chapter 13 - r.i.p. skipper

So there was this skinny dude named Skipper who lived in Balata Refugee Camp. He had big huge dark eyes and always wore a baseball cap and a necklace with his friend's picture who died on it. He walked like a shadow and the angles of his face were fine and sharp and beautiful. I'll never forget him cuz one of the first nights I was in Balata, I was hanging out with some Palestinians and internationals at my friend Mohammad's house, and Skipper came over with one of his friends and they both looked like hard-ass gangsters to me, but then Skipper's friend told us that Skipper could dance like a mo-fo, and with a little bit of urging from us he was soon moonwalking across Mohammad's apartment, his forehead all knitted up in concentration, and we were all laughing and hooting and hollering cuz he sure could dance like a mo-fo.

After that night, I passed him often in the streets, but since he was a man and a fighter, too, it wasn't appropriate for me to greet him, so I would try to catch his eye and we would acknowledge each other with a slight uplifting of our chins - too cool for school. I learned later that everyone called him Disco Skipper and that he was always the first to get up and dance at the weddings.

Late in the night on October 8th, Skipper was heading to the place where the army was stationed, weapon in hand. Like the other fighters, he had stayed awake into the night and waited for the army to come, which they did every night. Sometimes they would come and leave, sometimes they would come and shout through a bullhorn, sometimes they would arrest people, and sometimes they would come and try to kill the fighters, who through all of this try to defend the camp as best they can - no easy feat when you are a kid from a refugee camp facing the third largest army in the world. Skipper rounded a corner, came face to face with a soldier,and was shot in the chest. He died in the hospital a few hours later. Like most fighters, he had a will:

"To the children of Palestine. Don't let anyone get you down, you must overcome your weakness and be strong. Finish your education. Ourstruggle must be fought through education, it is our path to freedom."

"Mother, do not cry for me because if I die I will be alive with the people. If I die don't cry, just come to my grave and touch the ground and you will be touching my face. And tell the other mothers what it is like to sacrifice, and that Palestine needs our sacrifice. Palestine willuse my blood to paint her story."

Rest in Peace, Skipper. This song makes me think of you, and the other young men in the camp who never know when their turn will come - just that it inevitably will:

"So Many Tears" Tupac Shakur

Back in elementary,

I thrived on misery

Left me alone I grew up amongst a dyin breed

Inside my mind couldn't find a place to rest

until I got that Thug Life tatted on my chest

Tell me can you feel me?

I'm not livin in the past,

you wanna last?

Be tha first to blast,

remember Kato

No longer with us he's deceased

Call on the sirens,

seen him murdered in the streets

Now rest in peace

Is there heaven for a G?

Remember me

So many homies in the cemetery,

shed so many tears

Lord, I suffered through the years,

and shed so many tears..

Lord, I lost so many peers,

and shed so many tears

(see the article Mohammad wrote, which I have referenced here, at http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article5870.shtml)**************************************************************

I have been back in the States for almost a month. I still feel a little weird, like I've grown a new body part but I don't know where it is, much less how to use it. I've got some crazy mood swings happening. I don't talk a lot, and I still can't get over how much people shower here, and how easy it is to get food - anything you want, at all times of the night!

I find myself marvelling at the amount of free time I have, and wondering what to do with myself. Everything seems too easy. The streets are real quiet and empty here, and anywhere you want to go, you can go there without any worries of how long it will take or what you will have to putup with on the way. Dang. It's really nice here, feels like I'm on vacation at a nice resort.

I have weird flashbacks, too, kinda like what I imagine acid flashbacks must be like. I'll see a concrete wall built for an irrigation ditch andfor a split second I'll go back there, back to Palestine and the apartheid wall. Or at night I'll hear a rumbling in the next room and tense up for a second waiting to hear where the jeeps will stop and realize it's a washing machine. I saw a Humvee on the highway making the trip from mymom's house in Ohio and thought "oo, I forgot my passport." People ask me if I am going to go back, and I start to say "inshaalah" - god willing.

And all the time, in the back of my head, is Palestine, and it's disconcerting to think about my friends in the refugee camp who are dying,physically and soulfully, while I go out to eat and watch baseball. I don't know what I'm doing here. I know that I can work to to help end the occupation more effectively from America, and I have begun that work, but I can't get rid of the feeling that I'm on vacation, that this life is so fabulous it can only be temporary. And I miss Palestine! I miss the way we ate there, sitting together on the floor sharing from the same dishes; I miss Fayrouz's mom and Mirinda soda; I miss the community, how there are always thousands of people outside doing stuff, the vibrant culture andthe kids, the sound of Arabic and the taxi drivers with their loud music and stuffed animals on the dashboard.

I want justice for Palestine. I think peace is a natural outcome ofjustice. If we want peace in the middle east, then we must work for justice, which means holding people accountable for war crimes and human rights abuses, and adhering to the international laws which we have all agreed upon. The Fourth Geneva Convention describes the protections which must be followed for all individuals, regardless of citizenship or lackthereof who are considered noncombatants, as well as combatants who have laid down their arms, and combatants who are out of the fight due to wounds or detention.

These protections include:

**"The prohibition of outrages upon personal dignity, in particularhumiliating and degrading treatment" (I remember the female soldier whowas caressing the buttocks and legs of Palestinian men - "we're searchingfor bombs" she said. I remember how she roughly squeezed the women'shijabs, and screamed at them when they didn't move fast enough. Iremember waiting in line for hours at checkpoints as cars with Israeliplates zoomed by, their faces often pressed to the windows like kids atthe aquarium. I remember the woman on her deathbed on her way to chemotreatment, pleading with the soldiers at a flying checkpoint to let herpass...they didn't until she coughed and spat blood on the ground.)

**All persons "shall not be deprived of the rights of fair and regular trial." (reading this makes me want to laugh hysterically, but i keep itback cuz i might never stop. Palestinians can be arrested and held for 18 hours without any contact. When they are given a trial, it is with anisraeli judge and israeli jury. the appeals process is almost non-existant.)

