Huda has five children; her four daughters live in the US and her son lives in England. Her husband died a few years ago and she often complains that she is lonely (1). She even has an American passport so we asked her, “Why don’t you go live in the States with your daughters, Huda?” She just says, “It is better here”.
As you may imagine, not everyone here holds that opinion. Living under occupation is no picnic, especially if you would like to choose where you live or if you want to go away for the weekend. Of course she was upset when she was denied her permit to go to visit her cousin over Christmas, but otherwise only travels when there is some orthodox saint that needs celebrating somewhere. She has a pretty long term view of this Occupation and lists this time in the history of Palestine as simply the most recent in a long line of Occupiers: “….the Ottomans, the British, and now the Isra-eelis.” Unlike our young Arabic teacher who burst into tears and flung herself on our sofa when Elle confessed she was Jewish (2), Huda doesn’t harbour the same feelings toward ‘the Yehud’. We will be watching Al Jazeera and there will inevitably be some story about Palestinian hardship at the hands of the IDF (3) but Huda will just shake her head as though they are naughty schoolboys: “Oh, those Isra-eelis……tsk tsk….more tea?” Don’t get me wrong, she is under no illusions about the situation here, but she doesn’t want to ‘throw them all into the sea’ as some have suggested.
I think the real reason Huda doesn’t leave though, is the produce. We thought the fruits and vegetables were fantastic in Israel but the markets in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem seem Canadian compared to the market here in Ramallah. Even so, Huda is very picky and doesn’t fill her cart with just any old tomatoes. Elle and I used to go to the market ourselves but after going with Huda, we feel completely unqualified to manage this on our own. “NO!” she said as I headed toward the baker who was pulling fresh pita out of the oven, “Not him!” I pick up a potatoe and look for her approval. She shakes her head and pulls me along. Looking for onions, she rummages through the pile, tossing aside the majority for the ones with the tops still intact. In this case, I can understand her criteria but for the most part I have no idea. “How does she do it?” we ask ourselves when we have bought some pears on our own but they turn out to be hard and flavourless.
Well the first rule is to buy in season, something we should already know, but here, anything in season is pure gold. When we arrived in Fall it was pomegranate season and we couldn’t get enough of them. Then ‘calamantina’ (4) arrived in December from Jenin or Gaza and the baby eggplants and squashes. In February it was the season of organic cauliflower from Halil(5) but you had to get the bright yellow ones that came from the village. Now we are addicted to the thick-skinned grapefruits from Jericho which are a cross between a pomelo and a grapefruit, sweet and delicious but seemingly only available by the bushel, which means we probably have enough to bring some home with us in June.
The other factor is that Huda is definitely connected to the right people. Lately, every time we walk into her kitchen, we see yet another pile of goat cheese on her counter, the flat white blocks stacked neatly in a pyramid. “More cheese, Huda?!!!”, we ask. “No, this is for my niece Rula”. If she was more enterprising, she would make a good wage as she works hard as a cheese dealer, packaging up her stash and calling for the re-up (6). The other day while we were hiking we stopped at a Bedouin village where the family had goats and was making fresh cheese. It was all very idyllic in an ethnographic kind of way, and while everyone was fawning over all of the dairy products they were making, we knew that Huda’s Bedouins were probably better.
She doesn’t do it for money though; she does it out of love, love for her family and friends, but also the love of food. She has a bit of an obsession with it, but not the stuff-your-face kind, the cooking and feeding others process. And it is this sixth sense she has cultivated over years of being obsessed with making everything as tasty as possible which has enabled her to pick the right cucumbers every time. As obsessions and addictions go, it is not a bad one, especially for anyone living vaguely close to her.
“Come’” she said, “after lunch we eat oranges in the sun”. We follow obediently to her front porch and sit beside the geraniums as she peels one for each of us. I try to imagine Huda at the Costco in Washington somewhere, wheeling some oversized cart around, frustrated that she can’t pick through the apples. “Better to stay here in my house”, she says, and I believe her.
*A collection of selected poems by Mahmoud Darwish
Footnotes
1. Huda complains about being alone but the truth is, she is actually rarely alone and has many visitors.
2. It was, as we say, a Woody Allen moment. As I looked over at Elle her sidelocks unfurled….
3. Israeli Defence Forces
4. Clementines
5. Hebron
6. If you have watched ‘The Wire’ you get it, if not, you should watch ‘The Wire’ any way, it is really good.
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
Sunday, March 29, 2009
On the Road
We are working on a film about the roads here in Palestine (1) which takes us on many adventures as we drive around the West Bank with our camera pointed through the windshield. Sometimes the two of us just drive to see where we will get to and what we will find along the way. Other times we take along guides or passengers in exchange for their stories or comments on the drive. Most recently:
Ramallah to Jenin: We take our friend Sonia and her 13 year old son Qays to visit her elderly mother in Jenin. We go by taxi because we are not sure whether we can take our car with yellow plates into Jenin(2). We pass through approximately 4 checkpoints on the way, our driver nervously telling us to please put our camera away at the checkpoints. It is spring and the almond blossoms are blooming. Sonia is feeling nostalgic and narrates the journey for us, alternating between romantic tales of the past and resentment towards the Israeli presence felt everywhere. We decide to stay overnight with them, and walk around Jenin in the evening noticing everyone noticing us, a little surprised at the abundance of martyr banners on the lampposts.
Ramallah to Beit Ijza: Our 19-year old Arabic teacher Rand is very anxious to assist us. We tell her what we are working on and she asks whether we will take her on one of our drives, so we do. We have seen an image of a particularly brutal section of a road that is enclosed on either side by two massive walls, funneling Palestinians past settlements to outlying villages. Our neighbour Kleemans tells us this road leads to a home which is physically surrounded by a settlement. We find the road, the wall and the home embedded in the settlement. It is all a bit too much for Rand, who alternates between astonishment and crying. The man who lives in his home surrounded by the settlement is enclosed by a 20-foot high fence with barbed wire on top. I imagine the shape of his property in plan which must look like a lollipop, the driveway being the stick.
