For each death on this graph is a case of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) for family and friends. A mother looses her child, a child looses her father/mother.
Each death signifies a continuation of social upheaval.
What is most important to me when viewing graphs about military caused deaths, is that ALL of these deaths were avoidable, and all military caused deaths are unnecessary. Not only unnecessary but down right against all of our ethics, morals and values in life.

i hope you can digest this graph with a bit more serious emotion and thought than the ones you see daily on yahoo.com or comast.net etc…

Has the body been destroyed?

will you help save it?

then, turn off everything, and play with yourself
then, keep everything off, and play with them!

I have come to portland oregon to a place called tryon life community farm. It’s an intentional community that won in a battle against McMansion developers for this piece of land, a non-profit sustainable education organization, as well as a space that attempts to hold a container for radical new ways of thought, organization, and ideas to mingle and mammafest. May goal here in describing this place is not to lift it up as idealic, but to express what some of the deeper intentions of this space are. And in fact the work i hope to do here beyond just learning with the folks here about gardening, DIO, herbal healing, etc, is to challenge this spaces notion of boundaries and borders.

As a space that has deep intentions of a new culture, a new framework of organizing and relating to each-other, this earth, and the universe, i question and wonder what this means for the delicate space of edges.
A brief comment on edges: The edges of ourselves and our communities have been fragmented and torn apart; dominated by state sanctioned disaster capitalism through the dismembered of autonomous communities. Part of this dismembering is the erasing of membranes, and the insertion of state borders and walls. But in my critique of borders i do not wish to just focus on the violence and destruction caused by and at state borders, but also the violence created by the erasing of autonomous membranes that have been enveloped, cut in pieces and excluded from nations. With the eradication of these membranes how do communities whom resist create membranes that challenge the flow* of people, information, and material that state borders have created? The question for me is- What was/is an autonomous membrane? What did/does it look like, and in what ways would the flow of people, info, material in an autonomous membrane look like? How do we conceptualize and articulate non-state community boundaries? In what ways can we alter the borders we have been conditioned to creating and living with in our different cultures/locations?
*i see membranes/borders as the structures that are the main facilitators/conduits of flow (while the origins may be from different locations and cause different styles of flow, these objects/ideas must travel through the membrane/border at some point?)

This is the project i will be playing with in the next few months while in this community. I am curious both in the possibility of finding more questions, as well as pealing out ways that a “radical” community within the US struggles to not replicate the white-supremacist ideology that supports the borders and boundaries of this empire state (do they struggle? if so how? do they create structures in their border membrane to challenge white supremacy structures? etc).

I would love feedback, and suggestions of readings so so much! Right now i really could use any sort of thoughts that are already out there or thoughts that you yourself have. Also I certainly am not attempting to write what autonomous membranes should look like, but rather interested in certain structures that may be common among many different membranes.

lastly – A key piece of the idea of autonomous membranes is that each community has a membrane that is unique to their internal community and external surroundings. And this membrane helps facilitate towards goals that are unique for their community. So the reason i brought up in the last paragraph the focus on white-supremacy is because the community i am at now is not only in the US which has a long history into the present of white-supremacy, but also in Oregon which has its own grotesque past and present. Also this community is inhabited by a large majority of people with light skin tones, including myself, so i question how the mechanisms on the border of this community may contribute to this pattern.

Oh and i could go on, since i will have to define what are some of the key ideologies that function within the US border such as white-supremacy, patriarchy, & classism (is this an ideology, or is there a better way to phrase it?), so as to look at how a “radical” community that claims to have the intention of dismantling the oppressive qualities of the culture this state replicates, can create a membrane that directly challenge these modes of flow.

I realize this is all a bit vague right now, but it is just now developing and i thought id put my thoughts out there. Thanks so much for your time yall! again any confusion or thoughts please spill them here

much love
tums

Below is an article put out by the Israeli Committee Against House demolitions in response to the previous demolition.

RAMADAN KAREEM
FROM THE NETANYAHU AND OBAMA ADMINISTRATIONS
Jeff Halper
August 11, 2010

Yesterday, the day before the Muslim holy month of Ramadan began, at 2:30 in the morning, workers sent by the Israeli authorities, protected by dozens of police, destroyed the tombstones in the last portion of the Mamilla cemetery, an historic Muslim burial ground with graves going back to the 7th Century, hitherto left untouched. The government of Israel has always been fully cognizant of the sanctity and historic significance of the site. Already in 1948, when control of the cemetery reverted to Israel, the Israeli Religious Affairs Ministry recognized Mamilla “to be one of the most prominent Muslim cemeteries, where seventy thousand Muslim warriors of [Saladin’s] armies are interred along with many Muslim scholars. Israel will always know to protect and respect this site.” For all that, and despite (proper) Israeli outrage when Jewish cemeteries are desecrated anywhere in the world, the dismantlement of the Mamilla cemetery has been systematic. In the 1960s “Independence Park” was built over a portion of it; subsequently an urban road was built through it, major electrical cables were laid over graves and a parking lot constructed over yet another piece. Now some 1,500 Muslim graves have been cleared in several nighttime operations to make way for…..a $100 million Museum of Tolerance and Human Dignity, a project of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles. (Ironically, Rabbi Marvin Hier, the Wiesenthal Center’s Director, appeared on Fox News to express his opposition to the construction of a mosque near Ground Zero in Manhattan, because the site of the 9/11 attack “is a cemetery.”)

