was young Palestinians, whose rage was tempered by determination and discipline. They turned out day after day and developed powerful organizing and mobilization networks. Importantly, their principle allies were anti-Zionist Jews, full of anguish at the crimes being committed in the name of the Jewish people and at the blind support of Israel by many of their loved ones. I am not talking here about the mediagenic black-hatted Hasidim of the Neturei Karta, but young and middle-aged Americans of Jewish descent, largely pretty secular, who were brought up in the shadow of the Holocaust. Their numbers are now being augmented by a trickle of rabbis and other more religious Jews who find they cannot stomach what they see.

It is also heartening that the anti-war movement, which is at a difficult and critical juncture in the fight to end the occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan, refocused on Gaza. Especially noteworthy was the role of the big United for Peace and Justice coalition, which has caught flak for downplaying Palestine on occasion. In addition to protest demos and vigils, UFPJ mobilized member groups to call local talk radio shows and write letters to the editor at local papers, a key step in countering the hegemonic position of pro-Israel views in the mass media.

7. There are many problems in building support for the Palestinian cause and ending US backing. The biggest problem, if you ask me, isn't the strong support for Israel by many American Jews and Christian fundamentalists. It's not even the incredibly well-financed and organized Israel lobby. It is the view, held very broadly in this country, that: "All those people are crazy. They're religious maniacs. They've been killing each other for thousands of years and nothing anybody can do is going to stop them." This thinking will take time and effort to uproot.

On the positive side, there is evidence that the Israel lobby is overplaying its hand. When President Obama chose George Mitchell (main US negotiator in the Northern Ireland peace process) as Mideast envoy, Abe Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League expressed concern: "“Sen. Mitchell is fair. He’s been meticulously even-handed, But the fact is, American policy in the Middle East hasn’t been ‘even handed, it has been supportive of Israel when it felt Israel needed critical U.S. support.” Taking a stand against fairness probably isn't the best way to argue your case in the public eye, especially when you are increasingly perceived as an amoral bully.

8. The increased exposure of Israel's crimes, the spread of protest in the US and internationally, and the high level of anger we are seeing may make a big leap in the Palestine solidarity movement possible. It has in recent years been made up of a determined and single-minded crew spread among many small and locally-based organizations, best able to respond and mobilize sympathizers when a real crisis like the attack on Gaza erupts. Now, I think there is a possibility of a leap to the level achieved by, say, the anti-apartheid movement in the '80s, a solidarity movement capable of sustained high-visibility campaigns which can show the reality behind Israel's expensive PR efforts and deal material blows to the Israeli occupation of Palestine.

The Palestinian movement in this country has emphasized the importance of building such a campaign around BDS--boycotts, divestment and sanctions. As with South Africa, the threat of political isolation and economic hardship can put fear in the hearts of even the most brutal oppressors. In working to swing public sentiment to our side, our biggest target is also our one of our strongest arguments--the $4 billion dollars annually the US pumps to Israel in aid, loan guarantees, "joint projects," etc., including financing 20% of Israel's entire military budget. Why should Israel, a relatively prosperous state, get over 20% of the entire US foreign aid budget when it uses the money to maintain the occupation, steal more Palestinian land, and wage war on those it oppresses?

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Beth Meets Righteous Rabbis

[FotM's friend Beth has returned from from Palestine and Israel, where she had not been since the 1967 War. This post continues her account of conditions there, following earlier reports here, here, here and here.]


Before I left New York, I made plans to see two feminist and left activists, friends of friends: one an Israeli Palestinian woman in Nazareth, the other an Israeli Jew in Haifa. Unfortunately, only the woman in Haifa was available when I could make it, so I took the bus from Jerusalem to Haifa, with a young soldier as my seatmate. Perhaps I should have tried, but this was the only time I could not bring myself to start talking with the person I was with for two hours.

I talked with Dahlia, along with her partner Chana, extensively over a wonderful meal in an Arab restaurant in an upscale area of Haifa that featured a dozen similar places to eat. They are active in the Coalition of Women for Peace and they participate in the Women in Black vigil in Haifa. Two of the long-term projects of the Coalition are:

Re-framing Security: In Israel, the concept of "security" is a powerful one. It is used to justify all military activity and the occupation of Palestinian territories. "National Security" is a phrase invoked not just to increase military budgets, but also to silence criticism and prevent transparency. The "Re-framing Security" Project explores this term from the broadest feminist-civil perspective, thus challenging the narrow militaristic understanding of security. Security in its civil forms includes aspects such as economic security (having a job, a roof over one's head, access to health care), security in the family and the community (safety from gender-related violence, protection from crime, having one's children safe in schools), environmental security (clean tap water, clean air), etc. The project generates critical discourse through lecture series, workshops and tours for groups of formal and informal educators, young leaders, social activists and other agents for change.


