ANDREW                    vs  the STAR STATE TROOPERS

(30 minutes after being tear gassed)  and other observations from a 17 day trip to Palestine & Israel

We can argue with the Palestinians about who's to blame; but about who's suffering worse - there's no argument.  

They are a destitute nation living in an elaborate prison under the guns of the Israeli army,

We are a bourgeois, well-travelled nation that spoils its kids and, while being vulnerable to violent death by terror, is most vulnerable to violent death by traffic accident.

LARRY DERFNER. High school during wartime: Daily Ed.  Jerusalem Post.: Mar 4, 2004. pg. 13

Andrew vs the Star State Troopers.   June 2, 20 04.   www.monafay.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk.  

Contact:  samplesize@tiscali.co.uk  for MS.doc (5.9Mb) copies.   

Please feel free to send copies of this report to friends.  

Day 1:  Tel Aviv: March 3 2004-04     

I had expected scenes reminiscent of 1970’s Belfast.  Instead, I found that Tel Aviv is a mix of Miami and Piccadilly Circus – an urban paradise - with blue skies, balmy temperatures, new cars, three-lane traffic, well-watered flowers and manicured beaches.    We traveled by service bus from the airport to the city.  Although we were obviously foreigners, no passenger showed the least fear that our bags, had they held explosives, were large enough to blow us to Dimona.  Tel Aviv is not a city under siege. 

At midnight, the city was ablaze with neon.  Abba blared from bars and in glass-fronted saloons, girls were having their nails painted, hair braided and brows plucked.  Like other cities, the glossy brochures advertised escort services. In London, the “beautiful young girls” would be Thai; in Tel Aviv, they are Russian (24-hour rates available).

Central Tel Aviv is a white (if slightly) swarthy city. I was not prepared for the small, fit, shinny black skinned soldiers walking the streets.  They stand out like beacons in contrast to the young policewomen who, 20 lbs. overweight, carry Michelin rolls around their waists. 

Whilst waiting at a phone box two lads approached me. They were still at school.  They spoke poor English so I gave them an English lesson. One was from Turkey and the other from Bulgaria.  The Bulgarian had arrived in Israel at age 8 and was still homesick. A friend, a lad of 19, who was in the army, joined the English lesson.  After uttering his first word, it was obvious that English was his first language. I asked him "What accent do you have". "Hebrew", he responded.  I said, “No”.  He then admitted that he was Ghanaian Hebrew - which certainly explained his big, beautiful features and blackness!

Today Jerusalem:

Over breakfast I read the Jerusalem Post. Investigators accused the Prime Minister of dishonesty, and police investigating sex-slavery and had raided a brothel.  The only thing unusual was the fact that this brothel pimped to orthodox Jews and offered a special, “Come five times: come again for free”, promotion.

One of the Post’s regular writers Larry Derfner had written a feature confirming my observation that Tel Aviv was a pleasant and prosperous city.

We can argue with the Palestinians about who's to blame; but about who's suffering worse - there's no argument. They are a destitute nation living in an elaborate prison under the guns of the Israeli army, and we are a bourgeois, well-travelled nation that spoils its kids and, while being vulnerable to violent death by terror, is most vulnerable to violent death by traffic accident.” [i]

LARRY DERFNER. High school during wartime: Daily Ed.  Jerusalem Post. Jerusalem: Mar 4, 2004. pg. 13

Taking Derfner’s advice and not wishing to spend more time with the bourgeois, well traveled and spoilt we bussed to the central station and traveled to East Jerusalem, home to the traditional, parochial and poor.

What a difference an hour makes:

Tel Aviv’s streets were ablaze and vibrant last night, when I went to bed.  In contrast, tonight when I turned in, East Jerusalem’s streets resembled something from the “Twighlight Zone”.  I woke at 2 am, spooked, dry-mouthed and stomach-knotted.  The culture shock of that one-hour bus ride is enormous.  The only previous time I have been spooked like this was at Moscow airport in 1975 when KGBers pointed their Kalashnikovs at me. 

The big spook factor here of course is the Israeli Occupation forces.  Their uniforms, guns, jeeps and flashing lights are everywhere and scary.  However, it is the never ending sinister squeals of sirens - high pitched up close, droning afar – that chills me to the bone.

East Jerusalem is a city of decay.  Large tourist hotels are dark, derelict and dead.  This is in amazing contrast to West Jerusalem, just 600 yards from this hotel, where signs of the sky-scrape hotels hundreds of feet above ground, blaze brightly. 