The month-long period between Netanyahu’s July 6th visit to Washington and the start of Ramadan has provided Israel with a window to “clear the table” after a frustrating hiatus on home demolitions imposed by the “old,” mildly critical Obama Administration – although there is no guarantee that Israel will not demolish during Ramadan, especially if it wants to exploit the period until the November elections, knowing that until then Obama will not overtly oppose anything it does in the Occupied Territories. In fact, the process of demolishing Palestinian homes never ceased. On June 6th, for example, a year after the demolition of more than 65 structures and the forced displacement of more than 120 people, including 66 children, nine families of Khirbet Ar Ras Ahmar in the Jordan Valley, totaling 70 people, received a new round of “evacuation orders.” A week later the Israeli High Court ordered the Civil Administration to “step up enforcement against illegal Palestinian structures” in Area C, the 60% of the West Bank under full Israeli control.

And so, on July 13th, upon Netanyahu’s return (Palestinian homes are not demolished without an OK from the Prime Minister’s Office), three homes were demolished in the Palestinian East Jerusalem neighborhood of Issawiya, followed by three more homes in Beit Hanina. The Jerusalem Municipality also announced the planned demolition of 19 more homes in Issawiya this month. In the West Bank, the Israeli “Civil” Administration demolished 55 structures belonging to 22 Palestinian families in the Hmayer area of Al Farisiye in the northern Jordan Valley, including 22 residential tents and 30 other structures used to shelter animals and store agricultural equipment. According to the UN’s Office of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA): “This week [July 14-20, the week of Netanyahu’s return from Washington] there was a significant increase in the number of demolitions in Area C, with at least 86 structures demolished in the Jordan Valley and the southern West Bank, including Bethlehem and Hebron districts. In 2010, at least 230 Palestinian structures have been demolished in Area C, forcibly displacing 1100 people, including 400 children. Approximately 600 others have been otherwise affected.” Two-thirds of the demolitions for 2010 have occurred since Netanyahu’s meeting with Obama. More than 3,000 demolition orders are outstanding in the West Bank, and up to 15,000 in Palestinian East Jerusalem.

The demolition of homes is, of course, only a small, if painful, part of the destruction Israel wreaks daily on the Palestinian population. Over the past few weeks a violent campaign has been waged against Palestinian farmers in one of the most fertile agricultural areas of the West Bank, the Baka Valley, steadily being encroached upon by large suburbs of the settlement of Kiryat Arba, in Hebron. Israel already takes 85% of the West Bank’s water for its own use, either for settlements (settlers use five times more water per capita as do Palestinians, and Ma’aleh Adumim is currently building a water park in addition to its four municipal swimming pools and the huge fountains constantly flowing in the city center) or to be pumped into Israel proper – all in flagrant violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which prohibits an Occupying Power from using the resources of an occupied territory.

Accusing the farmers of “stealing water” – their own water – the Israel water company Mekorot, supported by the Civil Administration and the IDF, has in recent weeks destroyed dozens of wells, some of them ancient, and reservoirs used to collect rain water, which is also “illegal.” Hundreds of hectares of agricultural land have dried up as irrigation pipes have been pulled out and confiscated by the Civil Administration. Fields of tomatoes, beans, eggplants and cucumbers are dying just before they can be harvested, and the grape industry in this rich valley is threatened with destruction. “I’m watching my life dry up before my eyes,” Ata Jaber, a Palestinian farmer who has had his home demolished twice, most of whose land lies buried under the Givat Harsina neighborhood of Kiryat Arba and whose plastic drip irrigation pipes are destroyed annually by the Civil Administration just before he can harvest. “I had hoped to sell my crop for at least $2000 before Ramadan, but all is gone.”

(You can see a BBC report on the destruction of Palestinian reservoirs on YouTube and a heart-rending scene filmed just a week ago when Ata’s cousin was arrested in front of his small child for resisting the destruction of his water system .)

Settlements continue to be built, of course. The much-trumpeted “settlement freeze” amounted to no less than a temporary lull in construction. (Indeed, Netanyahu never used the word “freeze”; in Hebrew he refers only to a “pause.”) According to the August report of Peace Now’s Settlement Watch, at least 600 housing units have started to be built during the freeze, in over 60 different settlements – meaning that the rate of construction is about half of that during the same period in an average year when there is no freeze. Given that the approval process has never been halted – the Israeli government announced the planned building of 1600 housing units in the settlements when Vice President Biden was visiting, if you recall – making up for lost time when the “freeze” ends in late September will be an easy task. According to Ha’aretz, some 2,700 housing units are waiting to be constructed.

