Autumn in Palestine.

These dozen or so letters talk about my travel in Palestine and Israel during September and October of 2003.
They were written as a way of keeping in touch with my friends at home, and as a way of documenting what i saw and experienced in the course of performing as a clown for Palestinian children, and volunteering with an international human rights organization. They soon came to be a way of processing what i heard and saw, of making some kind of sense of feelings too big to handle without sharing them.

I welcome your comments and questions. -John-

 

 

28.08.03 - My new phone #, and stories.

My cellphone #, active tomorrow, is:

058 450 786 (from the US: 011 972 58 450 786)

Now, some stories.

(transcribed with additions, from 24 August)

On the flight from Frankfurt to Amman, I sit down next to a Jordanian man - Fayez - coming home from L.A. We talk about the history of the conflict in Israel and Palestine; it's always been this way, he says over and over again - it's in the Bible. The world begin in Jerusalem, and the world will end there, with rivers of blood in the streets. Unable to get a word in edgewise I let him sleep and switch seats in search of better conversation.

I sit next to two Americans, Scott and Christian, who turn out to be professional war correspondents at the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek, respectively. They're old friends, both based in Moscow and on their way to Baghdad, and let me listen as they swap stories about assignments in Chechnya and Afghanistan. One calls Chechnya the scariest place ever, where Russians, Chechnyans, or anyone can "disappear" you for half a dozen reasons, where there are no safe sides or places, where a fuel-air bomb could be dropped anywhere, at any time. Baghdad is a cakewalk, one says to the other, by comparison to Chechnya.

They both speak of the siege of Kabul as a low point in their career: cooped up with 300 other journalists in cabins in the mountains for two months, pacing and waiting for something to happen. American television crews pay Northern Alliance tankmen $500, $1000 a shell to fire for the cameras.


I get into Amman at 2am, get through customs by about 2:30, and await my contact, holding a little cardboard sign with Mohammed's name in English and Arabic. Finally after an hour and phonecalls to the US I figure out their was a mistake, they're not coming, I must go to Amman to meet them.

The cabbie who brings me into al-Hashmi, Khalil, proves later to be Hisham's cousin. He chats continuously as we drive, playing tour guide, and mentions that this highway we're on goes the length of Jordan, and on into Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. It hits me, then, that I'm really in the Middle East.

Hisham is a heavyset, thoughtful man, graying at the temples, who its hard to imagine was once part of a revolutionary army. I stay with his family only 24 hours, just long enough to sleep off most of the jet-lag. In the evening I meet Hisham's friends, an intelligent, middleaged, progressive bunch, who speak with me in turn about America, about Israel, about Palestine.


Skip forward to today: I'm having lunch with Ezra, who is visiting Israel and considering staying, and Rabbi Schwartzman, a merry-eyed and jovial Zionist fanatic who knows me only as Ezra's friend from America. I listen to them argue about house demolitions, Ezra saying how can you justify bulldozing homes? And "Schwartzie" talking about how every Arab wants to kill every Jew, how they teach their children to be suicide bombers, how only homes used as explosives storehouses and the like are bulldozed. As he says: so what if 5 times as many Palestinians have died, how can you compare killing innocents in Israel? I think of the 100 people who have died in ambulances in the last 3 months in the West Bank waiting at checkpoints, and finally I'm too disgusted to listen anymore.

Later, thinking about the seemingly-logical snarl of justifications and crap, I remember Hisham's own story, oh so simple by comparison:

One night, Hisham explained, he was with his father at their home in Ramallah.
It was the family home, purchased as would one a house in Oakland. One night, the Israeli Army came and said "get out." They could not take their things, nor even dress: they were forced out at gunpoint, never to return

It has been 30-some years since that night, and Hisham has a pleasant house in Amman, a good job, and a family. And all he wants, all his sons want (who have never seen Palestine) is to return home, to Ramallah. It is very simple, and very real. Why, Hisham asks, can I not return to my home? I wonder what Schwartzie's answer would be.

***

Love from Jerusalem,
John

31.08.03 - Jerusalem

In two years, I've spent at least a day in major cities in 9 countries, and
tomorrow will make 10. So far Jerusalem is my least favorite, and my first and
starkest experience of apartheid.

Jerusalem is divided into three parts: the Old City, surrounded by stone walls,
honeycombed with cobblestone streets laid before Christ was born. Bordering
this and East Jerusalem, the Palestinian section of the city, is my hostel,
conveniently located by the buses and shared taxis running to the West Bank
(Jewish buses don't go there, nor to Arab buses go to Israel.) The rest of the
City, West Jerusalem, contains the Knesset, and lots and lots of Jews, no
Palestinians.
G.B., a professional chef i met two days ago near Bethlehem, explained to me
that if he comes to Israel, as a normal Palestinian citizen, he would be
imprisoned for 6 months and given a 5000 shekel fine, which his father would
have to work for two years to pay off. It's worth noting that he was born in
Israel, but because his family is Palestinian, he has no rights therein.


Day before yesterday i was up and out at 6am, wandering the Old City, looking
for bottled water and cash and sandals at 6am. Almost everything is closed,
but I notice an unusual # of Orthodox Jews on the street, and more
soldiers and police then shopkeepers. Several streets are closed. At
one blockade, I smile and say Salaam Alekoum to a shopkeeper, then
point Damascus Gate? at the soldiers, who bark Closed and ignore me.
The shopkeeper says Damascus Gate? And points directions. Small
resistance.