Ramallah to Nablus: We have adopted a baby lesbian here in Ramallah who has found a girlfriend from Nablus on the internet. Besides us, A and M don’t know any other lesbians in Palestine, which is probably why they got together. We have become a conduit for this budding romance, and decide to chaperone A to Nablus to see her girl, not asking her what web of lies we may be implicated in. We drive to Nablus in our car hoping to interview A along the way, but the interview is useless as she is not much of a talker, and probably more interested in her upcoming date, than indulge our questions on the road system. We ask her what she hopes for Palestine and she mumbles something about peace as she stares out the window. At the checkpoint we are not allowed in to Nablus so we leave our car and take a taxi into town. Despite being a new romance, A and M seem very familiar with each other and have an interactive style somewhere between flirtation and bickering. Unlike straight young love in Nablus, A and M can walk the streets together freely without scandal (lesbians don’t exist of course!). After lunch with Mom, we leave the two alone (that is, with her three brothers and mother) and head back home to Ramallah photographing the roads on the way.
Jerusalem to Hebron: We ask Ezra to take us on a tour of southern Palestine as this is his turf. We start in Jerusalem and head down south, weaving our way through Palestinian towns, Bedouin camps and settlements taking a combination of Palestinian roads and settler bypass roads. He wanted to show us the situation in Hebron, so we drove in the particularly nasty way, through Kiryat Arba, the settlement side of town which has been encroaching on the old part of Hebron. We soon found ourselves in the midst of checkpoint, army and settler hell. We were doing pretty well touring the insanity, until we got pulled over and ‘detained’. The army took our passports and two potty-mouthed settlers gathered round, filming us sitting in our car for some reason. They seemed to know Ezra already and had some odd insults regarding his manhood, contrasting their proliferation of children to his preference for houseplants. Ezra was so experienced in this charade he simply waited until our passports were returned and we drove back to Jerusalem to have dinner. I think we broke a record for how many checkpoints we passed that day. I don’t even remember.
Ramallah to Jericho: We had filmed the road to Jericho before, an old road recently refurbished for Palestinians as they are cutting them off from the No.1 highway which connects Jerusalem to the Jordan valley. This time however, we walked. We went with a hiking group from Ramallah which gets up at 6am most Fridays and heads to the hills exploring various trails and paths around Ramallah. We were a little worried after the taxi dropped us off near a remote village and the leader pulled out an inkjet print of a Google earth ‘map’ with our path sketched in blue marker between large mountains (3). Yet we were new to the group and put our faith in these seasoned hikers who must know where they are going. After about 3 hours of walking through valleys, across cliffs and down rocky ledges we were told that we didn’t exactly know where we were and, that we weren’t going to stop for breakfast yet. The good news was that there was really only one path, which was through the wadi (4) until it emerged on the eastern side of the range, hopefully near some form of transportation. The bad news was that elle’s knee gave out, so ‘hiking’ became more like ‘hobbling’ (accompanied with a side dish of serious kvetching). Well, in the end with the help of local shepherds, we emerged near a Bedouin village where we caught a taxi back to Jericho and then another back to Ramallah. In the cab on the way home, we chatted with a woman who pulled out her ID card at the checkpoint. Under nationality it stated: ****** (5). She had the blue ID, a Jerusalem ID as it was called, but no official identity.
Was she lost? No way, she knew exactly what side of the road she lived on.
Footnotes
1) Known as the ‘apartheid’ road system as most roads are segregated (between Jewish settlers and Palestinians) and controlled through a matrix of checkpoints and military towers.
2) Our rental car is Israeli and has yellow plates as opposed to the green Palestinian ones. Certain areas of Area ‘A’ do not allow Israeli cars (although Ramallah seems to be an exception).
3) We have a set of amazing Israeli hiking maps charting every square inch of Palestine, which would have been very helpful, but we kept that to ourselves….
4) Riverbed
5) That’s not an expletive: ****** is truly what it says next to “nationality”!
Ramallah to Jenin: We take our friend Sonia and her 13 year old son Qays to visit her elderly mother in Jenin. We go by taxi because we are not sure whether we can take our car with yellow plates into Jenin(2). We pass through approximately 4 checkpoints on the way, our driver nervously telling us to please put our camera away at the checkpoints. It is spring and the almond blossoms are blooming. Sonia is feeling nostalgic and narrates the journey for us, alternating between romantic tales of the past and resentment towards the Israeli presence felt everywhere. We decide to stay overnight with them, and walk around Jenin in the evening noticing everyone noticing us, a little surprised at the abundance of martyr banners on the lampposts.
Ramallah to Beit Ijza: Our 19-year old Arabic teacher Rand is very anxious to assist us. We tell her what we are working on and she asks whether we will take her on one of our drives, so we do. We have seen an image of a particularly brutal section of a road that is enclosed on either side by two massive walls, funneling Palestinians past settlements to outlying villages. Our neighbour Kleemans tells us this road leads to a home which is physically surrounded by a settlement. We find the road, the wall and the home embedded in the settlement. It is all a bit too much for Rand, who alternates between astonishment and crying. The man who lives in his home surrounded by the settlement is enclosed by a 20-foot high fence with barbed wire on top. I imagine the shape of his property in plan which must look like a lollipop, the driveway being the stick.
Ramallah to Nablus: We have adopted a baby lesbian here in Ramallah who has found a girlfriend from Nablus on the internet. Besides us, A and M don’t know any other lesbians in Palestine, which is probably why they got together. We have become a conduit for this budding romance, and decide to chaperone A to Nablus to see her girl, not asking her what web of lies we may be implicated in. We drive to Nablus in our car hoping to interview A along the way, but the interview is useless as she is not much of a talker, and probably more interested in her upcoming date, than indulge our questions on the road system. We ask her what she hopes for Palestine and she mumbles something about peace as she stares out the window. At the checkpoint we are not allowed in to Nablus so we leave our car and take a taxi into town. Despite being a new romance, A and M seem very familiar with each other and have an interactive style somewhere between flirtation and bickering. Unlike straight young love in Nablus, A and M can walk the streets together freely without scandal (lesbians don’t exist of course!). After lunch with Mom, we leave the two alone (that is, with her three brothers and mother) and head back home to Ramallah photographing the roads on the way.