The fact that the so-called settlement freeze did not really end settlement construction is obvious. The American government seems ready to accept lip-service only from Israel, as against overt and brutal threats towards the Palestinians if they do not acquiesce to the charade. Palestinian negotiators revealed last week the Obama Administration threatened to cut all ties with the Palestinian Authority, political and financial, if they continued to insist on a genuine freeze on settlements or even clear parameters on what the sides will negotiate. (Netanyahu refuses to accept even the elementary principle of the 1967 borders being the basis of talks.)

Just as destructive of any real peace process, however, is the fact that the focus on settlement freeze deflects attention from attempts by Israel to create “irreversible facts on the ground” which will defeat the very process of negotiation. Even if Israel did respect a settlement freeze, there is no demand, no expectation, absolutely nothing to prevent it from continuing to build the Wall (the enclosing of the Shuafat refugee camp inside Jerusalem and the town of Anata is being completed in these very days, and the village of Wallajeh, some of which spills into Jerusalem, is losing its lands, ancient olive trees and homes even as we speak). Nothing is preventing Israel from continuing to impoverish and imprison the Palestinian population through its twenty-year economic “closure,” including the siege on Gaza, having reduced the Palestinian economy to ashes. Nothing stands in the way of completing a system of parallel (though not equal in size and quality) apartheid highways, big ones, going through Palestinian lands, for Israelis; narrow ones for Palestinians. Nothing keeps Israel from expelling Palestinian from their homes so that Jewish settlers can move in – on July 29th nine families living in the Muslim Quarter of the Old City, returning home at night from a wedding, found themselves locked out of their homes by settlers and prevented from entering by the police. (Palestinians, of course, have no legal recourse to reclaiming their properties, whole villages, towns and urban neighborhoods, farms, factories and commercial buildings, confiscated from them in 1948 and after.)

Nothing prevents Israel from terrorizing the Palestinian population, whether by its own army or the surrogate militia founded by the US and run by the Palestinian Authority to pacify its own population, whether by settlers who shoot and beat Palestinians and burn their crops with no fear of arrest, or by undercover agents, aided by thousands of Palestinian forced to become collaborators, many simply so that their children could receive medical care or so they could have a roof over their heads; whether by expulsion or the myriad administrative constraints of an invisible yet Kafkaesque system of total control and intimidation. Nothing opposes Israel’s boycott of the Palestinian people, isolated from the world by Israeli-controlled borders, or policies that effectively boycott Palestinian schools and universities by preventing their proper functioning. And nothing, absolutely nothing, stops Israel from demolishing Palestinian homes – 24,000 in the Occupied Territories since 1967, and counting.

Perhaps this way of welcoming Ramadan comes at no surprise in terms of the Occupied Territories. It took on an entirely different cast when, on July 26th, more than 1,300 Israeli Border Police, the shock-troops of the police’s Yassam “special operations” unit and regular police, accompanied by helicopters, descended upon the Bedouin village of al-Arakib, just north of Beer-Sheva, a community within Israel inhabited by Israeli citizens. Forty-five homes were demolished, 300 people forcibly displaced. One of the most grotesque and dismaying parts of this operation was the use of Israeli Jewish high school students, volunteers with the civil guard, to remove the belongings of their fellow citizens from their homes before the demolition. Besides reports of vandalism and contempt for their victims the students were photographed lounging in the residents’ furniture in plain sight of its owners. Finally, when the bulldozers began demolishing the homes, the volunteers cheered and celebrated. Over the next week, as Israeli activists helped the residents pick up the pieces and rebuild their homes, the Jewish National Fund, the Israeli Land Authority, the Ministry of the Interior and the “Green Patrol” of the Ministry of Agriculture (established by Ariel Sharon to prevent Bedouin “take-over” of the Negev) sent in police and bulldozers and had the village demolished twice more.

Although al-Arakib is one of 44 “unrecognized” Bedouin villages in the Negev – of which only eleven have even rudimentary education and medical services, no electricity, extremely limited access to water and none have paved roads (see http://rcuv.wordpress.com) – it is nevertheless populated by Israeli citizens, some of whom serve in the Israeli army. While demolitions of Arab homes within Israel is not a new phenomenon – last year the Israeli government demolished three times more houses of Israeli (Arab) citizens inside Israel as it did in the Occupied Territories (the destruction of up to 8,000 homes in the Gaza invasion aside) – it signifies that the term “occupation” cannot be restricted to the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza (and the Golan Heights) alone. The situation of Arab citizens of Israel is almost as insecure as that of the Palestinians of the Occupied Territories, and their exclusion from Israeli society almost as complete. While around 1,000 cities, towns and agricultural villages have been established in Israel since 1948 exclusively for Jews, not a single new Arab settlement has been established, with the exception of seven housing projects for Bedouins in the Negev where none of the residents are allowed to farm or own animals. Indeed, regulations and zoning prohibit Palestinian citizens of Israel from living on 96% of the country’s land, which is reserved for Jews only.