I see an old man with a small table along one wall like a 100 others,
selling combs and plastic jewelry. Four soldiers with M16s surround
him, shouting in his face, pushing him, kicking the table, picking
things off the table and dropping them in the street. I stop shocked
to watch but they continue. I keep walking and then 10 meters later i see a
gang of police: I stop them, point, try to explain what's happening;
they look, register it, are silent.

I keep walking and see many shops with Stars of David graffitied on
the fronts. Exactly like Germany in the 30s. later I tell this to an Israeli
woman who lives in the West Bank, who says this is the least of it, and reels
of a list of similarities.

Tomorrow I go to Nablus, maybe for a week, or 10 days...then to Tel Aviv, or
Deiheisha Refugee Camp, or home, or wherever God sends me.

Write and tell me stories of Oakland and SF, and be well, i'll be in touch.

xoj
(011 972 58 450 786) -cellphone

02.09.03 - Report: Checkpoint-watch at "Sabatash", outside of Asira, Nablus

Heythere.

Today in Balata we got a call that a dialysis patient had been detained at
Asira checkpoint, aka "Sabatash" (17), on her way into Nablus to the hospital,
a trip she has to make 3 times a week for treatment. Seven international and
local activists arrived near the checkpoint about 11 am. Two waited on the road
above while 5 of us went down to check on the patient. We were held up by two
soldiers, who delayed us for about an hour by checking our bags and other delay
tactics, not letting see the Palestinian detainees we had glimpsed on the way
in. Finally one of us was able to sneak off to the detainees while the others
distracted the two soldiers, and a few minutes later we were all able to join
them, the soldiers apparently hoping that we would take the one international
who was with the Palestinians and leave.

Twenty-four men and nine women were being held, most since 4am. Their IDs had
been taken, and they were given shade, but little water, and that undrinkable,
making a woman sick who drank it. There was alot of confusion about what would
happen, one soldier saying we all had to leave one moment, and that the
detainees would have to stay until night, and the next moment saying they could
leave if we leave. We stayed 2 or 3 hours with the detainees at their request,
brought them water from a nearby house, talked with them and juggled. We
learned that the dialysis patient had been sent home, without her ID, unable to
get treatment. Also another man had been taken away in a blindfold: at the
request of his friends we asked his whereabouts, and told by the soldiers he
was released, but this was thought to be a lie. Also we were told that before
we arrived, the men had been cursed, whacked on the head, and bullied by
soldiers.

With great reluctance but at the request of the detainees we left, after the
soldiers told them they would be released once we left. A few minutes later, at
about 2:30, one of the detainees called us as we were walking away to inform us
that everyone had been given back their IDs and released, but forced to return
home rather than continue to work and school in Nablus.

As we returned to the main road, we saw over 50 people in transit, trying
either to get home from Nablus, to into Nablus to school, to see family, or to
work. All were prevented by soldiers.

A note about the soldiers: from one moment to the next they behaved first
aggressive, then friendly, then threatening and violent. One moment a soldier
was threatening to beat us after his commander left; 20 minutes later they were
laughing while one soldier juggled and chatting amiably. I got the overall
impression that 80% of them were friendly, caring human beings, who saw no
connection between their own actions and the perpetuation of violence.

That's all for now. Tonight those of us who just arrived will go on a tour of
the Old City in Nablus and examine the destruction wrought after 10 days of
daily military incursions.

Best from Balata,
JL and IJ

03.09.03 - Balata Camp.

Three American women and I, three of us circus performers, band together in
Jerusalem and decide among half-a-dozen choices to go to Nablus, a city of
about 2-300,000 (exact numbers are hard in a warzone) that has been
under "curfew", or active military occupation in which the inhabitants risk
arrest or execution by leaving their homes, on and off for 10 days.

We leave for Nablus Monday morning, catching a ride with a tour of the Wall
being given by the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions. We join the
tour, see the Wall firsthand in half-a-dozen villages and talk to farmers who
have lost their land, with no legal recourse, no recourse at all. When over
lunch in Mas'ha I ask about legal remedies, I'm told the story of a man whose
land was taken, by force, to build housing for a settlement known as Etz
Efrayim. This man sued the settlers, and won an injunction against the
construction. It ceased for two days- coincidentally the weekend - and started
again. He sued again, the case taking one year. During that time construction
was finished, houses built, families moved in. The judge, again, ruled in his
favor, but this time said to get his land back, he must compensate each family
one million dollars US for losing their homes.

The "Wall" or "Fence" of which I speak is being built by Israel for "security".
They claim it is to prevent attacks on Israel by Palestinians. They fail to
mention that it will annex 58% of the land in the West Bank, 85% of the natural
wells and aquifers, and 88% of the arable, fertile farmland. That also it will
divide the West Bank into isolated islands, each large town being cut off from
the other, and from all international borders.

In Mas'ha, one farming village we visited, 95% of the farmland was taken.
Please read that again: 95% of the crops of a village that relies on farming
where taken, and added to the state of Israel. The law in Israel dictates that
after 3 years, that land will become Israeli property and will be sold by the
government to Israeli citizens. All, apparently, in the name of security.