Jerusalem to Hebron: We ask Ezra to take us on a tour of southern Palestine as this is his turf. We start in Jerusalem and head down south, weaving our way through Palestinian towns, Bedouin camps and settlements taking a combination of Palestinian roads and settler bypass roads. He wanted to show us the situation in Hebron, so we drove in the particularly nasty way, through Kiryat Arba, the settlement side of town which has been encroaching on the old part of Hebron. We soon found ourselves in the midst of checkpoint, army and settler hell. We were doing pretty well touring the insanity, until we got pulled over and ‘detained’. The army took our passports and two potty-mouthed settlers gathered round, filming us sitting in our car for some reason. They seemed to know Ezra already and had some odd insults regarding his manhood, contrasting their proliferation of children to his preference for houseplants. Ezra was so experienced in this charade he simply waited until our passports were returned and we drove back to Jerusalem to have dinner. I think we broke a record for how many checkpoints we passed that day. I don’t even remember.
Ramallah to Jericho: We had filmed the road to Jericho before, an old road recently refurbished for Palestinians as they are cutting them off from the No.1 highway which connects Jerusalem to the Jordan valley. This time however, we walked. We went with a hiking group from Ramallah which gets up at 6am most Fridays and heads to the hills exploring various trails and paths around Ramallah. We were a little worried after the taxi dropped us off near a remote village and the leader pulled out an inkjet print of a Google earth ‘map’ with our path sketched in blue marker between large mountains (3). Yet we were new to the group and put our faith in these seasoned hikers who must know where they are going. After about 3 hours of walking through valleys, across cliffs and down rocky ledges we were told that we didn’t exactly know where we were and, that we weren’t going to stop for breakfast yet. The good news was that there was really only one path, which was through the wadi (4) until it emerged on the eastern side of the range, hopefully near some form of transportation. The bad news was that elle’s knee gave out, so ‘hiking’ became more like ‘hobbling’ (accompanied with a side dish of serious kvetching). Well, in the end with the help of local shepherds, we emerged near a Bedouin village where we caught a taxi back to Jericho and then another back to Ramallah. In the cab on the way home, we chatted with a woman who pulled out her ID card at the checkpoint. Under nationality it stated: ****** (5). She had the blue ID, a Jerusalem ID as it was called, but no official identity.
Was she lost? No way, she knew exactly what side of the road she lived on.
Footnotes
1) Known as the ‘apartheid’ road system as most roads are segregated (between Jewish settlers and Palestinians) and controlled through a matrix of checkpoints and military towers.
2) Our rental car is Israeli and has yellow plates as opposed to the green Palestinian ones. Certain areas of Area ‘A’ do not allow Israeli cars (although Ramallah seems to be an exception).
3) We have a set of amazing Israeli hiking maps charting every square inch of Palestine, which would have been very helpful, but we kept that to ourselves….
4) Riverbed
5) That’s not an expletive: ****** is truly what it says next to “nationality”!
Saturday, February 21, 2009
Ramallah to Berlin
We decided to make an impromptu trip to the Berlinale, the Berlin Film Festival, in order to see some films and hopefully become encouraged to keep working on the films we have been making. The month of January was a bit of a bust with the invasion of Gaza, Ramallah had become a city of tears, demonstrations and depression. But slowly, as everyone got back to their lives (or what was left of them in Gaza) we were trying to get back to into our work and needed some inspiration.
Going to Berlin from Ramallah we experienced a bit of culture shock, and felt that these two places could not be more indicative of order vs. chaos. Driving in Ramallah was akin to playing a video game, always on guard for an obstacle to be avoided, usually an oncoming car. In Germany, never mind the cars, pedestrian traffic is tightly controlled; stray on that bike path and you’ll be immediately reprimanded by some shrill bicycle ringing. I had also forgotten how clean Germany is. Maybe they tidied up Berlin for the Berlinale, but it was amazing, not a curry-wurst wrapper or even a cigarette butt to be found. Coming from a city where land-fill sites stand in for parks, it was a bit unnerving. Yet one thing that Ramallah and Berlin do share, is a familiarity with walls. The last time I had been in Berlin was in 1986, on a high-school German exchange program. At that time, Berlin was still divided and we passed through Checkpoint Charlie to spend a day in East Berlin, trying to spend the 25 Marks we were forced to exchange upon entry. As I recall, it was nearly impossible, and I came back with a cheaply bound complete collection of Karl Marx readers. I remember seeing the wall, impressed with the graffiti, and our teenage behaviour, waving to the guards in the towers trying to elicit a response.
The Berlin wall is now a monument in the city, revealed in leftover fragments still intact, or the inspiration for some pretty cool landscape art at Potsdamer Platz. Unfortunately, the wall we are familiar with here is very much still doing its job, and let me tell you it is a LOT bigger. We kept looking at those pieces of Berlin wall and thinking, ‘you call that a wall? I’ll show you a wall!’ I do remember the Berlin wall did have this massive zone behind it with trenches and mines etc. but now, seeing the wall itself, out of context, it looked kind of pathetic next to the Palestinian one.
It took us awhile to psychically leave Ramallah and enjoy the festival. The evening we arrived we sat watching a Michael Snow video of Panasonic speakers and simultaneously realized how far away we had been. We then made ourselves fairly unpopular at the cinema office by chastising the festival for showing a retrospective of Israeli cinema. We seemed to gravitate to the films on Israel/Palestine – ‘Rachel’ and ‘Defamation’ (1). Despite the tasty Weissbier, the shiny new train stations and excessive orderliness we just couldn’t shake the Middle East.
Eventually we did calm down and attended some interesting films that weren’t connected to the politics of Israel/Palestine: films on sheep and bricks for instance. Yet in the end, we just couldn’t help it and finished off our trip with a visit to the Holocaust Memorial, Peter Eisenman’s work of hundreds of tomb-like rectangular columns which undulated with the topography, forming a grid of blocks to wander through. The memorial was very powerful and worked both as graveyard and ghetto, sculpture and environment. It seemed to also work for some children as a play structure. Our thoughts turned back to the wall, the landscape of Palestine and we wondered when we would see fragments of the Palestinian wall left as monuments to remember these bad times.