**"No protected person may be punished for an offense he or she has not personally committed," and "collective penalties and likewise all measures of intimidation or of terrorism are prohibited." (I think about the mother of a martyr in the refugee camp who was put in prison for 15 years; her 5 year old will not see her again until he is a grown man. I think about the man in Bil'in who is not allowed to go to Jerusalem because his son was wounded and paralyzed at a non-violent demonstration in the second intifada and the Israeli government expects him to take revenge. I remember the soldier who told me that even though the checkpoints were inhumane and caused innocent people to suffer, they were neccessary to catch the couple people out of millions who become self martyrs. I remember the stories I heard of people shot during invasions who could'vebeen saved, but died on the ground cuz the ambulances weren't allowed to enter the villages. I think about the villages where we went to protest, who were invaded and punished later that night because a few of its residents were resisting the occupation, just like the nazis did in WW2, which is why we made the geneva conventions in the first place.)

No justice - no peace. When will enough be enough? If it can happen to the Palestinians, - if a government is allowed to create heinous breachesof the Geneva Conventions, allowed to disregard international law and inflict collective punishment upon another group of people - it could happen to you, or to your kids. I think it's beginning here - our government can now officially and legally make you disappear forever, with no trial and no lawyer, if they suspect you of terror. Ask Maher Arar if the US has proven a good judge of who is a terrorist and who isn't.

Who's going to stop it?

magan

chapter 12 - ween y'allah?

September 11, 2006

My friend Mohammad Fourage loves kids. "The kids," he says, "they are the best thing about the life." And they are.

The kids in Balata Refugee Camp are fearless and fiery; they speak from way down deep in their chests like the Godfather, and they spot me far down alleys and come running. "Adjnebia,Adjnebia!" They come running like I have Snickers bars and shekels tied to my clothes.

The little girls in their striped school uniforms tug shyly at my shirt -"What's your name?" "Ismi Magan." "Magan? Magan." They whisper it to each other, over and over again. They take me by the hand to meet their big sisters and mothers who have big smiles and endless pots of tea and ask if I will take down my hair from its messy ponytail. "Ahhh...hiluwe," they breathe. Beautiful. I tell them they are beautiful, too, and they are.

The boys, they dare each other to shake my hand, follow me down alleys,and puff their chests out for pictures. They are constantly playing "war", with plastic and wooden guns and homemade slingshots, darting in and out of narrow corridors and hiding in the shadows, mimicking the movements of soldiers they know all too well. "I try to give them other toys, but they only want to play Arabs and soldiers," he says as he flicks his hand toward a dusty red dump truck sitting forgotten underneath the coffee table. "I hear the Israelis say 'Look what they teach their children! They teach them to love guns, to love killing!' But it's not me who is teaching them this."

There is a little girl, Miriam, who lives in the apartment above Mohammad's; her dad is his landlord, and tonight he is chiseling away at the lock on Mohammad's door cuz it's broken and we can't get inside. He uses a hammer, and the thwack! echoes through the apartment building. Each time he brings the hammer down, Miriam's eyes grow large and she whimpers and inches closer to her dad. "She cries for any loud noise," Mohammad explains, and the hammer cracks again like the gunshots that crack through air every night. Every. Single. Night.

Miriam hugs her doll close - I play peekaboo with her and I think about what will become of her growing up in this place where no one sleeps well because that's when the army always comes, at night. That's when the sonic booms and rockets come, when the soldiers bang up the stairwells and bang on the doors and throw sound bombs that bang into living rooms and hold families at gunpoint while snipers take up positions on the roofs of their homes. I think about what my friend Matthew told me, how he talkedto a child psychologist in Gaza who can't make any headway treating the children because you can't heal a kid with emotional scars from living in a war zone until you take that kid out of the war zone.

I look at Miriam with her doll and I want to take her to America to get a good night's sleep. I want to take her older brother, too, who is scared to be alone since soldiers occupied his house 2 years ago, take him far away from this place before his fear turns into anger and he turns into a face on a martyr poster slowing fading to blue in the sunlight.

These kids...these fierce, fantastic kids. Where will they be in 10 years? If the situation is anything like it is now, 40% of them will have served time in prison. Some of them will be dead. Most of them will go to college, and most of them will be unemployed for at least some time when they finish, or they'll be highly educated taxi drivers. Some of them will join one of the brigades and defend the camp with guns when the Israeli tanks come. A few of them will tour the world telling people about Palestine, about the life in Balata Camp. A few of them will be journalists, teachers, actors, run youth centers (there are 2 in the camp,each with their own dance and drama troupes), participate in demonstrations and hold positions in the government.

Or maybe...maybe...in 10 years Palestine will be free. Palestine will be free, and the kids, they'll go with their friends to swim in the sea, and it will only take an hour to get there cuz the checkpoints will be gone and the roads will be open for everyone. Maybe they'll go to Jaffa, the city their great grandparents fled more than 70 years before, and see what they still consider to be their hometown, cuz there won't be a wall or soldiers keeping them out. Maybe they'll visit relatives in the South they haven't seen since they were small cuz there won't be men with guns who stop them on the road and check their IDs and tell them they aren't allowed to travel outside of the camp. Maybe they'll take a vacation to Jordan cuz the borders will be open. Maybe they'll be judges cuz Palestine will be allowed to govern itself. They'll make the hajj to Mecca and not worry about being able to return home. They'll turn on thefaucet and water will always come out.

This is my hope. This is the world I want for the kids of Balata Camp. Iask the Palestinians what they hope for, and the answer is invariable: to live one day in peace. I look around me and I think: Ween Y'Allah? Where is God? Ween Y'Allah? Many people asked this 5 years ago as the towers fell. They ask it in Iraq, in Puerto Rico, in the inner city of St. Louis.

Sometimes I can see him, in the faces of the kids playing soccer and the old women holding their grandbabies. I hear him coming over the loudspeaker of the mosque. But mostly I know he's here because the Palestinians tell me he is, and if they can still see him and believe in him, than I do, too. And I'll keep singing in the darkness right along side the kids of the camp.

if we got faith, it's possible. if we got love, its easy.

much love,

miss magan

In the dark times,

Will there be singing?