The message of the bulldozers is clear: Israel has created one bi-national entity between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River in which one population (the Jews) has separated itself from the other (the Arabs) and instituted a regime of permanent domination. That is precisely the definition of apartheid. And the message is delivered clearly in the weeks and days leading up to Ramadan. It is papered over with fine words. Netanyahu issued a statement saying: “We mark this important month amid attempts to achieve direct peace talks with the Palestinians and to advance peace treaties with our Arab neighbors. I know you are partners in this goal and I ask for your support both in prayers and in any other joint effort to really create a peaceful and harmonious coexistence.” Obama and Clinton also sent their greetings to the Muslim world, Obama observing that Ramadan “remind us of the principles that we hold in common, and Islam’s role in advancing justice, progress, tolerance, and the dignity of all human beings.” Both the White House and the State Department will hold Iftar meals. But the bulldozers and other expressions of apartheid and warehousing tell a much different story.

(Jeff Halper is the Director of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD). He can be reached at .)
The Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions is based in Jerusalem and has chapters in the United Kingdom and the United States.

Please visit our websites:
www.icahd.org
www.icahduk.org
www.icahdusa.org

on a relatively unrelated note- how wonder-full, it has been said!
I have been bouncing around in my head a lot of thoughts about how to talk with sharon MA, and with campers from the camp i used to go to about Israel, about Judaism, about privilege, etc. What i am finding now is so much, SO much has been said. I do have words and thoughts that other people may call MY own, but this is not how i see them.
Anyways, i am still not sure how to begin any such talk with Ashkenazi jews children of the white flight generation(or perhaps the second generation). One thing is sure, fear will have to be discussed. But id rather not turn the discussion into a philosophical/spiritual/religious one and instead keep it grounded to the who, whys, hows and whats of the material world. The who profits/is oppressed, the why zionism is racism, why jewish organizations in the US don’t discuss this, the how Jewish history is being destroyed as well as Palestinian due to zionism, the how Palestinians resist occupation, the how the media in the US distorts the material goings on, and the what can be gained from taking a stand, the what we can do. But i know these people may take issue that i go into it so bent on explaining the poltics i hold. Maybe ill lead the talk with my own experience here for the past few weeks, hmm, either way i like to up-front with my politics and intent. Yes i want people to make up their owns minds, but really is it their own in the first place? Also cant people still make up their mind for them selves if some one is saying, “hey this is not about showing all the fucking facts, or describing “both-sides”, this is about confusing you, blurring the sides, and all with the intention of hopefully making you uncomfortable at times, and shaking your reality, but afterwards there will be tea and cake and light music for you to digest it all” hmmm ill still think about it.

here is a longer piece to read-> Answer to Rosenfeld: Jewish History, Anti-Semitism, and the Challenge of Zionism by Mark Braverman, Ph.D. Mark writes a response to an essay entitled a “’Progressive’ Jewish Thought and the New Anti-Semitism,” an essay by Alvin Rosenfeld, Professor of Jewish Studies at Indiana University. Oh academics word battling… but it has some important pieces of fact and opinion. I will also say in my point-of-view it seems to still essentials the Ashkenazi Jewish voice as the voice for the Jewish people.
quick notewomen in black!!!!

Mark reminds me in his writing of a lovely elder women i met here yesterday at a demonstration. Her name is alyah (she was raised by serious zionists, during the 1940s in the US). She grew up with the Habonim Dror movement, which was lefty socialist zionists, who dreamed of a socialist nation in Palestine. She moved to Israel some time before 1967 and lived the kibbutz life. She was talking to me now as i asked her how she came to the politics she has today, which are of the more radical left. Alyah begin with the story of her experience after the ’67 war. She explained that in Israel after this war there was this sense of euphoria, they had huge marches through the old city and there was just a general excitement she says. When i asked her about the Moroccan quarter which used to be where the large plaza in by the western wall is now, she said nope it was demolished with-in days after the war, and not a thing was said about it. Mostly what i took away from this conversation was that there was this group of socialist zionists who for better or worse truly believed their dream would come true here, and for some years they felt like they had it, with their kibbutzim (although during this time many of them were still ignorant to the fact that many kibbutzim were just a few years ago palestinian villages…). None-the-less they went on living in this dream they had created and slowly slowly the veils began to drop, and as Alyah said more and more you had no choice but to acknowledge what Israel had become, which is yet another western state financed by military capitalism. And so Alyah was one of the israeli gals who started

I have no conclusion for this post, i will leave it frayed for today.

below is a much more in-depth account of it from people who were there.. open these and take a look Videos, pictures and articles!