Where the "fence" itself runs, what I saw, is first coils of concertina and
barbed wire, then a trench in the earth, then another fence, this one
electrified, with lights and motion-sensors, then a "trace-patch" - a road with
fine sand designed to show footprints or tracks, then a patrol road, then
another trace-path, then another fence. Scattered randomly within are
landmines. If this seems large, it is: I might guess 30 meters wide, all told?
I'm told it cost Israel 11 million shekels per kilometer to build- what is
that, 1.5 million US per mile?

You're going to hear alot of stories in the coming weeks about the bullet holes
in walls, or the shopfronts crushed by tanks, or the students detained in route
to school and forced to sit in the sun until they vomit from heat-stroke, or shot and then denied medical treatment...some really horrific shit. But try to understand, all of those
things, that I see with my own eyes, or hear about as we sit around the house
in the evening and talk about what we've seen (all those examples are within
the last 7 days, just here in Nablus)- try to understand that all this is
happening inside a country that is being crushed economically by the
construction of a "Wall".

I'm staying in Balata Refugee camp, a 10-minute cab ride from downtown Nablus,
in the home of a Palestinian man whose brother? cousin? (details are sometimes
hard with the language barriers, and now I always carry a notebook) died
fighting the Israelis 2? years ago; we stay here in part because there is the
ongoing threat that his home will be demolished as "punishment." Also he help
to coordinate our efforts, acting as translator and giving us credibility.

About 30,000 people live here in Balata, but that's an empty statistic: I see a
bustling neighborhood of concrete-block buildings shops and thick steel
shutters, not so different in some ways from poor neighborhoods in Jerusalem or
Amman. The differences then are the broken, sometimes undrivable roads, the
stink of shit from the sewers beneath the streets, the absence of hot water in
the relatively comfortable home where we're staying.

There are no tourists here, no visitors from the outside (we are, after all, in
a "Closed Military Zone") except for internationals, and most people in the
community respect me, and us, as such; still sometimes children will ask me in
the street: Bush? To which I must answer Bush is a killer or some similar,
indicated by a thumbs-down motion or spitting, and two days ago I met a man
whose wife was Iraqi- he was polite, but only that.

Still, I feel very comfortable here. I can imagine spending the larger chunk of
my trip here, Nablus becoming my home-base until I leave in November. Today I
met with a group of volunteers, almost all untrained, who work in times of
emergency as a medical relief team, evacuating the wounded, and during times of
calm in schools and community centers. Next week, two or three other clowns and
I will teach them to juggle and share what skills we have. This weekend some of
us will go to Tulkar'm, for a series of peaceful demonstrations. Today, two
people died, a boy who was shot two days ago by a tank firing at random in a
crowded street downtown, and a woman, hurt by soldiers yesterday, I don't know
the details. Last night there were tanks in the streets on the edge of the
camp, and I wonder what tonight will bring. It was a restful day, so I feel
ready to go out with an ambulance crew, if needed.

That's enough, eh? There's so much, and I'll stuff and cram what I can into
print. Be well, write and call often, know that I enjoy hearing about your days
even if I don't readily write back. -j-


PS: Listen: I consider it part of my responsibility here to write these
reports, and share with you what I see. Please do something with it- make a
phone call to ask Congress why the US just gave Israel 9 billion dollars, or
read a little bit on the Web (just look up Balata, for example, or Nablus)
or..hell, I don't know, something. One minute worth of something is better than
nothing.

Love from Balata,
John

09.09.03 - Violence, clowning, and children, in Balata.

Last night was my first time under fire. We were relaxing at the house in
Balata, just returned from a children's party, and someone calls me to say "Do
you know there are clashes in Balata?"

A tank and four jeeps are in Balata, on the street where I live, about 5
minutes walk away. We walk quickly and I'm surprised by the lack of concern on
the faces of the shopkeepers. A block from the mosque they start shooting and
we duck into an alley with 30 rowdy, boisterous young men, shouting and joking,
ducking at the explosions. I want to capture how strange it is to be standing
in an alley, in the dark, with soldiers firing machineguns just out of sight,
with teenagers and young men for whom this is a weekly event.

We're all afraid and none of the five of us have basic medical training. The
man that called us isn't answering his phone. Finally we find a familiar face,
a college freshman who hangs around the house, wearing a paramedic's vest and
treating a superficial gunshot wound. He asks us to stay and accompany him in
case someone is hurt near the soldiers: the idea being our presence will lessen
the likelihood of him being shot as we carry out the wounded. We stay, and a
few minutes later the jeeps leave, and we go home.


If you've been wondering: hey, what's with all the tank-chasing, why aren't you
clowning, john? - the answer is of course i have, and anytime I want 200
children to gather, I just juggle in the street for 10 minutes. I carry
clownnoses everywhere, one for me and some to give away. Also in Jerusalem I
met up with two other performers, and they knew several others, so we've been
doing impromptu shows wherever we happen to be. And yesterday, a party was
organized at the community center near the camp, and we did dance, juggling,
magic, and clowning, 6 of us. At least, we tried to: a few hundred children
mobbed us and only with a team of Palestinian adults could we clear space to
juggle for moments at a stretch. My clownnoses were ripped from my face and
pulled from my pockets. When the people who organized the party brought out
bags of small toys, there was a fistfight on the pavement, younger kids
clawing, older ones slugging, a hundred-kid dogpile. The Americans all stood
aghast. The organizer explained that "these kids don't get toys."


