After an inconclusive search for the Holy, Mum and Dad, J and I witnessed the politics of the present day on a trip with Breaking the Silence to Hebron. I've written about them already, but this tour was slightly different.
Breaking the Silence is an organization of veteran combatants who have served in the Israeli military since the start of the Second Intifada and have taken it upon themselves to expose the Israeli public to the reality of everyday life in the Occupied Territories. "We endeavor to stimulate public debate about the price paid for a reality in which young soldiers face a civilian population on a daily basis, and are engaged in the control of that population’s everyday life."
We started off in the nearby Israeli settlement to Hebron, Qiryat Arba'a. I'd never been inside a settlement before, though parts of Jerusalem feel very like this one. As Alon, the Israeli ex-soldier, explained to us what Palestinians trying to scrape a living in the land that remains theirs, go through on a daily basis, Dad looked wistfully at the ground covering of spring plant life, and said: 'Look at all the pretty flowers, who know nothing of all this.'
We walked around the ghost town of Hebron, remembering Alon's explanation of his stint in Gaza, where he and his fellow Israeli soldiers occupied a house where an elderly lady was still living. She had been unable to walk to safety with her family after the warning leaflets were distributed, urging people to leave before the army broke in. So she was left in the house on her own with Alon and his men. He explained how slowly it dawned on him that this Gazan grandmother was no different from his own grandmother, herself a Jew from Iraq. And how he began, from that moment, to question what the Israeli state was trying to achieve, and their ways of doing it. Organisations like Breaking the Silence are key to everyone's understanding of the other side.
But I realised, looking at Mum and Dad's reaction to these first hand accounts, and the opportunity to see the occupation with their own eyes, how difficult it is to visualise when you're not here. Before we came to live in Jerusalem, I wondered if people exaggerated the facts.
Now I know, they do not.
This graphics organisation, Visualizing Occupation, do a lot to explain the situation clearly.
The differing legal status between an Israeli child, and a Palestinian child:
And more clear graphics at this site:
http://972mag.com/special/visualizing-occupation-2/
As we walked down the friction point in Hebron, called: 'Shuhada Street' the irony of one possible way to translate it, struck me.
'Shu hada?' in Arabic, means, 'What is this?'
It's a question we should all be asking.
It's all about the Israeli state, and their blue sky thinking.
How looming and dark are the Palestinian skies in comparison.
That night we saw Tony Blair at the American Colony Hotel where we'd had dinner. His security men, paid for by the British taxpayer, were there, dripping with communications devices. TB was on the phone, his plastic complexion unwrinkled and silver fox hair unruffled. Dad and I concocted what we should have said to him as we left. I loved the idea of Dad attempting a citizen's arrest. I think he could have pulled it off. TB should be in jail. And it will take more than citizens, it seems.
This morning I greeted one of the Palestinian teachers at the dwarfs' school, as usual. She'd had her glossy, black hair cut into a neat Mum-bob, but between the bouncing sides of the bob-cut were her grim looking eyes. 'I'm so sad,' she said.
Netanyahu's victory in last night's elections is disastrous for Palestine. The prospects of a Palestinian state is now really and truly lying dead in the water; and along with it the promises of thousands of new homes for Israeli settlers in the occupied territories.
While Herzog and Livni's coalition might have staved off more building, and helped Washington and Europe to work towards some form of two state existence for this troubled land, Bibi - (Netanyahu's nickname) - has no such plans.
As Jeremy Bowen wrote on the BBC website:
'He (Netanyahu) issued a series of grim warnings about the consequences for Israel if he lost - Arabs with Israeli citizenship were voting, so his people needed to turn out.
He also made a series of promises that would worsen Israel's relations with the US and Europe if he continues as prime minister. He promised thousands of new homes for settlers in the occupied territories, and said he would not allow the Palestinians to have a state.'
Settlements are the thorns in the side of any peaceful solution, with their amoeba like reproduction, dotting the green hillsides with their immaculate white walls and red roofs.
I read in the New York Times this weekend there are now over 600,000 Israeli settlers in Palestinian territories - between the West Bank and East Jerusalem - many of them housed during Netanyhu's aggressive building campaign in the 1990s.
'I do not intend to vacate any settlements,' he has said.
And the outcome of this election gives Netanyahu a strong chance of forming a coalition government.