Yes, there will be singing

About the dark times

--Bertoldt Brecht

chapter 11 - the unbearable lightness of being

Salaam, y'all. I have created this list due to some concerns that mass emails with everyone's email addresses posted creates some privacy issues. If you wish to unsubscribe, let me know, cuz I haven't quite figured that out yet.

I've been thinking a lot lately about a particular passage in the writings of Rachel Corrie. She talks about how she knew what "the unbearable lightness of being was, before I read the book. The lightness - between life and death, there are no dimensions at all, the difference between Hitler and my mother,the difference between Whitney Houston and a Russian
mother watching her son fall through the sidewalk and boil to
death...it's just a shrug...the difference between ecstasy and misery is just a shrug."

I sit and drink tea with my friends in Palestine, people that have become so close to me, but I feel this gulf between us that will never be bridged. We were born on opposite sides of the coin: the oppressor and the oppressed. And just like it's impossible for the heads and tails of a penny to see each other, to see what the other sees, I feel like it's impossible for me - blessed with freedom, opportunity,
lightheartedness, security - to see the world from the eyes of someone whom the world decided didn't deserved those things, too. I try; I try very hard to understand, but when you try to fit this suffering and this horrible mess into the parameters of your American-born brain, it can't deal with it, it has no way to make sense of it, and everything becomes surreal and like a dream.

And that is when the lightness of life is unbearable: there is no rhyme or reason why I am not Palestinian, why I was born into the 20% of people who have food and shelter every day. I think all the time what my life would've been like if I wasn't lucky enough to be born into that 20%.

The only way to truly face the reality of it - the only way to see the other side of the coin - is to willfully destroy your previous reality. You must die a little death, and let go of everything you've been told since you were small: how America believes in Justice for all, how we are a haven for the poor and tired, how anyone who is an enemy of the United
States is an enemy of Freedom, how our country was founded with the belief that All Humans Have the Right to Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness. It's a lie. It's a big fat lie, and everyone knows it, and it hurts real bad to own up to it, it hurts to realize that this freedom we have, our collective American dream of anyone being able to come up out
of the gutter and become a millionare, what we're all busting our asses to achieve, is an illusion. Cuz everyone can't have it, and people are suffering all over the world so we can have it.

I'm seeing it with my own eyes, and my heart hurts, but seeing it with my own eyes is helping me to wake up from the dream I've been walking around in for 24 years. I know I sound like a crazy conspiracy theorist ("everything's a lie!!"), but I don't care. Come to Palestine and see what's being done in your name. Go to Iraq and see what they're doing with your money. Go to Nike sweatshops in South America and see what your shoes truly cost.

Last night the Israelis dropped from airplanes a delightful treat for the children of Balata Camp: chemical bombs disguised as brightly wrapped candies. 2 boys are very badly burned. Bet yer not gonna hear that on the news, so I thought I'd let you know. I bet $20 the planes they dropped 'em from are made in the good ole' USA.

peace in the middle east,
magan

Check out Picture Balata project

My friend Matthew is a fierce photographer from Chicago, and he's doing a photography workshop with the kids in the camp. Check out this photo from from my girl Safaa, who's 12: I got to go around with some of the kids as they took pictures, and they really loved it and it make them feel good to have an opportunity to show the outside world what their lives are really like, and not the bullshit that's in the media all the time. So not only do the kids get to do something constructive, positive, and artistic, the project is also helping get the real story of Palestine out there. So check out their pictures at : picturebalata.net and send them some money if you can, cuz Matthew is working with very little money.

Als0, go check out Matthew's bitchin' work capturing Palestine and Chicago at justimage.org. Here's one of his pictures:

chapter 10- balata camp

Salaam, shalom, waaazup to everyone from beautiful Palestine. I'm feeling a little overwhelmed and depressed today. I have been in Balata Refugee camp for 4 weeks now, and it is the belly of the beast. 25,000 people squeezed into an area the size of a large shopping mall, the largest refugee camp in the West Bank. The army asassinates and arrests young men on a nightly basis, they killed two yesterday morning by dropping rockets on their house, which is right around the corner from where I'm staying. There hasn't been one night I haven't heard humvees roaring through the camp at midnight. I haven't met one single male over the age of 18 who hasn't been to prison. I haven't met one single family who hasn't lost a father or brother. There are no jobs, no peace, no justice, no life, the only thing left anymore is hope, it seems. So I want to write to you about why Palestine is beautiful and why Palestinians are some of the warmest, most resilient human beings I have ever met.

I told you about my friend Fayrouz in one of my first emails, a girl I met in the service on my way to Balata Camp for the first time. I am staying with her and her family now, and they call me family. Her mother fusses over me like I'm her daughter, won't allow me to go out in the street if my clothes are rumpled or dirty, always fussing at me to wash my feet cuz they are always dirty. She washes my clothes, despite my objections, and is always trying to fix me food. She asked if I would maybe marry her oldest son once he gets out of prison so I can stay in Palestine. Anyway, Fayrouz is 20 and beautiful and passionate and an English major at Na-Jah University in Palestine. The night before the asassinations I mentioned above, we stayed up until 3 am talking about boys - her favorite subject. She just broke up with her boyfriend, the one she said looked like Che Guevara. But he didn't called her for a month, she thinks he is seeing another woman, so we agree that we were terribly mistaken, he doesn't look like Che at all, that in fact he is actually really ugly and never deserved her in the first place. "You should rip up his picture!" I say. She does, quite ceremoniously, and says "Now I will put it in the toilet!" Fayrouz considers herself a good Muslim girl, a classy lady, so as soon as she said this, she got very red, and I am laughing and laughing, and she starts laughing too. I tell her about my American boyfriends and how stupid they can be sometimes and she tells me about her Palestinian boyfriends and how stupid they can be sometimes, and we agree that it is high time that women are allowed to rule the world. 3 hours later we woke up to the sound of rockets and gunfire, and Fayrouz says, with a half smile, "I hate this life."