The occupation industry research project: “Who profits from the occupation?” In addition to various political, religious and national interests, the occupation is also fueled by corporate interests. Civilian companies and transnational corporations are increasingly involved in real estate deals, the development of settlements, the construction of fences and walls on Palestinian land, the paving of a separate road system for settlers, and the sale of equipment used for human rights violations and the repression of the civilian population. This project began in 2006 and involves systematic research about Israeli and international companies which directly profit from investments in the occupied Palestinian Territories and the Golan Heights. After rigorous research, the results are posted on the whoprofits.org website, which provides the public in Israel and internationally with accurate information about business interests invested in maintaining the occupation.

Our discussion ranged over many topics, from Barack Obama to the one-state vs. two-state solution to feminism within the left. Following is an excerpt of our discussion. Despite, or perhaps due to, the tone that comes across, they remain and will continue to be committed activists.

Beth: Haifa is a city with many Palestinians in its population. At the same time, in the Jerusalem municipality, there appear to be serious attempts to reduce the number and percentage of Palestinians. What is your take on these plans?
Dahlia and Chana: In 1948, they did it and that’s it. It was a period where the world didn’t react. Like Benny Morris (Righteous Victims, 1999 and The Birth of the Palestinian, 2004) said, they missed the opportunity and didn’t do ethnic cleansing altogether in ’48. But what do they say? Do it now. Let’s do whatever we can.

But they cannot do it.

(Then ensued disagreement over what the Western powers would ultimately allow)

C: Why? Europe supports Israel. United States supports Israel.

D: They cannot do it because the US is supporting Israel, because Europe is supporting Israel.

C: Everything that has been done since ’48, who supported these things? Germany, Europe, the United States. Without the support of those countries, Israel could not have become a state in ’48.

D: But not now. Not any more. This is also why she cannot wipe out all the Palestinians that are here.

C: Okay. But she can oppress them, change the landscape, erase every memory of what happened here. And look at what happened in the last forty years. With the support of the US and Europe and Germany.

D: In Jaffa, there is a museum. Jaffa is a Palestinian city. So they have a city museum there and in the museum they have the story of all the history of Jaffa, the Ottoman, the Crusades, the Romans, everybody, so on – no Palestinians, no Palestinians whatsoever are mentioned in the history of Jaffa. Jaffa was an Arab city. I saw this book about the history of Jaffa, From A Major City to a Poverty-Stricken Neighborhood, this is the name of the book about the history of Jaffa. Whole neighborhoods were wiped out. The whole piece of land between Tel Aviv and Jaffa is now hotels and so on. There were hundreds and hundreds of houses. Jaffa itself, all the old city of Jaffa, there are no Palestinians, only Jews.

C and D: There are 5 million Jews in Israel. There are 5 million Palestinians in greater Palestine. They will not get rid of these 5 million people. Their intention is one big Israel. They will kill many, as many as they can. They will break their spirit. Anyone who can go will leave. The poorest will stay, those with no power of resistance, no ability to fight, depressed.

B: And if you ask them, if I could sit down with a bunch of the religious, what would come out of their mouths about the Palestinians?

C and D: You don’t have to be religious to be racist. The whole public. You can sit with a group of left-wing people, labor, Meretz and it’s amazing the racism you will hear and you think okay, if a racist is a racist, then okay, but if a leftwing person is a racist, then where is hope? If you have a place based on support of one people, from one ethnic group, one religion, it has to be racist. In 2000, at the university, it was the first time we heard people say aloud racist things against Arabs. And now it’s PC to be racist.


Back in Jerusalem, my friend R got a text message from Rabbis for Human Rights asking for help the next day to paint the home of a Palestinian family that had been firebombed two weeks previously by settlers. She was busy at the office but I decided to go, meeting up with Rabbi G at 7 the next morning.

The house was on the outskirts of the village of Burin, just south of the checkpoint into Nablus. Two weeks previously, the family had been away for a few nights. Settlers from one of the two nearby settlements, either Yitzhar or Bracha, smashed the bedroom window, lit an oil soaked rag and threw it into the room. The baby’s crib was incinerated. Smoke filled the house, and once the fire was put out by people from the village, soot covered the walls.

