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Wednesday, April 17, 2002
Strange Birds above Abu Dis
Posted by Laurie King-Irani
(This is a letter from Tycho, an American woman who is
now in East Jerusalem.)
East Jerusalem [17 April]--It is a disturbing
indication of my acclimation to the militarization of
everyday life here that when a group of Apache
helicopters began bearing down overhead in a closed
village where no one is allowed to be on the streets,
what first came to my mind were Lauri Anderson lyrics
and second, whether there are batteries in my camera.
Then, of course, the fact that i may soon be under
aerial rocket attack establishes itself as a reality
and yet, something about the obscenity of it all and
knowing that this is hardly surprising to the people
we are interviewing, seems to block any sense of real
fear. Fortunately, they did not bombard us and the
journalists I was translating for agreed we should
continue on into the center of the town. About an hour
later I received my second dose of teargas within 12
hours, having been at the access road to another
closed village in East Jerusalem in the middle of the
night, where some inexperienced soldiers quickly
reached their limits in a relatively non-aggressive
confrontation by Palestinians who had been waiting for
over 14 hours to get to their homes.The situation in
East Jerusalem is becoming quite tense. The invasion
in Abu Dis, the 400 year old hilltop village I was in
this afternoon, is part of a broader strategy to bring
the war here into everybody's holy city, while across
the Green Line, Israelis were treated to fireworks and
concerts in commemoration of their Independence Day.
Sharon may be flaunting plans for withdrawal to the
international media hungry for "the latest
developments," however the reality here is clearly not
withdrawal but rather, a rearrangment of where the
tanks and gunmen are located.As the blockaded workers
last night sarcastically pointed out, their village,
`Isawiya, is now Camp `Isawiya, in the tradition of
Israeli forces rustling 10,000 people out of their
homes like cattle, under the guise of searching for
one lone "terrorist" while media and human rights
workers are prevented entry as the soldiers loot and
bulldoze.Similar to the well-known analogy of a frog
put in a pan of cold water who then acclimates to
being heated to the boiling point, one comes to
consider curfews and closures as mild if not
inconsequential, since in Jenin the people were
massacred and in Nablus and other places, they are
still being strafed by F-16s. I defy any American or
European to gladly accept not being able to walk down
the street for four or more days at a time, to feel
bullets whiz overhead when the curfew is lifted and
accept deprivations of water and electricity at the
will of some occupying power. As a military
megalomaniac, Sharon has been able to use the most
extreme forms of violence being inflicted on people
here as something of a distraction to the equally
humiliating, calculated and insidious forms of
violence which continue to be widespread throught
Palestinian lands. Schools are closed, business are
shut down, taxi drivers are arrested for driving
medical workers to the hospitals, and everyone is
confronted with some level of repression and
harrassment more or less continuously, and thus it is
no wonder that tonight, as I was walking in the Old
City, one of the streets was blocked off as the
soldiers investigated a bomb that had been placed in a
plastic bag outside the Prime Minister's residence
here.A lot of journalists and international solidarity
folks have been focusing on Jenin, and since I have
still not been able to get into the camp myself, I
will take this opportunity to elaborate on another
aspect of what has happened there: the detention of
men from Jenin Camp and the creation by the Israelis
of a new generation of refugees. Apparently when the
IDF first entered Jenin Camp, they focused on
arresting males of all ages except the very young, did
hideous things to them in situ and then put them in a
detention center in Saalem, which is a checkpoint on
the Green Line along the northern boundary of the West
Bank (very close to Megiddo, for those familiar with
the geography).People are being held there for varying
lengths of time, interrogated by the IDF, the Shin Bet
and perhaps Mossad (this was not entirely clear), kept
outside in a cage, blindfolded and handcuffed,
stripped of their clothing and given aluminum foil to
use as "blankets" on a bare stone surface. They are
being released with polaroid mugshots of themselves,
neatly labeled, thanks to Microsoft, to indicate they
have already been processed, in the event they are
picked up again. The military drops them outside one
of a handful of villages in the larger governate of
Jenin with strict instructions that they are not
allowed to leave that village.The number of refugees
being created in this way numbers in the hundreds, and
my guess is that now it is well over 1000. Neither the
UN nor the Red Cross has come in to provide any type
of assistance to these people, they have no idea what
has happened to their families in the Camp and the
local villages are hardly able to provide for them.
A great deal of information passes my way just by
virtue of being here and getting first-hand reports
from journalists and non-press credentialed activists
who manage to get into different areas as well as get
turned away. The difference between these accounts and
what I manage to read in the news is striking. Because
of the "bank holiday" today, the Erez crossing into
Gaza was closed, but in all likelihood I will go to
Gaza this weekend to bring some medical supplies and
also see firsthand what is going on there.Friends in
Deheisha could see the fire from the Church of
Nativity last night, and today a journalist who
managed to make it to Manger Square reported no
activity whatsoever. But the army stopped him twice
and on the second encounter, took the film out of his
camera. So I will end this will a cautionary note to
treat what mainstream news does get published or
televised with a healthy dose of doubt, as the
military continues to effectively control a great deal
of what is actually presented through the media to the
public.Tomorrow there is to be an international march
to the Church of Nativity, so stay tuned for more
reports of vapor control and other forms of attacks
against nonviolent civilians. I am begining to see
these street engagements as a sort of passion play for
the 21st century, and continue to feel hopeful that
the savior which they are giving birth to is a
liberation from the collective insanity being acted
out here, made in america as I was reminded of today
by the strange, whirling black birds that filled the
sky above Abu Dis.
