Greetings,
begin transmission. The Darren is leaving the Israel and will be returning to the Canada within the week. end transmission
Yeah, this needs an explanation. The following is an adaptation to the letter I sent to colleagues here in Israel and Palestine, both MCC and Zochrot:
Some of you know the gist of what I'm about to say, to some of you this will be new. The very short version is, I have realised that I belong in Canada, working with my own country and my own people. I have realised that I left Canada for escapist reasons and that no matter how much I hate the cops or socialised insurance or the affluence and materialism of people, those are not good reasons to ditch out on my country and the people in my life.
I have a family that I want to participate in. I don't want my new nephew to be three years old before I meet him; I don't want to go that long without seeing my other nephews and neices.
I have the best friends a dude could ever ask for and I realise that I want to be investing in their lives; not absent from them. Most of my friends weren't Christians before I met them and they are now; I have realised that I should continue to be investing in them. (This has nothing to do with proselytisation - it speaks to the closeness and intimacy of our friendships and an alignment in our lives and values.
Canada has many hurting and needy people; the disenfranchised. I know that most "successful" people ususally deal with the rich, our society caters to it; but that has always made me feel uncomfortable because of the disparagement I have seen in the world. I have always been drawn to work with the poor, the needy and the down-and-out. That is what took me to Africa three different times, to Germany, and finally to Israel. Those who knew me in BC knew that for the past few years I was just hiding out in the film industry, passing time and refusing to engage my society.
Something changed with this trip, however. I noticed it only a few weeks into my term. I saw the commitment that the people from Zochrot had to their country, their people. Now, I think that Israel is way more screwed up than Canada is, just my own opinion, and when I saw my new co-workers' commitment to their people, it made me feel sheepish. I felt like I was doing the exact opposite of what they were doing. They saw a screwed up situation and dug in their heels and stayed to work against the tide. I saw a screwed up situation in Canada and just left, hoping to find greener pastures. What I found was a dawning realisation that I actually do belong in Canada, working with my people; working with Canada's disenfranchised.
It took me a long time to arrive at this decision. I thought about it since that first dawning in early August, I actively considered it for over a month and laboured over it for the past several weeks. I consulted friends, both in Israel and in Canada, including members of my family. I read some wisdom literature, hoping to glean some information that could give me direction; I poured over the stories of Jesus, looking for hints in his parables and interactions with people. I wrote out pros and cons lists on both staying and going. I prayed through it thoroughly.
It would be much easier, in a sense, to just stay here. I have some really great friends, whom I love. I have a terrific apartment and enough food and really cheap beer to keep me chubby. There is a beautiful city at my doorstep and the Mediterranian Sea to swim in. Zochrot is an honourable organisation that has inspired and moved me. MCC has been paying my student loans and basically, I have been riding on a free ticket. I have been learning heaps, from the history of this land, a new language and culture, and the humanity of people; all people.
But, in my own sense of integrity, I needed to be honest with myself and with those around me. I could no longer deny the feelings of conviction within me that for the first time in my adult life I actually feel like I belong in Canada - that I have a responsibility to take ownership of my Canadian identity, instead of scorning it, and seek to help the disenfranchised in my community. To stand in support and love of my family and my friends - not to just run away to a different country taking for granted all that is really most important to me.
So, I needed to set a date for leaving, one that I was comfortable with and one that I thought showed respect for Zochrot, MCC and my friends here in Tel Aviv. The last thing I wanted to do was to disappear or run out in the night. In most jobs you give two weeks notice. I really value my experiences here and wanted to give six weeks notice. I planned on stopping my studies at the language school and going back to the Zochrot office and spending time again with the staff from Zochrot whom I have hardly seen since starting Hebrew Language study. And I also wanted to be above-board with MCC, so they could know of how I feel and support me.
I telelphoned the country representative and told him all that I have written above. He called me back two hours later informing me that I must leave immediately. That MCC doesn't want me around their partners if I will not be with MCC. I tried to explain about giving notice and being incarnational in the time I felt I wanted to give but to no avail. He said that the Jerusalem Rep would take care of things with Zochrot and with all the details of me leaving Tel Aviv. It turns out that I am leaving in the middle of the night, literally, in two days, on Monday.
The Jerusalem Rep would take care of it? We are two very different people and I don't ever speak with him about my life, my dreams, my goals, my concerns. In short, he is not a source of support in my life and doesn't actually even know me. So how is he supposed to take care of it?
He never knew my reasons for wanting to leave. So how is it that he can say anything to Zochrot or to my fellow colleagues within MCC? These things gravely concerned me because I fear he might just make something up about how I was homesick or something like that. Homesickness has nothing to do with me returning to Canada.
So, I wanted to explain these things myself. I sent an e-mail similar to this one to my colleagues at MCC and Zochrot and have actually arranged to have lunch with the Zochrot staff tomorrow to say goodbye. Eitan, the director told me that I can't leave Israel without trying Abu-Hasan's in Jaffa; that it is better than Abu-Adham's, where I eat several times a week and one day when I ate three bowls (free refills) they gave me a free shirt. Most Israelis barely get through one. So, I'll see if this Abu-Hasan's is better; but it will be really good to spend one last time together with the staff.
I do not think I am leaving here a failure. I believe that life has many twists and turns on this journey and that epiphanies and realisations that change us are good things, rather than bad. My parent generation values things like "commitment" and "obedience to a call" and I value those things, too. But what I value more is the dynamic that evolution happens, change occurs; change that we don't always see coming and can't always plan. At least that's the way it works for me.
I feel I am responsible to properly explain myself and let you all know how I feel and why I am making the decisions I am making. I am not responsible for your reaction. If you feel like I'm lacking in character, or that I've run-out on my responsibilities and commitments, then I agree; that is why I am returning to Canada, to take ownership of those responsibilities and commitments. It was not my intention to sweep through the Middle East, wasting money on some soul-searching mission. A cynic could easily see it as that; I don't see it that way.
My regret about leaving so soon is that it feels like a definite severing - like a definite statement MCC is making to me. I have been in language school since the beginning of September and have rarely even seen the Zochrot staff; now I am being whisked off so that I barely see them. That saddens me.
It will be hard leaving this place that I have lived for three months. Like I said earlier I have some really valuable relationships, both inside MCC and Zochrot, and outside, with my "regular" Israeli friends. Not being the bravest person I know, I wouldn't have laboured through this decision if I didn't believe in it and I wouldn't decide to go home if I didn't believe that it was for the sake of personal integrity and responsibility and ownership.
These are my reasons and this is how I feel. Sorry for misunderstandings or hurt feelings.
Darren
(Burro-D-Block OUT)
Saturday, October 22, 2005
Thursday, October 20, 2005
a Tour of the WestBank
Thursday, October 20, 2005
My time up in Zababdeh was really cool. Fine, I was sick for a couple of days but by Tuesday was feeling like myself, again. I really enjoyed going for walks in an olive grove with Mark and Andrea and seeing old trees leading my eyes towards beautiful views of the mountains surrounding Zababdeh. Tuesday night brought a full-moon and it looked so beautiful hovering over those mountains. Wednesday it rained. It poured, in fact, over the entire country. I was so glad to see great globs of water fall. I loved hearing the constant drumming of pitter-patter on the ground. It rained in Israel, too, even in Tel Aviv. People are talking about winter and there are less people in the streets at night. Not that it's actually cold. Last night, after my return to Tel Aviv, Matan and I went for a walk to the grocery store and I was in shorts and a t-shirt and enjoying the coolness. He was in long-pants and was complaining that it was too cold; he had forgotten to put on a sweater so we didn't go for much of a walk: only to the store and back.
To leave Zababdeh, I was going to catch a bus at 5:15 am to take me to Ramallah, then it wouldn't be much trouble to get to Tel Aviv via Jerusalem from that point. Mark walked with me to the bus. There were no people, so we waited, hoping the driver would come soon. After five, or so, minutes he did show up. He took one look at me and said to us some sentences. He said something about my foreign passport and he either said the roads were closed and he's doing a new route or he said that he didn't want a foreign passport on his bus because it would cause problems. I only heard the word "passport" but Mark understood a little of what he said. I don't know any Arabic because I'm surrounded by Hebrew. I didn't get on the bus; it was clear that he didn't want me to.
There was some tension in the Westbank this week because the IDF were stepping up their road closures and their supposed security checks. It's a tough situation on both sides, I think; Israel is paranoid that Palestine is going to stick it to them every opportunity they get and Palestine gets so tired of being squashed by the Israelis. Why Israel doesn't just pull out of the WestBank and stick to the 1948 borders is beyond me. I think it is rooted in imagery, symbolism and desires for hegemony and held firm by propaganda and fear. Anyway, times get tough and tension spills over. Three settlers were killed and several others wounded at a hitchhiking stand near Bethlehem on Sunday when a Palestinian man shot them. The next move is that Israel flexes its muscles and tightens its chokehold on Palestine. Airforce jets circled Jenin for several hours on Wednesday, their constant circling and roaring engines was pretty annoying to me but they weren't letting off sonic booms or dropping any bombs. Intimidation is the name of the game for the IDF. Bethlehem and Jenin are not even near each other; but Israel impedes life all over the West Bank, just the same. They protect their illegal settlements by shutting down the highways that run near them, which means Palestinians have to either drive huge distances to circumvent the closures or they have to go off-road and drive through fields to link back up with the road on the other side of the closure. There are many unknowns because the IDF is unpredictable and moody. There is tension and fear, on both sides. Palestine is poor, very poor.
Israel blocks any economic growth and blocks any outside trading with other countries. Israel gets stronger and Palestine continues to hold on to their hard way of life, still living with grace and dignity in a way that amazes me.