A Palestine Video blog, has a video of the people attempting to resist the robo-cops…

The “banality of evil” and Israel’s destruction of al-Araqib

Al Araqib Demolished for the Third Time in Two Weeks by the Israeli Committee against house demolitions

The international solidarity movment’s report, complete with words, videos, and pictures

israels third destruction of al-arakib

here are the articles that were written and videos that were shot last time the village was destroyed:

video of Protest against Israeli Razing of Al-Araqib Village as PA Support Direct Talk with Israel

Summer Camp of Destruction Truly a MUST read

Al Jazeera english on the demolition

Bedouin village razed in Negev as Israelis cheer on

To those of you who are skeptical of any critique of Israel; probably right now your mind is searching and swimming looking for an excuse. “Well there must be a reason” your mind tells you. “there must be something that is not being said.” This is where the line ends. Let this story be a jolt, like an electric shock to your brain that forces a re-wiring of the mind. There is no reason. This is the continued ethnic cleansing and transfer of all native people who refuse to assimilate into Israel. Let that travel the center of your mind, sit on those words. Hush your mind and breathe… Or grow angery, let your head boil as you realize you can not let go of the need to defend israel in your mind. A trained sense of defense for israel that wont allow you to feel any emotions for the people that are now shelterless in the desert with-out much water during first day of the holy month of Ramadan, in which they will continue to fast all day long while they rebuild their shelters (with what little material they have left) in the scorching sun. Maybe the anger grows into tears, tears that remind you of the times you doubted what you were being told about Israeli violence (or any other state sanctioned violence) but when you spoke out you were harassed and silenced. But remember this it is not soley about you and your mind, this is about the people of Al-Araqib, and the many other palestinian, and bedouin villages that are constantly being demolished within Israel, this is also about the people of Gaza living in the largest prison in the world, and the Palestinians in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan who have been living in refugee camps for 62 years. So take the time again to think about the reason why.. The ethnic cleansing and transfer of all native people of Palestine who refuse to assimilate into the Israeli state apparatus.
yes, i am looking for the cords of your emotions, and hoping to pull ever so slightly. So if you have not yet looked at the videos or articles that i linked above, please do so and take some time to yourself and feel.

I am in east Jerusalem now on my own for the first time since i have been in Palestine. I am at a small hostel called the New Palm, it is known for being the “activist” hostel right outside of the Damascus gate. It’s nice to be around so many anarchic ascetic folks, this much i can say, beyond this my emotions seem to fluctuate greatly. I feel as though i have not written enough, always so self-critical that i end up with no words. I wish i could get across with words the different types of organizing i have seen; from youth organizing groups that do drama and arts with Palestinian kids, to demonstrations that happen weekly in Palestine focused on bringing media attention to the non-violent resistance and to the absurdity and cruelty of the Israeli army. You see in this microcosm of Palestine there is very clear demarcation of “sides”. Now i am no fan of sides, perhaps this is a function of my privilege, but i have grown to see that there are in fact sides. Yet these sides are not static, they move, and we move. So what one day is a side for peace may the next day be one for war, and what one day is the side of the oppressed may the next be the side of the oppressor. When our minds become stagnate we lose sight of this, we grow comfort thinking we found the side of peace the side of harmony, good fortune and righteousness. But here in Palestine in this moment in history the sides are clear. (the US has these sides too, but straight white and wealthy america often misses this)

There is the Israeli army narrative/agenda on one, and the Palestinian peoples narrative/resistance on another. Of course there is not such a “clear” binary as this but it functions well to explain my thoughts. See in the US one can pass through life never making a stand on where their politics lie, where their empathy and heart beats. They can “pass” as an advocate for human rights and vote democratic or republican. But here it does not function as such, since the majority of people in israel support the Army’s decree of violence and transfer of the Palestinian people, one must take a true STAND to resist being swallowed by the aggressors mindset. A stand can mean many things, much of which i am in no place to say, but from my humble experiencing it looks something like refusing the military, organizing demonstrations against the israeli army/growth of settlements, supporting Palestinian youth organizing, supporting Palestinian people’s calls for solidarity and resistance. It means being willing to openly criticize your government as racist and stand up to the racist voices that surround you daily, and facing the economic, political and social consequences of doing such. It means starting summer camps for israeli youth to learn about the racism and apartheid of their country and how to create alternatives. These are all lessons i wish to hold dear to my heart and travel home with.

In the US today the line has become more and more defined. As more racist immigration laws come into act around the country, and as the media becomes more openly bigoted, it becomes ever more urgent that people are willing to take a stand. It means making plans, organizing and understanding solidarity. Recognizing the liberal individuality that traps our minds, hearts and bodies. An individuality that teaches us its all about our individual growth and liberation-void of all understanding of a communal liberation or communal-passion (compassion).