On the plane back to Tel Aviv we read about the Israeli election in the newspaper. Livni and Bibi were tied and Lieberman was going to decide how the government would be formed. The options were a choice between a right-right coalition or, a right-fascist coalition. Palestinians were fairly disinterested in the outcome, the consensus being from those we spoke to, that it really didn’t make a difference who was in power in Israel. And as for Palestinian elections, it doesn’t look like Abbas is even planning to hold any in the West Bank.
It will be awhile before that wall comes down…
Footnotes
1) ‘Rachel’ – film about Rachel Corrie, an American activist killed by an Israeli bulldozer in Gaza, near the Rafah border. ‘Defamation’ was a film by an Israeli director who takes a very critical look at the issue of anti-Semitism.
Going to Berlin from Ramallah we experienced a bit of culture shock, and felt that these two places could not be more indicative of order vs. chaos. Driving in Ramallah was akin to playing a video game, always on guard for an obstacle to be avoided, usually an oncoming car. In Germany, never mind the cars, pedestrian traffic is tightly controlled; stray on that bike path and you’ll be immediately reprimanded by some shrill bicycle ringing. I had also forgotten how clean Germany is. Maybe they tidied up Berlin for the Berlinale, but it was amazing, not a curry-wurst wrapper or even a cigarette butt to be found. Coming from a city where land-fill sites stand in for parks, it was a bit unnerving. Yet one thing that Ramallah and Berlin do share, is a familiarity with walls. The last time I had been in Berlin was in 1986, on a high-school German exchange program. At that time, Berlin was still divided and we passed through Checkpoint Charlie to spend a day in East Berlin, trying to spend the 25 Marks we were forced to exchange upon entry. As I recall, it was nearly impossible, and I came back with a cheaply bound complete collection of Karl Marx readers. I remember seeing the wall, impressed with the graffiti, and our teenage behaviour, waving to the guards in the towers trying to elicit a response.
The Berlin wall is now a monument in the city, revealed in leftover fragments still intact, or the inspiration for some pretty cool landscape art at Potsdamer Platz. Unfortunately, the wall we are familiar with here is very much still doing its job, and let me tell you it is a LOT bigger. We kept looking at those pieces of Berlin wall and thinking, ‘you call that a wall? I’ll show you a wall!’ I do remember the Berlin wall did have this massive zone behind it with trenches and mines etc. but now, seeing the wall itself, out of context, it looked kind of pathetic next to the Palestinian one.
It took us awhile to psychically leave Ramallah and enjoy the festival. The evening we arrived we sat watching a Michael Snow video of Panasonic speakers and simultaneously realized how far away we had been. We then made ourselves fairly unpopular at the cinema office by chastising the festival for showing a retrospective of Israeli cinema. We seemed to gravitate to the films on Israel/Palestine – ‘Rachel’ and ‘Defamation’ (1). Despite the tasty Weissbier, the shiny new train stations and excessive orderliness we just couldn’t shake the Middle East.
Eventually we did calm down and attended some interesting films that weren’t connected to the politics of Israel/Palestine: films on sheep and bricks for instance. Yet in the end, we just couldn’t help it and finished off our trip with a visit to the Holocaust Memorial, Peter Eisenman’s work of hundreds of tomb-like rectangular columns which undulated with the topography, forming a grid of blocks to wander through. The memorial was very powerful and worked both as graveyard and ghetto, sculpture and environment. It seemed to also work for some children as a play structure. Our thoughts turned back to the wall, the landscape of Palestine and we wondered when we would see fragments of the Palestinian wall left as monuments to remember these bad times.
On the plane back to Tel Aviv we read about the Israeli election in the newspaper. Livni and Bibi were tied and Lieberman was going to decide how the government would be formed. The options were a choice between a right-right coalition or, a right-fascist coalition. Palestinians were fairly disinterested in the outcome, the consensus being from those we spoke to, that it really didn’t make a difference who was in power in Israel. And as for Palestinian elections, it doesn’t look like Abbas is even planning to hold any in the West Bank.
It will be awhile before that wall comes down…
Footnotes
1) ‘Rachel’ – film about Rachel Corrie, an American activist killed by an Israeli bulldozer in Gaza, near the Rafah border. ‘Defamation’ was a film by an Israeli director who takes a very critical look at the issue of anti-Semitism.
Tuesday, February 3, 2009
Wild Kingdom
Love is in the air. Well, not exactly love, but a lot of sex, and not exactly in the air but in the foliage. Every time we look outside the cats have taken to the trees, fornicating on some precarious branch. We thought it might be the Ramallah style of spring fever but it is probably just because our dog Leila(1) has now commanded the lower level of our yard. They sure make a lot of racket as well. I know cats are pretty noisy whilst in the act, but it could also be because they are nervous about falling out of the tree, dropping to the earth in the middle of what seems to be a fairly traumatizing event.
As for Leila, she has become a microcosm of one aspect of the situation here, the Palestinian refugee who just can’t seem to catch a break. We have trotted her out to many an adoption occasion, only to have her efforts summarily rejected. Actually, she was more ignored than rejected, which was probably more painful for us than for her. One day however, as we were enjoying an outdoor café in Jerusalem (guiltily transgressing our BDS(2) position we have been trying to hold since Gaza) a nice outdoorsy looking guy named Mark stopped to pet her. Pleased (and desperate) that he was showing such interest in her, we laid on the sob story of how we rescued her from a life on the streets, but were unable to keep her because we were travelling bohemians with no real fixed address. We omitted her ethnicity, not wanting to risk shutting down his interest before her charms would surely win him over. In any case, she was charming enough to get an invite to his house to meet Pokey, his 12-year old dog who he thought needed a companion. So the next weekend, we brought Leila over to Mark’s house in Baka, a beautiful area of Jerusalem, full of old ‘Arab’ homes. Mark was a new import to Israel, having left California and some mysterious tech business to make Aliyah(3) about 6 months ago. Elle and I had a little talk before this visit, and decided that what was most important was that Leila find a good home, even if it was a politically incorrect one. So we took a deep breath and drank tea in Mark’s vaulted kitchen admiring the arches and stone floors while the dogs acquainted themselves outdoors. It was only when Mark started talking about a certain ‘Arab mentality in the Middle East’ which he found difficult that I saw the thought-bubble emerge out of Elle’s head: “That’s it! No racist home for Leila!” I gave her the ‘keep-your-mouth-shut-glare’. After all, wasn’t it better that Leila stay in her country, than ‘voluntarily-transfer’ to Canada? Besides, I kind of liked the idea that she would be in fact reclaiming an old Palestinian home. The other thing is, Leila herself is really not all that political. She seemed to have no issues with Pokey and was pretty happy running around Mark’s spacious backyard. In any case, whether it was our stony silence, Elle’s subsequent comments about his ‘Palestinian home’ (couldn’t help it….) or the fact that Pokey seemed irritated with Leila, Mark decided Leila just wasn’t for him.
