bintibop

The Lanterns musical

Yesterday on All Things Considered, I heard about a musical in Ramallah. Based on "The Little Lantern," a story Ghassan Kanafani wrote for his niece, the musical is called The Lanterns and features children. You can listen to the NPR story at
http://www.npr.org/rundowns/rundown.php?prgId=2&prgDate=12-Aug-2004 -- just scroll down to the story entitled "Palestinians Embrace Musical Allegory." The niece for whom Kanafani wrote the original story died with him in the car bombing in Lebanon in 1972. If you haven't read Kanafani's novella Return to Haifa, then go find it. Still one of the best pieces of literature I've read or taught.

the drive

This link takes you to a site put up by a 21-year-old Chilean student in Palestine.

I found it while reading posts by contributors to i am a palestinian which Sandy had listed in a previous post.

The amount of risk this individual student takes to expose some things is dedicated.

Here's the post I read which prompted me to find his site...

I am not a palestinian, but I am a 21 year old Chilean citizen currently in Palestine studying arabic. I have a website dedicated to Palestinians that have to live under occupation, with pictures and journal entries on the horrors and sufferings of the occupation.
I want to share a part of a journal entry of last week...

Today, after the killing of Abelaziz Rantisi, I approached Qalandiya checkpoint in order to cross to Jerusalem and I witnessed a battle between the soldiers and....yea...kids....teens....

Soldiers had m-16's and a humvee.

Kids had stones.

I took AMAZING pictures of the soldiers shooting at the kids and how they ducked and pointed at their targets and shot at them, I was about 80 meters from them, but they couldnt see me....but the soldiers at the checkpoint did not far away did...

When i was done taking pictures, (About 30) I went on my merry way to Jerusalem, but the commander stopped me and asked me what pictures i took and demanded to see them. This is the officer that comes from New York....

I showed him, told me to step aside, and said that i had to delete them....i refused.....he insisted....and i was surrounded by 4 more soldiers.

Ok...fine...i did...so i went through each of the pictures...at first they wanted me to delete ALL the pictures, but i complained saying that i would only agree to delete the ones that had soldiers in them...not of the kids....but they wanted me to delete the pictures of the kids throwing stones as well.

So i told the commander, i was just taking pictures of the soldiers shooting at the kids....he QUICKLY yelled at me and said...

OH PLEASE, THEY ARENT SHOOTING AT THE KIDS!!!!

umm...yea they are sir...its HERE in the camera.

OH, WHAT WOULD YOU DO IF THEY THREW STONES AT YOU HUH?

uhh, they have m16's, the kids have stones sir...

YEA, BUT A STONE IN YOUR HEAD CAN KILL YOU!!!!

oh please, these kids are 30 meters away AT LEAST, the soldiers have HELMETS, bulletproof vests, and a HUMVEE for gods sake!!!

NO NO NO, YOU DONT KNOW HOW A STONE CAN KILL YOU (stressing the word kill and pointing at his helmet with a stone he picked up from the ground)... comical isnt it?? he was hitting his HELMET..idiot..

So I said, listen, these kids are protesting against this illegal occupation...they are expressing themselves...( i should have mentioned the killing of rantisi as well, but i didnt)

ILLEGAL? OCCUPATION? PLEASE, THIS IS JORDANIAN TERRITORY!!! (he stomped with his foot on the ground as he said this) SEE, LOOK, LOOK, THIS IS JORDANIAN TERRITORY AFTER 1967!!

i looked at him and said WHAT!??! (another sign of denial from the zionists)

YEA, THIS IS JORDANIAN TERRITORY!! YOU DONT WANT TO GET IN THIS DISCUSSION WITH ME, I HAVE BEEN A JOURNALIST FOR 30 YEARS!!! (and now he is a soldier?? haha, but when he defied me not to get in this conversation with him, I widely smiled and said, oh yes i DO)

Listen, i would LOVE to discuss this with you, but i think this is not the place or time or situation...but trust me, i KNOW what is going on, and the difference is that you are COMPLETELY BIASED towards the israelis...

NO, IM NOT!! IM NOT BIASED!!!

of course you are sir, you are jewish, you must protect and excuse your existence and you are a soldier!!! (i laughed) i said, of COURSE you are biased!!! I can give you facts from history and they wouldnt be biased, they would be statements, plans AND actions from YOUR leaders and members of society!!!!