I have another friend in the camp, Hamoudi, who lives with his mom and his aunts and cousins, all of whom are fantastically loud, brassy women who like to smoke and watch soccer matches. I mentioned to Hamoudi that I liked the scrolls with verses from the Koran written on them that hang as decoration in his house - he must've told his mom, cuz the next time I came over, she took them off the wall and gave them to me, despite my objections. Palestinians are so generous, and they are always trying to give you things or do things for you despite your objections. I've had to train myself to not compliment anything, scarves or pictures or jewellry, because it will be immediately handed to me, even if the person is very very poor. And all of the Palestinians in Balata Camp are very very poor, although you would never know it. Fayrouz told me that the Koran says that poor people who don't let people know they are poor will be the first to enter heaven.

I've taught Hamoudi some St. Louis slang, so every time he sees me, he says "What is up, my dirty?" with a huge smile on his face. He also likes the _expression "Mi casa, su casa", although he always gets it backwards and says "Su casa, mi casa". He take me and the other internationals for pizza and to smoke the hookah at a rooftop coffee shop, and for trips into the mountains above Nablus, where he points out houses and tells us stories about the families that live in them. On my birthday, Hamoudi brought a cake to my apartment that had "Happy Birthday, my dirty" written on the top, and he and the internationals and a few Palestinian friends sang Happy Birthday to me in English and then in Arabic. I told him that he is my big brother, so now he won't allow any of the guys in the camp to speak to me and calls me all the time to check on me.

5 times a day the call to prayer blares from the loudspeaker of the mosque, and it is a strange beautiful sound that is a cross between chanting, praying, and wailing. The streets of the camp are lined with fruit vendors, one of whom recognizes me now and my penchant for bananas, so when I walk by, he shouts "Moz! Moz! Hamse shekel wahad kilo!" (Bananas! Bananas! 5 shekels for one kilo!") The streets are always busy, there are always old men arguing about politics (I think - I can only understand a few words) who beckon us over and always ask us "What do you think of the situation here? What do you think of Balata Camp?" and are very pleased when we say that even though the situation is very bad, we love Palestine and Balata Camp in particular. Kids ride bicycles and set off fireworks, and when they see our cameras they crowd around and say "Adjenabs! Soorimi!" (Foreigners! Take my picture!) They pose and clown and get big smiles when we show them the picture and say "Damar"...Balata Camp slang for "cool".

Ok, so that's lovely Palestine, and I feel much better.

Free Palestine, peeps.

magan

In the dark times,

Will there also be singing?

Yes, there will be singing,

About the dark times.

--Bertolt Brecht

chapter 9 - stories from palestine

Stories from Palestine

"Here we are like animals, we just eat and sleep and wait to die." --man from Tel Rumeda

In Tel Rumeda, a neighborhood in the city of Hebron in the south of the West Bank, Palestinians live their daily lives in fear of Israelis who occupy settlements on both sides of their homes. During the day, gangs of Israeli kids roam the streets and throw rocks and eggs and punches at the Palestinians kids on their way to and from school and their homes; if the Palestinians throw back, they are taken to the nearby military base by soldiers and beaten. One of the human rights workers I worked with there had been there for 6 months, and she said she had never seen a Palestinian kid throw a rock or a punch in defense of themselves because they fear the consequences. So when the colonist kids attack them, they just run as fast as they can. At night, the Israeli colonists shoot bullets and rocks through their windows, and soldiers enter homes in search of nothing and destroy the personal possessions of the families who live there. Colonists walk around in their Orthodox prayer shawls and kippehs on Shabat, the Jewish holy day beginning from sundown on Friday and lasting through Saturday, with large automatic guns around their necks; if a Palestinian were to carry a gun in a similar manner, or was found to have a gun, he/she would be shot on site with no questions asked. My last day in Tel Rumeda, I watched as a soldier laughed and played games with the Palestinians kids who were crowded around him...why they weren't afraid of him, I don't know. Soldiers have been known to defend both Palestinians and internationals from colonist attacks, and have often been attacked by the colonists themselves...can you imagine? Later this soldier asks one of the boys to uncover the plate of food he is carrying home before he leaves the checkpoint. I ask why he does this. He says there could be a bomb inside. I ask him why he is so afraid of Palestinians, afraid of the little boy he was just joking with a few minutes earlier. He says, "Islam is a violent religion. There are problems with Muslims all over the world. This little boy will probably grow up to become a suicide bomber, just you wait and see."

"All we can do is try. There are lots of ways to try." --man from Assira

In Assira there are 100 million cats and they wrap their grapes in pajamas. The man who is hosting us, Kassan, sees me taking photos of the brightly dressed fruit, and he says "It's to keep the bugs away." Assira is known throughout Palestine for having the best olive oil; before the second Intifada (2001), people came from Israel, Egypt, Lebanon and all over the West Bank to buy their olive oil. After the second Intifada, Assira lost everything. No one is permitted to come there to buy the oil anymore, and settlers and soldiers burn the olive trees to the ground. Kassan tells a story about an old man who took his donkey up the mountain to harvest his olives. On the way back to the village, he was stopped by a soldier who looked in his bag and asked him what he planned to do with the olives. The old man told him he was taking them to sell in the village. The soldier told him he wasn't permitted to take the olives. The old man tried to protest, to tell the soldier that the olives came from his trees, and it was the only income he had. The soldier repeated that he couldn't take the olives with him. The old man attempted to pass the soldier anyway, and the soldier shot his donkey in the head. When the old man began to cry, the soldier beat him so badly he broke his legs, and the man died in the hospital a few days later. Kassan tells me another story of a family who harvested olives all week long, and were stopped by soldiers on their way to the village. The family had six sacks of olives with them, their livelihood for the rest of the year. The soldiers ran over the sacks with their humvee. Kassan tells me how Assira feels they have been forgotten; not even journalists will make the trip to Assira, because they say the checkpoints and long walk up the mountain make it too difficult and not worth their time - they tell him that the troubles in Assira happen everywhere in the West Bank everyday, and that it isn't news anymore.


magan

chapter 8 - white girl ego trip

Something about Palestine is an ego trip for a white girl. You have delusions of grandeur, that you will arrive on the scene and the Palestinians will have parades and cry "Peace! Oh, yes, peace at last." You fee you can keep people safe because you are an American with Inalienable Rights, that Nobody can do Anything to you, that people will listen to you because you are a Westerner with access to powerful and rich people. You come here half expecting that you will end the occupation single-handedly. You believe soldiers will listen to you, will obey your orders because, after all, you have paid for their guns and jeeps and military-issued boxer briefs.