Perhaps it was for the best. Leila now has her bags packed for Canada, rabies certificate in paw, and we no longer have to decide what level of Israel is acceptable for a Palestinian dog. It is ridiculous for sure, but ridiculous is everywhere. This past week one friend left Ramallah and one came to visit: both Jewish, both anti-Zionist, both career activists and even both lesbians. One is Israeli, one American. The American refuses to visit Israel, in fact, she refuses to recognize Israel and refers to it as ‘48’, spending all her time in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. The Israeli, doesn’t spend any time in the Occupied Territories, but to be fair, is not allowed to. Yet she did come to visit us in Ramallah, but only stayed for a few hours practically refusing to leave our apartment for reasons of guilt, shame and fear. Two women fighting for the same cause yet will probably never meet except for maybe at some feminist peace conference in another country. This is when it gets really depressing. If these two Jewish lesbian anti-Zionists(4) don’t even cross paths, what hope is there for the rest?
The cats are yowling again. I try not to imagine them enduring the season of the tomcat. Now soft and fat from the cat food we bring from Israel to feed them, I hope they can still make it up and down those trees. Maybe they are just hungry. I’ll go check.
Footnotes
1. We named her based on the epic Arabic love poem of Qays and Leila, lovers who were forbidden to marry and then went crazy. The term, ‘Majnoon Leila’ (crazy Leila) came out of this story, the precursor to Romeo and Juliet.
2. BDS: Boycott/Divestment/Sanctions
3. 'Aliyah' is widely regarded as an important Jewish cultural concept and a fundamental concept of Zionism that is enshrined in Israel's Law of Return, which accords any Jew and eligible non-Jews with immediate Jewish relatives, the legal right to assisted immigration and settlement in Israel, as well as automatic Israeli citizenship (from Wikipedia). The term ‘to make Aliyah’ describes this process of returning to Israel.
4. Again, if I may quote from Wikipedia: Anti-Zionism is opposition to Zionism, the international Jewish political movement that established a homeland for the Jewish People in Palestine and continues to support the state of Israel. Opposition to Zionism has changed over time and has taken on a spectrum of religious, ethical, political or military forms. Some include, opposition to the creation of a Jewish state prior to the appearance of the messiah, objection to the idea of a state based on maintenance of a Jewish majority, differing democratic values and differing dimensions or rejection of Israel's right to exist in any form. The legitimacy of anti-Zionist views has been disputed into the present day, along with the relationship between anti-Zionism and antisemitism. Some commentators argue that anti-Zionism represents fair opposition to Israel or its policies, particularly in the occupied territories. Others contend that to the extent anti-Zionism represents an opposition even to Israel's existence, it is inherently antisemitic. In this context, and admittedly oversimplifying, I am referring to those who believe in a one-state solution for Israel-Palestine.
As for Leila, she has become a microcosm of one aspect of the situation here, the Palestinian refugee who just can’t seem to catch a break. We have trotted her out to many an adoption occasion, only to have her efforts summarily rejected. Actually, she was more ignored than rejected, which was probably more painful for us than for her. One day however, as we were enjoying an outdoor café in Jerusalem (guiltily transgressing our BDS(2) position we have been trying to hold since Gaza) a nice outdoorsy looking guy named Mark stopped to pet her. Pleased (and desperate) that he was showing such interest in her, we laid on the sob story of how we rescued her from a life on the streets, but were unable to keep her because we were travelling bohemians with no real fixed address. We omitted her ethnicity, not wanting to risk shutting down his interest before her charms would surely win him over. In any case, she was charming enough to get an invite to his house to meet Pokey, his 12-year old dog who he thought needed a companion. So the next weekend, we brought Leila over to Mark’s house in Baka, a beautiful area of Jerusalem, full of old ‘Arab’ homes. Mark was a new import to Israel, having left California and some mysterious tech business to make Aliyah(3) about 6 months ago. Elle and I had a little talk before this visit, and decided that what was most important was that Leila find a good home, even if it was a politically incorrect one. So we took a deep breath and drank tea in Mark’s vaulted kitchen admiring the arches and stone floors while the dogs acquainted themselves outdoors. It was only when Mark started talking about a certain ‘Arab mentality in the Middle East’ which he found difficult that I saw the thought-bubble emerge out of Elle’s head: “That’s it! No racist home for Leila!” I gave her the ‘keep-your-mouth-shut-glare’. After all, wasn’t it better that Leila stay in her country, than ‘voluntarily-transfer’ to Canada? Besides, I kind of liked the idea that she would be in fact reclaiming an old Palestinian home. The other thing is, Leila herself is really not all that political. She seemed to have no issues with Pokey and was pretty happy running around Mark’s spacious backyard. In any case, whether it was our stony silence, Elle’s subsequent comments about his ‘Palestinian home’ (couldn’t help it….) or the fact that Pokey seemed irritated with Leila, Mark decided Leila just wasn’t for him.