What is most difficult for me here is the violence. Two kinds: the Israeli
violence against Palestinians, of course - the economic warfare that slowly
destroys 2 million people's lives. But more than that, what I see every day, is
the Palestinian violence: the children who race from the party when the hear a
tank is coming, to throw stones. Clowns and toys forgotten. The teenagers, who
pester us in the dressing-room before the show to take pictures of them wearing
headbands, Koran in one hand and fake gun in the other, emulating Hamas
leaders. The posters on every wall of Palestinians killed by Israelis: often
young men posed smiling and proud with Kalashnikovs. The Israelis hate and fear
the Palestinians and are systemically committing genocide, like Germany like
Israel, and the hatred is passed on, shared, given to the children, who stop me
to show me their bullet scars as I juggle at the party.


There is so much to write about, even a slow day is full, full of experiences.
Talking late into the night with a Japanese woman attending college in
Montpellier - in English and filling in the gaps in French - was so relaxing
after a full day of being illiterate and stupid, unable even to ask for
directions, or read more than numbers. I quickly become accustomed to feeling
apart, isolated by langauge and by culture - it's nice to have someone to talk
to that doesn't live in a warzone.

By the way: sorry, for those of you that have been here, and notice my lack of
referring to folks by name; it's safer that way, I think, and I'm erring now on
the side of caution. Better to be paranoid then talk in detail about the family
of a man whose house could be demolished on a moment's notice, with any
pretext.
Speaking of, if you'd like some beautiful hopeful news to counter these gory
details, go find Starhawk's article "The Boy Who Kissed a Soldier", about her
visit to Balata last summer.

So: I'm healthy, a little sunburnt, well fed, and glad to be alive.
Much much more to come soon, in'challah. xoxoxJ

PS: Yesterday returning from a weekend of demonstrations in Tulkarem, coming
into Balata a friendly stranger named Mohammed walks with me and we talk about
politics. I forget the exact words, but I'll paraphrase: Bush, Sharon, Arafat,
Blair, Abdullah: they're all fuckers, each and every one. Teachers, workers:
these are good people. Politicians should never be allowed near the job, he
said. There, talking with him in the street for 5 minutes, I feel in
solidarity, sane, at home. -j-

15.09.03 - Bridging the Gap.

(A letter to an American friend who has recently moved to Israel.)

Hey Z,

It was good discussing politics with you last night, however frustrating we
might sometimes find it. I really want to connect with you on this level...i
don't think we have to agree necessarily to do it: we agree already that all
human beings have certain inalienable rights, and that I think is enough for
dialogue.

You remember the other night when you called me to tell me to check out the
full moon? That night, when you called, was the night that the soldiers shot at
us. Let me tell you the story.

North of Nablus is a small village called Asira, a very beautiful one where the
old woman stop us in the street and try to bring us inside to serve us
tea..almost every house we pass the people sit in the porches and say "Welcome, come inside, have tea" in Arabic to us, strangers.

Many people who live in Asira work or go to school in Nablus, and some vice-
versa. So every day, there are hundreds of people who walk along the road, or
through paths in the hills, to travel back and forth, and every day, they are
harassed by soldiers, sometimes beaten, sometimes detained from morning until
night and never allowed to pass, sometimes simply turned back. I have
personally seen this happen now on 4 or maybe 5? different occasions, and heard many stories.

That particular day, 4 of us, all Americans, were going to Asira to spend the
night and early the next morning, escort two dialysis patients to the hospital
in Nablus for treatment. They almost always have trouble getting through, and
are sometimes even turned back, not allowed to pass, even though missing
treatment can mean kidney failure.

So, around dusk, we arrived at the roadblock on the Nablus side, and began
walking down the hill to the next roadblock, about a kilometer of road now
claimed by the Israeli military where cars are no longer allowed to drive from
town to village. On one hilltop, overlooking a pass through which the road
runs, were soldiers in their usual spot, and as I told you last night, they
shouted at us in Arabic, then we shouted back in English; they shouted again in
Arabic, and again, we in English, and they took a shot at us- I felt chips of
rock from the bullet's impact hit my feet. When, later, we made our way down
(after taking cover and shouting for several minutes in English until a soldier
called back "ok"), the soldiers, who even recognized some of us from earlier
trips, said that they shouted stop in Arabic, and thought we were Palestinians,
so they fired.

There on the hilltop with them were 6 or 8 men, mostly students going home to
Nablus, and one man going home from work to Asira. Four soldiers had stopped them, taken their IDs, and made them wait indefinitely; the commander
said "this is so they learn their lesson." What lesson was not explained.
As we had done in the past, we stood there talking to the soldiers, trying to
reason or negotiate with them, trying to advocate for the Palestinians, trying
to get them safely home. That is what I was doing when you called me. Later,
after trying and failing to get the man from Asira home (he was sent to Nablus,
instead), sitting angry and sad and disgusted on the pavement beyond the 2nd
roadblock, we all looked at the moon, and truly, it was beautiful.