The spookiness took hold firmly when a friend and I were walking back to the hotel at dusk and some soldiers shook us down.  Fortunately, a policewoman wanted the soldiers for some other purpose so they quickly let us go.  We returned to the security of our hotel; but even the concept of this hotel’s security is illusory.

The hotel belongs to Jerusalem’s Cathedral of Saint George and has lodged pilgrims for centuries.  Unfortunately, thirty yards from where I sleep, Israeli developers have dug up an entire city block and made a huge hole.  It is clearly the foundation for a new US hotel[ii].  The metaphor is clear.  A society, which has existed for millennia has had its foundation undermined and is about to fall into a deep pit.

With that thought, I went to sleep again, only to be awoken frequently by the sound of dopplering sirens.

 “Why are there no pilgrims?”

The press of bodies blocking the gateways of the old city is deceiving.  Just ten yards back from the main thoroughfares the side streets have virtually no human presence and the city is lifeless.  Easter is just a month away but as I look out from an empty hostel, I see an empty Via. Dolorosa. Why are there so few visiting this city which for two thousand years, has made its living from pilgrims?  Is the Intifada to blame?  Do modern Christians have so little faith that a miniscule chance of violent death keeps them from visiting their shrines and relics? [iii] 

No.  The most credible explanation is that the Israeli Government, as a matter of policy, deliberately discourages tourism to East Jerusalem.

We befriended a Lutheran couple.  The woman had worked for Jerusalem’s Anglican mission 40 years ago, and had been a friend of the Lutheran church here ever since.  She cited instances where tour operators had stopped offering tours to Lutherans because of deliberate government harassment.  For instance, airport security and emigration officers would allow all but one member of a package tour to proceed to the departure lounge and would detain one unfortunate passenger – but only until the plane had departed. 

My experience also leads me to believe that the Government deliberately discourages tourism.  For instance at Ben Gurion airport the airport authorities are unnecessarily unwelcoming to incoming visitors where an obvious apartheid system (Black hats, beards, high dioptre spectacles and yarmulkes to the right, also-rans to the left) is operated.

Ariel Sharon has agreed to let visitors into the Mosque between 8.30 and 11.30.

We visited the usual sights; the Western Wall, Church of the Holy Sepulchre and tried to see the Al-Aqsa Mosque.  Four soldiers who would not let us in guarded the entrance.  Like many soldiers in Jerusalem, they were short, round-faced, shiny-smart and presumably Ethiopian[iv].  One said, " Ariel Sharon has agreed to let female Moslems into the Mosque between 8.30 and 11.30 tomorrow”.[v]    

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The West Bank is "draining".

We found a Hostel frequented by Internationals.  The first man I met there was a very driven fellow of few words.  He had been in the West Bank for two months and found it "draining".  He was allowing himself a two-day break.  Even so, he felt that he could only manage a few more weeks.  I learnt that the heart tugging thing about the house demolitions was not watching a house being razed - but watching the tables chairs, beds blankets and books being crunched up in the rubble and dust.

A loud banging at the door waked me.  I went to the common room but only found one other person there.  He was cursing the soldiers in the street below. I returned to bed, awoke a little later and met an acquaintance for coffee.  She asked, "What did the soldiers do when they came to your room?" It was only then that I realised that there had been a nighttime raid. The army, guns at the ready, had come, counted everyone and left.  What was that all about?

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A Refugee camp

I have returned from a visit to a Shufat refugee camp[vi].  The camp is in Jerusalem and supported by the UN.  The family we met kept saying, "How lucky we are". The reasons being (I believe) that the Israeli police never enter the camp and the army have only done so once.  Unfortunately, the camp made the world news last year when the army had bulldozed houses on the edge of the camp because they were too close to the new settlement being build across the valley.

http://www.poica.org/casestudies/Shufat-camp10-7-01/shufat-map2.jpg 

A major problem is lack of space. The camp was built for four thousand refugees in 1967.  Now it houses about twenty thousand.  Children used to play in on a steep rocky area on the side of a stream bordering the camp. However, in the last few years the Israelis have built a huge settlement across the valley - for Russian immigrants. It is very close (less than 400 yards away). If a child from the camp plays on that hillside now, the settlers call the police who pick up the child and hold the child in jail some days.  This holding sentence is repeated several times (or until the family retains a lawyer and make a deal - about $1000). Palestinian Lawyers cannot represent these children.