It has been hard for me the past days to write because i feel scattered. I feel ungrounded. I feel focused on myself and my own confusions. I have always been a fairy being, finding solace and grace in the un-earthly the spirits, ghosts and creatures of the night, but recently i feel void. I have no god to look for, no goddess to cuddle up to and the ghost here are all crying, leaving me with an unnecessary fear. Walking always looking over my shoulder is no way to walk. I dont wish to share it with any depth because i dont wish sadness upon people. I used to… i used to wish it upon all the smiling faces of the suburbs, hoping they could feel as bitter and sad as i did inside. But whats the use. I’d rather shock them with my smiles and convince them to join me; at a demonstration against immigration laws, at a teach-in’s about domestic violence, at an organizing meeting about creating after school programs for youth, etc.. I’d rather work to help people make a stand, a stand of togetherness. To help people be romantic again, to hug and kiss again, to cry again and again.

To be willing to face the consequences of giving up your privilege. It becomes a big deal, when all reality says it shouldn’t. Giving-up your privilege means organizing against classism, sexism, racism, ableism and fascism. It also means creating a new organism in its place, filling the void with alternatives without borders. It means having courage to make space between you and those in your life that hold you in a your space of privilege that silences your powerful voice change. Its difficult sad and overwhelming, but it is in my silly opinion one path of renewal the leads to some where other than the depths of ignorance shrouded in barbed wires. Where it leads i could hardly say… this is when one begins to ask your goddess moon, i promise she has more to say on this matter.

Thanks for continuing with me <3

Lets look at a specific case going on right now in Israel, which prompted me to write this.
“On July 26, Israeli police demolished 45 buildings in the unrecognized Bedouin village of al-Arakib” leaving over 200 people homeless.
Yet, what is the story everywhere on US news? (foxnews.com, msnbc.com, nytimes.com, cnn.com …) Rockets Fired at Israel. Immediately invoking fear. If one reads further they will realize these rockets were extremely weak and unsophisticated. Two landed in the water, one exploded in air, and two hit the ground; one in Israel which hurt no one, and one in Jordan injuring 4 or 5 people. This story is in all the US news carriers, already playing into the warmonger delight and invoking fear in many US people of the angry arab with rockets trying to kill you at any moment. Yet within the same few days Israeli military is able to go in and demolish an entire village and not one word is said in the US* (this was covered in BBC, Al Jazeera, Huffington Post, Haaretz, etc) ? Israel has painted such a picture that just to talk of their war crimes is to be called an anti-semite. With a culture like this, a culture of US folks that are so ill-informed and so intensely taught to stay away from any critique of israel for fear of being called an anti-semite, there is no other way to describe it than the dark ages. Such fear, such repression, it only bodes for a more dangerous future, unless we can admit our faults and begin to work for a more holistic knowledge. If this news was to reach the US ears than people would have to be confronted with one of the largest lies told to US jews- the untold story of the JNF (Jewish National Fund) which is cast as a environmental organization that is part of making “Israel Bloom”. The plans for this village that was demolished is to turn it into a JNF forest that will be planted with trees American Jews give money to.

No news source alone can provide a complete picture, but this does not mean one must mistrust everything one reads, rather one must be critical, which includes thinking about where the funding of these news outlets come from, and what this article is trying to say etc… So often folks from home who are curious of my politics, specifically surrounding zionism and israel, will barrage me with questions asking me to defend and explain everything to them, if they catch me in the right mood perhaps i will engage. More and more though i wish to just tell them if you want to know it is up to you to honestly engage in a journey to know. You do not learn by simply asking people around you questions and expect them to give it to you as you continue consuming (often i find myself hoping this will work, but beyond being rude, and disingenuous, it is fruitless and not productive). Rather you must be active you must say “i desire to understand this more concretely, more holistically, and more critically” and then rather than asking people for specific facts you can begin asking what are good resources where are good places to look. For better or worse US folks must realize if they wish to have any semblance of a holistic understanding of international, national and local affairs they must engage whole heartily beyond just the headlines of their most entertaining news program or paper.

Here are some articles to being understanding the current goings on with the Bedouin village that was demolished the other day and not reported in the US.

Summer Camp of Destruction Truly a MUST read

Al Jazeera english on the demolition

Bedouin village razed in Negev as Israelis cheer on

*correction- Just found an article on CNN about it, but notice the difference in language

And i know there is another population of people who ask why? Why is it important for me to read all this anyways? My answer is not absolute, but my answer is; we live in a world were we unconsciously/consciously consume mis-information/ double speak, and if we wish to re-wire our brains and hearts towards a life without wars then we must actively seek.. its not so grim.

know hope

With the short amount of time i have had to use the internet, and the poor condition of this computer i have not been able to upload many pictures. For now ill give a brief personal update on what I have done the past week or so, now that the delegation i am on is coming to close.