Some of the Palestinians believe this, too, that you have magic keys, a mystical power to open checkpoints and minds and stop bulldozers from destroying their homes. They ask you "Please talk to them." They ask you this while holding their babies, they ask you to explain to the men with guns that they are sick and cannot wait in line in the hot sun. They ask you to bring medicine from America, to help them build factories, to talk to George Bush and tell him how much they are suffering. They ask you to speak to the American people, all 200 million of them, to tell them to stop sending tax money to the American government, who is sending the money to the Israeli government, who is sending the money to Palestinians in care packages of bullets and rockets and monster bulldozers.

And you become sick with guilt because you know it is your responsibility to help with these things, because you know it is being done in your name and with your money, but mostly it is your responsibility because you try to be a good human being and when people are suffering you believe this is wrong and you want it to stop. You know that if you were a Palestinian - and there's really no rhyme or reason as to why you weren't born in Palestine, nothing special you did to deserve to be born in America - you would wish that people cared enough about you to stop this horrible thing being done to you.

The longer you are in Palestine, the more you learn, the more you see, you realize that there is actually very little you can do. You are mostly alone here, and there are 200 million people back in America and they feel bad about the stuff that you tell them, but not bad enough to take direct action to stop the killings, stop the wall, stop home demolitions. It will take thousands of people to do this, thousands of people to rebuild Palestine, thousands of people to stop the governments of America and Israel who are slowly killing the Palestinians. Surely out of 200 million, there are a couple thousand who have the time and resources to help you fix this problem. But they are not here. There are only 10 Americans here. You want to get pissed at people. You want to say "Why are you making me do this alone? Why am I the only one fixing our mistakes? Why aren't you here, too?"

In the same instant, you forgive them, because you know it's hard, when you have families and bills and when you are trying to find your own happiness, too. You forgive them and you decide not to judge them because you are not God, and you know that you are no saint. Because you know that when you leave this place you will be secretly glad to return to the quiet streets and the endless water and the malls full of cold air and shoes.

My friends and family and homies, the world is seriously sick right now, and the American government has not only proved themselve to be incapable of fixing things, they have also proved that they are the instigators of the sickness. We have a war in Afghanistan, a war in Iraq, we pushed for and financially supported the war in Lebanon, we support the Occupation of Palestine, and there is talk of war with Iran and North Korea. Please email back if you disagree.

We can't sit back and allow them to do what they want with our tax dollars and our power, because they are abusing it and they are killing people, and meanwhile our own education system has gone to shit, millions of people don't have health insurance, everyone is working two jobs just to get by, New Orleans is still a pile of rubble....it goes on and on. We have to take things into our own hands. We have to start working on the world's problems - and the problems within our own country - as if they are are our own problems. It's the only way things will change. We have to be brave enough to say "This is not who we want to be anymore. This is not the way we want the world to be anymore." No one is going to do it for you. I repeat - if you are unhappy with the conditions of the world, the conditions of your country and your life, you have to do something about it personally, because no one is going to do it for you.

End sermon. Things seem really bad right now, but at the same time I feel a current of change moving through our people. I think you all are tired of this militaristic, war-driven, corporate-controlled society we live then. I think you all know that there is a better way to live. I think you ready for it to happen, and I trust the day is approaching when you will feel you have the power to make it happen, when we stand strong together and take back our country.

My humble advice? Start small. Start with yourself - examine your job, your lifestyle, the things you buy - investigate how your own actions impact the world at large. Read independent media. Go to a lecture that sounds crazy and progressive and radical, and see what you think. Don't just give your money away to charity - this is still expecting other people to do the work for you. Roll up your sleeves, dig in, do volunteer work, educate yourself on political candidates, call your congressman when you're pissed off. Participate in government - this is what democracy is. Be the change you wish to see in the world.

I don't know anything, I'm not an authority on anything, but I know we can't go on living the way we are, the world cannot sustain it. I know most people are unhappy, and we need to do something about that.

Thank you for reading, for listening to my opinion. I have lots of stories to tell, will get to them in the next email.

Magan

In the dark times,

Will there also be singing?

Yes, there will be singing,

About the dark times.

--Bertolt Brecht

chapter 7 - encounter at a checkpoint

Underneath his green helmet, his eyes are clear and large and blue and when he tells me about seeing his little brother blown up by a suicide bomber, he does not look at me. "I'm so sorry", I say, and I mean it. "Oh yeah, I bet you are."

We have been at his checkpoint all morning, negotiating and pleading with him and his fellow soldiers to allow sick people, pregnant women and young children to pass through the long line of Palestinians waiting to leave Nablus, a wait that is averaging two hours today. We are annoying to him. He knows why we are here, what we stand for. "No, I mean it, I'm so sorry, my heart is broken for you." I say it and I mean it and my eyes are filling with tears thinking about my little sisters, how much I love them, what it would be like to see someone kill them. My eyes fill with tears as I think about what I would (want to) do to someone who blew up my little sister.

me and my little sis in NYC

He is suprised a little, to see me cry for him and he says "I know this is a terrible solution" - he gestures toward the checkpoint where a hundered Palestinians are packed like so much cattle into narrow gangways, waiting their turn to have their IDs checked, their bags searched, their shirts lifted, their pockets patted. Some of them do this every day. They have been waiting two hours today. It is very hot. There is another checkpoint 2 miles down the road. "I know this is not the solution", he says again. "This is not making you safer", I say. "99% of the people that come through here are not interested in hurting you, but when you treat them like this everyday, you make them want to hurt you." "I know. I know the conditions are terrible. I know they are frustrated. I know people should not live like this. But what else can we do? Last month we caught 5 people with bomb packs."

