An Israeli Soldier Cares For My Safety

The following took place Friday, November 25th in the village of Nabi Saleh during its weekly protest against the Israeli occupation. A group of protesters managed to reach the hill, where a few hundred meters below was the village spring the illegal settlement of Halamish took by force. If you're not an Israeli settler (or their ilk), you are prevented from getting even close to the spring.


“Watch out. You might get hit by a stone.”
For a split second, various images flitted through my mind. One was me throwing my head back, convulsing and positively howling at a full moon in a deserted forest. Another was a perverse natal instinct to hug the soldier, before throttling him into seeing reason. The third was a kaleidoscope of colors. It wasn’t a full scale explosion, but my mouth became unhinged with “dignified” fury.
“You dare to stand in front me, and pretend that you care about my safety? You’re pretending to be worried if a rock hits me? How dare you, when you come here every week—and not just on Fridays but throughout the week— and terrorize this village by spraying them with skunk water, firing tear gas and rubber bullets and live ammunition at their children, at the women, the men! How many children have you arrested? How many houses have you raided? How many have suffocated from the tear gas fired deliberately in their homes, how many kids have you fired at? You don’t care about any of that!”
His little comment solicited the same reaction from the other sabaya/young women around me. We were shouting over each other, then pausing to listen, then picking up on each other’s sentences with added vitriol.
“Anyway,” I added, more calmly. “These stones have a special homing device built into them; they only hit occupiers.”
Two rocks then crashed into the protective shield of one soldier standing to my right. The one in front of me was completely flummoxed.
“Where are you from?” I asked. “Brooklyn?”
“Fuck Brooklyn.” His muddy green eyes were shocked. At that moment, it hit me. I felt so sorry for him.
The commander then marched up. “Go back ten meters,” he barked.
We stayed where we are. If we were guys, there would have been pushing, shoving, anything to provoke us and for them to justify firing from close range. But we were four Palestinian women with a few other Israeli and international activists. Never underestimate the regal wrath of Palestinian women. We will go batshit crazy on you.
“Please go back ten meters.”
Ah, the order turned into a request, which brought about another stab of the kaleidoscope colors.
“You go back! This is Palestinian land, you are the ones encroaching upon this land, and you are the ones perpetuating the colonization of an indigenous people, so you get off this land!”
The commander stared.
My sister and her friend were enjoying themselves a bit too much with their directed banter at them:
“Do you bleed differently from me? We bleed the same blood!”
“Free your minds! Zionism has imprisoned you!”
“You are a victim of your own government’s policies!”
“Put down your gun, we are protesting peacefully!”
A couple of teenagers baffling the Israeli soldiers in front of us by tearing into their state-fed propaganda. I was thoroughly amused, to say the least. I turned to another soldier.
“Isn’t this much better than firing tear gas canisters at us? Look, we’re having a dialogue! We’re talking. We’re not negotiating, since that would imply two equal parties, but we’re conversing!”
One of the girls pointed to another soldier’s face.
“You’re bleeding,” she said.
“From the rocks you throw at us.”
Kids with guns. This was a new unit. A young, scared unit who broke their own rules by replying back.
It was such a ridiculous situation. I touched his submachine gun. “Look at you, decked out like you’re about to face an army. You’re wearing a helmet, knee pads, bulletproof vest, and this gun of yours that shoots sound bombs and tear gas and bullets. We are armed with nothing. Do you realize how stupid you look?”
“You are armed with rocks.” The eyes shifted, the feet shuffled.
Mr Muddy Green Eyes. I felt so sorry for him.

Avi Dichter, Egg on Your Face?

WALTHAM, MA -- Members of Brandeis Students for Justice in Palestine (BSJP) disrupted a panel discussion of six Members of the Israeli Knesset tonight at Brandeis University.

The action targeted MK Avi Dicther, an international war criminal wanted for crimes against humanity and violations of the Geneva Convention. Dichter ordered the tortures of detained Palestinians while he served as head of Shabak, the Israeli Intelligence Services. In July 2002, Dichter ordered the assassination of a Hamas commander by dropping a one-ton bomb on his home in a residential area, causing the deaths of 15 people, including 9 children, and injuring dozens more.

When Dicther spoke, a dozen Brandeis students stood and demanded that he turn himself in to authorities, distributing warrants for his arrest. In English and in Hebrew, the students listed charges against Dichter, including torture and the bombing of civilians. They ended their disruption by chanting in Hebrew "Don't worry Avi Dicther, we'll meet you in the Hague."

The action aimed to alert the Brandeis community to the presence of a war criminal on campus. "We believe that Avi Dichter must be put to trial for his crimes against humanity," said participant Liza Behrendt.