I would like to talk with you about Nablus and the Muqata and Balata and the
farming villages and the checkpoints, all the the places I've travelled in
these two weeks, just as you spoke to me about the cave and the Red Sea- these places are equally etched in my memory. But to talk about the people who live in these places one cannot forget that they - and for a little while, we - are at war. If we cannot talk about this, for whatever reason, then please, come to the West Bank and see for yourself what is happening, and no words will be
needed. If you cannot do either, then I fear we will have very little to say
while I am in Palestine.

Yours,
John

16.09.03 - Cirque Yallah Majnoon comes to Beit Sehour.

In the next room, four friends are preparing for tomorrow's show. Today we did two shows: at the school next door, and at Ibdaa Cultural Center, in Deiheishe Camp.
Tomorrow is another there, a big one for 200 3-6 yr olds. 5 clowns are
kickin' butt, and I'm exhausted, just starting to get my second wind, going
back and forth between fixing computers and rehearsing skits. Joe Mama, Booza
the Clown, Eden, Ghassan, and myself: Cirque Yallah Majnoon, the Let's Go
Crazy Circus.

Yesterday I arrived in Beit Sehour to begin a two-week stint as Media
Coordinator - meaning I write or edit press releases and action alerts, and
field phone calls 24 hrs a day. I'm tremendously excited, media being the
greatest unmet need here...so if you have media contacts, now's the time to
send them. :)

Ironically this probably means I'll be writing more, but sending less to the
list, which I'd rather reserve for personal experiences..but just this once,
the press release I wrote today about home demolitions in Jenin is included
below.

xoJ

Israeli Army Demolishes Two Family Homes with Ten Minutes Warning, Threatens 3 Others

At 10am Monday, the Israeli Army demolished two family homes in Suatate,
Palestine, a suburb of Jenin near Kadim settlement. The two families were
given 10 minutes warning before their houses were demolished, leaving 12
people homeless. Afterward, the army informed families in three neighboring
houses that their homes would also be demolished, claiming the houses are
“too near the settlement”, which is about half a kilometer away.
The homes, and approximately 200 dunams (50 acres) of adjacent farmland
are far from any Israeli controlled roads or areas, and the families believe that the
demolitions may be occurring to make room for illegal expansion of Kadim
settlement. Demolishing these three remaining homes would leave a total of 35
people homeless.

At the request of the threatened families - who fear of losing their 3
remaining homes and 200 dunams of farmland - the International Solidarity
Movement in Jenin has established a presence in the homes, to show solidarity
with and to ensure the safety of the occupants.

Demolition of homes is a violation of international law, and specifically
banned in the proposed Israel-Palestine ‘Road Map to Peace’.

For more information or to help support the five affected families, contact:

International Solidarity Movement Media Office 022-774-602
In Arabic: Youseff - ISM Jenin 057-836-527
In English: Mostafa - ISM Jenin 055-894-262
To protest the proposed demolitions, contact:

Major Shakira - Israeli District Command Office, Jenin
046-407-312 or 042-501-555 (daytime), 042.501.565 (evening)

###

18.09.03 - Terrorists.

Yesterday, after our show at Ibdaa Cultural Center in Deiheishe Refugee Camp, Jihad took us on a tour of the camp. Most of the tour was about the shaheeds - those who have died as a result of the occupation. That word is also used for suicide bombers, but 99% of shaheeds are Palestinians killed in Palestine by Israelis- typically murdered in cold blood. There are no Palestinian soldiers in Israel, after all, and the only Israelis that come to Palestine are soldiers. In the newspapers and on television they speak of "clashes", and one envisions populations of Israeli jews and Palestinian muslims living side by side, suddenly erupting into violence..but this is not true at all.
Instead, "clashes" happen when Israeli army jeeps and tanks come to Palestinian towns and refugee camps, sometimes firing as they go. Often a jeep will cruise through town, and the students, called shebab, will chase them throwing stones, then the soldiers will respond with guns, maiming or killing the children who chase them, destroying homes or entire office buildings wherever the children run.

As in other places I've visited in Palestine, everywhere in Deiheishe the walls are covered in posters and spray-painted stencils of portraits of shaheeds. Sometimes the men will pose proudly with rifles, but normally the dead are shopkeepers minding the store, old men walking home, children playing in the streets- killed by stray bullets or missles fired from helicopters or most criminally, Israeli snipers.

Jihad knew the story of everyone who had died, in detail- names, times, situations, accepted or supposed reasons. At every poster we passed in the streets, we stopped to hear about the person who had died. He did not mention the one who was his best friend, but only later in response to my questions talked about him: shot dozens of times, torn apart by bullets.

I forget the details now of how his friend died..it was unreal, overwhelming, the same stories over and over: each was an innocent person, murdered by Israeli soldiers with limitless weaponry and no regard for human life - for Palestinian lives.

Jihad told us also about a woman, rather a girl, who in the week before she died had just finished her high-school exams, before going to Jerusalem to kill herself and a dozen Israelis with a bomb. She was a sweet girl, he said, and engaged to be married in three months. She, like other bombers, left a videotaped explanation, but Jihad didn't give details about what she said, and I got the sense the details were less important than the truth of her life: that she had watched her friends die, that she was unwilling to go on living amidst so much death.

Two months ago Deiheishe, a refugee camp of schools and shops and stone houses, was occupied by the Israeli military. Four days ago, in Balata, an 82-yr-old man was shot between the eyes by an Israeli sniper as he leaned out his window to look into the street. Every day 2, 3, 5, 20 people are killed somewhere in Palestine by Israeli soldiers. A man I met in Deiheishe said to me: if I defend myself and my family against this, does that make me a terrorist? If that is so, than I am proud to be called a terrorist.