Perhaps it was for the best. Leila now has her bags packed for Canada, rabies certificate in paw, and we no longer have to decide what level of Israel is acceptable for a Palestinian dog. It is ridiculous for sure, but ridiculous is everywhere. This past week one friend left Ramallah and one came to visit: both Jewish, both anti-Zionist, both career activists and even both lesbians. One is Israeli, one American. The American refuses to visit Israel, in fact, she refuses to recognize Israel and refers to it as ‘48’, spending all her time in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. The Israeli, doesn’t spend any time in the Occupied Territories, but to be fair, is not allowed to. Yet she did come to visit us in Ramallah, but only stayed for a few hours practically refusing to leave our apartment for reasons of guilt, shame and fear. Two women fighting for the same cause yet will probably never meet except for maybe at some feminist peace conference in another country. This is when it gets really depressing. If these two Jewish lesbian anti-Zionists(4) don’t even cross paths, what hope is there for the rest?
The cats are yowling again. I try not to imagine them enduring the season of the tomcat. Now soft and fat from the cat food we bring from Israel to feed them, I hope they can still make it up and down those trees. Maybe they are just hungry. I’ll go check.
Footnotes
1. We named her based on the epic Arabic love poem of Qays and Leila, lovers who were forbidden to marry and then went crazy. The term, ‘Majnoon Leila’ (crazy Leila) came out of this story, the precursor to Romeo and Juliet.
2. BDS: Boycott/Divestment/Sanctions
3. 'Aliyah' is widely regarded as an important Jewish cultural concept and a fundamental concept of Zionism that is enshrined in Israel's Law of Return, which accords any Jew and eligible non-Jews with immediate Jewish relatives, the legal right to assisted immigration and settlement in Israel, as well as automatic Israeli citizenship (from Wikipedia). The term ‘to make Aliyah’ describes this process of returning to Israel.
4. Again, if I may quote from Wikipedia: Anti-Zionism is opposition to Zionism, the international Jewish political movement that established a homeland for the Jewish People in Palestine and continues to support the state of Israel. Opposition to Zionism has changed over time and has taken on a spectrum of religious, ethical, political or military forms. Some include, opposition to the creation of a Jewish state prior to the appearance of the messiah, objection to the idea of a state based on maintenance of a Jewish majority, differing democratic values and differing dimensions or rejection of Israel's right to exist in any form. The legitimacy of anti-Zionist views has been disputed into the present day, along with the relationship between anti-Zionism and antisemitism. Some commentators argue that anti-Zionism represents fair opposition to Israel or its policies, particularly in the occupied territories. Others contend that to the extent anti-Zionism represents an opposition even to Israel's existence, it is inherently antisemitic. In this context, and admittedly oversimplifying, I am referring to those who believe in a one-state solution for Israel-Palestine.
Sunday, January 18, 2009
Dog Days
Reem asks us to help her buy some Orange SIM cards for her colleague in Gaza because he is sure the Jawwal towers will be bombed and Gazans will have no way of calling out. Jawwal is the Palestinian cell phone provider and Orange is the Israeli.
Chelsey arrives on her Birthright(1) trip just after the attack on Gaza. She asks her tour guide what is happening in Gaza. He tells her not to worry about it.
We are glued to Al Jazeera like everyone else, watching the carnage, the inept Arab leaders, the lying Israeli officials and keeping track of the death toll.
Together with Dunya(2), we decide to project images of Gaza with the word ‘SHAME’ in English and Hebrew. Dunya gets a projector, but we need a way of powering our projector from the car. We do some research and realize we need an ‘inverter’, a device which gives us an electrical outlet off the car battery.
Our puppy needs a home and we won’t give her to someone who will keep her outside. This rules out a Palestinian home for her so we drive to Tel Aviv where they have an animal adoption day. Hopefully we can find an inverter as well. We find one at the Home Depot. We are ready to project. Still have the dog.
We are not ready to project. The cables are too short. Nobody seems to have these cables in Ramallah. We drive to Tel Aviv for another adoption day where we sit with 100 dogs who need homes. Nobody even looks at her. We decide the dog has been racially profiled and leave. We are too late to get to the Home Depot but find an auto body shop outside Qalandia where they make the cables out of some old wire for us. We are ready to project.
I spend a day with Dunya on the tour she is giving to students from Boston College studying social justice. We drive to a Bedouin village nestled in between a hydroelectric plant and a chemical factory. Despite the power plant in their backyard, they have no electricity themselves, but a lot of cancer. We spend the day visiting ‘unrecognized villages’ and ‘concentration townships’. At lunch the 3 students ask Dunya whether they are allowed to buy drinks which are Israeli. I look down at my bottled water. There are no other drinks so it is okay.
The PA(3) hits protestors in Ramallah with teargas for a show of support for Hamas.
Our equipment now working, we drive to Jerusalem to project our images from a hotel window. We are too far from the wall we are projecting on and our projected ‘Shame’ disappears into darkness.
We are having coffee with our friend Sonia when she gets a call. It is someone from Libya who called her number randomly just to make contact with Palestinians. Apparently people from throughout the Arab world have been calling Jawwal cell phone numbers to show support.
We drive to Gaza to see where we will be stopped. Police barricades well before the Erez crossing stop us. At a gas station we see smoke rising in the distance. Soldiers tell us we are not allowed to take pictures of Gaza which we ignore. We drive south along the Gaza strip and end up where the press is lined up, viewing Gaza from miles away, green pastures in front, the dull thud of shelling in the background.
Having breakfast with Dunya, Chelsey and Huda when Reem calls. She wants to come over because she is upset. Her colleague in Gaza has called her to tell her the Israelis are in tanks outside his window. He thinks he will die.
The dog is facilitating smooth passage through the checkpoints. I’ve never seen Israelis soldiers be so friendly at Qalandia.
The Bank of Palestine across the street closes for the afternoon for an employee demonstration against the situation in Gaza. Huda calls me to take pictures of her niece who works there.
We drive around Jerusalem looking for a spot to project our ‘Shame’ slideshow. We find a spot on a busy freeway. After three minutes, two young guys cross the street to yell at us and spit on our car.
A UN school is bombed in Gaza. Then the hospital. Mark Regev, Israeli spokesman, questions whether Israel was responsible.