The family I visited had several lawyers in the family. The Israeli courts would not license them and they were reduced to working as builders on the wall and houses for the Russians. 

Without rancour or bitterness, this family entertained us.  One was a schoolteacher and sadly told us that for the first time that Palestinian children were not bothering with higher education.  After all education would only put the family in debt and give them a qualification which had no commercial value.   Palestinians might well say, "England why have you forsaken us”[vii]

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Kalandia:  Monday 8 March, 2004.

Today is International Women's Day and several rallies will take place in the Territories. A group of us decided to go to the meeting at Ramallah. 

We took a Jerusalem service bus to the Kalandia, tumbled out and marched across 200 yards of rubble-surfaced, no-man’s land.  It was 10.00 am, warm, dry underfoot and easy walking. Camouflaged, sandbagged, heavy gun emplacements overlooked the snakes of travellers.

All travellers have to make this trek through no man land including grandmas and pushchair pushers. I dread to think what it would be like on a wet winter's night at 10.00 PM. 

At the other side of the checkpoint, we caught another service bus to Ramallah and walked to the rally.  The Palestinian police monitored it.  What a contrast; not a gun in sight! 

We then marched to President Arafat's compound. I learnt from a local that until the previous day the Israeli' army had been encircling the compound - something that they do regularly and with impunity. Ninety five percent of the compound has been bombed and bulldozed.  Looking at the desolation, ruins and isolation of the compound, one’s first impression is that the Israeli army can easily monitor Arafat’s every visitor and phone call.  It is obvious that there is no way that Arafat could send a secret message to Ramallah city Hall just one mile away, and that, in no meaningful way can he "control" Palestine.
Arafat addresses the crowd.  I was most impressed: not because of his speech (it was in Arabic) but– unlike Mr Blair who appears too scared to walk from No. 10 to Piccadilly Circus - because he mingled with the crowd [viii]. 

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The most obviously evil aspect of the Occupation is the "closure system". The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs report that there are 783 checkpoints, ditches and barriers obstructing West Bank roads.  Contrary to the view promoted by BBC reporters these checkpoints and roadblocks add little to Israel's security.  Most of the 783 closures are located deep within Palestine, not on the Israel Palestine border.  The closures exist for two reasons. 

·        To slow the movement of Palestinians and thus destroy their economy.[ix] 

·        To humiliate.

Tear gas and contact lenses

A woman staying in the hostel had to catch the 06.00 am plane to Sweden.  She had arranged to get the 01:45 service (van) to the airport. The pick up point is about 1/2 mile away.  We were all talking together and she was hoping that some male would escort her.  I offered. My mission to escort went uneventfully - the streets were deserted.  I had met her because as she sat in the hostel her eyes were watering and she was constantly fiddling and washing her contact lenses.  She was having no luck with them. Someone later came and said that it was the "tear gas". Apparently, she was one of the people who had been at another rally broken up by the soldiers.  Does tear-gas render contact lenses unusable? I don’t know.  At any rate she gave up on them and took to wearing her glasses

Talking to Palestinians

I find it quite amazing that Palestinians are not resentful of us British & Americans.  Whenever I spoke to anybody in a shop, restaurant or bus stop, four or five Palestinians other would come over and we would have a very pleasant and happy conversation.  Many spoke English very well; all had usable English.

On many occasions, Palestinians asked for my views on the future of Palestine.  I would say, "Peace will come" or something similar.  However, it was obvious that they were not interested in an opinion that was so obviously incompatible with reality.  After all they know that during the last few years that:

·        The Israelis have been stealing hundreds of denims of land daily.

·        That daily, on average, the IDF or settlers kill 2-3 Palestinians.

·        Unknown numbers of Palestinians have their homes destroyed and lose their businesses daily. 

·        That they have lost all their major water resources.

·        Each week, several thousand Israelis (Russians, Bulgarians etc) are moving into brand new homes built on Palestinian land.

Therefore, after living in Palestine a week, I summoned the courage and told them my version of their future.  That :

·        The Zionist ethnic-cleansing machine is in motion.  The USA will fund this apparatus for at least ten more years

·        That 50% of Palestinians will be relocated, made redundant or starved-out in the next 2 years.

·        The Israelis will kill 5-25% of Palestinians in the territories within the next 5 years. 

·        That the Bantustan-type ghettoisation of the West Bank will continue and Palestinian will cease to exist within a generation.