27.09.03 - A side-trip to Beit Sahour.

This afternoon we did a show at Senabel Theatre, and it was *spectacular*: 100 children, 4 Americans, one Israeli and three Palestinians; cameras, music, and comedy...yay. Afterward we stayed for hours, talking and doing a workshop for 15 kids at various stages of learning to juggle.

It is Joe's last night before he returns to Sarajevo, and we discover he's left a bag in Beit Sahour. It's impossible to convey the resulting slow-motion chaos: 6 or 7 of us performers and friends, none exactly sure how to get to or from Jerusalem to the theatre without a guide, none speaking enough Arabi to really communciate reliably with our hosts; finally it's decide that we will all sleep there tonight, but first 5 of us - one Palestinian woman from the theatre, one Israeli clown, and three Americans - will attempt to get to Beit Sahour and retrieve the pack.

We devise a coverstory to get our Israeli friend through the checkpoint, since there are only certain places he can legally visit in the West Bank as an Israeli citizen and where we're going isn't one of them. At the last minute he decides not to go: pot-smoking free-thinking lefty clown that he is, he's never been to the West Bank except as a soldier - so two wait at the checkpoint while Jameela, Joe and I make the trip. It's a Jewish holiday, so the checkpoint is closed to Palestinians, meaning no taxis are around, but we flag down the first car we see and the driver, a friendly Palestinian stranger, spends the next two hours driving around with us having various adventures until in the end, we have the bag.

Back at the checkpoint, our friends are clowning with the soldiers, until Jameela steps up to say hey, I recognize you, you're the one who hit me when I tried to pass here. You're the one who made me walk 4 km on my land. Hello, friend.

Later, somewhat confused I ask her: you live in Jerusalem, but you attend Bethlehem University? I thought normally Palestinians living in Israel can't go into the West Bank? She nods: she can't. Every schoolday for three years, she tries to pass that checkpoint, and every day she is denied: that's why she knows the soldiers there. Instead she takes backroads around the checkpoint to go to school. Her family has an apartment on the other side, for those days she can't get home.

Tonight, she passed through the checkpoint with no trouble - accompanied by Americans.

###

I'm healthy and well and doing almost a show a day. Yesterday we made a youth group in Beit Sahour laugh until they cried. Will write much more soon.

Love from Israel and Palestine,
John

29.09.03 - Two people saying no.

Yesterday I stayed in Jerusalem, wanting to be near to an American friend in the hospital, in case I was needed, in case anything happened. But nothing did, so the day was slow, and around 10pm three of us went for drinks at a bar near the hostel called Diwan, or "D-1".

It's a refusenik bar, which means queers and lefty types and such hang out there, and ISMers on furlough. That night we sat with three young Israeli girls, one of whom was a vocal refusenik.

Jasmeen would speak in short, thoughtful bursts, meeting my eyes and then looking away shyly to think, back and forth for a long time.
"I'm crazy," she said, "21". She had a dogtag around her neck, with the number hand-painted, to prove it. "21" is the name for a certification of psychological problems that make you unfit for the Army- the most common way for young Israeli peace activists and conscientious objectors to avoid two to three years of compulsory service, the alternative being 6 to 18 months in jail.

"I like the word no," she said, "it's a wonderful word. When they say you have to enter the army, you say No! And then later, when they say you have to be locked up in jail because you don't want to be in the army, again you say no.

"People don't ask you what you want here in Israel...the word want is not in our vocabulary. I mean it is in our vocabulary but we don't use it...they only tell you what you should do, nobody ever asks you want you *want* to do.

"If you say, I don't want to kill Arabs, what they hear is: you hate the Jewish people. If you say, I want to do something else, they hear: you only care about yourself.

"Sometimes I feel like I'm the only one who opposes the draft. I know that there are other people who oppose it, but sometimes I feel like I'm the only one.

"They said it should be a Jewish state so that all the Jewish people can feel at home, but I don't feel at home here...I feel more at home talking to non-Israelis than I do talking to Israelis.

"I hate this country..i am an outsider here. I don't want to kill Arabs, so I am an outsider."

She talked for a long time, and I listened, watching her eyes, the braces on her teeth, the row of scars on her arm. Then someone came with a drink, and the spell was broken. I realized later it was the first time I'd talked for more than 5 minutes with someone born in Israel.

###

Earlier that afternoon, sitting at the hostel, a massive bald bear of a man, arms covered in tattoos, beckoned me over. We had talked before, once or twice, and I'd learned to avoid him if possible, uninterested in listening to his long-winded war stories.

Knak is Austrian, 40 years old. He is erudite, funny, friendly, and usually polite even after a day of drinking cheap Russian vodka. That afternoon he was drunk but alert, asking many short questions about my clowning experiences, and then explaining that he had a wife and 5-year-old son in Moldavia, and wanted to do something good for that country, to make his son proud. He invited me and my clown-troupe to come to Moldavia in June and to perform, maybe raise money from the performances for the building of a community center or school. He offered to pay our airfare and expenses, but explained that we would have to stay with families, that the accommodations would be very poor..but that maybe he could pay us for our time, as well, perhaps ten thousand dollars. I suggested he take the ten thousand and use it for building the school. That, he replied, is why I picked you.