After spending some time in Palestine ’48 learning about internally displaced Palestinians (Palestinians who still live within Palestine ’48 but no longer in their original villages) we returned to Occupied Palestinian Territory (aka West Bank). We spent the night in Ramallah meeting with Omar Barghouti (one of the prominent voices of the BDS movement within Palestine), as well as Uri Davis (a Jewish Palestinian who was one of the first people to write about Israel as an Apartheid state). It was really incredible meeting Omar, who i had read and heard so much about in the past two years of BDS work. He had such a wonderful presence and spoke so clearly. We spoke with him as well about what Ilana writes about below (the Palestinian Authority (PA) new campaign of boycotting Israeli Settlements (colonies)). He also humored us with his sarcastic speak about how he has been “disappointed with how stupid zionists have become” and how he wonders where all the smart zionsts have gone…? As he mentions one of the events in the US where he gave a talk and had a box for questions and 10 of the questions were all exactly the same, asking a common zionist question (i forget what exactly the story was)- to which he responded “when AIPAC (zionist lobby group that often supports zionist education) told you to ask these questions the did not mean for you all to ask the same one.. come on people be a bit more creative” I found it funny.. as well as hopeful that right now many zionists (i have not defined this term on this blog… umm quickly i will just say those that believe in a jewish state in Israel) are struggling to find any legitimate arguments or critiques that hold weight against the BDS movement (calling it anti-semtic and such being their meaningless catch phrase).

Wednesday, July 21
The next day we traveled to a small village called Mas’ha to visit Hani Amer’s home. I have pictures later, but this house is completely surrounded by the wall and settlement fences. Absurdity beyond understanding, where we are in this world i can hardly speak of, yet her and her family live there on going. Munira told us she has been “sick, sick because of living in constant fear.”

With out enough time to feel what i had seen with Munira we traveled about 20 minutes to Hares another small village to meet with Issa Souf, a nonviolent activist who is paralyzed from the waist down after being shot by a soldier in 2001. Here is an artical he wrote called I pity you for becoming murders.

As these two stories whirled around my mind and sent tingles through my veins i sat in the taxi van traveling up to Nablus to meet with students from An-Najah National University. From the difficult stories of violence and suffering where resistance was played out solely by living, and surviving, that we heard earlier in the day, the story we heard in Nablus was one of active resistance, through BDS campaign on their campus. We also got a tour around Nablus with Saed Abu-Hijleh, a Palestinian human geographer, power, and radio show host, how is currently working as a lecturer of political and environmental geography at An-Najah National University. We visited the streets that 8 years ago were filled with Israeli tanks and bulldozers that invaded Nablus. We saw the graves of families killed when 2 story tall bulldozers collapsed the their homes on them. Again another emotional event on a day that seemed to leave no rest for the feelings to settle.

I have trouble some times feeling, after so much time where emotions were used to manipulate. Whether it was as a child of divorced parents that would play to my emotions to use me as a weapon in their battle, or as a young jewish kid who was told the story of the holocaust and suicide bombing to convince me that the Jews deserved at ALL costs the land of israel (in an attempt to get me to move to israel to partake in the demographic war). So walking through the streets of Nablus and hearing these stories all my hold memories of hearing stories of emotional turmoil come up, and it all mixes and it took me time to find ground again. Reminding myself there is a reality and a world beneath the covers, a place i can call home. It can be difficult to find but it has to do with unmasking the power, and recognizing that it’s not about saying whos pain is worse but about who is the aggressor…

It became clear after spending the night in Balata refugee camp in Nablus. We stated at a placed called the Yaffa Cultural Center that has set up an arts studio and classrooms for kids in the camp. The camp was founded in 1952 by the UN for the refugees of Palestine ’48 and for 8 years was just tents (because under international law refugees must be allowed to return when they are displaced because of conflict), but slowly they started building small homes and now today there are loads of 3 story buildings inches apart all in a 2 square kilo area making it so the bottom floors get almost no sunlight do the crowdedness. There is small ally-ways throughout the camp but no road wider then a few feet.

Friday, July 23
This day the uncomfort did not end. We were planning on going to East Jerusalem for a political tour with Abu Hassan to learn about the issues faced by Palestinians being kicked out of homes, and having their homes demolished etc. But because we were going into Jerusalem two people on our delegation could not come because they had Palestinian ID’s. It felt gross going without them (us white folks from thousands of miles away who can travel where ever the fuck we want, while folks who have lived their whole lives only miles from a place can not go…(yea guilt, it’s real)). The tour itself was gross too.. we went to Sheikh Jarrah a neighborhood where Palestinian’s have been kicked out of their homes by the Israeli Army and then moments later their homes were taken over by Jewish Settlers. We were able to walk right up to these houses and see the Israelis now living in them with their giant israeli flags. Across the street are coaches from the family who used to live there that now sits outside the house daily in protest (often having rocks and food thrown at them by the settlers living in what used to be their home).