I am doubtful of this - it seems highly unlikely that a self-martyr would try to just walk through Hawara checkpoint, notorious for its thorough and extravagant security procedures, its unbending and merciless soldiers. There are many other checkpoints out of the city that are easier to pass through, not to mention the path over the mountains. But it doesn't matter - he is expressing to me that although he realizes that innocent people are suffering, he doesn't care because he believes this checkpoint keeps him and his people from suffering. It is hard to argue with this. It is hard to argue about suffering with a Jewish person. I cannot reason with his heart, so I try to reason with his head.

I tell him that the bombings are reactionary, not an offensive. The profile of a self martry is very similar to a grassroots activist in the USA - college educated, middle class upbringing, promising future, interest in social justice and politics. I tell him about a girl whose family I met, a college girl who was engaged to be married in a couple months, a girl who went into a supermarket in Tel Aviv and blew herself up. Her family had no idea she was going to do this. Why would she want to do this? I think about it all the time. What would make me do that?

female self-martyrs (suicide bombers)

The longer I live in Palestine, and get a taste of what it's like to be Palestinian, the more I understand. When you are Palestinian, you know no one has respect for your life, and you start to lose it yourself. You see soldiers kill people and imprison people without any explanation given, without any reprecussions. You know they could do this to you and your family at any moment. You know they could come destroy your house at any time, because you know a lot of innocent people this has happened to. You see them building a wall in your country, you see them illegally confiscating land from your friends and neighbors in order to do it. You see them putting up checkpoints inside your country, not on their borders but inside your country, and they tell you when you can and can't leave. You see that the world is ok with this, cuz no one seems to be stopping it, and it has been happening for 50 years. You see that all people from Israel are obligated to serve as soldiers, and you see a chance to not only take out a few of these potential or past soldiers who are committing these crimes against you and your people, you also think that if you do this, maybe the world will pay attention to what's happening to your home. You see that there is not much of a life for you or your children anyway. You think that maybe this is the best thing you can do for your people. Maybe you are wrong, but you cannot keep living like this. You cannot bear the thought of always living like this.

The soldier is quiet. I have been talking a long time. He is listening to me. He is uncomfortable. I keep talking.

I tell him I don't condone suicide bombings. I think it's horrible. But I understand it. I don't think it's any less horrible than shooting missles at people, blowing up hospitals, or forcing almost a million civilians to flee their homes. I think suicide bombings happen because of the Occupation. I don't think the Occupation is happening because of suicide bombings. I think if the Occupation ended, the bombings would stop, because Palestinians would have hope. They would have something to live for. I think if the Palestinians were given the right to a peaceful and just existence by Israel, Israel would be rewarded with peace by Palestine. You cannot oppress people and expect them not to resist. If you use violence to oppress people, they will use violence to resist it.

My president told me that attacking and occupying Iraq would keep me safer. He was wrong. It made people hate me more, it made more people want to hurt me, because I have killed thousands of innocent people in the name of my personal safety. I don't know what should've been done after September 11th. I don't know what should've been done after the Holocaust, after any of the tragedies of our time. I do know that what we do, what we have done, just perpetuates the evil that causes these tragedies to happen.

I don't think that my president is occupying Iraq because he is concerned for my safety; I don't think Olmert is occupying Palestine because he is concerned for the Israelis' safety. I think there are larger things at work, men fighting over money and power and land, and we are all victims of it. We are told that we need to be afraid of each other. We are told that people are trying to kill us - our whole lives we are told this. The Arabs, the Russians, the Japanese, the Native Americans - who is trying to kill us, who the enemy is - it changes every few years. People wanting to kill you is scary, so when someone tells us they can keep us safe, we believe it, and we do whatever they ask us. I tell this soldier that he is a victim of it, too, that he is being used, that his real enemy is not the Palestinians, but rather the men at the top who wage war for profit. I ask him what would happen if we all stopped being afraid of each other. If we all saw each other as brothers instead of distant strangers (thank you Tupac).

He looks at me a long long time. I am starting to cry again, cuz I've just told him everything inside my heart and his face is still as hard as stone. I'm embarassed and I leave. I look back and he is still looking at me.

HUWARA CHECKPOINT - PHOTO ESSAY

Huwarra Checkpoint outside Nablus - if you're on foot you go wait in line in the picnic shelter thingy

if you're in a car you wait here so soldiers can search it - when they get around to it, of course.

After you wait in the long-ass line - I've waited anywhere between 15 minutes and 3 hours - they look through your stuff. But they don't really look through it - it seems like it's kind of a symbolic gesture, and not really for security, cuz they just kinda open the bags real quick and maybe move a couple things around. Maybe bombs are real easy to spot and they don't feel like they have to look that hard. Or maybe the statement by the Israeli government that checkpoints are for security is a big crock of shit.

If you're a dude under the age of 40 (or sometimes its 30, or 50, or 60 - whatever the soldiers feel like that day) you go through a metal detector and then talk to the soldier behind the plate glass, who greets you warmly and instructs you to lift up your shirt and pants legs to give away any bombs you might be hiding under there - bombs that weren't found by the metal detector or the pat-down that usually happens before this step. Today the woman check tummies and ankles was a woman - in a Muslim culture, for a man to show this skin to a woman who isn't his wife is very humiliating.

If yer super lucky, you get the bonus hijab check. This female soldier was also enojoying patting down the Palestinian men - running her hands across their legs and buttocks - until the internationals there threw a loud enough fit and they brought in a dude to check the men. The female soldier was real disappointed, so they put her on hijab patrol to make up for it.

And less than 10 miles away......