This was not the first problem with these settlers. Two months ago, they set fire to the olive trees along an entire hillside, damaging years of growth. The hill was in flames. Another human rights group, B’tselem, has been giving cameras to Palestinian villagers. If photos document abuses like burning a hillside of olive trees, there is a chance that perpetrators could be prosecuted. The following is from the B’Tselem website:

In January 2007, B'Tselem launched "Shooting Back," a video advocacy project focusing on the Occupied Territories. We provide Palestinians living in high-conflict areas with video cameras, with the goal of bringing the reality of their lives under occupation to the attention of the Israeli and international public, exposing and seeking redress for violations of human rights. "Shooting Back" works with families who live in close proximity to settlements, to military bases, or at the sites of frequent army incursions. Settlers daily harassing a family in Hebron or attacking farmers in the South Hebron Hills, soldiers invading Qalqilya, …these are just some examples of the material filmed by over 100 cameras that we have distributed to families throughout the Occupied Territories. B'Tselem has succeeded in airing this material on major Israeli and international news networks, exposing global audiences to the previously unseen.

There were more of us than were necessary to do the painting but that gave us time to interact and take stock of the situation. The family and the young men from the village who helped out and the young boys who hung around expressed their thanks with gestures and a few words of English and a few of Hebrew. They fed us figs and grapes fresh from the trees.

Rabbis for Human Rights formed in 1988 to be the rabbinic voice of conscience in Israel with the purpose of giving voice to the Jewish religious tradition of human rights. Current membership is about 100 – 12 orthodox, the rest a mix of Conservative, Reform, Reconstructionist and Renewal. At first, they involved themselves in interfaith work relating to the Muslim community, including condolence visits to families of Palestinians killed by the army. They had no money in the beginning. Now, with contributions from individuals and congregations around the world, they have eight employees. Their education department is the largest part of the budget. It provides for seminars on human rights for Israelis, a hotline number for soldiers who are facing dilemmas regarding what they are being told to do at the checkpoints and in the defense of settlers, and literature given out at employment agencies to let immigrant workers, as well as Israelis, know their rights.

In recent years, RHR has become a more activist organization, doing a great deal of work against abuses of human rights in the territories. They get involved with Bedouin rights, women’s rights, building permits, home demolitions, and access to agricultural land, harvesting crops for Palestinians where they are cut off by the wall/fence from their land.

As an American Jew, raised in the religious traditions, I was encouraged by my talk with Rabbi G, originally from Melbourne, and Rabbi A, a woman from Philadelphia, both of whom decided to make Israel their home in the mid-70’s. The RHR website clarifies their overview:

Alongside efforts to prevent human rights abuses, Rabbis for Human Rights endeavors to introduce an authentic and humanistic understanding of Jewish tradition and sources into Israel’s public discourse. While the increasingly dominant nationalistic and particularistic understanding of Judaism echoes loudly, Rabbis for Human Rights gives voice to the tradition’s concern for the stranger and others vulnerable within society.

They have not abandoned the principles that drew them to become rabbis. I grew up learning, in addition to all the rules of behavior, that I was to look out for those less fortunate, that giving charity was a crucial part of life and that what I did not want my neighbors to do to me, I should not do to them. These rabbis look at the scriptures from that perspective.

Would that such a perspective could take hold throughout the Jewish community, especially in its two major centers, Israel and the United States. Insh'Allah.

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Beth Reports, Part 4: Ramallah

[This is the fourth in series of first-hand reports from Palestine and Israel, written by FotM's friend Beth. The first three are here, here and here.]

We walk to the East Jerusalem bus terminal and get the local Arab minibus to Ramallah, making sure to carry our non-Israeli passports to show at the checkpoint. (Israelis, by law, are not allowed in Ramallah.) After an uneventful 40 minute drive, we come to the outskirts of this city of about 50,000 people where, one after another, new apartment buildings are under construction. It appears to be a booming metropolis, with hundreds of new apartments soon to be available, all of white or pinkish white stone, pleasing to the eye.

Yet unemployment is high and getting higher as people move there from villages where the apartheid wall separates them from their land and they can no longer make an adequate living. Palestinians from the educated middle class from the smaller cities and towns are also moving there because it is easier to move around, do research, meet with colleagues, to simply enjoy life. According to the World Fact Book put out by the CIA, West Bank unemployment in 2006 was 18.6%. I’m certain it’s higher now.

We met up with Z, a 23 year-old Jewish-American graduate student in Middle East Studies who is living there while studying Arabic at Bir Zeit University in Ramallah. The previous day he had gone to Bilin, where Palestinians have combined civil disobedience with legal petitions to fight Israeli policies. An Israeli court decision said that the wall should be moved back, which would allow farmers access to their land, but this has not been done.

Every Friday, for more than three years, there have been non-violent protests against the wall. That Friday, the Israeli military dispersed the protesters with toilet water, that is, water from the toilet. I’ve heard the same story from three people, though one said it was chicken, not human, feces in the spray of water.