Knak claims to be a professional mercenary, recently retired. He claims quite a few things that anyone with any sense shouldn't admit to in public...and yet, I believe him. Later that day we talked more, and he began to tell me about his past..the stories are unreal, fantastic; it pained him to tell them. He claimed to have been in command of a unit in Chechnya that killed 2500 people in 6 hours, and that 18 other officers who served with him committed suicide.
He said he began learning how to kill when he was 7 years old. He said even that last week, a Middle-Eastern head of state offered him 15 million dollars to work for one year, as a contract killer, but that he said no, because he is done killing.

He says he cries every night and every day. He was crying as we spoke, his face twisted in pain, unable to stop talking about the necks he has broken with his bare hands. And me sitting 12 inches away, listening, my hand on his shoulder, trying somehow to comfort him, unable to even comprehend who he is, what he has seen.

"Who is the psychologist who can help me?" he asked, sobbing. "Who asks want I what, how I feel? No one."

Then six hours later, I hear Jasmeen asking for the same thing.
Two people who are saying no, as best they can. Please pray for them.

-J-

 

07.10.03 - a typical day.

The phone rings, and I reach for it, groaning. It's morning; maybe 7am, maybe 11. "ISM Media Office?"
It's probably a reporter wanting information about an activist from their state or country who was arrested. Maybe it's a friend in Qalqilya or Jenin or Nablus, calling to tell me there's a house about to be demolished, or that tanks rolled through town last night, shooting as they go. Less likely the latter, since this is not news anymore, 3 years and a week since the beginning of a period of armed resistance and intensified oppression called the second intifada.

Clothes, email, coffee. Stumble out and say good morning: I sleep at the office, after all, so a few other people are in the suite, if I sleep in. I have a big office mostly to myself, these past couple of weeks; another American works here often, a thoughtful and quiet writer who sits and smokes and edits, hunched over a laptop by the window. He's the editor for the International Middle-East Media Center (http://www.imemc.org), the best English-langauge source i know for local political news.

Urgent work comes in fits and starts throughout the day. An American friend comes in the morning for a visit, with two others in tow: an Israeli-American activist and her friend, also Jewish, from Chicago. We sit over coffee and relax, chat about how to cook pizza and the importance of annual strategic planning meetings. Every so often I take phone calls.

Throughout the day I alternate between reading news coverage and answering correspondence..it's a slow day and a frustrating one, with alot of distractions.

At 6p I drag ass out the door, over to Handala Cultural Center at Azeh Camp, where I've promised to teach chess. I arrive for a full-on class, 7 or 8 young teenagers, eager but respectful. For two hours I play the strongest kids, discussing the games after with the help of translators, trying to give perspective. These kids have never seen a chess book or played on the Internet but they love the game, and care about learning it. It's a joy to teach them. Later, after, the coordinator asks: Can you come every day? I agree to come back four days a week, for the remainder of my stay. It's a relief to be out of the cultural bubble of the office, forced to try to speak and understand Arabic, and I'm excited to find a community, however temporary.

After, my American friend Alison has a dinner party. In attendance are A., a Palestinian Muslim, Java, an American Jew, G., a Palestinian Christian, Alison, an American Christian, and John, an American Freak. All of us religious, even devout, in our own ways. All of us laughing and talking and enjoying, actively enjoying one another's company. In this, I wake up thinking, there is hope for the future.

This morning I eat breakfast, read a novel, do a lesson from "Let's Read and Write Arabic." Then it's time to work, and to write.

Tonight I'm off to Ramallah for a circus show, then back here. Inch'allah, off to Nablus in a few days.

Love from Bethlehem & Beit Sahour,
John

12.10.03 - Our Circus in Palestine

(from a thankyou letter to Beard Juggling in England)

Dear Vicky, and Beard folks:

The donated juggling clubs have arrived: thank you!! Before I arrived I also recieved donations of clown noses from the World Peace Clowns and balls from Klutz, in America- without all your help we wouldn't be here juggling. It is
so wonderful to have the support of an international clowning and juggling community in doing this!

There are a core group of us and many guests and friends here in Palestine doing shows and workshops, under the name "Cirque Yallah Majnoon": pigeon Arabic for "The Let's Go Crazy Circus". At last count we've done 14 shows in 5 weeks, plus half-a-dozen smaller, impromptu ones, plus 5 or 6 workshops.

Our next-to-last show was at a school for developmentally disabled children in Er Ram; about 40 kids plus teachers, with 4 Americans, 1 Dane, 1 Palestinian, and 1 Japanese singer...and it was _amazing_, the director of the school said he's never seen some of those kids so happy, that it was the first time in their lives they'd ever seen something like this. And all it took was some clowning, juggling, magic, singing, and laughing. Now he's helping to organize another show, this time for a few hundred kids: quite big, given the difficulty of travelling in the West Bank.

All of us here are also doing other things: two are teaching theatre at schools in Ramallah, and working with the Puppet Festival; one is teaching art to disabled children at Ibdaa Cultural Centre in Deiheishe Refugee Camp, four of us are working with a Palestinian human-rights group. Whenever we can we come together and do shows.

