Jerry Levin

From The Inside Looking Out: Report-48

by Jerry Levin

People I meet still ask, why

this one time completely secular Jewish American atheist and

mainstream television network foreign correspondent gave up that

career to become a full time volunteer member of CPT (Christian

Peacemaker Teams). And I tell them it has everything to do with my

kidnapping by the Hizballah in 1984 back when I was running CNN's

Middle East bureau in Beirut. Up until that time, I had believed

quite emphatically and unquestioningly in what you might call the

efficacy of violence. In other words, I was convinced that in certain

situations violence worked. Coupled with that belief was also my

atheistic or perhaps only agnostic disbelief, a disdain for the

entire concept of faith, which perceived no rational connection

between my sometimes "yes" belief in the efficacy of violence, and my

always "no" disbelief in God.

But in captivity after ten days of intense contemplation, I reasoned

my way to a complete conceptual turn around: to an always belief in

God and a never belief in the efficacy of violence. It was triggered

in part because of an ah! ha! moment in which I experienced a sudden

insight as to the absolute inability of human violence to achieve any

condition that can be of permanent value to humankind.

With respect to nonviolence, it became clear to me in captivity that

the absence of nonviolence as a primary motivating force in terms of

conduct--in terms of human behavior in other words--remains

undoubtedly one of the most crucial problems that the world needs to

face up to without blinking, if humankind is to survive.

We need to face up to the undeniable effects of rationalized

violence, because, to begin with, too many people--especially here at

home in the United States, and, of course, elsewhere--only give lip

service to teachings about nonviolence as taught for instance by

Jesus during his Sermon on the Mount. By their actions however, it is

clear they are doing their best to turn Jesus into a nationalistic

tribal God of war.

by Jerry Levin

East Jerusalem, January 10, 2005

From The Inside Looking Out: Report-47

On April 21st, Mordechai Vanunu

will have been out of prison for a year, but not out of Israeli

custody or jurisdiction. Then at that time the one-year ban on

travel outside the country ends.

Maybe.

Like the administrative detentions of thousands of political

prisoners in Israeli prisons-Palestinian and Israeli-his

circumscribed conditions outside of jail could be extended. In

official (and unofficial) circles, there still is amongst Israelis

great resentment of his lifting the veil of secrecy surrounding

Israel's nuclear weapons program nineteen years ago. And, even

though he says he revealed all he knows about the program back in

1986, there is the worry that, if allowed to fly the coop, his

denials notwithstanding, he will begin sharing as yet unrevealed

secrets that will bring activities at Israel's Dimona nuclear

facility into a new and still unwelcome glare of international

scrutiny.

by Jerry Levin

East Jerusalem, January 8, 2004

From The Inside Looking Out: Report-46

Now that our visas have almost

expired, my wife, Sis, and I will be leaving Palestine and Israel

for a few weeks. That is more than Mordechai Vanunu can do, hemmed

in as he is by official Israeli restrictions, which he ticks off one

by one. "Number one: not to leave the country for one year. Number

two, if I want to move in Israel, I should report every day to the

police where I am going and where I am staying. But I don't want to

go into Israel. I want to leave it.

"Number three: Even though, I don't have to report where I am going

in Jerusalem, if I want to sleep in another house, even in

Jerusalem, I have to report where each night. Number four: I am not

allowed to go to the Palestinian territories." So Palestinian East

Jerusalem is "home" for now, and the Anglican St. George's Cathedral

guesthouse is his current address.

From The Inside Looking Out: Report-42

by Jerry Levin

(Hebron, West Bank Palestine, December 15, 2004). This is another in

a series of reports exemplifying CTSD (Current Traumatic Stress

Disorder) with a focus on the village of At-Tuwani as a stand-in for

all of Palestine's severely occupation-affected village, towns, and

cities.

CTSD (also in therapeutic circles better known as Chronic Traumatic

Stress Disorder) exists when there is no end (or respite even) to

both the actuality and logical expectation of additional

debilitating stress at any moment: no appreciable space in which

CTSD has even half a chance to become PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress

Disorder) and, therefore, presumably more relievable. Here's what I

mean.

The parents of our friend, Hassan, were not originally from At-

Tuwani, as is the case with some of its other current residents.

Hassan is the one who asked CPT and Operation Dove to establish an

ongoing presence there. His request for help in the form of

hopefully discouraging observations and accompaniments was prompted

by stepped up efforts by squatters living in the adjacent Ma'on

settlement to hinder and prevent villagers from bettering their

meager living conditions. At the same time, of course, Ma'on's

sneaky and often violent marauders and vandals with the facetious

protection of a series of Labor and Likud led Israeli governments

has continued to improve theirs.

From The Inside Looking Out: Report-40

by Jerry Levin

Hebron. West Bank Palestine, December 4, 2004

It's been a while

since the term PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) attained a kind

of idiomatic universality. But now I think it's important to

recognize that--where traumatic stresses and the disorders resulting

from them are concerned--there is something that may be even worse

than PTSD; and that is CTSD: Current Traumatic Stress Disorder. The

kind that a person being scarred and rescarred by perpetual violence

can't leave behind. Can't leave behind because it never stops. The

kind where--tragically--a victim doesn't have an opportunity to

reach the point where relentless ongoing stress--deliberately

applied--can be left behind so that he, she, or they can enter into

a "post traumatic" phase, where presumably there is a better chance

for recovery and healing.

So this report is about CTSD, especially as it applies to the

beleaguered, careworn men, women, and children of At-Tuwani who, in

the face of unrelenting subtractive too often violent domination,

are struggling from one day to the next to hang on to their way of

life and the surviving dignity they amazingly still are able to

muster. At-Tuwani is a small and ancient Palestinian village

situated too close for comfort to Ma'on, one of the militant

violently acquisitive Israeli settlements in the Yatta hills

southeast of Hebron.

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.

For example, when we left Palestine back in early June, the two story high imposing

photo-mural (in color) of Yassir Arafat, which had been removed the year before from

its place of prominence above the entrance to Hebron's Municipal Building, was still

down. (Hebron is Hamas country.) But as soon as it was clear that he was mortally

ill, the sign suddenly reappeared, the week before last. "He is our national symbol

of resistance," more than one Hebron resident, critics all of Arafat's domestic

administration, said; "and for that we honor him."

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.