Andrea was surprised to hear both our voices as we came back to their place. They contacted their landlord a couple of hours later - at a respectable hour! - and asked if he could try to arrange a seat in a taxi for me run by one of his relatives who lives in Ramallah who takes people up to Jenin every morning then does a run back to Ramallah at the end of the day. But with the road closures and the stepped up harrassment at checkpoints, not many people were wanting to travel. The driver sat around in Jenin for several hours with no travelers until the Stoner-Leaman's landlord called him up to tell him that I'd pay just over double fare to get a ride. Finally, by 4:30 I climbed into a taxi, paid the driver 100 shekels ($30 CDN), and got a ride to Ramallah. We had to take a very round-about way to avoid some checkpoints and road closures. I got my own private tour of the WestBank and it is beautiful. Its also very poor and underdeveloped, which is really sad because it is only that way because Israel chokes the Palestinian economy.
At one point my driver Saliba (means "the cross" - he's part of the 2% Christian population of Palestine) took us around a sharp corner on a mountain road and a huge expanse opened up before us. The mountains gradually fell away into lower ground and the sun was just setting giving off a soft light that made the view breathtaking. From left to right I could see until the horizon swallowed up everything. As we descended down the mountain we were stopped by a taxi driver coming towards us who told us that up ahead there was a tank blocking the road so we needed to go another way. Saliba manouvered our big old six-door mercedes down a steep and incredibly bumpy dirt path and we set out across fields on a worn track that is often used by Palestinians to avoid checkpoints or closed roads. We had been near a Jewish settlement, which is why the tank was closing the road (to "protect" it). Saliba told me that by going through these fields, which was like a maze of different tracks and more stones on the ground than soil, it seemed, we were saving driving 150 extra kilometers on roads to get back to the highway.
We spotted the tank and the tank spotted us. For about two or three minutes ours was the only car in the field and the tank's upper body rotated, following us with its eyes. I could sense the discomfort and tension of Saliba and see the sweat on his forehead and wondered if we might be in real trouble. We just kept on driving. Other cars and minvans and trucks started to appear on various tracks after some minutes of our solo off-roading. Most of the drivers tried to wave Saliba down, presumably to ask about open roads ahead, but he wasn't stopping. He wanted out of the fields as fast as possible. He just waved people on instead of stopping to talk and muttered to me about how dangerous it would be to stop and confer with other drivers with a tank watching us. We eventually got back to a paved road and continued on. We went through two checkpoints where the soldiers treated us cooly but let us pass before coming into Ramallah.
My driver, Saliba, talked with me the entire way. He had a very interesting perspective on all things political and had some good knowledge, too, having been a schoolteacher in Jerusalem for 25 years before the school closed. The only two parts where I asserted counterpoints to what he was saying were when he denied the Jewish Holocaust and sang the praises of Saddam Hussein. That last one led to a very interesting conversation where he told me that Arab people cannot live with democracy; they need to have a dictator-type ruler, he said. I reminded him that he was of the Christian religion and asked if he wanted to live under an Islamic legal system. He replied that there was nothing he could do about it and that it was in Palestinian law that the leader must be Muslim. He said he didn't mind. That he didn't want democracy; he said that when Palestine becomes a nation, Abbas will have to go because he is too weak and too democratic. He explained his point of view to me about Hussein by listing a dozen other examples of Arab countries whose leaders are autocratic and dictatorial. He told me that Jordanians only settled down when their King built a military that kept them in line. I don't think he speaks for all Arabs or all Palestinians. He is just one man with his own opinions, just as I am, but it sure was interesting to hear him rail on against democracy. Saliba also named villages we past and told me a thing or two about a thing or two. He explained to me how certain villages got their names. He told me stories about the British occupation. I was thoroughly exhausted by the time we arrived in Ramallah but also very grateful for my own private tour of the West Bank.
From Ramallah, I took a servees (shared taxi mini-van deal) to Kalundia then walked across the "border" and through another checkpoint before getting into another taxi to get me to the central bus station in Jerusalem. When we passed through yet another checkpoint the soldiers wanted me to open my backpack for them. It was dark and he didn't have a flashlight so as soon as I opened it and said "rack begadeem" (only clothes) he just waved me away from him moved on to the next car.
After getting to Central Bus Station, going through yet more security checks from visual profiling to metal detectors to x-ray machines, I finally boarded my bus to take me to Tel Aviv. Just over four hours after leaving Zababdeh I was back in my apartment in Tel Aviv, exhausted but happy. I find it amazing that if there wasn't so much conflict and tension and if buses and vehicles could move freely between Israel and the Westbank, I could have made the journey in just over an hour. Maybe someday.
My time up in Zababdeh was really cool. Fine, I was sick for a couple of days but by Tuesday was feeling like myself, again. I really enjoyed going for walks in an olive grove with Mark and Andrea and seeing old trees leading my eyes towards beautiful views of the mountains surrounding Zababdeh. Tuesday night brought a full-moon and it looked so beautiful hovering over those mountains. Wednesday it rained. It poured, in fact, over the entire country. I was so glad to see great globs of water fall. I loved hearing the constant drumming of pitter-patter on the ground. It rained in Israel, too, even in Tel Aviv. People are talking about winter and there are less people in the streets at night. Not that it's actually cold. Last night, after my return to Tel Aviv, Matan and I went for a walk to the grocery store and I was in shorts and a t-shirt and enjoying the coolness. He was in long-pants and was complaining that it was too cold; he had forgotten to put on a sweater so we didn't go for much of a walk: only to the store and back.
To leave Zababdeh, I was going to catch a bus at 5:15 am to take me to Ramallah, then it wouldn't be much trouble to get to Tel Aviv via Jerusalem from that point. Mark walked with me to the bus. There were no people, so we waited, hoping the driver would come soon. After five, or so, minutes he did show up. He took one look at me and said to us some sentences. He said something about my foreign passport and he either said the roads were closed and he's doing a new route or he said that he didn't want a foreign passport on his bus because it would cause problems. I only heard the word "passport" but Mark understood a little of what he said. I don't know any Arabic because I'm surrounded by Hebrew. I didn't get on the bus; it was clear that he didn't want me to.
There was some tension in the Westbank this week because the IDF were stepping up their road closures and their supposed security checks. It's a tough situation on both sides, I think; Israel is paranoid that Palestine is going to stick it to them every opportunity they get and Palestine gets so tired of being squashed by the Israelis. Why Israel doesn't just pull out of the WestBank and stick to the 1948 borders is beyond me. I think it is rooted in imagery, symbolism and desires for hegemony and held firm by propaganda and fear. Anyway, times get tough and tension spills over. Three settlers were killed and several others wounded at a hitchhiking stand near Bethlehem on Sunday when a Palestinian man shot them. The next move is that Israel flexes its muscles and tightens its chokehold on Palestine. Airforce jets circled Jenin for several hours on Wednesday, their constant circling and roaring engines was pretty annoying to me but they weren't letting off sonic booms or dropping any bombs. Intimidation is the name of the game for the IDF. Bethlehem and Jenin are not even near each other; but Israel impedes life all over the West Bank, just the same. They protect their illegal settlements by shutting down the highways that run near them, which means Palestinians have to either drive huge distances to circumvent the closures or they have to go off-road and drive through fields to link back up with the road on the other side of the closure. There are many unknowns because the IDF is unpredictable and moody. There is tension and fear, on both sides. Palestine is poor, very poor.
Israel blocks any economic growth and blocks any outside trading with other countries. Israel gets stronger and Palestine continues to hold on to their hard way of life, still living with grace and dignity in a way that amazes me.
Andrea was surprised to hear both our voices as we came back to their place. They contacted their landlord a couple of hours later - at a respectable hour! - and asked if he could try to arrange a seat in a taxi for me run by one of his relatives who lives in Ramallah who takes people up to Jenin every morning then does a run back to Ramallah at the end of the day. But with the road closures and the stepped up harrassment at checkpoints, not many people were wanting to travel. The driver sat around in Jenin for several hours with no travelers until the Stoner-Leaman's landlord called him up to tell him that I'd pay just over double fare to get a ride. Finally, by 4:30 I climbed into a taxi, paid the driver 100 shekels ($30 CDN), and got a ride to Ramallah. We had to take a very round-about way to avoid some checkpoints and road closures. I got my own private tour of the WestBank and it is beautiful. Its also very poor and underdeveloped, which is really sad because it is only that way because Israel chokes the Palestinian economy.
At one point my driver Saliba (means "the cross" - he's part of the 2% Christian population of Palestine) took us around a sharp corner on a mountain road and a huge expanse opened up before us. The mountains gradually fell away into lower ground and the sun was just setting giving off a soft light that made the view breathtaking. From left to right I could see until the horizon swallowed up everything. As we descended down the mountain we were stopped by a taxi driver coming towards us who told us that up ahead there was a tank blocking the road so we needed to go another way. Saliba manouvered our big old six-door mercedes down a steep and incredibly bumpy dirt path and we set out across fields on a worn track that is often used by Palestinians to avoid checkpoints or closed roads. We had been near a Jewish settlement, which is why the tank was closing the road (to "protect" it). Saliba told me that by going through these fields, which was like a maze of different tracks and more stones on the ground than soil, it seemed, we were saving driving 150 extra kilometers on roads to get back to the highway.
We spotted the tank and the tank spotted us. For about two or three minutes ours was the only car in the field and the tank's upper body rotated, following us with its eyes. I could sense the discomfort and tension of Saliba and see the sweat on his forehead and wondered if we might be in real trouble. We just kept on driving. Other cars and minvans and trucks started to appear on various tracks after some minutes of our solo off-roading. Most of the drivers tried to wave Saliba down, presumably to ask about open roads ahead, but he wasn't stopping. He wanted out of the fields as fast as possible. He just waved people on instead of stopping to talk and muttered to me about how dangerous it would be to stop and confer with other drivers with a tank watching us. We eventually got back to a paved road and continued on. We went through two checkpoints where the soldiers treated us cooly but let us pass before coming into Ramallah.