You get to do it again!

chapter 6 - fayrouz

god is good to me and sends me little gifts every now again, and a couple days ago she sent me Fayrouz, a beautiful woman my age who was in ramallah and happened to be going where i was going and offered to take me there. on the hour-long service ride, she shows me a picture of her boyfriend and tells me she loves him and thinks he is so handsome because he looks like Che Guevara (he does not). She tells me her name is a turquoise colored stone you can find deep in the ocean, and she tells me about her brother who is in jail. He is 18, has been in prison for 2 years, and has 6 more to go. I ask why he is there. She says she does not know; the Israeli army said he is "wanted" and that is everything her family knows about it. It is a story I will hear many times in the Balata refugee camp, outside the city of Nablus, my home of the week. 2 years ago they took another brother - he was 14, and he stayed for a year. His name is Mahmoud, and he is very charming and and declares himself my protector about 10 minutes after I arrive at their home. We hear gunshots outside their front door, and I jump at the then-unfamiliar sound, and he runs outside to curse the boys who were playing with the gun for scaring me. Their house is full of wall hangings and miniature models of the Dome of the Rock that he made while he was in prison. Fayrouz and her brothers tell me how the army comes at night and kidnaps people, how they assasinate their brothers and fathers, how no explanation is ever given. Their father was assasinated 10 years ago - they miss him so much, they say. I meet their cousin, whose mother is in jail and will be there for 15 years for associating with "wanted" men. No trial. No lawyer. No charges, really. This 5 year old boy will not see his mother until he is a grown man. Welcome to Palestine.

me and fayrouz

my new bros, from the top: ahmad, machmoud, omar

Semah, Fay's sister, wearing a necklace with a picture of their brother who is in jail

I spend the night and we "make a party", as they call it here. Mahmoud runs out and buys Pepsi, nuts, and a new music mix tape that has, among other things, a reggaeton song I recognize from the USA. My hips start to sway before I even think about it, and they catch me, and they make me dance for hours. They show me traditional dances and not-so-traditional ones. In the morning, we watch an Amercian movie, one of those made-for-TV jobbies about Martin Luther King Jr., about the civil rights movement in Selma, Alabama, and as we watch the black people struggle and sing about marching to the freedom land, Fayrouz and her brothers say "yeah, yeah, yeah!". We watch the police beat them and gas them as they try to march to Montgomery, and I look over and Fayrouz is crying and Mahmoud is breathing shallowly and their eyes are glued to the screen. I think about Condoleeza Rice, about her new middle east, about her peacekeeping trip that has caused riots everywhere she goes. I think of the young man at the rally in Ramallah holding a sign that says: Condi - if segregation was not ok for you, why is it ok for me?

It has happened in america. It has happened in south africa. It happened in europe to the Jewish people. It has happened so many times, and I am watching it happen in Palestine now. I feel helpless against it most of the time, this evil that seems embedded in human nature. "The strong will be shameful"...this is an ancient Arabic proverb. Are we going to let it happen again? Cuz we don't have to...I believe this with my whole heart, that we can stop it this time.

What are you willing to do to make it stop? What are you willing to give up? If you think we can't stop it, if you think Palestine is doomed, how do we keep this from happening again? I very much welcome your thoughts...please be daring, please be creative and innovative, be audacious as hell, because "teaching our children not to hate" and "let's just give peace a chance" doesn't really seem to be working. I want plans. I want maps and drawings, I want recipes for disaster. I want actualities, not warm fuzzy ideals. How can you be different right now?

[end sermon. love you all. i miss submarine sandwiches and nachos.]

miss magan

chapter 5: i am in palestine and this is not a dream

My journal from a couple days ago:

I am in Palestine and this is not a dream. I am sitting in a tent in the middle of the desert in the Middle of the East, where Arabic and tea is flowing like a river through clouds of smoke that linger softly in the crags of the farmer's faces, who are recounting for us the story of how they came to live here:

Before the 2nd Intifada* things were very good. We all lived in Yaata (he gestures towards a far-away clump of bright lights) and worked in construction in Israel. After the 2nd Intifada, no one was allowed to work in Israel. So we move here, with our families, to work the land and raise sheep. We do not wish to be farmers or have the life of farmers, but there is not much else to do. We are told by Israel we cannot build homes; this doesn't matter much because the settlers** would come and destroy them anyway. So we live like the Bedouins, and make tents, but they are burning these, too. But it is much easier to re-make a tent. Always, they burn things to dust.

As a representative of a pacifist organization, the next question I ask is entirely inappropriate, but it is through my lips before I can stop it: Why don't you have guns to protect you? (In my private thoughts, I am imagining someone coming to burn my house down and threaten my children with knives night after night, and when I tell the police, they won't do anything about it, which is what happens in Palestine all the time. I would get a gun, and when they came to do it again, I would shoot them. I am not sorry for this.) Our translator is a little pissed I have said this and doesn't want to ask the men this question, but it is too late, cuz they have seen the look on his face and they know I have said something scandalous and they want to know what it is. They hear the question, and it makes them quiet. They say:

Right now we have nothing, and they come and threaten us with knives. If we get knives, they will get guns. If we have guns, they come with soldiers. If soldier is seeing me with a gun, he is putting me in jail for many years, no matter what the situation. It is illegal for a Palestinian to have guns.

That night, as I lie in the tent the farmers have contructed for us (us being me and Fernando from New York and Paul from Britain) so we can keep an eye on the house they have just put a new roof on, since the last one was - you guessed it - burned down - I hear a great big booming in the distance.

We all step outside the tent, and in the distance, there are 3 or 4 bright stars that have broken out of the sky and started to fly in formation, and they are dropping beautiful fiery comets on the horizon. We are silent; we don't know what we are seeing, or maybe we do and it is too much to speak about. "That's...that's them bombing Gaza, isn't it?" says Paul in his lovely British accent. Impossible, we think. We look at a map, and see we are about 60 miles away from the Gaza Strip. So this is what it looks like, I thought, when lots of people are dying...from 60 miles away, lots of people dying looks like a laser light show.

peace, salaam, shalom.
only love will prevail.

magan

*Intifada is Arabic for "uprising" and literally means "shaking off" - it refers to Palestinian resistance against Israeli oppression, both violent and non violent - the first Intifada was in 1987 and ended with the Oslo Accords in 1991, and the 2nd Intifada began in September 2000 when Ariel Sharon invaded Al-Aqsa Mosque on the Muslim holy day with 2000 soldiers
**Settlers refer to Israeli colonists who are sent to live outside Israel's borders on Palestinian land - this is one tactic the Israeli government uses to usurp land from the Palestinians. Settlers are generally known to be violent and very aggressive towards the Palestians, which causes Palestinians to leave their homes, and then they build more settlements.