Good time in Ramallah

The manager of our hostel is paralysed on one side. Nevertheless, yesterday he took a dozen of us to Ramallah.  Unfortunately, whilst in Ramallah he was told that his father had died. This gave him a "turn" and affected his ability to walk. The problem then arose, "How was he to return across the checkpoint to Jerusalem?"  His friends knowing that I was a doctor and non-Palestinian asked me and an American friend to escort him. I learnt that an Israeli (yellow plate) taxis could come into the Territories – and return across the checkpoint to Jerusalem relatively benignly. We found such a taxi and loaded up our friend. 

At the check point the taxi driver managed to drive right up to the concrete barriers.  My colleague and I then walked the 200 yards to the Israeli soldiers.  One was a pleasant mild person and, after 30 minutes spent checking our taxi, he let us through. This was our lucky day. If the whim of the soldier had been otherwise we would have had to drag our friend 200 yards over stony ground. These are good times in Ramallah. 

Andrew vs. the Star State troopers (or being a guest of the olive farmers). 

Budros is a little Palestinian village with a total population of fewer than one thousand.  Its mayor had asked ISMers and other internationals to stay in the village.  Budros and three other hill villages exist in an 80-year time warp in the middle of nowhere. 

The village is one mile from the village of Quibya where, in 1953, a young man staked his claim to fame.  He supervised the massacre of fifty farmers.  His name was Ariel Sharon[x].

Some years ago, the Israeli Government started building very large settlements and beautiful "Israeli only" roads close to these traditional villages.  Obviously all this building has disrupted the economies of all these villages.  To make things worse the Wall, which will prevent villagers getting to their farmland, is now being built within 400yards of the village centre

In the close-by village of Nelene, the Wall Company, protected by the Israeli army and Border Police, was bulldozing a swathe through olive groves in preparation to building "the Wall".  The villagers were hoping to stop the Bulldozers working by swamping the building site with local women.  This is only possible if Internationals or media are present - hence our requested presence in the village.

I could not see most of the action but women managed to break through the army cordon and get to then bulldozers. The Bulldozers retreated to the other side of the valley and stopped work for the day. The Shebab (young men) got out of control and started throwing stones (of course ineffectual).  The soldiers then started blanketing our side of the valley with tear gas.  I learned a lot about how to handle myself in such conditions.

The next day the mayor asked us to go to the village of Deir Quazim and we were involved in an action.  Twenty soldiers protected two Bulldozers.  The rules of engagement are simple. 

Palestinian men can and will be beaten by Israeli soldiers; Palestinians are not allowed to lay hands on Israeli soldiers.

For most of the time, the soldiers stand around smoking but periodically take baton-swinging forays into the crowd. This could be dangerous for any individual Palestinian if it were not for the fact that as a soldier picks on somebody; the crowd crushes in - like crows mobbing a buzzard - until the soldier retreats[xi].

Israeli soldiers are armed with an enormous range of weaponry; M16 rifles, sound bombs, short and long range tear gas, canister and single shot rubber bullets and many magazines of live rounds.  Reinforcements are stationed about half a mile away.

Palestinians are not allowed offensive objects.  Soldiers would surely shoot them – and anyone near them – without compunction.  I felt very uncomfortable whenever I found myself next to someone waving a flag, since the army has on occasions declared that flags are offensive weapons (Wood flag staffs could be used as clubs!).  Soldiers will baton- push women but are reluctant to brutalise them.

After several hours, a group of thirty women got their courage together and, in mass, walked past the soldiers to the bulldozers, and sat down. We accompanied them. The bulldozers stopped working and their drivers moved away. Many soldiers then grouped together and shot at us with rubber bullets.  They then advanced towards us and showered us with teargas.  No one can take tear gas for long - except the old ladies who just lay there - so we had to retreat. As we retreated and tried to reform, they battened us to the village boundary.

Unfortunately, they grabbed one of us, Flo, a wonderful woman from the US who had been in Israel and Palestine for six months.  She was cuffed and dragged off by the Border police.  At the village boundary, other soldiers lobbed tear gas into the women and schoolgirls who were chanting religious and political slogans. We all retreated to the centre of the village.

 Whether it is Hiroshimites against the A-bomb, Vietnamese against Napalm or Sioux against Gattling guns when massive, overwhelming superiority meets villagers the outcome can never be in doubt.  I was under no illusion about the outcome of the confrontation between the Israeli army and a few hundred rural villagers.  The villagers had no hope, but overall, today’s action was a success.  After all, the bulldozers did stop work for over an hour, only one lad was hit with a live round and it wasn’t a turkey shoot - a blood bath.  Today was about as good as it gets.

