Visitors to West Bank Describe Palestinians As Overpowered, but not Resigned

By Pat and Samir Twair


	ISM volunteers Mary Hughes-Thompson (seated) and Greta Berlin (Staff photo S. Twair).

ON A TWO-WEEK TRIP to the West Bank, Greta Berlin, Mary Hughes-Thompson, Hedy Epstein and journalist Alison Weir twice were removed from buses for taking photos, Berlin’s passport was confiscated, and Epstein was barred from entering Hebron through a Palestinian-only path because she is a Jew.

The biggest difference they noticed since their last trip to the West Bank two years ago, Berlin and Thompson said, is the recognition by the Palestinians that they are militarily overpowered.

“This is not to say the Palestinians are resigned to defeat,” Berlin clarified, “so much as an attitude that this, too, shall pass—history is on our side.”

The veteran International Solidarity Movement (ISM) volunteers were incensed at the way Israel’s apartheid wall has carved up the ancient city of Bethlehem.

“The wall has locked up Bethlehemites into a prison within a 27-foot wall that snakes through the city,” Thompson said. “People are herded into a mechanized terminal where soldiers shout orders in Hebrew. I protested that Bethlehem isn’t in Israel, so why were they speaking Hebrew?”

One of Berlin’s first tasks after crossing the Sheikh Hussein Bridge from Jordan into Israel on Aug. 11 was to join Neta Golan and Mohammed al-Khatib to help prepare a power point presentation the latter was to make in Brussels on Aug. 30 and 31.

For nearly two-and-a-half years, Al-Khatib has led weekly nonviolent demonstrations in Bil’in village to protest the erection of the apartheid wall that is fencing off more than half of Bil’in’s agricultural lands from villagers so as to expand the huge Modi’in Ilit settlement.

The ISM volunteers were in Bil’in on Aug. 18 to take part in the 132nd consecutive demonstration. As usual, the peaceful, singing villagers approached a phalanx of jeeps and armed soldiers awaiting them at the wall.

“Eight actors in full clown make-up led the 300 demonstrators,” Berlin recalled. “The Israelis shot tear gas canisters, releasing the new CS gas which really is heavy duty mace. The clowns were overwhelmed. It was a surreal sight as their make-up began to run while the clowns gagged and staggered.”

That day, Berlin said, she helped villagers pick up 150 tear gas canisters—lethal projectiles which shatter metal particles when they hit an object.

Thompson and Berlin were thrilled about the moral victory Bil’in achieved Aug. 31, when the Israeli Supreme Court ruled in favor of its petition to change the route of the apartheid wall, allowing 575 acres of agricultural land to remain within the village.

“I credit this victory to Mohammed al-Khatib and the Committee Against the Wall’s steadfast and courageous insistence to conduct those weekly demonstrations that caught the world’s attention,” Berlin said.

Having last been to Jenin in 2003, the activists were astonished to see a completely rebuilt refugee camp paid for by the United Arab Emirates. The children’s theater and restaurants have re-opened, but, they lamented, each night the Israelis make deadly incursions into Jenin and Nablus, capturing and killing civilians.

Thompson was particularly disturbed about the plight of an elderly Palestinian whose East Jerusalem home overlooks the Wailing Wall. He is receiving legal notices that he has “sold” his home to a Jewish buyer who intends to take possession of the house, Thompson said. But the Palestinian was never approached by anyone about selling his home and has never received money. The home owner is poor and can’t afford an attorney; since there is no office or agency for him to turn to, she noted, he could be evicted at any time.

Asked why she has elected to travel to the dangerous West Bank six times—including a 2002 trip during which settlers severely beat her as she assisted Palestinians harvesting their olive crops—Thompson, a 73-year-old retired documentary filmmaker, replied: “I can’t NOT go back. Each time I leave, I feel I’m leaving a little more of my heart behind. Palestine is the only place I truly believe that if I were lost, stranded or hurt, I could knock on a door and be taken in and cared for. When I rise in the morning and look at the trees in my garden and the quiet streets outside my home, I wish every Palestinian could wake up without the fear that a precious child might die that day.”

“Saudis in America” a Film Delight


“Saudis in America” director Fahmi Farahat (l) and producer Ahmad Zahra (Staff photo S. Twair).

A special screening of Fahmi Farahat’s documentary, “Saudis in America” delighted a full house Sept. 8 at the American Film Institute in Los Angeles. It is Farahat’s first film, and offers promise of great things to come from this young artist.

The one-hour documentary deals with how Saudis living in the U.S. felt during the aftermath of Sept. 11, 2001, and also with the attitudes of Saudi women about how they are perceived by the West. Farahat miraculously brings the Saudi sense of humor to bear on this serious material, and the audience quickly identifies with the people interviewed.