Along with the already dwindling hopes of Palestinians around their lands, Mum and Dad left to go back home leaving me feeling a little bereft without their staunch support, humour and holiday spirit.
So now I'm filling the gap with trying to write like a MoFo and finish a few deadlines before the next visitors, and then an Easter holiday.
Breaking the Silence is an organization of veteran combatants who have served in the Israeli military since the start of the Second Intifada and have taken it upon themselves to expose the Israeli public to the reality of everyday life in the Occupied Territories. "We endeavor to stimulate public debate about the price paid for a reality in which young soldiers face a civilian population on a daily basis, and are engaged in the control of that population’s everyday life."
We walked around the ghost town of Hebron, remembering Alon's explanation of his stint in Gaza, where he and his fellow Israeli soldiers occupied a house where an elderly lady was still living. She had been unable to walk to safety with her family after the warning leaflets were distributed, urging people to leave before the army broke in. So she was left in the house on her own with Alon and his men. He explained how slowly it dawned on him that this Gazan grandmother was no different from his own grandmother, herself a Jew from Iraq. And how he began, from that moment, to question what the Israeli state was trying to achieve, and their ways of doing it. Organisations like Breaking the Silence are key to everyone's understanding of the other side.
But I realised, looking at Mum and Dad's reaction to these first hand accounts, and the opportunity to see the occupation with their own eyes, how difficult it is to visualise when you're not here. Before we came to live in Jerusalem, I wondered if people exaggerated the facts.
Now I know, they do not.
This graphics organisation, Visualizing Occupation, do a lot to explain the situation clearly.
The differing legal status between an Israeli child, and a Palestinian child:
And more clear graphics at this site:
http://972mag.com/special/visualizing-occupation-2/
As we walked down the friction point in Hebron, called: 'Shuhada Street' the irony of one possible way to translate it, struck me.
'Shu hada?' in Arabic, means, 'What is this?'
It's a question we should all be asking.
It's all about the Israeli state, and their blue sky thinking.
How looming and dark are the Palestinian skies in comparison.
That night we saw Tony Blair at the American Colony Hotel where we'd had dinner. His security men, paid for by the British taxpayer, were there, dripping with communications devices. TB was on the phone, his plastic complexion unwrinkled and silver fox hair unruffled. Dad and I concocted what we should have said to him as we left. I loved the idea of Dad attempting a citizen's arrest. I think he could have pulled it off. TB should be in jail. And it will take more than citizens, it seems.
This morning I greeted one of the Palestinian teachers at the dwarfs' school, as usual. She'd had her glossy, black hair cut into a neat Mum-bob, but between the bouncing sides of the bob-cut were her grim looking eyes. 'I'm so sad,' she said.
Netanyahu's victory in last night's elections is disastrous for Palestine. The prospects of a Palestinian state is now really and truly lying dead in the water; and along with it the promises of thousands of new homes for Israeli settlers in the occupied territories.
While Herzog and Livni's coalition might have staved off more building, and helped Washington and Europe to work towards some form of two state existence for this troubled land, Bibi - (Netanyahu's nickname) - has no such plans.
As Jeremy Bowen wrote on the BBC website:
'He (Netanyahu) issued a series of grim warnings about the consequences for Israel if he lost - Arabs with Israeli citizenship were voting, so his people needed to turn out.
He also made a series of promises that would worsen Israel's relations with the US and Europe if he continues as prime minister. He promised thousands of new homes for settlers in the occupied territories, and said he would not allow the Palestinians to have a state.'
Settlements are the thorns in the side of any peaceful solution, with their amoeba like reproduction, dotting the green hillsides with their immaculate white walls and red roofs.
I read in the New York Times this weekend there are now over 600,000 Israeli settlers in Palestinian territories - between the West Bank and East Jerusalem - many of them housed during Netanyhu's aggressive building campaign in the 1990s.
'I do not intend to vacate any settlements,' he has said.
And the outcome of this election gives Netanyahu a strong chance of forming a coalition government.
Along with the already dwindling hopes of Palestinians around their lands, Mum and Dad left to go back home leaving me feeling a little bereft without their staunch support, humour and holiday spirit.
So now I'm filling the gap with trying to write like a MoFo and finish a few deadlines before the next visitors, and then an Easter holiday.
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