Rachel phobia – 16 March

Today is the first anniversary of Rachel Corrie’s death.  Jacob and Dan asked if I would go with them and others to the Erez checkpoint, Gaza.  Jacob and Dan were colleagues of Rachel and from Olympia, Washington.  They had planned a "Die-in for Rachel" memorial.

The checkpoint staff and 20 news reporters were expecting us agencies (I didn't see BBC).  Jacob and Dan orchestrated the die-in and by way of eulogy read from Rachel's lovely Emails to her parents[xii].                http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article2517.shtml

A bulldozer killed Rachel Corrie on 16 March 2003.  Within days, an outbreak of Rachel phobia swept the English-speaking world.  I cannot recall another instance in which the death of an unknown person, with no record of nastiness has caused such a massive outpouring of hatred, abuse and vitriolic fantasy[xiii].    Why?

¯.  In honor of Rachel Corrie, all bulldozers should from now on be known as "Corrie Crushers".

¯. If Rachel Corrie types perish in great numbers it will be a better world for having the sentimentality and delusion scoured away by reality.

¯. Rachel was a terrorist enabler. She is dead. The world is a better place

¯. Rachel corrie - Useless harpy who couldn't get laid or get a job so she committed suicide by bulldozer.

This vitriol was not confined to Rachel’s memory but extended to her parents and college.

¯. Rachel Corrie's parents are proof of what P. T. Barnum said about suckers.

¯. The REAL criminals in this are the killers who dupe young idealistic morons into sacrificing themselves for a wholly unworthy "cause."

Zionists even used the Rachel epithet to abuse others!

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I have read hundreds of Rachel phobic letters and conclude that Rachel-haters fall into two camps - the Neocons and the Plastic Zionists[xiv].  

Neocons:

I have no satisfactory explanation as to why the Neocons, Wall Street Journal readers and USA conservatives so abhor Rachel.  After all, they did not write obscene letters when an IDF sniper shot off Tom Hurndle's head.  They don't write odious letters against the hundreds of Israeli women who weekly protest the demolition of Palestinian houses.  Nor do they protest the refuseniks who refuse to participate in the humiliation of the Palestinians[xv]. 

Plastic Zionists

Politicians who send their children to private schools but who advocate egalitarianism, Ford motor salesmen who don’t buy Ford and obese, cigarette-smoking doctors who tell their patients to quit have something in common; a credibility problem.  They are hypocrites. 

Zionists, who preach on behalf of Israel and the right of Jews to live in Israel but who live in the US and UK have a credibility problem.  A disinterested observer might well ask, "Why, don't you do as you preach?  Have you so little faith that you will not tear up your US and British passports and go and live in Israel?"

Rachel also believed passionately.  She took herself to one of the poorest places in the world and, virtually alone, acted on her faith, and when was put to the test, her faith was not found wanting. 

How galling this must be to plastic Zionists, who basking in the reflected glory of Israel, appear not to have the faith to act on their preaching’s[xvi]

In contrast, Rachel, a young girl with no obvious religious or political affiliation, did not talk the talk, she walked the walk.  Rachel was not plastic, she was the Real thing. 

This, I believe, is why they hate her.

Gaza

The Israelis do not allow independent travellers into Gaza.  The best that I could do was visit the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in Jerusalem and collect an up to date report and map.

Gaza is the most crowded place on the face of the earth.  Its 1.2 million inhabitants are jammed-in at a density of 134,000 people per square mile.  Birmingham, England has a population of one million.  If its population were jammed-in like this, it would only occupy a piece of land 2.5 miles by 2.5 miles!  Unimaginable. 

Religious fundamentalism Middle East style.

The British Government tells us that Middle Eastern religious fundamentalism is a threat to our western values.  If so, I can vouch that fundamentalism is quite different to how it appears on TV!

When I first rode into Jerusalem I was aware of black specks, swarming, ant like against the sun brightened masonry of the distant city.  Up close, I discover that streets were awash with black-hatted, black-coated and black-booted, bearded men.  These orthodox or ultra-orthodox Jews comprise one third of East Jerusalem’s population, some 200,000 people.

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I tried to categorise the bewildering variety of black beards, coats, hats and curls into distinct cliques.  All I could conclude was that - almost to a person – all having one thing in common; severe myopia.  Even the little shaven-headed girls sported coke-bottle glasses.

Settlements, roads and the Wall.