My driver, Saliba, talked with me the entire way. He had a very interesting perspective on all things political and had some good knowledge, too, having been a schoolteacher in Jerusalem for 25 years before the school closed. The only two parts where I asserted counterpoints to what he was saying were when he denied the Jewish Holocaust and sang the praises of Saddam Hussein. That last one led to a very interesting conversation where he told me that Arab people cannot live with democracy; they need to have a dictator-type ruler, he said. I reminded him that he was of the Christian religion and asked if he wanted to live under an Islamic legal system. He replied that there was nothing he could do about it and that it was in Palestinian law that the leader must be Muslim. He said he didn't mind. That he didn't want democracy; he said that when Palestine becomes a nation, Abbas will have to go because he is too weak and too democratic. He explained his point of view to me about Hussein by listing a dozen other examples of Arab countries whose leaders are autocratic and dictatorial. He told me that Jordanians only settled down when their King built a military that kept them in line. I don't think he speaks for all Arabs or all Palestinians. He is just one man with his own opinions, just as I am, but it sure was interesting to hear him rail on against democracy. Saliba also named villages we past and told me a thing or two about a thing or two. He explained to me how certain villages got their names. He told me stories about the British occupation. I was thoroughly exhausted by the time we arrived in Ramallah but also very grateful for my own private tour of the West Bank.
From Ramallah, I took a servees (shared taxi mini-van deal) to Kalundia then walked across the "border" and through another checkpoint before getting into another taxi to get me to the central bus station in Jerusalem. When we passed through yet another checkpoint the soldiers wanted me to open my backpack for them. It was dark and he didn't have a flashlight so as soon as I opened it and said "rack begadeem" (only clothes) he just waved me away from him moved on to the next car.
After getting to Central Bus Station, going through yet more security checks from visual profiling to metal detectors to x-ray machines, I finally boarded my bus to take me to Tel Aviv. Just over four hours after leaving Zababdeh I was back in my apartment in Tel Aviv, exhausted but happy. I find it amazing that if there wasn't so much conflict and tension and if buses and vehicles could move freely between Israel and the Westbank, I could have made the journey in just over an hour. Maybe someday.
Monday, October 17, 2005
Not sure if I've met dogs this sick
Family, Friends, and folks who for whatever reason read these e-mails.
As you know, I came up to Zababdeh to hang out with Mark and Andrea Stoner-Lehman, fellow MCCers. Our first night was a really good time of visiting, a walk in an olive grove, some felafel and chess.
Cabbage. Cabbage did it to me. It tried to kill me.
I woke up on Sunday morning and it took me about twenty minutes to realise that I couldn't eat anything and that I felt bloated and in pain. Turns out the cabbage in the felafel (for it came to me in my dreams and mocked me) had poisoned me.
It is now Monday night and I am still fighting a sore stomach and the nastiest runs that ever ran through my body!
I am much better than yesterday, when I was a walking zombie and in addition to the runs was vomiting throughout the day. I slept for nearly 20 hours of the 24 on Sunday.
I woke up this afternoon at 1pm and have eaten a little bit and haven't barfed yet. I am really glad that I am not alone in my apartment in Tel Aviv while being so sick - psychologically, it would be very difficult. Because of Jewish holidays (Sucot) there are no Israeli busses running until Wednesday, so I am here, at Mark and Andreas, recuperating until then. They have been very good to me.
I just wanted to give a brief update, so that those of you who keep up on it all can know where I'm at.
I got to see some russian league hockey on the television tonight. It sure doesn't compare with the Nucks, but it was nice to see some hockey, at least.
Okay, this hurts my brain - Darren OUT.
As you know, I came up to Zababdeh to hang out with Mark and Andrea Stoner-Lehman, fellow MCCers. Our first night was a really good time of visiting, a walk in an olive grove, some felafel and chess.
Cabbage. Cabbage did it to me. It tried to kill me.
I woke up on Sunday morning and it took me about twenty minutes to realise that I couldn't eat anything and that I felt bloated and in pain. Turns out the cabbage in the felafel (for it came to me in my dreams and mocked me) had poisoned me.
It is now Monday night and I am still fighting a sore stomach and the nastiest runs that ever ran through my body!
I am much better than yesterday, when I was a walking zombie and in addition to the runs was vomiting throughout the day. I slept for nearly 20 hours of the 24 on Sunday.
I woke up this afternoon at 1pm and have eaten a little bit and haven't barfed yet. I am really glad that I am not alone in my apartment in Tel Aviv while being so sick - psychologically, it would be very difficult. Because of Jewish holidays (Sucot) there are no Israeli busses running until Wednesday, so I am here, at Mark and Andreas, recuperating until then. They have been very good to me.
I just wanted to give a brief update, so that those of you who keep up on it all can know where I'm at.
I got to see some russian league hockey on the television tonight. It sure doesn't compare with the Nucks, but it was nice to see some hockey, at least.
Okay, this hurts my brain - Darren OUT.
Friday, October 14, 2005
Pesto La Mubanga
Pesto La Mubanga:
Take two cups of fresh basil leaves. If you have a food processor, that would probably work best to shred them; I use a cheese grater, which turns my fingers green.
Pour in a half-cup of olive oil into your bowl with your shredded basil leaves.
Salt, Pepper, papryka (I use sweet papryka), a little bit of cayenne (as much as you desire).
Then put in several cloves of crushed / pressed garlic, I use about six or seven, but that's because I like excessiveness.
Several pinches of parmesan cheese and several tablespoons of cream cheese....stir in all in good.
some diced pine-nuts or several splashes of beer go nicely, too.
Mix it all up, take time to smell your mix and breathe deeply.
Serve it over spaghetti noodles.
ROCK AND / OR ROLL!
Burro.
Take two cups of fresh basil leaves. If you have a food processor, that would probably work best to shred them; I use a cheese grater, which turns my fingers green.
Pour in a half-cup of olive oil into your bowl with your shredded basil leaves.
Salt, Pepper, papryka (I use sweet papryka), a little bit of cayenne (as much as you desire).
Then put in several cloves of crushed / pressed garlic, I use about six or seven, but that's because I like excessiveness.
Several pinches of parmesan cheese and several tablespoons of cream cheese....stir in all in good.
some diced pine-nuts or several splashes of beer go nicely, too.
Mix it all up, take time to smell your mix and breathe deeply.
Serve it over spaghetti noodles.
ROCK AND / OR ROLL!
Burro.
Tuesday, October 11, 2005
The Hashemite Kingdom
Tuesday, October 11, 2005
I am back from the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan; back to Tel Aviv; back to telling stories via e-mail. Tonight I went out with Eitan Reich and had a really beneficial conversation about life; Zochrot; "the situation" of Israel / Palestine; MCC; our friendship; his expectation of having a baby next month; our shared "adventure" of looking around and trying to figure out just what our purpose is and what life is about. And, no, I don't want to read a Rick Warren book.
It was also really nice to be back in Tel Aviv to hang out with my buddy Matan. It felt good to have a buddy whose eyes lit up at seeing me and he threw his arms around me laughing, eager to know what I had experienced in Jordan. He was so happy to hear that my eyes had seen the Dead Sea from the Jordanian side, that my feet had walked on paths in the desert, that I had eaten in Amman. He said, "I'm going to go there; we have peace with Jordan." Then he said, "I really want to see Damascus..." His eyes took on a look of longing and he said, "One day...." We spent the afternoon, today, watching Welkin's latest concert that was taped and the DVD was sent to me. At one point my brother tells the crowd that they are missing their biggest fan and that he is usually dancing and cheering and Matan started laughing and leaned into the TV and said to the screen, "I know your brother, and he is crazy!" We laughed and enjoyed the show. Me with the ever present Welkin-tears on my cheeks.
So, I would like to give you a couple of snippets of my time in Jordan. But first a little scene painting: Thursday I took the bus to Jerusalem and met up with Mark and Andrea, Bassem, and Chris and Tim. We went to a really cool restaurant in East Jerusalem and I was able to get all caught up with Mark and Andrea, having not seen them since orientation in Emerika in July. I slept in Bethlehem at Chris and Tim's house and it was nice to visit with them.
Friday morning, bright and early - 6:30 Bethlehem time - I was dropped off in Jerusalem (a twenty-five minute drive to a different world), where it was 7:30, since Israel's time change (the fall-back) and Palestine's time change (indeed, the whole Arab world) are a week apart. I wonder if there is more to a time change than a time change.... It's at least really good for all the Muslims, since it's Ramadanadingdong and they don't eat until it's dark (it's dark at 5:30pm, now). Anyway, the "MCC Palestine" folks jumped in our hired mini-bus and headed for the Allenby Bridge crossing (called King Hussein bridge from the Jordanian side). We drove through the Judean Desert, saw many shepherds with their sheep and goats, camels and some really nice-looking asses (as in donkeys...I want one...he can live on my roof...I'd make him a manger and call him D-Block). As we approached the border, we saw the Dead Sea; we drove past Jericho (which is a big sprawling Palestinian city) and finally got to the border.
The crossing took less time than I had been told it would. We went through Israeli security, paid our departure tax, waited around a while, got on a bus, then eventually started moving towards Jordan. I got to see the Jordan River, even though it is more like a stream near the Dead Sea (it still rages up north, as it flows from the Golan Heights into Lake Kinneret, or as we call it, the Sea of Galilee; I haven't seen it in person, just photos). Halfway across the bridge we were boarded and had our passports taken from us, where we got them back once we got to the Jordanian side and were processed at customs. We then took two taxis between the group of us and headed to the MCC office in Amman, the capital city of Jordan.