At a café on the top floor of a huge shopping center overlooking the main square where we go for a glass of juice, we are the only women. As tourists, we are welcomed. Luckily, I take pictures of the central square before being told not to. Watching from above, I was struck that there were no traffic lights or stop signs despite streets converging on the center of town filled with cars and trucks. Somehow, the traffic managed to flow as local people went about their routine. The souk, much more tightly packed with people and stalls than the one in Jerusalem, had an abundance of produce and clothing. Women shopped, almost all of them with their hair covered, many in brightly colored hijabs, children trailing behind.

The center of political activism in Ramallah is at the university, where young men and women participate in many different political groups, demonstrations and other activities. As recently as ten years ago, Z has been told, almost none of the women at the university wore the hijab; now at least half do. Z tells us that there is also a thriving night life which he is a part of, with young men and women coming together for various cultural activities – art, music, dance and poetry.

The Israeli army can come into town whenever they want. The police from the Palestinian Authority do not have much authority but they are in the street carrying rifles. There was recently a demonstration in the City Center which was dispersed by Palestinian Authority police in riot gear.

As it has been every day, it is 90 degrees or more. As we walk around downtown Ramallah, we try to stay on the shadier side of the street. We look for actual shade, maybe a park, but there is none to be found. We see trees up a hill but when we get there realize that they are behind the walls of a police station.

Everywhere, young boys approached the three of us, especially Z, to buy chewing gum, “one shekel, one shekel.” The currency in Ramallah, and throughout the territories. is the Israeli shekel. Many of the items we see for sale on the street--hardware, toys, clothing--are brought from Israel to be sold there. As we pull away from four 8 to 10 year old boys who surround us, and keep walking, I see a large Palestinian flag and a skeleton key (symbol of the Palestinian people’s desire to return to the homes they fled or were forced out of in 1948), painted on a wall, but in general, I am surprised to find little graffiti and only a few Palestinian flags atop buildings.

For us, leaving Ramallah is no big deal, but for the Palestinians on our minivan, it is a different story. My friend R writes:

Minivan from Ramallah back to Jerusalem--entering the van I hardly notice anyone--the seats are deep and I go sit by the window, hiding; Beth, next to me, snaps pictures. At the Kalandia checkpoint the van stops, young guys and older men go off and young women too--all with hijabs--I look around me and see an elderly man, a woman with a baby, and to my surprise, since I hadn't noticed before, some Western-looking people sitting in the back, and behind me, two young women who could be Palestinians but clearly have foreign passports--segregation in action--from passengers in a van we were 'profiled', categorized, privileged and co-opted. Next time we ought to step out and walk through the prison-like "terminal'"/checkpoint.

The next day, we go to the Dead Sea to relax. Before 1967, and when I was there right after the war, this trip would have taken three to four hours, traveling west from Jerusalem, then south to Beersheva, then around the southern land of the (prior to June, 1967) Jordanian-controlled West Bank, back east and north up the edge of the Dead Sea.

But Israel has built a highway, Route 1, straight across the West Bank, from Jerusalem to just south of Jericho; from there another highway travels south along the Dead Sea. An hour after we leave Jerusalem’s central bus station, we are at the public beach at Ein Gedi. It’s the polar opposite of travel for Palestinians living in the West Bank, which in the same period has devolved from simple and direct hour-long trips into convoluted day-long projects.

The Dead Sea is 1,378 ft below sea level; its shores are the lowest point on the surface of the Earth on dry land and it is the deepest hypersaline lake in the world. Because of the lake’s buoyancy, you lie back in the water and float for as long as you want, which for me was more than an hour. Or you just stand there in the water, perhaps talking with people around you. I got to talking with a young man from Burma. He called it Myanmar. His government sent him and eleven other young men to study agriculture and veterinary science at the university in Netanya. Despite the recent cyclone and political upheaval he said that everything is going well in his country.

I met another woman, from Mauritius, a nanny for the children of a well-to-do Parisian Jewish family on vacation (thousands of French Jews own vacation homes in Israel). The nanny knew about the occupation, and when I talked about home demolitions and checkpoints, she wanted to know more. She said that the family she works for, like those Burmese kids, preferred not to pay attention to what was really going on. Turns out keeping one’s head in the stand is not exclusively an American trait--or, to put it another way, where you stand depends on where you sit.

Taking a break from relaxing in the hot water under the hot sun, I came out of the water and found R sitting at a bench in the shade with two Israeli men from Tel Aviv, traders in spices from Iran and Turkey. They offered us home-made falafel and a type of delicious peanut I had never seen before. I asked how many people there are in Israel. One of them said: about 5 million. With the Arabs? I asked. No, just Jews, he said. To him, the Palestinians, even those living within the borders of the state of Israel, were not worth counting.
In reality, according to the CIA Fact Book , there are 7,112,359 people in Israel. This count includes about 187,000 Israeli settlers in the West Bank, about 20,000 in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights and 177,000 in East Jerusalem (7/08 est). Of these, 76.4% are Jewish and 23.6% are non-Jewish (16% Muslim, 1.7% Arab Christian, l.4% other Christian, 1.6% Druze and 3.9% unspecified).