Love and Rage,Tycho
________________________________________________________________________
For live cricket scores download Yahoo! Score Tracker
at: http://in.sports.yahoo.com/cricket/tracker.html
California"] [Main Index] [Next entry:
"American/French nationals refused entry at Ben Gurion
Airport"]
Wednesday, April 17, 2002
Strange Birds above Abu Dis
Posted by Laurie King-Irani
(This is a letter from Tycho, an American woman who is
now in East Jerusalem.)
East Jerusalem [17 April]--It is a disturbing
indication of my acclimation to the militarization of
everyday life here that when a group of Apache
helicopters began bearing down overhead in a closed
village where no one is allowed to be on the streets,
what first came to my mind were Lauri Anderson lyrics
and second, whether there are batteries in my camera.
Then, of course, the fact that i may soon be under
aerial rocket attack establishes itself as a reality
and yet, something about the obscenity of it all and
knowing that this is hardly surprising to the people
we are interviewing, seems to block any sense of real
fear. Fortunately, they did not bombard us and the
journalists I was translating for agreed we should
continue on into the center of the town. About an hour
later I received my second dose of teargas within 12
hours, having been at the access road to another
closed village in East Jerusalem in the middle of the
night, where some inexperienced soldiers quickly
reached their limits in a relatively non-aggressive
confrontation by Palestinians who had been waiting for
over 14 hours to get to their homes.The situation in
East Jerusalem is becoming quite tense. The invasion
in Abu Dis, the 400 year old hilltop village I was in
this afternoon, is part of a broader strategy to bring
the war here into everybody's holy city, while across
the Green Line, Israelis were treated to fireworks and
concerts in commemoration of their Independence Day.
Sharon may be flaunting plans for withdrawal to the
international media hungry for "the latest
developments," however the reality here is clearly not
withdrawal but rather, a rearrangment of where the
tanks and gunmen are located.As the blockaded workers
last night sarcastically pointed out, their village,
`Isawiya, is now Camp `Isawiya, in the tradition of
Israeli forces rustling 10,000 people out of their
homes like cattle, under the guise of searching for
one lone "terrorist" while media and human rights
workers are prevented entry as the soldiers loot and
bulldoze.Similar to the well-known analogy of a frog
put in a pan of cold water who then acclimates to
being heated to the boiling point, one comes to
consider curfews and closures as mild if not
inconsequential, since in Jenin the people were
massacred and in Nablus and other places, they are
still being strafed by F-16s. I defy any American or
European to gladly accept not being able to walk down
the street for four or more days at a time, to feel
bullets whiz overhead when the curfew is lifted and
accept deprivations of water and electricity at the
will of some occupying power. As a military
megalomaniac, Sharon has been able to use the most
extreme forms of violence being inflicted on people
here as something of a distraction to the equally
humiliating, calculated and insidious forms of
violence which continue to be widespread throught
Palestinian lands. Schools are closed, business are
shut down, taxi drivers are arrested for driving
medical workers to the hospitals, and everyone is
confronted with some level of repression and
harrassment more or less continuously, and thus it is
no wonder that tonight, as I was walking in the Old
City, one of the streets was blocked off as the
soldiers investigated a bomb that had been placed in a
plastic bag outside the Prime Minister's residence
here.A lot of journalists and international solidarity
folks have been focusing on Jenin, and since I have
still not been able to get into the camp myself, I
will take this opportunity to elaborate on another
aspect of what has happened there: the detention of
men from Jenin Camp and the creation by the Israelis
of a new generation of refugees. Apparently when the
IDF first entered Jenin Camp, they focused on
arresting males of all ages except the very young, did
hideous things to them in situ and then put them in a
detention center in Saalem, which is a checkpoint on
the Green Line along the northern boundary of the West
Bank (very close to Megiddo, for those familiar with
the geography).People are being held there for varying
lengths of time, interrogated by the IDF, the Shin Bet
and perhaps Mossad (this was not entirely clear), kept
outside in a cage, blindfolded and handcuffed,
stripped of their clothing and given aluminum foil to
use as "blankets" on a bare stone surface. They are
being released with polaroid mugshots of themselves,
neatly labeled, thanks to Microsoft, to indicate they
have already been processed, in the event they are
picked up again. The military drops them outside one
of a handful of villages in the larger governate of
Jenin with strict instructions that they are not
allowed to leave that village.The number of refugees
being created in this way numbers in the hundreds, and
my guess is that now it is well over 1000. Neither the
UN nor the Red Cross has come in to provide any type
of assistance to these people, they have no idea what
has happened to their families in the Camp and the
local villages are hardly able to provide for them.
A great deal of information passes my way just by
virtue of being here and getting first-hand reports
from journalists and non-press credentialed activists
who manage to get into different areas as well as get
turned away. The difference between these accounts and
what I manage to read in the news is striking. Because
of the "bank holiday" today, the Erez crossing into
Gaza was closed, but in all likelihood I will go to
Gaza this weekend to bring some medical supplies and
also see firsthand what is going on there.Friends in
Deheisha could see the fire from the Church of
Nativity last night, and today a journalist who
managed to make it to Manger Square reported no
activity whatsoever. But the army stopped him twice
and on the second encounter, took the film out of his
camera. So I will end this will a cautionary note to
treat what mainstream news does get published or
televised with a healthy dose of doubt, as the
military continues to effectively control a great deal
of what is actually presented through the media to the
public.Tomorrow there is to be an international march
to the Church of Nativity, so stay tuned for more
reports of vapor control and other forms of attacks
against nonviolent civilians. I am begining to see
these street engagements as a sort of passion play for
the 21st century, and continue to feel hopeful that
the savior which they are giving birth to is a
liberation from the collective insanity being acted
out here, made in america as I was reminded of today
by the strange, whirling black birds that filled the
sky above Abu Dis.
Love and Rage,Tycho
________________________________________________________________________
For live cricket scores download Yahoo! Score Tracker
at: http://in.sports.yahoo.com/cricket/tracker.html