Once there, we teamed up with the rest of the MCCers, 25 in total, where we took a big chartered bus the four-hour drive south to Wadi Dana, a nature reserve about sixty KM north of Petra (have you ever seen the climax of the final installment of Indiana Jones....that place is Petra). The drive down took twice as long as the drive back because on the way down we took the King's Highway, which winded along like the drive to Whistler, meandering along mountain passes, giving great views and offering nausea for the car-sick prone folks (like myself and Andrea). The way home we took the Desert Highway, which took two hours and was straight and flat. I guess it was nice to go both ways, but my head still swims when I think of all the turns and curves of the King's Highway.
Wadi Dana is a nature reserve in the desert, in between the Dead Sea (to the north) and Aqaba on the Red Sea (to the south). There was no oasis of water, as I had expected; but a dry mountainous canyon-filled series of valleys that had rocks like teeth and were sporatically highlighted with cacti and small evergreen trees. It caused me to realise why Zion Canyon is called that in America - Wadi Dana looked very similar to the pictures I have seen of Zion Canyon. We camped at the bottom of a valley that we got to by shuttle truck, riding in the open back, wondering if we were going to plunge over the side into the canyon below. We stayed in tents that had parking-lot-party-blankets (which I knew very well not to use) and mattresses that we could sleep on. Bassem and I shared a tent. He tried in vain to wake me up and stop me from snoring. The second night, he told me that he was even full-on punching me to stop me from snoring. I wouldn't wake up and wouldn't stop snoring. I was happy to hear that some things never change.
Okay, here's a snippet.
On Saturday morning, some of us went on a guided hike up to some caves. As it turned out they were caves where ascetics used to live back in the Byzantine period, which were later occupied by Beduins, as recently as twenty-five years ago. The caves were super cool. All the rock was sandstone and once we got to the caves, we had to scale up a cliff to get into them. It was really cool to see. There were crosses etched into the stone and you could just imagine how a family or some ascetic monk with his camel-hair shirt itching his skin could sit or where food could be stowed. The view was incredible but it occurred to me that one who rolls in one's sleep wouldn't last very long in these caves. The highlight was scooting across a very narrow ledge to access the church. It was carefully carved out and was only ten feet by ten feet but had beautiful rounded arches and spaces for shrines. The roof had been rounded out and both sides and back also had been rounded. I understood that this church was more than 1500 years old.
Here's another snippet.
I needed some time alone, since that's how I am and on Saturday night I slipped off, away from the fire and the singing and grabbed my CD player and headed out to a cliff edge under the canopy of stars. I took my shirt off and stood with my arms upstretched in the cold desert night. I was so happy to be cold. Then I laid down on the even colder rock and listened to Welkin's Strangers and Exiles, tears on my cheeks, me singing to keep the creepy crawlies away and I stared into the welkin - the firmament of the heavens - feeling wonder that this desert air had never heard the voice of a human singing the words of these particular beautiful songs. Bassem joined me after some time and I got him to listen to Howling Wind because of its appropriateness - the Middle Eastern climactic ending and the stiff breeze of the desert night. We talked about life and God and the cosmos for a while; then when our conversation turned to being so far from home I put the earphones on him again and let him listen to Psalm of Pearls. He was amazed that my brother made such beautiful music. My earphones can really crank it out, so I held them up and we laid back, watching shooting stars together, letting the album play through before going back and warming ourselves up by the fire. I was loving the cold and poor Bassem was shivering but we had a really good time out in the desert night with the welkin and the Welkin.
Historical Mention: the general area where we stayed is mentioned in the Bible. Apparently Wadi Dana is seven km from the ancient capital city of Edom, called Rimmon. Judges 20:45ff picks up a battle between Israel and the Benjamites, where Israel slaughtered thousands of Benjamites and six hundred of them hid in the rocks of Rimmon for four months. Looking around, I could easily see how six hundred men could hide out in the rocks, the caves, the crevices.
Sunday afternoon we all piled back on the bus and returned to Amman, where we said our goodbyes and the "MCC Palestine" folks stayed in a hotel. A few of us went out for dinner and then a guy named Chris Thiessen (who is here with his parents for a few months) and I went to the hotel pool and did the pool, hot-tub, steam-room, sauna circuit a few times until I was too exhausted to continue. We returned to Jerusalem on Monday morning, said our goodbyes to each other there, too, and I got on a bus and came back to Tel Aviv.
I slept for fifteen hours last night - my body, mind and soul needed a rest from "retreating."
I am back from the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan; back to Tel Aviv; back to telling stories via e-mail. Tonight I went out with Eitan Reich and had a really beneficial conversation about life; Zochrot; "the situation" of Israel / Palestine; MCC; our friendship; his expectation of having a baby next month; our shared "adventure" of looking around and trying to figure out just what our purpose is and what life is about. And, no, I don't want to read a Rick Warren book.
It was also really nice to be back in Tel Aviv to hang out with my buddy Matan. It felt good to have a buddy whose eyes lit up at seeing me and he threw his arms around me laughing, eager to know what I had experienced in Jordan. He was so happy to hear that my eyes had seen the Dead Sea from the Jordanian side, that my feet had walked on paths in the desert, that I had eaten in Amman. He said, "I'm going to go there; we have peace with Jordan." Then he said, "I really want to see Damascus..." His eyes took on a look of longing and he said, "One day...." We spent the afternoon, today, watching Welkin's latest concert that was taped and the DVD was sent to me. At one point my brother tells the crowd that they are missing their biggest fan and that he is usually dancing and cheering and Matan started laughing and leaned into the TV and said to the screen, "I know your brother, and he is crazy!" We laughed and enjoyed the show. Me with the ever present Welkin-tears on my cheeks.
So, I would like to give you a couple of snippets of my time in Jordan. But first a little scene painting: Thursday I took the bus to Jerusalem and met up with Mark and Andrea, Bassem, and Chris and Tim. We went to a really cool restaurant in East Jerusalem and I was able to get all caught up with Mark and Andrea, having not seen them since orientation in Emerika in July. I slept in Bethlehem at Chris and Tim's house and it was nice to visit with them.
Friday morning, bright and early - 6:30 Bethlehem time - I was dropped off in Jerusalem (a twenty-five minute drive to a different world), where it was 7:30, since Israel's time change (the fall-back) and Palestine's time change (indeed, the whole Arab world) are a week apart. I wonder if there is more to a time change than a time change.... It's at least really good for all the Muslims, since it's Ramadanadingdong and they don't eat until it's dark (it's dark at 5:30pm, now). Anyway, the "MCC Palestine" folks jumped in our hired mini-bus and headed for the Allenby Bridge crossing (called King Hussein bridge from the Jordanian side). We drove through the Judean Desert, saw many shepherds with their sheep and goats, camels and some really nice-looking asses (as in donkeys...I want one...he can live on my roof...I'd make him a manger and call him D-Block). As we approached the border, we saw the Dead Sea; we drove past Jericho (which is a big sprawling Palestinian city) and finally got to the border.
The crossing took less time than I had been told it would. We went through Israeli security, paid our departure tax, waited around a while, got on a bus, then eventually started moving towards Jordan. I got to see the Jordan River, even though it is more like a stream near the Dead Sea (it still rages up north, as it flows from the Golan Heights into Lake Kinneret, or as we call it, the Sea of Galilee; I haven't seen it in person, just photos). Halfway across the bridge we were boarded and had our passports taken from us, where we got them back once we got to the Jordanian side and were processed at customs. We then took two taxis between the group of us and headed to the MCC office in Amman, the capital city of Jordan.
Once there, we teamed up with the rest of the MCCers, 25 in total, where we took a big chartered bus the four-hour drive south to Wadi Dana, a nature reserve about sixty KM north of Petra (have you ever seen the climax of the final installment of Indiana Jones....that place is Petra). The drive down took twice as long as the drive back because on the way down we took the King's Highway, which winded along like the drive to Whistler, meandering along mountain passes, giving great views and offering nausea for the car-sick prone folks (like myself and Andrea). The way home we took the Desert Highway, which took two hours and was straight and flat. I guess it was nice to go both ways, but my head still swims when I think of all the turns and curves of the King's Highway.
Wadi Dana is a nature reserve in the desert, in between the Dead Sea (to the north) and Aqaba on the Red Sea (to the south). There was no oasis of water, as I had expected; but a dry mountainous canyon-filled series of valleys that had rocks like teeth and were sporatically highlighted with cacti and small evergreen trees. It caused me to realise why Zion Canyon is called that in America - Wadi Dana looked very similar to the pictures I have seen of Zion Canyon. We camped at the bottom of a valley that we got to by shuttle truck, riding in the open back, wondering if we were going to plunge over the side into the canyon below. We stayed in tents that had parking-lot-party-blankets (which I knew very well not to use) and mattresses that we could sleep on. Bassem and I shared a tent. He tried in vain to wake me up and stop me from snoring. The second night, he told me that he was even full-on punching me to stop me from snoring. I wouldn't wake up and wouldn't stop snoring. I was happy to hear that some things never change.
Okay, here's a snippet.
On Saturday morning, some of us went on a guided hike up to some caves. As it turned out they were caves where ascetics used to live back in the Byzantine period, which were later occupied by Beduins, as recently as twenty-five years ago. The caves were super cool. All the rock was sandstone and once we got to the caves, we had to scale up a cliff to get into them. It was really cool to see. There were crosses etched into the stone and you could just imagine how a family or some ascetic monk with his camel-hair shirt itching his skin could sit or where food could be stowed. The view was incredible but it occurred to me that one who rolls in one's sleep wouldn't last very long in these caves. The highlight was scooting across a very narrow ledge to access the church. It was carefully carved out and was only ten feet by ten feet but had beautiful rounded arches and spaces for shrines. The roof had been rounded out and both sides and back also had been rounded. I understood that this church was more than 1500 years old.
Here's another snippet.