This Israeli blind spot to the existence of The Other in their midst is perhaps the major obstacle to the achievement of peace with justice in the area.


[The fifth and last of Beth's reports can be read here.]

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Beth & Tel-Aviv's Women In Black

[This is the third in a series of articles by Beth, an activist and friend of Fire on the Mountain, on her first visit to Israel in 41 years. The first two reports are here and here.]

The next morning, I went to walk around in the Old City. The streets are narrow; shops line either side. Tourists and local people are everywhere. I can't imagine finding my own way around. A guide approached me, asking, in English, if I wanted a tour, including a visit to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher and the plaza of the Dome of the Rock, open for tourists for an hour that afternoon. The Dome of the Rock plaza is magnificent. I was not moved in a religious or spiritual way but by the splendor of the structure. Walking all around the plaza for the full time allotted, taking pictures from many angles, I just soaked in the beauty and historical significance of the place.

Yusef, my guide, was born and still lives in Silwan, a neighborhood of about 5,000 Palestinians, legal residents of Israel since 1967 as they are in the part of Jerusalem that is now occupied, or annexed, depending on who you ask. He was surprised by my concerns and more openly expressed his own as we walked. He said that thirty Jewish families have moved into Silwan. "We get along o.k., they are not the problem, the problem is the Palestinians who sold their homes to the Jews and moved away. Sadly, there will be more."

He was apparently not aware that in another part of his town, I learned later, a Palestinian home was recently exploded. The streets are so narrow that they could not fit a bulldozer so, because the Jerusalem master plan had that spot designated as "green" where a park would be built, a family's home was destroyed. He tells me he feels much more comfortable in the Jewish Quarter than in the Arab Quarter because, there, he can be who he is, a forty-year old unmarried Arab, formerly a teacher who now makes his living showing the tourists around, an alcoholic two years in recovery, who thinks politics is "a zero."

He likes all people, he says, but it becomes clear that he does not like what he calls the nudniks, Arab and Jew, who mess in each other's business and want to tell other people how to live their lives. As he showed me the religious sites and showed me the many beautiful crafts available in the Arab Quarter, he taught me a few words of Arabic. Now I know the words for: my name is, grandparent, water, butcher, vegetarian, respect and congratulations. I bought Palestinian pastry and beautiful glasses from the factory in Hebron.

I needed a break. We went to Tel Aviv to hang out with another friend who had lived in NY for a while. I wanted to see the beach. But first, I found my way to the office of the Hotline for Migrant Workers. Thousands of people have come to Israel from Eritrea and the Sudan, from the Philippines, Romania, Nepal and many other countries since Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza are no longer allowed to work in Israel. The Africans are usually fleeing war in their countries; others come to find work to feed their families back home. Others are under a form of indentured servitude: they are allowed to work for five years for the specific employer who brought them to Israel. If that employer treats them unfairly or even abusively, they have no legal recourse. If they leave the job, they can be arrested and deported. This organization works with all of them, as refugees, and then as workers.

Two attorneys are employed by the group, trying to get the government to change rules and to enforce existing legislation. In one recent case, a Filipina was taking care of an elderly Israeli Jewish woman until she died. The woman had not paid everything that was owed and when she died, 13,000 Israeli shekels (about $3,500) was owed to the home care worker but the son refused to pay, saying he didn't have the money. The lawyers are still working on the case.

There is sex trafficking in Israel, women with no legal status are confined in houses by their pimps servicing 30-40 clients a day. These women, mostly from Eastern Europe, are also clients of the Hotline, seeking help to get out of their desperate situations.

I met with N, a volunteer for the organization for nine years. She is an upscale secular woman, with fashionable clothes, jewelry and make-up. She used to employ a woman from Ghana to clean her house. She paid her well and "even" paid into the Israeli social security and health care funds on her behalf. One day, the woman called frantically from jail. She was picked up by the immigration police and someone had given her a card with the Hotline number. N called, got help to get her Ghanaian domestic worker out of jail and then went to find out more about the group.

She says, "How could I just keep living my life knowing there is such important work being done?" She has been involved ever since. She visits immigrant workers in jail when they are picked up for being in the country illegally. She lets them know what there rights are and finds donations of clothing and toys for when they are let out of jail after 6 or 8 or 10 months.

N explains that the country as a whole does nothing for the 150,000 migrant workers. While Israel initially took in many thousands of refugees after the Second World War, there has been no policies or programs put in place to deal with these refugees from the Sudan and Eritrea. The Tel Aviv-Yafo municipality does assume some responsibility for the estimated 35,000 foreign workers in the area. It is the first city in Israel that does not completely ignore the problems of its foreign residents, providing a center with staff to assist with employment problems, treat children at risk, and raise awareness among policymakers on a national level of the needs of these residents of Israel.