SOUSSIA: a photo essay

This is the village of Soussia. Only 7 or 8 families live here, waaaay out in the Negev Desert. They farm and grow things to make money.

This is a real nice lady who lives in Soussia. I forget her name. This is her daughter, Marah. It means "happy" in Arabic.

This is Marah's Dad. He's real nice, too. He taught me how Soussians say "wow": Yabayayeeeeee!

There are Israeli settlers that live very close to Soussia. The settlers come and burn down the Palestinians' homes and hurt them with guns and knives. This is where Marah's Dad was stabbed in the head.

This is Marah's house. A couple days ago, settlers came and burned the roof off. They asked us to come help them put it back on. So we did.

These are settlers. They were not very happy that we were replacing a roof they had worked so hard to burn down.

They told us to get off "their" land. We said no. They didn't like that, and shoved some people around a little, and threatened us.

This guy got real pissed when we wouldn't stop putting the roof on, so he got on his Nextel and called.....

a bunch of these guys.

We talked to the soldiers and told them what they were doing. The settlers talked to the soldiers and told them we were bothering them. So the soldiers told everyone to just leave each other alone.

I guess the settlers didn't listen, cuz 3 nights later they came back and burned the roof off Marah's house again.

chapter 4 - roadblocks and goat's milk

Hello to family, friends, St. Louis, Ohio, and beyond:

It has been a busy few days, I don't know quite where to begin.

On Saturday I participated in a direct action in Izbat Al Tabib, a very tiny village with about 300 people who are all recognized by UNRWA as refugees. The Israeli government has issued demolition orders for most of the buildings in the village which has motivated the community - most of whom are very poor, and very tired from life under occupation - to organize. There is only one road into their village, which the army has blocked with a huge pile of rubble (for "security reasons", of course, even though you can still cross on foot and the peope that live in the village are farmers and vendors); the only other road into the village is about 50 kilometers out of the way, so you can imagine how difficult this makes things. To make matters worse, the Israeli government will not grant them building permits to build a school or health clinic, or even to put proper roofs on their homes, so the villagers have to travel long distances for very simple needs like school and groceries. If the road was not blocked, trips that now take hours would take minutes.
Our direct action was to assist the villagers as they attempted to remove the road block, which took hours as we were removing rubble and concrete with our bare hands. During the action, approximately 30 Israeli soldiers and police watched us and occasionally took aim at Palestinian kids who were shouting at them.

In order to prevent military violence a large team of internationals, including myself, formed a human wall between the soldiers and the road block, which kept them from firing into the crowd. The villagers were successful in opening the block and cheered and celebrated as a couple cars drove through. This is when the soldiers ran towards the demostrators and began to fire their machine guns in the air while other soldiers aimed at us, so it looked like they were shooting directly at us. I don't think I breathed for like 20 minutes. Despite all this, the villagers were really proud of accomplishing their goal, even though they knew the army would put it right back up...which they did, about an hour later, making the roadblock even higher than before. You're probably thinking "what was the point? what was accomplished?" Maybe nothing, but I think something: It was a symbolic victory, ...made the the villagers feel just a little less hopeless, and a lot more powerful.
I spent that evening with a wonderful family with three little girls, and they taught me to Indian dance so I taught them some theatre games which they loved. (For all my teaching artists friends: these kids were AMAZING at endowing objects...they took a scarf and became old women, karate masters, waitresses, matadors, you name it). We gave each other little presents - "for to remember", as the oldest daughter explained.

Ok, so here's a heartbreaking Sally Struthers style story, I'm just warning you. There is a family in this village in a desperate situation. The head of the household died a couple years ago, leaving behind a wife, a son, and two daugthers, one of whom has Down's Syndrome. They don't have any income, and their house is barely more than a shack, full of snakes and mice with a leaky roof, and the cost of the kids' schooling is very high because of transportation costs, books etc...since they are not allowed to build a school of their own, they have to send the kids to private schools, which have costly fees....each kid also needs about $1 a day for food and transportation. The daughter with Down's Syndrome is on medication that costs about $50 a month, and is not allowed to attend school, as they have no special ed teachers. To make matters worse, the mother has just received the notice that her house is to be demolished in the coming month. The popular committee of the village have asked me to do what I could to help this family - the village works together to give the family as much support as possible, but it falls far short, and I am in process of contacing a couple organizations in Palestine like Save The Children. If anyone is interested in "adopting" this family and contributing to their financial situation on a monthly or a one time basis, please let me know. I will also be fundraising when I get back. Also please let me know if you have any organizations in mind that may be of help.

I'm sorry to be such a buzzkill, a bleeding heart...I know people don't want to hear about this stuff. I know it horrifies you like it does me, but know there IS something that we can do about it...or we can at least try. After hearing her story, and drinking the tea and goat's milk that she very carefully prepared for us (goat's milk is SO GROSS, but I didn't have the heart not to drink all of it - she milked the damn thing right in front of us, for god's sake, and took an hour to boil and prepare it) I asked her what her dreams were. She laughed a little, and talked softly as she stared off into space, and the translator said: Her wishes are very little: to put a roof on her house, to have a chance to live, to have her children to complete school.

And that's what we all want, my friends, so if you've got a little extra time to research and contact organizations, or a little extra money to send her way (remember that every dollar gets multiplied 4 1/2 times in Palestine, so a little is a lot)...this is how we change the world just a little. I have photos that you can see when you get back, so you can see the proof right in front of you. I told her about the wonderful people that sent me there to hear her story, and she has invited all of you over for goat's milk if you ever find yourself in Palestine....I'm serious.

love you all.

magan