I needed some time alone, since that's how I am and on Saturday night I slipped off, away from the fire and the singing and grabbed my CD player and headed out to a cliff edge under the canopy of stars. I took my shirt off and stood with my arms upstretched in the cold desert night. I was so happy to be cold. Then I laid down on the even colder rock and listened to Welkin's Strangers and Exiles, tears on my cheeks, me singing to keep the creepy crawlies away and I stared into the welkin - the firmament of the heavens - feeling wonder that this desert air had never heard the voice of a human singing the words of these particular beautiful songs. Bassem joined me after some time and I got him to listen to Howling Wind because of its appropriateness - the Middle Eastern climactic ending and the stiff breeze of the desert night. We talked about life and God and the cosmos for a while; then when our conversation turned to being so far from home I put the earphones on him again and let him listen to Psalm of Pearls. He was amazed that my brother made such beautiful music. My earphones can really crank it out, so I held them up and we laid back, watching shooting stars together, letting the album play through before going back and warming ourselves up by the fire. I was loving the cold and poor Bassem was shivering but we had a really good time out in the desert night with the welkin and the Welkin.
Historical Mention: the general area where we stayed is mentioned in the Bible. Apparently Wadi Dana is seven km from the ancient capital city of Edom, called Rimmon. Judges 20:45ff picks up a battle between Israel and the Benjamites, where Israel slaughtered thousands of Benjamites and six hundred of them hid in the rocks of Rimmon for four months. Looking around, I could easily see how six hundred men could hide out in the rocks, the caves, the crevices.
Sunday afternoon we all piled back on the bus and returned to Amman, where we said our goodbyes and the "MCC Palestine" folks stayed in a hotel. A few of us went out for dinner and then a guy named Chris Thiessen (who is here with his parents for a few months) and I went to the hotel pool and did the pool, hot-tub, steam-room, sauna circuit a few times until I was too exhausted to continue. We returned to Jerusalem on Monday morning, said our goodbyes to each other there, too, and I got on a bus and came back to Tel Aviv.
I slept for fifteen hours last night - my body, mind and soul needed a rest from "retreating."
Wednesday, October 05, 2005
Jordan-Bound
Hello all of you,
I am off to Jordan and will not be back in Tel Aviv until Monday night. So, if you wonder if I'm okay; I am, I'm just away from the EEnternet for a while. I'll write when I get back home.
It is the MCC regional retreat; we are camping in a nature reserve, spending some time "regathering the troops" and renewing our spirits. Cool, eh?
I wonder if I will have to share a tent with someone and then if they'll hate me because of my crazy snoring. I am pretty sure I still snore; I don't see why not. I have no roommate to get annoyed with me and then tell me in the morning how loud I was the previous night, and I haven't woken myself up lately, but it would make sense that I am still a snorer.
What does snoring have to do with going to Jordan? Ramble on rose....(that's a Grateful Dead reference, just so you know).
Darren
I am off to Jordan and will not be back in Tel Aviv until Monday night. So, if you wonder if I'm okay; I am, I'm just away from the EEnternet for a while. I'll write when I get back home.
It is the MCC regional retreat; we are camping in a nature reserve, spending some time "regathering the troops" and renewing our spirits. Cool, eh?
I wonder if I will have to share a tent with someone and then if they'll hate me because of my crazy snoring. I am pretty sure I still snore; I don't see why not. I have no roommate to get annoyed with me and then tell me in the morning how loud I was the previous night, and I haven't woken myself up lately, but it would make sense that I am still a snorer.
What does snoring have to do with going to Jordan? Ramble on rose....(that's a Grateful Dead reference, just so you know).
Darren
Tuesday, October 04, 2005
Food and Thought
Tuesday, October 04, 2005
Shana Tova! Happy New Year!
Yesterday I went with Matan and Yael to Matan's mom's house in Haifa for Rosh Hashana with the Kreiger Family. It was like salve to my family-missing wounds! We only went for the afternoon and evening because we had to drive the In-Law's of Matan's brother there and back again. Matan and Yael are back up there today; I had other stuff to do...some homework...and a New Year's party at Zochrot-member Norma's house to go to tonight.
Wow, yesterday was awesome! I got teary-eyed (no one noticed) during the gift exchange because of just how good it felt to be with a family! It was so wonderful to see the generations together (from two-week old (teenie-weenie-primi) baby to 92 year-old (sharp as as knife) great-grandmother). I really like Matan's family; I am so grateful to know him and Yael and was blessed to be a part of their family event.
Rosh Hashana is one of the two big tribal feasts in Israel (the other being Passover in March / April). That means that it is a MUST for all the tribes to get together and to celebrate together. Matan's family is not religious, at all, which probably made the whole experience that much easier for me (a goy) to participate and celebrate with them. We did follow some of the traditions: we dipped apple slices in honey to symbolise the desire for a sweet coming year. We said ShaNa ToVa a million times and clanked our wine glasses together. They exchanged gifts, during the meal's INTERMISSION, and hugged and kissed each other. I am really digging the whole kiss-the-cheeks way of greeting and saying goodbye to people; it seems like a real sense of togetherness. I am not too much of a participant because I still feel kinda funny about how to do it; but after a glass of two of wine, I was kissing the grandma and the mother and aunt, too!
We arrived at around 5 pm and I came dressed up as nice as I could. In fact, I looked like an orthodox Jew with my black pants and white dress shirt. Matan had a really cool get-up from India: the traditional Indian garb of long-shirt and matching pants. White as snow and really cool; Yael had a beautiful white dress on. Everyone was dressed up in some form or another - not gaudy or over-the-top but respectful and celebratory. White is the predominat colour for the New Year - start out in purity and freshness and all that.
When we first arrived, I sat around looking at a picture book of the Golan Heights for an hour or so while the family fussed over each other and the meal preparations. I was able to help out a little bit, running an errand or two but whenever I entered the kitchen, the women quickly shooed me out. We had agreed that all communication would be done in Hebrew. I didn't want them to have to adjust anything on account of me. Sure, in side conversations I was able to speak English; and Matan or his brother, Guy, or any number of people were eager to translate stuff for me. Often, however, I was able to understand the gist of what was being said - or at least a hint of it.
The Meal: We started out with apple slices dipped in honey and chocolate cake - as I mentioned above it is to symbolise the hoped-for sweetness of the year to come. Then we had the traditional fish served to us. The Kreiger family is not religious enough to serve fishheads, much to my relief. I can't remember what kind of fish it was - or rather what kind of dish it was named. It was like a fish paste, formed together in sausage shapes. It was served cold and I got a very small portion because they were sure I would hate it. I was told that if I could eat this, I could eat anything. I was a little nervous. I put on some red-coloured horseradish and had at 'er. It wasn't so bad, at all. I didn't expect it to be cold, so that was weird, at first, but I ate my piece and told them all it was just fine. I DIDN'T say it was the best thing I'd ever tasted....Geoff!
The next course was the salads and baked salmon. There was a cabbage salad, a really good lettuce and mixed veggies and fruit salad; avocado, liver-paste (which I tried just to say I tried it...yes, I ate MEAT yesterday). There was an eggplant salad, a cus-cus salad, a beautiful and very tasty half-salmon (that reminded me of how my mom cooks it). There was bread, pickles, soda water and of course the wine. I am sure I am forgetting stuff, too; I was amazed at the amount of food for only thirteen people to partake of.
After the salad course, which was more like a meal in itself, we had soup. It was chicken broth with chicken-filled vreneki's in it (like perogies). Then there was the INTERMISSION where they exchanged presents and talked and laughed and we could get up and stretch our legs if we wanted. Then we had the main course. There was roasted chicken and yams. There was INCREDIBLE roast beef and it's sweet mouth-watering juices; there was meatloaf that blew my mind! This meatloaf had nuts in it and fruit - both dried and fresh. It was so good. Matan had like half of the whole dish - it really made me laugh.
After all of this, we still had a variety of cakes for dessert. Then coffee and tea and beer if one desired. It was such a good time. We finished eating at around 11 or so, and I got home at 1:30am.
And today, they are doing it all again! Isn't that incredible!
I think that being with the Kreiger family and seeing them love and value each other did me a whole pile of good. First, as I mentioned earlier, it allowed me to be apart of a family and to be swept up in the love. But second, I genuinely appreciated these people and their culture and tradition. We did talk a bit about the conflict between Israel and Palestine. Matan seems to get a kick out of telling people that I am working for a "pro-Palestinian" group but that it's a good thing I met him because he's showing me a more balanced perspective. So, when it came up, Guy's father-in-law said that he was born and raised in Yugoslavia and it is the same thing there between the Christians and the Muslims. The boyfriend of their aunt also told me that even though in Israel Jews have the larger population, when it comes to the Middle East, the Arabs by far outnumber the Jews and they need to "hold on." I really appreciated hearing their views even if I didn't agree entirely. I could have added that even the Jordanians referred to Palestinians as "dirty" and didn't want them in their country immediately after the Nakba in 1948. I could have added that the assumption that Palestine will just attack if given the chance is definitely fostered by the constant Israeli degradation and provocation of violence and psychological warfare. I could have added that even though the Kreiger family was average middle-class, they would be considered EXTREMELY wealthy by the Palestinian standards that I have been exposed to.
I didn't add these things because I was a guest and it was not my place to confront them about big themes like "occupation" on New Year's Eve. No. I didn't even want to say those things because I am here to learn. I am here to be incarnate in Israeli culture and hopefully bring a greater understanding of the run-of-the-mill Israeli perspective of "the situation" to MCC and also attempt at fairness to the "sides" in my own thinking and as I represent myself to you folks.