I reconnected with my friends and we went to the beach. We sat, drinking, looking out at the magnificent sunset, relaxing. And the next morning, Friday, we did it again, swimming and resting.

Friday and Saturday are the weekend here so Women In Black, which started in Israel in 1988, holds its vigils on Fridays, usually 1-2. I found my way to the Tel Aviv vigil in a busy shopping area. It looked similar to the one in Union Square where I stand every Thursday – a dozen women and a few men, dressed in black. But the signs, of course, were all in Hebrew. I stood with the group and watched passers-by. One young woman kneeled down to read 3 or 4 paragraphs on a poster headlined "Is this what we want for our country?"

I wondered what was going through her head. Most people, like in New York, ignored us. The women that day were in their 40's and 40's but I was told that two young women have recently gotten involved, having just refused military service. One woman, an academic, is writing a book about Women In Black vigils around the world. We will stay in touch so that she can ask questions about our group in New York.

While the people on the street in Jerusalem are overwhelmingly many varieties of religious, in Tel Aviv, in 24 hours, I only saw a dozen men with skull caps, (cipot), and one or two with earlocks, (payes). And yet, amid the din of throngs of shoppers, the vast majority of them secular Jews, across the street from the vigil, there were two ultra-Orthodox young men, missionaries to the non-religious, getting teenage boys to put on the prayer straps, (t'fillin), and say a few prayers.

One of the Women In Black, a native of Cleveland, offered to drive me back to my friend's apartment. She moved here from the States in 1958, part of the Habonim Zionist youth movement. She says that she has always been a fighter for human rights. When I ask if she is still a Zionist, she says "I'm not an anti-Zionist, I don't like how it's interpreted today. My interpretation is to strengthen Israel as a democratic state I can be proud of where human rights are maintained, where it is not controlling other human beings. A lot of mistakes were made in the name of Zionism. I'd like to see these mistakes rectified. At this point I am ashamed of my government, of my country as a whole. I want to live in a place I am not ashamed of."

As an American activist, I express that I, too, am ashamed of what my country has been doing. She says that the majority of Jews in Israel are so scared and this is fed by the religious community. And many people are angry that the ultra-Orthodox have too much power. When I ask if she feels hopeful, she says, "Sometimes, yes, but most of the time, no. What we do as women, the small things, the day-to-day meetings with Palestinian women, lays the groundwork for coexistence at the personal level but we really cannot influence policy."

Back to Jerusalem on Friday night, R explained that our best bet for the next day, Shabbat, would be to go to one of the Palestinian cities so we made plans to visit Ramallah.

[Beth's next report, Part 4, is here.]

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Mahmoud Darwish, ¡Presente!

Mahmoud Darwish
13 March, 1942 - 9 August, 2008
Palestinian Freedom Fighter & Poet

I Come From There
Mahmoud Darwish

I come from there and I have memories
Born as mortals are, I have a mother
And a house with many windows,
I have brothers, friends,
And a prison cell with a cold window.
Mine is the wave, snatched by sea-gulls,
I have my own view,
And an extra blade of grass.
Mine is the moon at the far edge of the words,
And the bounty of birds,
And the immortal olive tree.
I walked this land before the swords
Turned its living body into a laden table.

I come from there. I render the sky unto her mother,
When the sky weeps for her mother.
And I weep to make myself known
To a returning cloud.
I learned all the words worthy of the court of blood,
So that I could break the rule.
I learned all the words and broke them up,
To make a single word: Homeland....


[h/t Lars Akerhaug}

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Beth Checks In: I'm Back In Jerusalem

[It is far too easy for progressives and lefties in the US to let the occupation of Palestine fall off the radar, and awfully hard to keep organizing and protesting our own government's complicity in that crime, in the face of omnipresent pro-Israel propaganda and the depressing "facts on the ground." FotM has been guilty of this neglect, too.

Now Fire on the Mountain is proud to publish the first of what we hope will be several reports from the skirmish lines there, hot from the keyboard of a friend who has not faltered in the fight for justice. Beth is an East Coast trade unionist and antiwar activist, who has returned for a two week visit after last being in Israel in 1967, in the immediate aftermath of the Seven Days War.]

I came to Israel to spend time with a good friend, R, and to see with my own eyes what I can about the situation here. I arrived at Ben Gurion airport a few minutes early and got through customs easily. I think it helped that I said "yerushahlayim" instead of "Jerusalem" when the woman who checked my passport, the fifth time it was checked that day, asked where I was staying. Going to get my bag, there was a line of men holding signs to identify themselves to the people they were there to pick up; the first sign I saw was "AIPAC". Welcome to Israel.