Then we went to the red cross and met with three people who ran in 2006 on the Change and Reform ballet and are Hammas members. After the election when the Change and Reform one the majority of the seats in the Palestinian Election (West Bank, Jerusalem, and Gaza) and Israel declared the elections void because they call Hammas a terrorist group and the PA had a coup in the west bank these three citizens of Jerusalem were arrested by Israel for being affiliated with Hammas. After they were released from prison they were given 30 days to leave Jerusalem. They refused, and were currently taking refuge at the Red Cross (they had been there for 2 weeks when we got there). We talked with them for about an hour and were able to ask them a bunch of questions about their situation.

From there we traveled back into the West Bank to Bethlehem, to Aida Refugee camp. We met with people from an organization called Beautiful Resistance that does theater and media work with youth in the camp. Aida camp is literally right against the apartheid wall and has the piece of wall were Banksy (a famous graffiti artist) did his more famous pieces. On the other side of the wall is a huge field of olive trees that used to be a part of the community that now lives in the occupied territory. This is a clear example of the strategy that Israel deploys in their colonizing of the Palestinian land- Maximum land with minimum people (putting the wall as close to where people live as possible thereby taking as much of their land as possible but not the people who work it) Now many Palestinians living there must wake up at 3 AM ever morning to wait for hours at the Bethlehem checkpoint to go work their fields. (a classic saying in Bethlehem now is that if Jesus were alive he would get stopped at the checkpoint, as well as the three kings that go see him at birth would be unable too…)

Saturday, July 24
We left Bethlehem after visiting the Church of Nativity (which was almost destroyed by Israel a few years back, the bullet holes still present). We traveled south to Hebron were we met with Hisham Sharabati, a journalist and activist (a friend of ours on the delegation’s uncle). Hebron is an extremely heated space right now as it has colonies of settlers right within the city, and not just economic settlers (those that move into colonies because of economic advantages offered by Israel) but National Religious settlers who are extremely violent in their daily actions towards Palestinians. There is often clashes between Palestinians and settlers in Hebron, and it becomes a clear example of state sponsored terrorism as the Israeli soldiers stand next to settlers who throw rocks at Palestinian’s and do nothing, yet will beat and arrest Palestinians who just as much as say angry words to settlers. In Hebron we ended up going to a weekly demonstration about opening up Shuhada Street which used to be the main street for Palestinian people in Hebron, but is now controlled by the Israeli Army and being settled by Jewish National fundamentalists. The demonstration quickly became chaotic as the Israeli soldiers continued to beat resistant protests and arrest protesters who wanted nothing but to walk down a street… It happened in a few waves, the first of which demonstrators were able to successful un-arrest a few people (by grabbing on and falling to the ground), but after which the soldiers dashed in and quickly grabbed a few Internationals at random. At the end when the Palestinian people who were leading the demonstration said enough… the Israeli’s would not quit and through a sound grenade at us as we were walked away.

We regrouped with Hisham after and were going to walk to another part of Hebron. To get to this part of Hebron we needed to go through an Israeli check point and as we got close the Israeli soldiers walked right up to us and said you all are under arrest. We immediately were confused and said began to refuse as the grabbed me and another person by the arm and said four of you come with us. I continued to push the soldier off of me as Ilana and Hannah got in-between us (at this point they were demanding that just the men be arrested). The soldier (or should i say kid) continued to grab at us but we slipped out and walked away. During this Lubna, a Palestinian on the delegation with us was asking the soldier why he was trying to arrest us, and he said to her “you people don’t deserve to know”.. the racism overflows..
After grabbing some orange juice and decompressing we found out 6 people were arrested 3 internationals, 2 israelis, and one Palestinian. It was a lot to swallow and my first encounter with the eyes of israeli soldiers who are just waiting to use their guns..

I did not come to Palestine to go to demonstrations, but it has become a popular activity for internationals to do when in Palestine. In the moment i began to see the use of internationals, in their ability to be the front line between the Israeli Soldiers and the Palestinians. It is so complex, all we can do is make our actions in the moment honest, and towards justice.
Perhaps i will go to more demonstrations, but my real work here is about BDS, and about getting the knowledge back to my community.

That evening i slept at a family’s house that live right next to a colony. The settlers there are also the more fanatical racist type. The family had loads and loads of videos which that had taken of their interactions with the settlers. No words..
Violence, hate.. it is not the news it is reality. The family was so strong, and so courageous, they go on living their live- rarely enough water, enough money, enough safety but they go on. I gave the gifts that were made back home at the going away gathering to the family

ahh the images pass quickly, but the feelings grow slowly..
there is much more to share, its been 4 days since then. 2 of the days were the Right 2 Education conference at Birzeit University.

hope hides in the images and lives in touch.