I realise that I have done a lot of refining in my thoughts and opinions since I came here; that is certainly to be expected. Matan said yesterday that maybe now I won't be "pro-Palestinian." I told him that I was "pro-humanity," that I have to be if I am to justify living outside of Canada. He doesn't understand what I understand but I don't understand what he does. For instance, Sunday afternoon we got in a great debate over whether or not Palestine would attack if given the opportunity and whether or not Israel can change their behaviours and policies towards Palestine in order to begin to change the relationships and perceptions that both "sides" have with the other. Then, on Sunday night he was reading the New Testament to me in Hebrew (the gospel of John) and it was really cool. We jammed out some music together, had a rap session, and sang a late-night rendition of Knocking on Heaven's Door. It is very healthy to have friendships where you can vehemently disagree on "big things" while finding unity and knowing how to enjoy each other and laugh...which may even be "bigger things" in the long run.
So, the next day, when I was at his family's house, I understood a little bit more about the importance of family, the desire to live freely and without fear, the collective experience (baggage) that our country's have on us (i.e. mandatory military service); it was remarkable how similar people seem to be in some aspects.
Just to close, let me say this about Israeli culture. There are kittubzim all over the land - some legal, some illegal (according to the UN). But the point is that Israelis live in community with each other. They share their lives with each other. Family is of incredible importance and it really makes me evaluate my own Canadian presuppositions regarding community and family. I am so individualistic and so carefully guarded about my personal space - it really is an interesting lesson to see these people, who look exactly the same as me, show me a different way. That said, let me say this. All the young people in this land, since it was "established" have served mandatory military service: three years for men, two for women....or should I refer to them as boys and girls? 18 years old is the entry age. There is systematic over-working, under-sleeping and participation in too much conflict that dehumanises both Arabs and Israelis. As a result, when people get out of the military they just want to live their lives. It is custom to go away for a long time (up to a few years) traveling to South America, the Far East, or India, to get back to the humanity that was threatened during the military service. My point being this: I have heard it said that there are no fist fights in Israel. They have seen real conflict and they don't care to engage in it as adults. Yes, it can be easily disputed; it can also be scoffed at that this nation lets their young people screw themselves up through battle, perpetuating the alienation of Palestinians (and all Arabs) to the Hebrew speaking Israeli.
But it is what it is, right now; and one does what one can. As Eitan Bronstein told me even again, Sunday during lunch: there is no sense in thinking one can make major changes: it is hopeless to think that there will ever be peace in this land. But in order to live with ourselves, we take a really small piece of the pie and see what we can do. Don't think about the big picture: it's too overwhelming; think only of the small area you can have impact. The words "WIlliam Wilberforce" scream within me when I hear those words; but who am I? A washed-up actor living in the bloodied Holy Land.
So, I leave you with these thoughts. Certainly give fodder for a really interesting discussion, I think.
All the best,
D BLOCK OUT
Shana Tova! Happy New Year!
Yesterday I went with Matan and Yael to Matan's mom's house in Haifa for Rosh Hashana with the Kreiger Family. It was like salve to my family-missing wounds! We only went for the afternoon and evening because we had to drive the In-Law's of Matan's brother there and back again. Matan and Yael are back up there today; I had other stuff to do...some homework...and a New Year's party at Zochrot-member Norma's house to go to tonight.
Wow, yesterday was awesome! I got teary-eyed (no one noticed) during the gift exchange because of just how good it felt to be with a family! It was so wonderful to see the generations together (from two-week old (teenie-weenie-primi) baby to 92 year-old (sharp as as knife) great-grandmother). I really like Matan's family; I am so grateful to know him and Yael and was blessed to be a part of their family event.
Rosh Hashana is one of the two big tribal feasts in Israel (the other being Passover in March / April). That means that it is a MUST for all the tribes to get together and to celebrate together. Matan's family is not religious, at all, which probably made the whole experience that much easier for me (a goy) to participate and celebrate with them. We did follow some of the traditions: we dipped apple slices in honey to symbolise the desire for a sweet coming year. We said ShaNa ToVa a million times and clanked our wine glasses together. They exchanged gifts, during the meal's INTERMISSION, and hugged and kissed each other. I am really digging the whole kiss-the-cheeks way of greeting and saying goodbye to people; it seems like a real sense of togetherness. I am not too much of a participant because I still feel kinda funny about how to do it; but after a glass of two of wine, I was kissing the grandma and the mother and aunt, too!
We arrived at around 5 pm and I came dressed up as nice as I could. In fact, I looked like an orthodox Jew with my black pants and white dress shirt. Matan had a really cool get-up from India: the traditional Indian garb of long-shirt and matching pants. White as snow and really cool; Yael had a beautiful white dress on. Everyone was dressed up in some form or another - not gaudy or over-the-top but respectful and celebratory. White is the predominat colour for the New Year - start out in purity and freshness and all that.
When we first arrived, I sat around looking at a picture book of the Golan Heights for an hour or so while the family fussed over each other and the meal preparations. I was able to help out a little bit, running an errand or two but whenever I entered the kitchen, the women quickly shooed me out. We had agreed that all communication would be done in Hebrew. I didn't want them to have to adjust anything on account of me. Sure, in side conversations I was able to speak English; and Matan or his brother, Guy, or any number of people were eager to translate stuff for me. Often, however, I was able to understand the gist of what was being said - or at least a hint of it.
The Meal: We started out with apple slices dipped in honey and chocolate cake - as I mentioned above it is to symbolise the hoped-for sweetness of the year to come. Then we had the traditional fish served to us. The Kreiger family is not religious enough to serve fishheads, much to my relief. I can't remember what kind of fish it was - or rather what kind of dish it was named. It was like a fish paste, formed together in sausage shapes. It was served cold and I got a very small portion because they were sure I would hate it. I was told that if I could eat this, I could eat anything. I was a little nervous. I put on some red-coloured horseradish and had at 'er. It wasn't so bad, at all. I didn't expect it to be cold, so that was weird, at first, but I ate my piece and told them all it was just fine. I DIDN'T say it was the best thing I'd ever tasted....Geoff!
The next course was the salads and baked salmon. There was a cabbage salad, a really good lettuce and mixed veggies and fruit salad; avocado, liver-paste (which I tried just to say I tried it...yes, I ate MEAT yesterday). There was an eggplant salad, a cus-cus salad, a beautiful and very tasty half-salmon (that reminded me of how my mom cooks it). There was bread, pickles, soda water and of course the wine. I am sure I am forgetting stuff, too; I was amazed at the amount of food for only thirteen people to partake of.
After the salad course, which was more like a meal in itself, we had soup. It was chicken broth with chicken-filled vreneki's in it (like perogies). Then there was the INTERMISSION where they exchanged presents and talked and laughed and we could get up and stretch our legs if we wanted. Then we had the main course. There was roasted chicken and yams. There was INCREDIBLE roast beef and it's sweet mouth-watering juices; there was meatloaf that blew my mind! This meatloaf had nuts in it and fruit - both dried and fresh. It was so good. Matan had like half of the whole dish - it really made me laugh.
After all of this, we still had a variety of cakes for dessert. Then coffee and tea and beer if one desired. It was such a good time. We finished eating at around 11 or so, and I got home at 1:30am.
And today, they are doing it all again! Isn't that incredible!
I think that being with the Kreiger family and seeing them love and value each other did me a whole pile of good. First, as I mentioned earlier, it allowed me to be apart of a family and to be swept up in the love. But second, I genuinely appreciated these people and their culture and tradition. We did talk a bit about the conflict between Israel and Palestine. Matan seems to get a kick out of telling people that I am working for a "pro-Palestinian" group but that it's a good thing I met him because he's showing me a more balanced perspective. So, when it came up, Guy's father-in-law said that he was born and raised in Yugoslavia and it is the same thing there between the Christians and the Muslims. The boyfriend of their aunt also told me that even though in Israel Jews have the larger population, when it comes to the Middle East, the Arabs by far outnumber the Jews and they need to "hold on." I really appreciated hearing their views even if I didn't agree entirely. I could have added that even the Jordanians referred to Palestinians as "dirty" and didn't want them in their country immediately after the Nakba in 1948. I could have added that the assumption that Palestine will just attack if given the chance is definitely fostered by the constant Israeli degradation and provocation of violence and psychological warfare. I could have added that even though the Kreiger family was average middle-class, they would be considered EXTREMELY wealthy by the Palestinian standards that I have been exposed to.
I didn't add these things because I was a guest and it was not my place to confront them about big themes like "occupation" on New Year's Eve. No. I didn't even want to say those things because I am here to learn. I am here to be incarnate in Israeli culture and hopefully bring a greater understanding of the run-of-the-mill Israeli perspective of "the situation" to MCC and also attempt at fairness to the "sides" in my own thinking and as I represent myself to you folks.
I realise that I have done a lot of refining in my thoughts and opinions since I came here; that is certainly to be expected. Matan said yesterday that maybe now I won't be "pro-Palestinian." I told him that I was "pro-humanity," that I have to be if I am to justify living outside of Canada. He doesn't understand what I understand but I don't understand what he does. For instance, Sunday afternoon we got in a great debate over whether or not Palestine would attack if given the opportunity and whether or not Israel can change their behaviours and policies towards Palestine in order to begin to change the relationships and perceptions that both "sides" have with the other. Then, on Sunday night he was reading the New Testament to me in Hebrew (the gospel of John) and it was really cool. We jammed out some music together, had a rap session, and sang a late-night rendition of Knocking on Heaven's Door. It is very healthy to have friendships where you can vehemently disagree on "big things" while finding unity and knowing how to enjoy each other and laugh...which may even be "bigger things" in the long run.
So, the next day, when I was at his family's house, I understood a little bit more about the importance of family, the desire to live freely and without fear, the collective experience (baggage) that our country's have on us (i.e. mandatory military service); it was remarkable how similar people seem to be in some aspects.