We give up on trying to find a home for the dog here. We are sending her to Canada with Chelsey when she leaves. She just needs her shots.
We stage another projection in Jerusalem. This time a very angry elderly man rips the projector cords out of the car. Elle gets called ‘a piece of shit’ and that she ‘probably goes with Arabs’. I only get called a bitch but it sounds much worse in Hebrew.
We spend the evening packing up boxes of humanitarian aid being sent to Gaza. Amongst the diaper, baby wipes and toothbrushes is a 2 litre bottle of Dettol still warm from the factory.
Nearly 1200 deaths and over 3000 casualties. Unilateral ceasefire is declared by Israel. Olmert says that if so much as one rocket is launched they will resume. He also says he is sorry for the civilian deaths but they did the best they could to only target Hamas. 400 children are dead.
Footnotes
1) 'Birthright' is a tour for diasporic Jewish youth funded by philanthropists and the Israeli government to encourage interest and support for Israel.
2) Dunya Alwan, our new American friend from upstairs, runs 'Birthright Unplugged' - the alternative narrative to 'Birthright', touring the Occupied Territories.
3) Palestinian Authority
Chelsey arrives on her Birthright(1) trip just after the attack on Gaza. She asks her tour guide what is happening in Gaza. He tells her not to worry about it.
We are glued to Al Jazeera like everyone else, watching the carnage, the inept Arab leaders, the lying Israeli officials and keeping track of the death toll.
Together with Dunya(2), we decide to project images of Gaza with the word ‘SHAME’ in English and Hebrew. Dunya gets a projector, but we need a way of powering our projector from the car. We do some research and realize we need an ‘inverter’, a device which gives us an electrical outlet off the car battery.
Our puppy needs a home and we won’t give her to someone who will keep her outside. This rules out a Palestinian home for her so we drive to Tel Aviv where they have an animal adoption day. Hopefully we can find an inverter as well. We find one at the Home Depot. We are ready to project. Still have the dog.
We are not ready to project. The cables are too short. Nobody seems to have these cables in Ramallah. We drive to Tel Aviv for another adoption day where we sit with 100 dogs who need homes. Nobody even looks at her. We decide the dog has been racially profiled and leave. We are too late to get to the Home Depot but find an auto body shop outside Qalandia where they make the cables out of some old wire for us. We are ready to project.
I spend a day with Dunya on the tour she is giving to students from Boston College studying social justice. We drive to a Bedouin village nestled in between a hydroelectric plant and a chemical factory. Despite the power plant in their backyard, they have no electricity themselves, but a lot of cancer. We spend the day visiting ‘unrecognized villages’ and ‘concentration townships’. At lunch the 3 students ask Dunya whether they are allowed to buy drinks which are Israeli. I look down at my bottled water. There are no other drinks so it is okay.
The PA(3) hits protestors in Ramallah with teargas for a show of support for Hamas.
Our equipment now working, we drive to Jerusalem to project our images from a hotel window. We are too far from the wall we are projecting on and our projected ‘Shame’ disappears into darkness.
We are having coffee with our friend Sonia when she gets a call. It is someone from Libya who called her number randomly just to make contact with Palestinians. Apparently people from throughout the Arab world have been calling Jawwal cell phone numbers to show support.
We drive to Gaza to see where we will be stopped. Police barricades well before the Erez crossing stop us. At a gas station we see smoke rising in the distance. Soldiers tell us we are not allowed to take pictures of Gaza which we ignore. We drive south along the Gaza strip and end up where the press is lined up, viewing Gaza from miles away, green pastures in front, the dull thud of shelling in the background.
Having breakfast with Dunya, Chelsey and Huda when Reem calls. She wants to come over because she is upset. Her colleague in Gaza has called her to tell her the Israelis are in tanks outside his window. He thinks he will die.
The dog is facilitating smooth passage through the checkpoints. I’ve never seen Israelis soldiers be so friendly at Qalandia.
The Bank of Palestine across the street closes for the afternoon for an employee demonstration against the situation in Gaza. Huda calls me to take pictures of her niece who works there.
We drive around Jerusalem looking for a spot to project our ‘Shame’ slideshow. We find a spot on a busy freeway. After three minutes, two young guys cross the street to yell at us and spit on our car.
A UN school is bombed in Gaza. Then the hospital. Mark Regev, Israeli spokesman, questions whether Israel was responsible.
We give up on trying to find a home for the dog here. We are sending her to Canada with Chelsey when she leaves. She just needs her shots.
We stage another projection in Jerusalem. This time a very angry elderly man rips the projector cords out of the car. Elle gets called ‘a piece of shit’ and that she ‘probably goes with Arabs’. I only get called a bitch but it sounds much worse in Hebrew.
We spend the evening packing up boxes of humanitarian aid being sent to Gaza. Amongst the diaper, baby wipes and toothbrushes is a 2 litre bottle of Dettol still warm from the factory.
Nearly 1200 deaths and over 3000 casualties. Unilateral ceasefire is declared by Israel. Olmert says that if so much as one rocket is launched they will resume. He also says he is sorry for the civilian deaths but they did the best they could to only target Hamas. 400 children are dead.
Footnotes
1) 'Birthright' is a tour for diasporic Jewish youth funded by philanthropists and the Israeli government to encourage interest and support for Israel.
2) Dunya Alwan, our new American friend from upstairs, runs 'Birthright Unplugged' - the alternative narrative to 'Birthright', touring the Occupied Territories.
3) Palestinian Authority
Monday, January 5, 2009
Gaza
As most of you know, the attack on Gaza started last Saturday. We were sitting in a café at the time, meeting a well-known Palestinian poet, Ghassan Zaqtan, when he got the news on his phone that the Israelis had bombed Gaza. Needless to say, our meeting with him was cut short. On our way home to check the news, the demonstrations in Al Manara had started and people started to gather in the streets. We had just heard from Neta about the conditions in Gaza before the attack, how the siege had taken its toll on the population and how dire the humanitarian crisis was. The siege was bad enough, but to hear of the scale of attack and that Israel planned to continue, was unbelievable. And have they ever. Last night we were at a demonstration in Tel Aviv when they announced that the ground invasion had begun. Despite the news, and the right-wing nationalists who were protesting our protest, it remained non-violent. It may have had something to do with the hundreds of police officers standing between them and us.