R is an Israeli woman I met in New York. She has lived in NY for many years, came back to Israel in February and is now working with the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD). The first nights, we went to dinner at her friend's home in a nearby neighborhood, previously home to many poor Mizrachi Jews (those from the Arab countries) and now being gentrified.

Her friend Y has been an activist in the feminist and the women's peace movement in Jerusalem for many years. She no longer wants to act out of anger and despair. She has seen so much conflict and burnout among colleagues here who are committed to a just peace. Now she has decided to work on developing forms for promoting and protecting the well-being of activists.

Also visiting was a dance therapist from France who is here for a few weeks doing workshops with groups of Palestinians and Jews. This is one small piece of the work Y wants to do with activists. Emphasizing the rhythm of the breath and the beating of hearts, the same for Israeli Jews and for Palestinians, using percussion instruments and dance forms, the hope is that people can go beyond their differences to the core rhythms and find community. So far, the workshops have been for Israeli Jews one day and for Palestinians the next, with only a small amount of integration.

A, Y's partner, is a human rights lawyer who defends individual Palestinians in criminal and security cases. I find myself wanting to write "so-called" in front of so many words. Throwing stones at a tank, for instance, is a "so-called" breach of Israeli security. It used to be that 90% of Palestinians who were arrested in such cases were tortured. Not Abu Ghraib torture, but torture none the less-- being made to sit on a slanted stool with your hands shackled behind you, hooded, with music blaring, for hours. That has alleviated somewhat, since the early '90's, he says, in the less serious cases.

When the suicide bombings began, Israel would destroy the house, the home, where that Palestinian had lived. His parents, and/or wife, siblings, children became homeless. There are still many, many Palestinian homes being demolished (more on that in my next post), but, with appeals to the High Court, since 2005, none for security reasons.

Thousands of Palestinians were kicked out of Kuwait when Iraq invaded in 1990; they fled and swamped towns and villages in the West Bank. Many of them had West Bank identification papers but those papers only allowed them to remain for a few months as they had been gone for years and had lost their residency rights.

A took cases of groups of twenty at a time to court to get their visas extended so they and their families could stay in the West Bank. Close to 1,000 cases were brought to the court. Eventually, an agreement was made, out of court so it was not a binding legal decision, and they were allowed to remain in the West Bank. (In fact, there was no where else they could go).

The first morning I woke up in Jerusalem, I decided to do the standard tourist tour at the City Hall. Arriving a few minutes late at Safra Square, just across from the walls of the Old City, I joined a large group of about 30 Israelis from other cities. The guide, speaking in Hebrew, was explaining the history of the area. I listened, and understanding only half of what was being said, searched for the English tour guide. I found her, with a small group, 2 women, 6 girls, all American, all religious. I was in shorts and a t-shirt, like all the Israelis in the other group. These 8 were all in long skirts and long sleeved tops

First in 1890, a wealthy British businessman had a municipal building established in that spot. Then, in 1930, the British Barclay Bank agreed to put up the money for a City Hall if they could use part of the building as a bank. The requirements of providing services to the growing Jerusalem meant that more and more space was required. Eventually, in the late 1980's, the Safra Brothers company from South America, put up the money for the current complex of buildings if the area would be named for them. And so, Safra Square.

The guide talked about the educational system, all four parts of it – the secular national schools, the religious national schools, the ultra-religious schools and the schools for the Arabs. These are all separate systems. I found out later that day that there are 9,000 Palestinian children living in Jerusalem who are not going to school. No new schools are being built.Those who are able to attend school have forty children in a class and they are on double shifts.

We were taken to the City Council chambers and then to see the view from the roof of the building. There are now 750,000 people in what is called the Jerusalem municipality, much of it annexed since the 1967 war. 1/3 of them are Palestinians. There are 31 members of the City Council. The Palestinians have no representation.

"But they get everything," said one of the women in the tour. The guide weakly said that no, the services are not equal. Ambulances often don't go the East side of Jerusalem because there is little signage indicating names of streets so they can't find locations. In fact, I later found out that while 1/3 of the tax money that flows into the Jerusalem tax coffers comes from the Arab population, only 10% of the services go to their neighborhoods.

The tour guide explained that during the last election, the Palestinian Authority told the Arabs not to vote because that would show support for the Zionist state. She said perhaps this time, later in 2008, they would take part in the election and if so, 1/3 of the Council could be Arab. "Which way do you want it?" she said.

For many reasons, this is totally not going to happen. At this point, there are only three members of the Council who are to some extent opposed to the policies of expansion into the Palestinian neighborhoods and the demolition of homes. Most of the other 28 are from the right wing religious parties.