Just to close, let me say this about Israeli culture. There are kittubzim all over the land - some legal, some illegal (according to the UN). But the point is that Israelis live in community with each other. They share their lives with each other. Family is of incredible importance and it really makes me evaluate my own Canadian presuppositions regarding community and family. I am so individualistic and so carefully guarded about my personal space - it really is an interesting lesson to see these people, who look exactly the same as me, show me a different way. That said, let me say this. All the young people in this land, since it was "established" have served mandatory military service: three years for men, two for women....or should I refer to them as boys and girls? 18 years old is the entry age. There is systematic over-working, under-sleeping and participation in too much conflict that dehumanises both Arabs and Israelis. As a result, when people get out of the military they just want to live their lives. It is custom to go away for a long time (up to a few years) traveling to South America, the Far East, or India, to get back to the humanity that was threatened during the military service. My point being this: I have heard it said that there are no fist fights in Israel. They have seen real conflict and they don't care to engage in it as adults. Yes, it can be easily disputed; it can also be scoffed at that this nation lets their young people screw themselves up through battle, perpetuating the alienation of Palestinians (and all Arabs) to the Hebrew speaking Israeli.
But it is what it is, right now; and one does what one can. As Eitan Bronstein told me even again, Sunday during lunch: there is no sense in thinking one can make major changes: it is hopeless to think that there will ever be peace in this land. But in order to live with ourselves, we take a really small piece of the pie and see what we can do. Don't think about the big picture: it's too overwhelming; think only of the small area you can have impact. The words "WIlliam Wilberforce" scream within me when I hear those words; but who am I? A washed-up actor living in the bloodied Holy Land.
So, I leave you with these thoughts. Certainly give fodder for a really interesting discussion, I think.
All the best,
D BLOCK OUT
Sunday, October 02, 2005
You Won't Believe What I Found!!!!
Hey Everybody,
I took a break from studying Ivrit tonight and decided to do an Internet search of my old buddy, Ethan Mars, the actor.
What came up as I searched through heaps of pages was a review of Welkin from Ethan Marss. with 2 ss's from some kind of Internet magazine. AMAZING! It is my pleasure to show it to you. I am listening to this album again because of this review!
UNCANNY! Obviously I sent him an e-mail... and am hoping to get one back.
Burro D Block OUT
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Strangers and ExilesCopyright Welkin 2004www.sungroovers-emag.com/canadian.content/reviews/2004/34rfts./no-gif/9Sgtid/archive/htm.
SEE:
www.welkinband.com
===========This is an album that moves me just as much as any Pink Floyd album. From the first song to the last, Strangers and Exiles brings me along an ethereal, noetic journey where I learn more about this thing called existence. It continually confronts my fears then assuages them; shows me hope and assures me of enduring peace. This album, beyond any that has been released in the past however many years, shows a depth and an appreciation for tender musicianship and impacting lyrics. It is meant to reach body, mind and soul.
Geoff Birch of Vancouver BC, Canada, from what I can gather on Internet Reveiws, spends his days with Vancouver Downtown Eastside troubled youth and by night he leads this mystical journey, writing the material and manning the vocals and guitar-work (he couldn't be reached for interview...his phone was disconnected). His voice rings above the trees and soothes even the heaviest of migranes (I should know). The lyrics drip with the honey of one who has seen and tasted a higher state of being. The flow of the songs, the weaving in-and-out of the melodies, haunt me to my soul; but in such a way that leaves me breathing deeply and eager to live another day. Able to live another day.
Who would have thought this from a band that professes it's allegiance to Christianity?! Doesn't George Bush also do that? Not to mention Creed and Garth Brooks? All three of them suck ass!
All is forgiven with Welkin, however...from the pan-flutes in the title track to the climaxes of the One Great Night to the other-wordly annihilation of greed in Veins to the yearning of lovers in Sunshine Valley to the steady beading of rain in Autumn Hymn, this is an album that gives and keeps on giving. If you feel like YOU are about to quit, then put this album on and let your pieces be put back together and listen for the new name you will receive. This album can introduce you to who you always have been (I should know that, too).
I have never met Geoff Birch, and after how I feel about this album, I am not sure that I want to. I want to picture the man as I do, standing above my own mess, carefully showing me how to find the groove that will make my soul hum rather than rattle. And I am scared that he might turn out to be some indie Vancouver rockstar who only wants fame and money. Whenever I listen to this album, though, I wish I could call him up and call him Bro, listen to some classic Hymns and drink back a couple of beers.
The first time I heard this album, when only three songs deep, I stripped down to my socks and danced until I couldn't stand up. Now, since listening to this album hundreds, if not thousands, of times, I can say that the fluidity of its spirit flows like wind; its musical intensity pulls one toward self-realisation and its climaxes remind one of the finer points of the artwork that is manifested love.
It was difficult for me to get the sanction to review this album. I had to convince my bosses that just because a band in unsigned doesn't mean they can't ROCK! For me, this album is top five, alongside Pink Floyd's Animals, the Flaming Lips' Yoshemi Battles the Pink Robots, Wilco's Yankee Hotel Foxtrot and the Grateful Dead's Terrapin Staion. The five of them would do nicely in a random spin in your multi-disc changer. Keep up the good work, if you ever read this, Geoff Birch and Welkin!
Sit back, relax, hold-on loosely, and enjoy the ride.
Ethan Marssethanmarss@yahoo.comSUNGROOVERS E-MAGAZINE, copyright, May 2005.
I took a break from studying Ivrit tonight and decided to do an Internet search of my old buddy, Ethan Mars, the actor.
What came up as I searched through heaps of pages was a review of Welkin from Ethan Marss. with 2 ss's from some kind of Internet magazine. AMAZING! It is my pleasure to show it to you. I am listening to this album again because of this review!
UNCANNY! Obviously I sent him an e-mail... and am hoping to get one back.
Burro D Block OUT
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Strangers and ExilesCopyright Welkin 2004www.sungroovers-emag.com/canadian.content/reviews/2004/34rfts./no-gif/9Sgtid/archive/htm.
SEE:
www.welkinband.com
===========This is an album that moves me just as much as any Pink Floyd album. From the first song to the last, Strangers and Exiles brings me along an ethereal, noetic journey where I learn more about this thing called existence. It continually confronts my fears then assuages them; shows me hope and assures me of enduring peace. This album, beyond any that has been released in the past however many years, shows a depth and an appreciation for tender musicianship and impacting lyrics. It is meant to reach body, mind and soul.
Geoff Birch of Vancouver BC, Canada, from what I can gather on Internet Reveiws, spends his days with Vancouver Downtown Eastside troubled youth and by night he leads this mystical journey, writing the material and manning the vocals and guitar-work (he couldn't be reached for interview...his phone was disconnected). His voice rings above the trees and soothes even the heaviest of migranes (I should know). The lyrics drip with the honey of one who has seen and tasted a higher state of being. The flow of the songs, the weaving in-and-out of the melodies, haunt me to my soul; but in such a way that leaves me breathing deeply and eager to live another day. Able to live another day.
Who would have thought this from a band that professes it's allegiance to Christianity?! Doesn't George Bush also do that? Not to mention Creed and Garth Brooks? All three of them suck ass!
All is forgiven with Welkin, however...from the pan-flutes in the title track to the climaxes of the One Great Night to the other-wordly annihilation of greed in Veins to the yearning of lovers in Sunshine Valley to the steady beading of rain in Autumn Hymn, this is an album that gives and keeps on giving. If you feel like YOU are about to quit, then put this album on and let your pieces be put back together and listen for the new name you will receive. This album can introduce you to who you always have been (I should know that, too).
I have never met Geoff Birch, and after how I feel about this album, I am not sure that I want to. I want to picture the man as I do, standing above my own mess, carefully showing me how to find the groove that will make my soul hum rather than rattle. And I am scared that he might turn out to be some indie Vancouver rockstar who only wants fame and money. Whenever I listen to this album, though, I wish I could call him up and call him Bro, listen to some classic Hymns and drink back a couple of beers.
The first time I heard this album, when only three songs deep, I stripped down to my socks and danced until I couldn't stand up. Now, since listening to this album hundreds, if not thousands, of times, I can say that the fluidity of its spirit flows like wind; its musical intensity pulls one toward self-realisation and its climaxes remind one of the finer points of the artwork that is manifested love.
It was difficult for me to get the sanction to review this album. I had to convince my bosses that just because a band in unsigned doesn't mean they can't ROCK! For me, this album is top five, alongside Pink Floyd's Animals, the Flaming Lips' Yoshemi Battles the Pink Robots, Wilco's Yankee Hotel Foxtrot and the Grateful Dead's Terrapin Staion. The five of them would do nicely in a random spin in your multi-disc changer. Keep up the good work, if you ever read this, Geoff Birch and Welkin!
Sit back, relax, hold-on loosely, and enjoy the ride.
Ethan Marssethanmarss@yahoo.comSUNGROOVERS E-MAGAZINE, copyright, May 2005.
So, you wanna know who I work for?
This will take you twenty minutes to half an hour to read but if it's worth it for you, giver.
The following is our formal statement....our business plan, if you will.....
Zochrot - 2006 'Zochrot' (ReMembering) is a registered Israeli Not-for-Profit NGO (580389526) that was established in 2002 in order to introduce the Palestinian Nakba to the Israeli public, especially to the Jewish population in Israel. The Palestinian Nakba refers to the "Catastrophe" the Palestinians suffered in 1948 when Israel moved into the Holy Land, dispersing the Palestinians and declaring statehood. Between the years 2002-2005 Zochrot has worked mostly as a volunteer organization, working from activists' homes and mobile phones. Throughout 2005 Zochrot has managed, thanks to many world-wide supporters, to develop a physical office and to open and operate the first-ever Information and Visitors’ Center about the Nakba in Israel. We have enlarged our staff to include six workers to support our programs. And we also welcomed a full-time intern to work in our offices for the next three years. Our organizational structure has developed to include a full-time manager, working alongside five part-time coordinators: the Visitors’ Center Coordinator; an Information Center Coordinator; the Haifa Region Coordinator; an Educational Programs Coordinator; and a Resources and Development Coordinator; and our Intern.In 2006 Zochrot will continue to develope organically, both responding to grassroots' needs and initiating various activities in order to fulfill our mission.