.....(he was silent)

PLUS!!! the breaching of international law, cannot be excused and we both know that, and the abuses occur everyday, and lets not even discuss the settlements, AND the settlers. What im trying to do by talking to you about this is so tell you that according to ME, is that the establishment of the state of isral WAS AND IS MORALLY WRONG. ( i cant believe i told the commander this)

.....(he just mumbled, didnt know what to say and sort of nodded and said that he could say the same about the palestinians!!! jesus...i couldnt keep arguing with such a scholar you know? im only a student and he is a journalist?!!?!??!...)

so i asked if i could go, shook his hand and I left.........
Posted by: Klaus Heiss | Age: 21 | Location: Palestinian Territories

independence

We are so lucky to have our independence, aren't we? As blind patriotism runs rampant today, I read this article. It helps me remind myself that my money goes to build this, to plot against the freedom of others, to commit genocide.

Happy Independence Day.

learning curve

I just learned something about editing in blogs. I posted a comment to Sandy's "wall" post and found there was no link (maybe no html capability in comments?) so I went to edit it and... I can delete Sandy's comments to my posts but can't edit or delete my own comments posted. Go figure.

So the link I was trying to provide was stop the apartheid wall photojournal. Worth looking at and reading.

Now, as for changing an old post, I tried to follow my own thought process (very scary), and realized it's somehow connected to not wanting to waste space/paper/bandwidth -- whatever strange synapse was firing in my head at the time.

I didn't want to be a blog hog.

Soooooieee!!!

blog-a-rama revision

Hypertext, blogs, web-based communication -- what a trip! Just re-read MJ's 15 June 2004 posting titled "blog-a-rama," and guess what? It was totally different -- MJ deleted the letter she wrote and put in a whole 'nother thang. Wow. The fixity of text on the web --- all illusion, eh?

the wall

So the first picture of the wall I saw was on the cover of the July 3, 2003 New York Review of Books -- Edward Sheehan's article "The Road Map & the Fence" is featured. The wall looks surreal -- so hugely concrete against the blue sky. I think back to my time in Berlin, before the wall came down. This wall looks worse, somehow. Newer. More technologically impregnable. Stark and loud in the center of land. People died trying to cross over or tunnel under the Berlin wall. I guess Palestinians won't need to worry about losing their lives crossing the wall, since they've already had decades of practice crossing checkpoints in and out of sanctioned areas. I think of all the places around the world where families are separated by political lines -- north and south, east and west. Korea, Viet Nam, cold war Germany and so many others.

I googled images for the Israeli-Palestinian wall and found some at Gush Shalom's site. Gush Shalom is an Israeli peace activist group and they've got some excellent pictures and information at http://www.gush-shalom.org/english/index.html. One poster reads - "The Wall - prison for Palestinians, ghetto for Israeli," and bright red spray-painted graffitti on the wall reads "From Warsaw Ghetto to Abu-Dis ghetto."

recall

I ordered a few books earlier this year, and they've been sitting patiently waiting for me to open them.

"Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict" by Norman G. Finkelstein

I first heard of Norman Finkelstein when I saw him interviewed on the Eyes on Palestine series from Democracy Now! He is (or was) a professor at NYU and CUNY and, from what I've seen, is a thorough, concise, brilliant political scientist who has had death threats due to ...well, you'll see when you go to his site. He's uncovered a lot of ugly truths and backed them up, which is of course why there are so many angry people with murder on their minds. Kind of like a refined Michael Moore.

"The Israeli Holocaust Against the Palestinians: A chronicle of war crimes and atrocities against people judged less than human by the U. S. government and media" by Michael Hoffman and Moshe Lieberman. This link is on a site called Jerusalemites and I'll take a closer look at it.

Hoffman has another site as well: hoffman info.com A bit hard to follow and feels on first glance like there's a lot of emotion in it, but I'll take look-see.

"Homeland: Oral Histories of Palestine and Palestinians," Edited by Staughton Lynd, Sam Bahour, and Alice Lynd

This is the book I started earlier this evening. I opened it up to an interview with a woman I stayed with in Ramallah in 1987 just 3 months before the Intifada. I heard her speak in San Francisco at the Palestinian Women's Union/ANC Women's Union Conference in 1986.