"There is hardly anywhere that you can drive for more than 5 minutes and be out of sight of an Israeli settlement and sniper tower". Friend Jeff (6 year US army veteran).

I agree with Jeff, Israeli settlements, and the building of new settlements, dominates the landscape. In places, so intense is the building activity of cranes, bulldozers, stone crushers and pile drivers that the horizon is a purple haze.

Journalists and politicians are clearly wrong when they report that:

There are some 200 Israeli settlements in the Palestinian West Bank. (Gerauld Kaufmann, all credit to him, says that there are more than 300!) 

Journalists and politicians should more correctly report:

A dense, stifling web of Israeli settlements and roads encircle hundreds of Palestinian ghettoes and concentration camps.

The settlement building is a cancer.  One afternoon we walked up the Keran valley, Jerusalem and saw the new settlements in the valley encroaching on the Arab shantytowns.  We saw three sets of goat herders - but altogether only about 40 acres of land remained for them.

I am not particularly opposed to a wall.  However, it is understood that any Israeli built wall should not be built on Palestinian land[xvii].  Furthermore, one would expect a security wall to be as short as possible -. Unfortunately, as the attached map shows, that the Israelis are building the wall on Palestinian land – and it is not short.  Nor is it a single wall, it is walls within walls[xviii].

http://www.poica.org/casestudies/Beit%20Jala%2021-4-04/Israeli%20Plan%20in%20Bethlehem.pdf

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 If you study these maps, you will find that the Israeli Government has planned this route to ensure:

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·        Grab agricultural land that is of immense value to poor rural Palestinians but of insignificant value to Israelis.

·        The Wall will ghettoise towns and villages (e.g. Qalqilia) so that entire will community will only have one access gateway.

·        The miles-long, fiord-like, wall building around cities such as Ar'iel is a huge land grab that will effectively divide the West Bank into two.

Quite clearly, the settlement-building program is creating a "slow-motion" holocaust.[xix]

The wall on the ground

Three months ago, Wall building activity stopped (temporarily) in the village of Budros.  One morning we followed the goat herders as they left the village, led their goats through the olive groves, across the level foundation of the Wall onto the hillside beyond.

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The hills of Tuscany

The hills around Budros are beautiful in the spring.  The stony limestone ledges are a mat of daisies, iris and cyclamen.  One afternoon Nils, Jeff and I walked in the Tuscanesque hills.  We discovered a ruined Roman mausoleum - well that is what we said it was!

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Memorable people

I will never know his name but I am grateful to the Israeli soldier manning the checkpoint on the night we escorted our sick friend home.  He was a mild person who understood our predicament and after a professional search quickly allowed our taxi through the checkpoint.

Elias was hiding from his wife in a grotty room in a grotty hotel in the old city. His brother had fought and lost an arm with Montgomery. He was born in Jaffa.  When he was 9, new Israelis settlers drove him and thousands of others off. He moved to Jerusalem.  In 1956 - disgusted with Britain for its duplicity in the Suez affair - he went to Amman, joined a terrorist group and bombed the British embassy. He was sentenced to life but was amnestied four years later.  He once returned to his "home" in Jaffa but was driven off by its residents.  He made a pledge a) to make a Pilgrimage to Gamal Nasser's grave and b) never to enter Israel again.

The elderly French priest had lived in a monastery in Israel since 1947.  He had never ventured as far as the local village just one kilometre away!

Five years ago, Angel and her husband went to Oregon where they had a child.  He had a studentship and quickly obtained his degree, green card and a girl friend.  He divorced his wife who returned with her son and his US passport to live in precarious circumstances in Jerusalem.  She is now engaged to a distant relative in Jordan.  However because of Israel's apartheid marriage laws, her fiancée cannot join her in Jerusalem - and her ex-husband refuses to let the child live in Jordan!

All the Swedes.  If I was to be granted another life I would like to be born Swedish.  That is, a thoughtful, energetic, self confident, humanitarian, well educated, polyglot.  Unfortunately, I would be a chain smoker.

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"Doing nothing is not an option[xx]". Jeff. 

For many Internationals, like me, it was a first visit to Palestine and Israel.  Our prime objective was to see – with our own eyes - whether reports of massive ethnic cleansing in Palestine were true. Sadly they are.  Unsurprisingly, we discovered that all we could do was bear witness; there was nothing that we could do to prevent or even slow this holocaust[xxi].  Nevertheless, upon leaving Palestine we all knew that, "Doing nothing is not an option".   This is the lesson of Palestine.