We went to the building's basement to see the City Model for Jerusalem, which now goes, they tell us, from Atarot to Har Homah, Both of those neighborhoods that have been built in the area I would call "occupied" since 1967, and they call "annexed". The model (according to the brochure) depicts "the existing state in the town center and the adjacent neighborhoods and in particular future projects that are being planned in Jerusalem."

It is a huge display of all the buildings, streets, parks that exist and that are planned. She pointed to an area in between French Hill and Maale Adumin, two areas that have been built on land that was part of East Jerusalem until, as the guide said "we came back after 19 years". She showed the plans for that area, saying that the United States is not letting it happen, that Condoleezza Rice has said it is not allowed because of international law.

The Geneva Convention, which Israel has signed on to, has rules against changing the population balance of an occupied land. The annexation of Jerusalem has not been recognized as legal by the world, not even by the United States. The religious woman said, "We’ll see!" When the guide pointed out the Museum of Tolerance--which is being built, I found out later, on the ruins of a Muslim cemetery--I choked at the irony, the chutzpah, of such a project.

I walked back toward my friend's apartment through a large park. There were people out for a walk, with their rifles. I saw two couples, husband and wife with a baby carriages and the men had rifles slung over their soldiers. There's a pervasive sense of tension.

After that, I had to get a reality check. I went to the Alternative Information Center, (AIC), founded in 1984 by Jewish and Palestinian activists who believe that ending the occupation is the immediate goal, but go on to argue that ending the conflict means much more than that and that Palestinians and Israelis have to live together and work together for the society to function in a healthy way.

I met with C, born in the US, living here since the mid-‘70's. She said that it seems to her harder to be an antiwar activist in the States than to be active in the fight here. When she comes back to visit, she sees so many ways to not pay attention to what's going on, while, here, it is in your face all the time. It cannot be ignored so she feels she has less choice but to do what she does.

I argued the contrary, that she was much braver than I doing her work here. She talked about how much money is being made with the expansion of the Jewish areas into what was East Jerusalem and into the West Bank with construction of houses and roads and tunnels. And then, of course, there's the wall, the largest infrastructure project ever undertaken in this country. There is no discussion of this process in the mainstream Israeli media, of whether or not this is the kind of society they want to have. She said, "They don't acknowledge we're in the Middle East".

AIC does not get into the endgame of 1 state or 2 states. Rather, they work based on universal principles of justice, equality and feminism. There is a second office near Bethlehem. AIC works to get a Palestinian voice heard on the issues being discussed – keeping a bridge open between the two societies, showing that it is possible to work together long-term. She stressed that the Palestinians should not have to wait for Israeli society to understand what has been going on before they can speak out for justice for themselves.

AIC compiles and distributes information about Palestinian and Israeli society since both are, for the most part, stereotyped in the media. She talked about how the majority of people in both societies have lost ground since Oslo. One in three Israeli children are living in poverty.

Since Palestinians are no longer allowed to come into Israel for work, much of the manual labor is done by migrants. The agricultural workers are Thai; people from the Philippines, Sri Lanka, Nepal and Eastern Europe are home care workers, Chinese do construction and Africans do cleaning. The situation is, of course, much worse in the West Bank and even worse in Gaza. Israel now has the second largest gap between rich and poor in the developed world--second only to the US.

The group hosts international delegations when they visit and is well-connected with activists around the world in the World Social Forum. They get funding from progressive Christian organizations in Europe and England and from a few governments in Europe. I asked how she, as an individual, functions within her society.

She talked about the importance of being who she really is day-to-day, that Israelis need to be confronted on a personal level. For example, when the bus driver, for no reason, gives the Palestinian who comes onto the bus a hard time, she asks the driver why and stands up for the Palestinian rider as the driver argues and other passengers start defending the driver.

I ask if she feels hopeful. She says that, incredibly, her Palestinian colleagues are more hopeful than she is, so that gives her hope.

{Part 2 in Beth's report can be found here.]

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Rough Days And Palestine

Maybe it's the dog days of August, but these are rough days. Several friends have died just in the last month. Hell, it's hard even reading the news lately.

Bad news on the doorstep
I couldn't take one more step

In this frame of mind, I am not surprised to find my thoughts turning to Palestine, perhaps the most painful of all the "world news" stories because it feels like there's so little hope of turning the situation around.

I'm sure you know what I'm talking about, but I'd like to quietly request that you watch the following video clip from a few short months ago, mounted here from YouTube. Because there may also be times when your mind, like mine, shies away from thoughts about the plight of the Palestinian people, exactly because it it so painful to contemplate.

We owe them our attention. We owe them more, and I'll comment on that in a forthcoming post, but for now, please watch. And feel free to comment.

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