In addition to interviewing Americans on the street about their views of Saudi Arabia, Farahat, who graduated in 2006 from the Radio, TV and Film department of California State University at Fullerton, ingeniously chose his family members and friends to tell the story of Saudis in America. “We’ve all heard scholars and theologians discuss the topic, I chose to let ordinary—well, they’re not ordinary to me—Saudis talk about what it means to be a Saudi,” he explained.

In his opening remarks, producer Ahmad Zahra commented: “We can’t afford in our world today to wait for others to tell our stories or express how we feel. We need to take the initiative to do this. What matters is that we support each other’s right of expression free of censorship and control.”

“Saudis in America” will be shown at film festivals and should be available on DVD format by the end of the year.

Combatants for Peace Speak Out


	Combatants for Peace Ra’ed al-Haddar (l) and Shimon Katz (Staff photo S. Twair).

In early 2005, a handful of Israeli and Palestinian veterans of combat began to tentatively and clandestinely meet in hope of finding a solution to the violence between them. They named their group Combatants for Peace and today they have more than 200 members. On Aug. 26 and 28, Ra’ed al-Haddar and Shimon Katz spoke in the greater Los Angeles area.

Addressing an audience at All Saints Church, Pasadena, the Israeli and Palestinian, who spoke through an interpreter, said that although they only met when they began their tour of U.S. cities, they’ve managed to communicate well—albeit nonverbally.

Al Haddar said he joined Combatants for Peace 10 months ago.

“Talking to the enemy was a new alternative to the constant violence,” he said. “It was a strange experience to look into the eyes of an Israeli soldier. There were lookouts to safeguard our sessions and we were uneasy. We feared the Israelis might be intelligence agents out to arrest us, they were anxious that maybe we intended to kidnap them. But slowly, we developed mutual trust.”

Katz said his story began 30 years ago in a village outside Jerusalem and he took for granted the Israeli narrative of its founding. After finishing his military duty in southern Lebanon in 1995, he traveled to India and immersed himself in Buddhist teachings and the philosophy of Mahatma Gandhi.

“I realized there was a better path to follow than engaging in a perpetual war with the Palestinians,” Katz said.

Called to Nablus as a reservist, he saw up close the Palestinian struggle against military occupation. When he was ordered to serve 10 days in Ramallah, Katz told his commanding officer he had better things to do than being a police guard for the settlers.

“The Israeli point of view is that we’re in the West Bank to protect the settlers and control terrorists,” he said. “I realized our military presence agitated the Palestinians and deepened the gap between both people.”

Al-Haddar recalled that he grew up thinking it was a game to throw stones at Israeli troops—until a soldier shot dead his rock-throwing companion. When he was 17, al-Haddar was arrested and interrogated by Israeli security forces over four days of beatings and sleep deprival. He served three years in an Israeli prison and was convinced upon his release that armed struggle was the only way to stop the occupation.

Then, in Beit Jala, he met a former Israeli soldier whose sister had been killed in a suicide bombing. Instead of seeking revenge, the Jew was offering his hand and telling al-Haddar the bloody cycle could end only through mutual understanding.

“I realized not all Israelis are bad,” al-Haddar said, “and that maybe we could work together.”

Concluded Katz: “Our goal is to raise consciousness on the part of both people regarding the suffering and hopes of the other side.”

For more information, visit <www.combatantsforpeace.org>.

Candidate Peter Mathews Addresses AAPG


Congressional candidate Peter Mathews (Staff photo S. Twair).

There’s no doubt about it: if college professor Peter Mathews wins California’s 37th congressional district race, Arab and Muslim Americans will have a friend in Congress.

Speaking to the Arab American Press Guild (AAPG) on Aug. 30, Mathews, a professor of political science at Cypress College in Long Beach, made it clear he knows the real history of the Middle East. He was born in India to parents who belong to the Syrian Orthodox Christian Church. His father, Ernest Paul Mathews, studied at Oxford University in the 1930s and established English schools in Jerusalem from 1939 to 1942.

”My father‘s recollections of Palestine inspired me to visit it,” he told the AAPG. “If more Americans witnessed what is going on in Gaza and the West Bank, I believe U.S. foreign policy on the Middle East would have to change. The media distort what is happening in the occupied lands and what is worse, most Americans don’t even know where Palestine or Jerusalem are on the map.”

Mathews is personally knocking on doors of homes in his congressional district, which includes Long Beach, Signal Hill, Carson, Willowbrook and Watts.

More information is available on the candidate’s Web site, <www.mathewsforcongress.org>.

Pat and Samir Twair are free-lance journalists based in Los Angeles.