Personal Stories (Palestine & Israel)

From The Inside Looking Out: Report-38

(Hebron, West Bank, Palestine, December 19, 2003) I've written the following before: "Every time my wife and I leave Palestine and Israel and head for home--when our visas are about to run out--we hope that things won't get worse here while we are back in the States; but sadly we know they will.

And, sure enough, they do.

Similarly, when we come back from the U. S. we hope that things won't get worse once we get back to the territories; but sadly we know they will.

And they do.

by Jerry Levin

Hebron, West Bank, Palestine

May 28, 2004

A section of the "annexation" wall has reached Ramallah western edge of Qalandiya checkpoint, south of Ramallah, which bars West Bank Palestinians coming down from the north from entering Jerusalem. However, it has been positioned-of course unilaterally--a considerable distance inside the Palestine side of the checkpoint, approximately a quarter of a mile down from where IDs and passports are currently being checked.

Something similar, of course, happened earlier this year in East Jerusalem. A section of the "annexation wall" sliced drastically through Abu Dis, putting Al-Quds University on the "wrong" side. Now it sits in the West Bank cut off from most of its student body and faculty. (See also From The Inside Out Report-34: Now The Sun Sets at 2:30.) And this section of the "annexation" has become the site of shootings of distressed Palestinians trying to sneak from one side to the other.

South of Jerusalem, a similar unilateral scenario is unfolding. The "annexation" wall has wormed its way up a hill northeast of Bethlehem to the eastern edge of the defunct Hebron Road, which traverses the Tantur checkpoint separating Jerusalem from Bethlehem. The Hebron Road once was the main thoroughfare south from Jerusalem through Bethlehem to and through Hebron. Now, however, the Hebron Road is abruptly blocked about a half mile down from the Tantur checkpoint by a forbidding Israeli army stockade, which encloses and seals off the heavily guarded Rachel's Tomb locale from the rest of Bethlehem. The religious site was lost to the West Bank as a tourist attraction when it was unilaterally attached to Jerusalem a few years ago.

By Clarence Musgrave

Circular Letter No 186

24th September 2004

At the start of last week's letter I mentioned that we had met some of the members of the Peace and Justice Network of the Anglican Church. Yesterday, there was a report in the press here (Haaretz 23rd September P 8) under the headline "Anglican delegation to recommend divestment." 'Leading members of the Anglican Church will recommend that their decision-making body adopt an anti-Israel divestment policy similar to the one the Presbyterian Church (of the USA) passed earlier this summer.' This sort of action is not dissimilar to that taken years ago when Apartheid was still the official policy in South Africa. Interestingly, in one of the meetings that we had this week with a member of staff of B'Tselem, he expressed concern about the fact that Israel might be perceived by the world at large as another version of South Africa, and hoped that a resolution to the current conflict would be found before this happened.

from: Marthame and Elizabeth Sanders

Dear Friends,

We are in the final leg of our journey across the U.S., speaking about Christians in Palestine, and sharing our film Salt of the Earth. We hope that those of you living in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, and Massachusetts will be able to come to our June events, and those of you in the Chicago area might be able to attend the Chicago Palestine Film Festival, which will show six of the nine chapters of Salt of the Earth on June 20 and 27. Details for our upcoming programs, film clips, links, and a host of resources of how to get involved are available on our renovated website (www.saltfilms.net ). If you haven't visited in a while, we encourage you to check it out.

The past five months of our coast-to-coast tour have been challenging and fulfilling. We have especially enjoyed traveling with Zababdeh's clergy. Fr. Firas (Melkite), Fr. Toma (Orthodox), and Fr. Aktham (Roman Catholic), have all been able to accompany us on parts of our journey, and we look forward to the Episcopal priest Fr. Fadi joining us in June.

We were pleased not only because we miss our friends in Zababdeh, but also because it gave so many folks here the opportunity to get to know these Palestinian Christian leaders. And it gave us the opportunity to return a bit of the hospitality we received in Palestine; between programs, we managed to give them a bit of American-style fun, ranging from putt-putt to roller coasters, from feeding baby alligators to visiting the Lincoln Memorial.

Not everything here has been so innocent or fun, however. While our talks are often met with enthusiasm and interest, we also encounter hopelessness and helpless frustration with the cycle of violence, with the atrocities on our TV screens. At times we've been met with an almost visceral anger, accused of being hateful and bigoted. And other times we have received comments like these:

"Well, you know, the real problem over there is that Jews are greedy. That's why they've had problems throughout history."

"We don't hear the true story of the Middle East here because Jews control the media and the money - just like it was in Germany."

It is a chilling experience to hear these assertions here in U.S., where we prefer to pretend that such hateful and ignorant prejudice are no longer accepted in the mainstream. These who have felt free to share their anti-Jewish sentiments with us have assumed that we must agree.

Presumably, the thinking goes, anyone who cares about Palestinians must hate Jews. This anti-Semitism is one manifestation of a binary thinking, a "friend or foe - with us or against us" mentality infecting a large part of our nation. Commonly, it can be heard driving much of the political discourse on our airwaves; in its extreme, it can lead to dehumanizing atrocities, as those our military committed at Abu Ghraib.

By Maria Khoury

My home is Taybeh, a village between Jerusalem and Jericho, not far from Ramallah. Taybeh received its present name during Salahdin's visit in the 12th century. Its earlier name, Ephraim, is mentioned in the New Testament: "Jesus therefore walked no more openly among the Jews; but went thence unto a country near the wilderness, into a city called Ephraim." (John 11:54). Christians have lived here since the time of Christ.

As a child growing up in America, I didn't realize there were still Christians in the Holy Land -- I imagined only Jews and Muslims. It wasn't until I was a student at Hellenic College, where I met my husband, David Khoury, himself a Palestinian, that I began to hear about Christianity's living presence in the places mentioned in the Gospel.

from: Sami Awad

The silence of the United States government and the governments of the world to the Israeli atrocities taking place against the Palestinian civilians in the West Bank cities continues to be the green light needed for the Israeli government to terrorize, destroy and kill the Palestinian people. When the United Nations' Security Council passes a resolution demanding that a country take immediate action, then every pressure is imposed on that country to abide by this resolution (economic, political and even military). When will Israel be pressured to abide with UN resolutions recently passed-with the support of the US-demanding Israel's immediate withdrawal from the West Bank cities? Imagine if this resolution was passed on a country like Iraq or Syria, what would the US be doing then? Even if Israel was a democracy, as it claims, the world should not accept this as an excuse to allow it to continue its undemocratic, inhumane and immoral actions against the Palestinians. Let, then, every country in the world claim "democracy" and receive international justification to terrorize and kill its enemies in cold blood.

Report by Bill Dienst , M.D.

Rafah, Gaza Strip, Palestine 11/16/03

We arrive at a scene of destruction that defies words. Eight hours ago, Israeli tanks were here searching for a Hamas activist, according to local witnesses. Their accounts are being translated on site from Arabic into English by Mrs. Ola Nijim, who works for the Union of Health Workers Committee, a non governmental organization that provides various health services here in the Gaza Strip.