She has two excerpts in the book; the second one is in the jail section. Right before hers is another excerpt from someone I stayed with in the African Quarter of the Old City (Jerusalem). The interviews were conducted in 1992; it was strange to read about the children not yet born when I them, or hear them talk about their families and see their homes in my mind, or the arrests that took place just months after I left. I could hear their voices while I read. I just recently looked at photos I took of them, reading old letters from one, and wondering who was alive, who was dead. I used to have a recurring nightmare about my Ramallah host's daughter, and have wondered if she was still alive. I remember going to the ruins of the AIC with my Jerusalem host to write an article. They were always being bombed, and between bombings they were being threatened. Israeli lawyers and other professionals risking everything to work for Palestinian human rights. It amazed me.

I skimmed through the names of the people in the book and recognized more. They're not bedtime stories, but they help me recall. When I got back to the States, I received three letters from just one person who was able to filter those letters through three steps to get them from Israel to Massachusetts. None of my interviews or tapes or even my poetry and other notes made it back to me. Only the film made it back with me.

In Nablus and Ramallah I was treated as a guest, and I am so grateful for everything they did and all the risks that were taken to bring me and a few others to people who were gracious enough to tell us their stories. I learned a lot in a short period of time. But it's not how I learn best. I need to be in the environment, not observing it. I ended up spending the majority -- and remainder -- of my time in Jerusalem where I lived and worked as part of a family unit. There were daily routines in which my hands had been incorporated, and when I went to Gaza or to conduct interviews my absence was felt. I remember getting a call from my adopted sister 'Atidal who told me I was "needed back home to help with the chores."

I wonder if 'Atidal is still alive. Or Howa, or 'Adnan, or Ali, or Umm Ali, Abu Ali, or any of the family. I wonder who survived and how they're doing. And I wonder who didn't survive.

image testing

Underground school performance of Palestinian tribal and cultural identity (illegal).

Gaza kids right before the '87 Intifada

Ramallah girls '87

Ramallah boy '87

Jabaliyeh boys '87

blog-a-rama

Okay, so I did the same search Sandy did and clicked on the first link which took me to this article -- to which I had to respond. Given the fact that Front Page Magazine is one of the most rabidly ultra-conservative, ultra-right publications in the country, and slings propaganda around like so much velveeta -- and given the fact that the article I responded to could have been written by one of the staff posing as Comanche for effect, I decided to respond anyway. Complete waste of time, but I felt better. I refuted a couple of the comments, but basically encouraged him/them/her to do their homework. 'Nuff said.

It reminds me of a friend in school who sat me down in the girls' locker room and, with genuine concern, told me there was really no such thing as Palestinians. She recounted how Zionists saved the land from savages and made the land green. She said Arabs ate babies and that she knew I was a good person and that I would never eat babies, but I shouldn't trust my relatives and I definitely shouldn't admit I was part Arab. And in earnest, she suggested that I could say I was Puerto Rican instead.

The fascinating part is that, no matter what I said, she responded by rote, with pat answers. There was no actual thought or communication involved.

Now where do you suppose this otherwise seemingly intelligent and thoughtful girl got such bizarre information and actually believed it? From her parents. And where did they get the information?

Where do conservative christians or muslims get their information?

How does it get absorbed as truth?

Why are people content to stop digging (or never start) once someone they consider to be an authority figure says something and asserts it as fact, rule, or law?

I find this fascinating. It definitely feels safer to believe that the hierarchical constructs we live by are good and right... and righteous. It's much more comfortable to believe that the motives of our governing body -- whether it's our country, our job, our cultural group, or our family -- are good and pure and that somehow, we've escaped the maladies that afflict the rest of the human race.

So yes, I can understand blind patriotism, or blind allegiance of any kind. Leave the driving to the powers that be. Makes sense.

Makes war and institutional racism and poverty and imperialism and genocide too. But hey, I guess that's the price one pays, eh?

Eh.

i am a palestinian.com

typed in "palestinian american blog" (no quotation marks) in google and got 62,200 hits. found Noor Ali-Hasan's blog at dorkyspice.com and her project called i am a palestinian.com. lots of websurfing out there for me to do. exciting.