Participant Paraska Tolan stated, "War criminals have a right to speak on our campus, but students also have the right to hold them publicly accountable for their crimes. This serves as a message that Dichter should not feel welcome, even at Brandeis University."

Lisa Hanania, a Palestinian student at Brandeis, said that she was extremely disturbed by the racist comments from some of the MKs. "MK Tzipi Hotovely claimed that 'Arabs have a different D.N.A that lacks humanity'. As a citizen of state, I am concerned that Israel is sliding into an openly racist ethnocracy."

Noam Lekach, a first-year from Israel, stated, "Brandeis claims to promote social justice, but today they invited legislators who openly espouse racist attitudes towards Palestinians."

The students emphasize that, although they targeted Dichter specifically, all MKs should be held accountable for recent racist legislation such as the "Loyalty Oath," the criminalization of Nakba commemoration, and the institutionalization of residential discrimination.

This is amazing to see, and refurbishes our belief that ten years from now, things will be much, much brighter. Good Jews, we really do admire you guys, for seeing the truth and working for justice even in the situation of being brought up your whole lives heavily (or moderately) indoctrinated by family and friends about the necessity of having a Jewish homeland supported by military occupation.

Too bad the same thing can't be said about Israeli Jews here, who are flying off the fascism mark. Support the IDF, revoke Palestinian citizens of Israel rights, don't forget to hoist that proud flag of democracy. Muppets.

Watan 3a Watar Act

Watan 3a Watar, performed at the Ramallah Cultural Palace last year. This particular acts sums it all: Palestine is the rather odd green pumpkin, sliced into two parts-1948 Palestine and the West Bank and Gaza Strip areas. 1948 Palestine is put to one side, forgotten about. The West Bank is divided from Jerusalem, which in turn is divided up into West and East Jerusalem, which is further divided up into tiny littered pieces of settlements and resettled by European Jewish settlers of Palestinian neighborhoods, etc. The West Bank is sliced into bantustans, with different cities cut off from each other directly, strewn with more settlements and settler only roads. Gaza is isolated from the world because the wrong political party is ruling it. So what's left of Palestine?

Nothing but good old hearty laughs with a look of unmistakable smugness.

Satire serves the purpose of bringing about reform in society, but we suppose the people in attendance were too star struck to notice, because having major quislings among them in the same room is a tale to be told to their grandchildren.

University of Mass. Walk Out

This is the problem with devoting every waking minute of our time to exams. We miss out on cool stuff. Like this burnation? It happened over two weeks ago. But whatever, we're really buoyed by this. Following in the foot steps of Michigan State University and Arizona State University, the University of Massachusetts, Amherst staged a similar silent protest when former IDF solider Kenny Sachs arrived on their campus in an attempt to humanize the Israeli occupation.

"The Western Massachusetts Coalition for Palestine organized a protest in order to show our solidarity with all Palestinians and to call attention to the illegal occupation in Palestine. We are a unified collective of community organizers, faculty members, campus groups, and concerned citizens. We support the international call for a boycott, divest, and sanctions movement against Israel until they comply with international law to allow for Palestinian right of return.

We engaged in a silent walk-out in order to represent the voices of those who were murdered by the Israeli Defense Forces and not able to give their account of the occupation. The Western Mass Coalition for Palestine is an anti-Zionist, anti-racist, anti-colonization group who stands with the Palestinians until the occupation ends, the separation wall is torn down, and the apartheid state of Israel allows for Palestinian self-determination."

Thank you.

And this does seem trivial and unnecessary, but we are seriously wondering if the dude with the white beard didn't scream blue murder when he took his duct tape off of his mouth. Ouch.

No, Really, Another Reason to Get Burrrrrned?

Amazing beautiful Students for Justice in Palestine of Arizona State University stage a silent walk-out during another former Israeli soldier's hogwash of preserving human dignity blah blah. These protests seriously make our day.

Want Some Aloe Vera for That BURRN

Effective, to say the least. Who else got eerie goosebumps?

Students from University of Michigan, salute. And to think, here in the West Bank, Al-Quds University (Abu Dis) still won't sever academic relations with Israel. For shame.

PS The two IDF soldiers are part of an Israeli hasbara organization called StandWithUs:

"Through brochures, speakers, programs, conferences, missions to Israel, and Internet resources, we strive to ensure that Israel's side of the story is told on university campuses and in communities, the media, libraries, and churches around the world."

Because Rupert Murdoch isn't enough.

We liked Ahmad Moor's take on this:

"Imagine, your voice is negated and occluded by a mass collective refusing to listen. There was something familiar about this.

That’s when it occurred to me – the army stooge was a Palestinian, perhaps for the first time."

UPDATE: Here's the extended video version.

"Remember, the majority of activism in the world comes from student campuses."

Oh how we sighed.