OLYMPIA, Wash. — Obviously the photo above wasn’t snapped at Percival Landing here in Oly. It was taken quite a bit ago, in September in Bil’in, two days before leaving Palestine. This blog has languished a bit since then. Spent a few weeks in UK and Europe and then flew home. I guess I consider this a little bit of a wrap-up report on this summer’s gig with the International Solidarity Movement. Not to say I’m done with working with the good folks at ISM by a long shot, but this little blog probably won’t pick up again until the next trip over.

what i saw
Again and again over this summer, I saw people choose cardboard signs and felt markers to go up against people weilding machine guns. Paper maché constructions marched against tear gas canisters and batons. People responding to tyranny, day-long military ordered curfews and midnight home invasions with letters, music, and marching. A group of rabbis, Palestinians and foreign activists snuck into a village near Nablus to rebuild homes the military keeps bulldozing in order to convince the rest of the world that it’s a place without a people so they might as well seize it. Shepherds continue to take their flocks to the same land in the southern Hebron hills they always have in spite of the (relevively) recent addition of settlers who will come and attack them for it.

People still head toward their olive groves as military bulldozers continue to destroy the land and build huge walls to continue the expansion of Israeli territory in the West Bank. People still try to build homes and have cook outs tand invite people to visit their ever shrinking villages. Maintaining everyday life becomes an act of resistance when the government that’s attacking you has only one goal: of you not existing.

on and ongoing
So leaving through the airport was a bit of fun. Israeli officials ran off with my laptop computer, digital camera and even a film camera and none have been seen again. They took them under the auspices of “security” but said they would be on the plane when it leanded at Heathrow. Big surprise: They weren’t. Swiss Air officials says this is a huge problem they have with Ben Gurion Ariport security people. They get check-in baggage claims from the airline, never actually give them the baggage in question and then stick them with the bill as supposedly lost luggage. It was tiring and inconvenient, but on the whole, I can’t complain too much about it. Well, I probably can. And will. But proper perspective has a way of taking the piss out of your argument. The Israeli government ripped off my computer and a couple of cameras because they were in a tizzy that they might have been used to work with some Palestinians who still seem to beleive they deserve basice human rights. I’m out some equipment. It bugged me for a while. It still sort of does. Being bugged is nothing compared to being under a military occupation. To being shot at because you decided to go to the corner store.

Earlier this week, Israeli soldiers invaded Bil’in and abducted four people in the dark of night. It brings the number of people taken from the village at night up to about 15. they are accused of damaging the metal poles intended to serve as the foundation for the annexation barrier, being built on their land. Considering what these folks are doing and risking, I can stand getting hastled a little by the yahoos at the airport. I can get my Swiss Air check for the stuff they ripped off and load all thsoe pictures I had wiped off the hard drive anyway and work from here. Israeli soldiers on October 27 arrested and jaile a 15 year old Palestinian girl walking home from scool in Hebron because she had the gall to ask soldiers to get nearby settlers to stop hitting her.

Computers, cameras and the equipment we use to document these things can all be replaced. There’s no Swiss Air payment that will help get this girl to school and home safely or let people sleep a full night without wondering if tonight will be when a bunch of teenaged soldiers are ordered to bust through their doors and drag them off.

So more photos might go up on this site once I have a way to upload them. That’s the only thing. They can slow a few of us down as we get out gear replaced. It doesn’t compare to what they’re doing to people’s lives right now.

palestine and oly in london
It was a surreal night as the theater. Stayed in UK for a few weeks after leaving Ramallah and toward the end of that trip, met up with a couple of our Rafah-bound ORSCP people and we attended a performance of “My Name is Rachel Corrie.” This is the play that’s basically Rache’s writings put into monologue. I liked the play. I liked the mix of message, personality and humor that existed in the writing translated to this performance. And it was the perfect thing to see at the right time.

But it was also a little weird sitting there, listening to familiar lines about places I know in Olympia and sitting next to two people bound for Rafah. It was hard not to think about the back stories and the “what ever happeend to” about people who were mentioned. For the people around me, London theatre goers, these people were characters mentioned in a line. For us three, these were people we know. Still, in spite of the ending we all know is coming, the play offers an optimism that no designer label government plan can match whether it’s “road map” or disengagement.” It captures that common humanity that a growing number of people are seeing in one another. That we don’t lack that much commonality, and the people who try to try to convince us otherwise tend to have agendas that run contrary to the greater good for the rest of us.

Anyway, it was a play that, if anything, showed why there’s a greater need to dive in. It’s not about choosing sides of either Palestinian or Israeli, but about going along with humanity.

There’s this little trick argument that people who want to challenge anyone wanting go work against the occupation. One example of this is to ask “Why don’t you go to Darfur?” It’s not a particularly good trick, though, because I actually think Darfur would be a great place to go. It’s another place where corporations are profitting by stirring up fake ethnic rivalries. Apparently, there are no WTO rules against that sort of thing.

But I’m dubious about people who come up with all sorts of things “you should do.” The best answer is to say “you seem really caught up in this Darfur thing, I think you should look into going and working with some organization there.” Offer them a couple of options. Ask them on occasion why they haven’t left yet. It really pisses them off. Sometimes, though not always, that’s enough for me.

Enough ranting for now. National Novel Writing Month starts in a couple of days. And there’s more gadgets and equipment to get lined up for folks planning to head over to Palestine. And there’s this photo project in the works. See, they took two of my cameras at the airport. So I’m kind of working on this thing right now to get hundreds of cameras in. More on that later.

For now, over and out.

Browse Timeline

• « Military abducts Bil’in villagers
• » Preccupied bloggers in the Jerusalem Post

Related Entries

Data entry...Demolishing Dershowitz...Fake ignorance about the controversy you’re about to raise doesn’t mean other people can’t criticize you...THE CAMPAIGN FOR THE RIGHT TO ENTER/RE-ENTER...New film looks at aftermath of Nahr al-Bared refugee camp battle...