There are many local groups here doing theatre, clowning, and performance: most are hampered by the inability to travel- it is difficult and sometimes impossible for most Palestinians to leave the town or region in which they
live. We try to focus on working with a few local groups, and those groups- a children's theatre in Jerusalem, community centres at two refugee camps in Bethlehem, local circus groups in Ramallah and Nablus - will get all the props when we leave.

Again thank you, and best from Palestine,
John

22.10.03 - Vacation

At some point, being in Palestine ceased to be a continuous novelty, and became where I live.

My home in Beit Sehour is just minutes from the office, an old stone house with
adjoining kitchen and bathroom, high vaulted ceilings and peeling walls hung
with huge rosaries and family pictures. The house belongs to a friend's
grandmother recently deceased, opened to Davina, Silje and I and our guests for
the duration.

Two nights ago we had dinner with Majdi (not his real name), our neighbor.
Earlier in the week I'd had a long talk with Majdi and another friend Ziad
acting as translator, sitting on Ziad's porch in the late morning sipping
coffee and speaking of politics and hopes for the future. Majdi works with
Fatah, a Palestinian political party that in his words focuses on building up
Palestinian society. I didn't get alot of details, mostly general impressions,
all steeped in the now-so-familiar sentiment among all the people I meet
that "We just want peace. We just want to live our lives in peace."
Majdi is wanted by the Israelis because of his involvement with Fatah; he can't
travel for fear of being arrested. He thanked me for what I am doing here, and
asked, if I could, that I convey his words to newspapers and media in
America: "We want peace."

That night, after a massive dinner, Majdi's brother arrived and chatted amiably
with us, a huge gaggle of twenty-something English-speaking human-rights
workers from half-a-dozen countries. At some point he changed the subject
abruptly to his time in prison, with evident tension from our hosts, clearly
wanting to welcome us in their home without bludgeoning us every moment with
politics. His brother spoke to me of two years in prison during the first
Intifada, still bitter after almost 15 years. Majdi again asked me, and I
promised, to convey some of what he said:

"I was in Atlit for 19 days, and every day was one year. That prison was for
Hezbollah - you know Hezbollah? - but they treated me the same as Hezbollah...

"There were 38 of us in one cell. 35, or 40 of us...there was a hole, in the
ground, for the bathroom. There in the cell, where we had to use it.

"There was one litre of water per person. One litre for washing, for drinking,
for everything. If you wanted to take a bath, to wash yourself, you would go
25, 30 days to do this."

(John) "Was it like this only in Atlit? How was it in other places?"

(brother) "The same. This was the same, everywhere."

Later, the brother spoke of the conspiracy between America and Israel, how they
planned the 9/11 bombing together, how 1 in 10 of the suicide bombings in
Israel are done by Israeli. I told him, calming and tactfully, that he is full
of shit -, or, rather, that the truth is perhaps much more complicated than
this, more difficult to contenance, to understand. The conversation passed back
to gentler topics, and he invited us to his home for dinner later in the week.
Afterward Bex, a Brit I've come to love in these few days since she took over
as Media Coordinator, congratulated me on my handling of him. Practice, I said,
just practice.

***

I could stay in Beit Sahour indefinitely. A few days ago was my first
conversation more in broken Arabic then in English. People are opening up to me
in the community, I hear secrets and laugh and get invitations to weddings and
parties. I'm learning to read and write Arabic, and my friends in town see it
as a sign of respect, and treat me accordingly. I could live for a year on two
thousand dollars, comfortably, and do good work in half-a-dozen places just in
Beit Sahour. Instead, I will come home.

***

Yesterday I came for the first time to Israel, beyond Jerusalem. This morning I
swam in the Meditterranean. Every day I sleep and eat and heal from the weeks I
spent in the Media Office, recently finished. What a wonderful transition. And
now, I'm going to resist finishing this story tonight by speaking of the
glorious day I spent at the Israeli Circus School, and go have a drink with my
friends.

Love from Israel and Palestine,
John

13.11.03 - Coming home.

It's been about 10 days now since I came home to Oakland. This will be my last letter in the series.

Last night at a cafe in my neighborhood the girl behind the counter, well-intentioned, asked: "Did you have a wonderful time?" I barely paused, nodded yes, I had...quite a time. What do you say, when someone asks if you had a wonderful time on your vacation, spent watching a culture be crushed, in a warzone?

I think of Mark, at the airport in Amman at 2am..scruffy, haggard, nearly unrecognizable as his clean-cut good-looking self six weeks before. Walking with a cane, still recovering from when he was shot in the leg a week before by an Israeli tank. I think of him as a marker, outside myself- a reference of what it meant for me to go.

I'm home now, busy with work and friends and the minutiae of life, so easily laid aside while travelling. A new world map, a few papers and photos, a book for learning to read and write Arabic, a skinnier jawline - the only changes that persist on the outside. For myself, I try to make time to talk with people who understand, and occasionally when I see a poster or photo of Palestine I start crying.

I'm glad I went, glad I spoke up when so many are not. Glad I can tell my children what I did, when in the future they are asked where was your father, when the world went mad.

Thank you, all of you who gave me money for my trip. Thank you! I couldn't have done it, otherwise. Thank you for listening, and for sharing what you learn through me with your friends and family.

I am eager to speak more about my experiences, about what I saw. If you can help organize a venue: at your church, your school, wherever - please let me know.

-John-

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