The po-po is everywhere these days, in both Israel and Palestine. We have been to many demonstrations in Ramallah in the past week, kept in control by the Palestinian police and army. Of course that in such a potentially explosive situation there would be, yet we have also seen army gathering in front of our house and riot police by the Muqata, lying in wait for a potential outbreak. The official explanation we were given was that they were protecting their people from the Israelis, yet the Israelis are not in Ramallah. The more likely reason is the PA, controlled by Fatah, is intent on quashing any visible support for Hamas. We have heard from friends how if anyone at these demonstrations raises a Hamas flag, it will be ripped out of their hands. Considering the first statement by Abbas after the airstrikes was to condemn Hamas for bringing this on themselves, this is not surprising. The other reason lurking in everyone’s mind is that Fatah is collaborating with the Israelis, and keeping everything under control in the West Bank while the Israelis beat-up Hamas (and everyone else who happens to get in the way). While he claims he ‘will not ride into Gaza on an Israeli tank’, who will fill the void if Hamas is destroyed? The one statement from Israel on this invasion that I do believe is that they don’t want to re-occupy Gaza. Who wants to be in charge of all those troublesome and expensive Palestinians again?
As you can imagine, the mood around here on New Year’s was less than celebratory. We attended a candlelight vigil at Al Manara, and for the first time, encountered a bit of hostility. “Why are you here? Who is the real terrorist?” a man asked us. When we apparently answered his questions correctly, he then tried to befriend us, but this was not the ‘Welcome, welcome” we were used to. But in addition to being angry, people are depressed. Cut off from Gaza, controlled by the PA and the Israelis, they feel helpless. But beyond their anger and rage at the Israeli attack, the Palestinians are disgusted with the rest of the Arab world who have completely abandoned them (again). As the Arab states schedule their meetings, and the UN debates the wording of their ceasefire statement (to be rejected by the US again), the tanks are rolling in and the airstrikes continue.
I don’t need to give you my list of top 10 statements by Livni, Barak, Olmert and Peres (although I think “there is no humanitarian crisis” wins) because I’m sure you have heard these campaign slogans on the news. Elle has written a great piece on the injustice of this attack on Gaza (see http://landed-graphicpictures.blogspot.com). In the meantime, we have been trying to adjust to the new reality around here, which is still a bit of an unknown. As I have mentioned to all that are worried about us, Ramallah has been very calm and we are for the most part, ensconced in our apartment planning some kind of guerrilla-girls propaganda piece, or watching the television at Huda’s while she prepares our next meal.
Simultaneously, it was Elle’s birthday (change of plans), Elle’s beloved dog Sigmund was put down (haram….), our friend Chelsey arrived and is in the middle of her Birthright tour nightmare, and, we rescued another animal (puppy headed for the trunk of a car). We are trying to find a home for this sweet little mutt but so far, no luck….not exactly the best time. We thought of advertising her as a refugee from Gaza who made a dash for the door when the tanks rolled in. Any takers?
The po-po is everywhere these days, in both Israel and Palestine. We have been to many demonstrations in Ramallah in the past week, kept in control by the Palestinian police and army. Of course that in such a potentially explosive situation there would be, yet we have also seen army gathering in front of our house and riot police by the Muqata, lying in wait for a potential outbreak. The official explanation we were given was that they were protecting their people from the Israelis, yet the Israelis are not in Ramallah. The more likely reason is the PA, controlled by Fatah, is intent on quashing any visible support for Hamas. We have heard from friends how if anyone at these demonstrations raises a Hamas flag, it will be ripped out of their hands. Considering the first statement by Abbas after the airstrikes was to condemn Hamas for bringing this on themselves, this is not surprising. The other reason lurking in everyone’s mind is that Fatah is collaborating with the Israelis, and keeping everything under control in the West Bank while the Israelis beat-up Hamas (and everyone else who happens to get in the way). While he claims he ‘will not ride into Gaza on an Israeli tank’, who will fill the void if Hamas is destroyed? The one statement from Israel on this invasion that I do believe is that they don’t want to re-occupy Gaza. Who wants to be in charge of all those troublesome and expensive Palestinians again?
As you can imagine, the mood around here on New Year’s was less than celebratory. We attended a candlelight vigil at Al Manara, and for the first time, encountered a bit of hostility. “Why are you here? Who is the real terrorist?” a man asked us. When we apparently answered his questions correctly, he then tried to befriend us, but this was not the ‘Welcome, welcome” we were used to. But in addition to being angry, people are depressed. Cut off from Gaza, controlled by the PA and the Israelis, they feel helpless. But beyond their anger and rage at the Israeli attack, the Palestinians are disgusted with the rest of the Arab world who have completely abandoned them (again). As the Arab states schedule their meetings, and the UN debates the wording of their ceasefire statement (to be rejected by the US again), the tanks are rolling in and the airstrikes continue.
I don’t need to give you my list of top 10 statements by Livni, Barak, Olmert and Peres (although I think “there is no humanitarian crisis” wins) because I’m sure you have heard these campaign slogans on the news. Elle has written a great piece on the injustice of this attack on Gaza (see http://landed-graphicpictures.blogspot.com). In the meantime, we have been trying to adjust to the new reality around here, which is still a bit of an unknown. As I have mentioned to all that are worried about us, Ramallah has been very calm and we are for the most part, ensconced in our apartment planning some kind of guerrilla-girls propaganda piece, or watching the television at Huda’s while she prepares our next meal.
Simultaneously, it was Elle’s birthday (change of plans), Elle’s beloved dog Sigmund was put down (haram….), our friend Chelsey arrived and is in the middle of her Birthright tour nightmare, and, we rescued another animal (puppy headed for the trunk of a car). We are trying to find a home for this sweet little mutt but so far, no luck….not exactly the best time. We thought of advertising her as a refugee from Gaza who made a dash for the door when the tanks rolled in. Any takers?
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