Our Vision - Is that a true reconciliation process will develop between two peoples: Israelis and Palestinians, which will aim at resolving, rightfully, the ongoing tragedy of the Palestinian refugees. This process must be based on an Israeli recognition of the refugee’s rights and the State’s responsibility in creating their tragedy. Our Mission – Is to initiate, support and sustain an ongoing Israeli public-debate about the Palestinian Nakba, the Refugee Problem and their right of return. This is our mission because Israeli Jews are rarely aware of what happened in Palestine in 1948; they are oblivious to the destruction and the intended demolition of most of Palestine's villages and towns and the expulsion of inhabitants. We believe that this same ongoing and directed ignorance is what now stands in the way of finding a just solution to the Palestinian Refugee Problem. Moreover, this ignorance promotes and strengthens ethnocentric and even racist attitudes amongst Israeli-Jews. It also prevents Israelis from deeply understanding the reality of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and its historical sources, thus leaving little hope for real reconciliation between the two peoples in the future. We see the ongoing oppression of the Palestinians, both inside and outside the 1948 borders of Israel, as a continuation of the form of relations established during the Nakba of 1948. We also support a solution for Palestinians refugees based on their right of return and hope that the Israeli government and official establishments recognize their responsibility for some part of the events taking place in 1948 and thereafter. Our main goal is to bring as many people, and especially Jewish Israelis, as possible to meet the facts and the stories of the Palestinian Nakba of 1948 and to understand the ongoing reality created by it.
Our Programs – As part of our mission of ‘ReMembering’, we wish to accomplish all the above by operating three major programs that include several projects in each category: ’RePlacing’, ’ReSourcing’ and ‘ReEducating’.
‘RePlacing’– Background – This program aims to counter the physical erasure and the way the space and landscape was, and still is, re-organized by Israel since 1948. Our goals here are to Re-visit and Re-name as many existing and destroyed locations as possible, including establishing connection to refugees from these locations and to collect and translate as many materials as possible into Hebrew (see also below in ‘ReSourcing’). Goals – Our goal in this program is to put forward alternative physical landmarks and signs, and / or to initiate events that mark the physical landscape and will challenge both the public and authorities with the erasure and forgetfulness of Palestine and Palestinian life.Beneficiaries – First and foremost we are aiming to influence the Jewish Israeli public. A second group, which we consider as major beneficiaries, are the Palestinian refugees’ communities inside, and outside of, Israel. We also look at a third group, which is a global, international group that should benefit from Zochrot’s actions, and thus are all supporters of a Palestine state and of reconciliation and just peace in the region and around the world. Evaluation - There are several criteria by which we can evaluate this program: Number of activities.The amount of new knowledge and materials the actions produce.The number and variety of participants and their willingness to get involved in further engagement with Zochrot or the concerned issues. The impact of the activities on the local populations, the public and the general political public-debate, through our website / center and through various Media forums and online-debates.The possibility to produce further actions out of the action taken. Many of Zochrot’s activities do trigger new ideas and initiatives for ongoing projects.
In 2006, this Program will include several ongoing projects:Tours and Visits - Touring and posting signs at destroyed Palestinian villages and towns: before every new tour we will have a preparatory process of research in order to see the place and decide where to post the signs and to locate materials, and tour guides from the local communities. We will publicize the event beforehand in local newspapers, on the Internet, in our website and other related sites, and in other relevant public arenas. After finishing the preparations, Zochrot will organize transportation that will travel to the location of a destroyed village in a certain area. The tour will be guided either by refugees from the destroyed village, by their children or by other experts on the location. We aim to include as many women as possible as such guides and experts. Whenever possible, some Hebrew and Arabic material about the villages will be produced and provided, including map-transcripts of the places before '48 (see below ‘ReSourcing’ for more details). In every village we visit, we intend to affect the participants towards understanding and sensitivity and to listen to testimonies or conduct a ceremony. We will also post signs at the location in Hebrew and in Arabic, with the names of the villages and other important information. We plan to visit as many destroyed villages as possible and to have a geographical spread which will not exclude any area of the country.Official Campaigns and Objections – Campainging for the official signing of destroyed Palestinian locations and to object to the further destruction of them, where still possible: in every possible case Zochrot will engage with the authorities in order to stress the need to officially and clearly sign the remains and location of destroyed Palestinian villages and towns. We will also conduct official objections' procedures, where still possible, to prevent official plans of further destruction of Palestinian sites, in order to start a debate on the authorities' plans. Memorial Events – Commemorating special dates relating to the Nakba: this project intends to produce special events on three specific dates: first, the Israeli day of Independence (on which we usually join in the "March of Return" organized by the Central Committee of the Internally Displaced Palestinians in Israel). Each year the march is conducted in a different village and we usually commemorate this village by a sign(s) and organize some special input by Zochrot for that day. Second, around April 9th, the Deir-Yassin Memorial Day, we join "Deir-Yassin Remembered" in a ceremony, or other event, in the village itself. Third, on the official Nakba day on May 15th, we usually conduct a public event in a central location in order to introduce the Israeli public with the importance of the day to Palestinian refugees.Operating Local Volunteers Groups – Initiating and supporting local groups to take on activities on the Nakba in their region: Zochrot wishes to empower and support local organizations of activists from existing organizations and as new initiatives to take up activities and research concerning the Nakba and the refugees. We will keep close contact with such groups and will push forward to initiate such groups wherever a substantial group of activists exist.A Hebrew Map of Palestine – Recreating a map of Palestine in Hebrew: Zochrot wishes to produce a map of the Nakba of Palestine in Hebrew to serve the public. This is based on existing maps and research and on our own research and experience.Travel Guide to Destroyed Villages – Offering a counter-tour-guide to destroyed Palestinian locations: towards the main Jewish holidays the daily newspapers offer families in Israel additional sections with tours in the country. It goes without saying that these sections do not even mention the Palestinian locations, still existing, yet destroyed. We wish to prepare and distribute a small booklet offering some alternative tours for families and individuals interested in exploring what is also erased from the landscape.
‘ReSourcing’ – Background – This program aims to counter the lack of information resources in Hebrew about the Nakba. We wish to collect and translate as many new materials as possible into Hebrew and to operate a growing and dynamic Information and Visitor’s Center to help interested people have a reachable place to help their interest. This Center will also serve as a communal and cultural center for the distribution of knowledge and information about the Nakba. We wish to operate and update a dynamic and interactive website that will serve as a database for introductory information about the Nakba and will invite visitors for further research on the subject.Goals – Our goals here are to put forward as many materials as possible, preferably new ones (or at least new in Hebrew) and to serve the need for more knowledge and data about the Nakba, the Refugees Problem and the right of return. Beneficiaries – First and foremost we are aiming to influence the Jewish Israeli public and the Hebrew speaking public outside Israel. We also specially target students at schools and universities, and researchers from various fields and disciplines. Evaluation- The impact of this program can be evaluated by the following criteria:Number of Publications added to the Information Center (Printed, Audio and Visual).Number of new web pages added to the website.New features and an ongoing upgrading of the website.Amount of new testimonies available in Hebrew.Increased access to our website and contacts through it.Number of visitors to the center and number of students, and other individuals, using the resources available there to investigate and research about the Nakba.
The Projects of this program includes:Hebrew website about the Nakba – Operating, maintaining and upgrading the first and largest Hebrew-speaking virtual center on the web about the Palestinian Nakba – www.zochrot.org. As of today, Zochrot's web site serves as the biggest online Hebrew source devoted to the Palestinian narrative of the Nakba. We announce all our activities through this site; we also communicate with pictures and individual stories; we upload testimonies to the site and we offer there a virtual library, including academic lectures and reports about the Nakba and the Palestinian refugees from such people as Benny Morris, Ilan Pape, Salman Abu Sita, Scott Leckie, Salim Tammary, the “Badil” organization and others. In our site we also have interactive maps of Palestine that show the location of every Palestinian village and town in Palestine before 1948. We are working today, and throughout 2006, to upgrade the website with new media forms and new presentations.Library and Visitors and Information Center – Operating a physical center for Zochrot's activities, to serve as an address for collecting and distributing knowledge (through all sorts of media); and for conducting research about the Palestinian Nakba. We intend to keep a dynamic center that will collect whatever new materials are available on the subject and that will serve as a resources bank for researchers and individuals interested in the subject.Publications and Presentations – Publishing booklets about the toured Palestinian villages (see above at RePlacing), and developing various forms of presentations on the subject of the Nakba to the general public. Here, we include the booklets we intend to produce before embarking on a tour to a new location. We also intend to produce smaller publications, such as brochures and different invitations to specific events and and specific dates. Collecting Testimonies – Countering the aging of the first generation witnesses of the Nakba of 1948 by collecting oral histories and existing testimonies to establish a large database for further educating and research: we intend to contact as many survivors in different regions of Israel, Palestine and elsewhere as possible, and to collect their testimonies. This is intended to be done with the participation of our activists and supporters everywhere, in order to offer avenues to investigate the local region and to be involved with learning about close communities.
‘ReEducating’ – Background – This program aims to counter the educational efforts by Israel to erase any memory of Palestine and the Nakba of 1948. As was mentioned above, the Palestinian Nakba is systematically erased from the Israeli landscape and consciousness. In this process the educational system plays a major role: the history and geography of Palestine and the events that changed it into the Jewish state of Israel are not addressed both in the official and in the non-official educational systems. We operate with different methods and in alternative forums to include the issues of the Nakba and the refugees in the educational agenda.Goals – Our goals here are to develop an option for formal and informal systems of education to engage in learning and teaching about the Palestinian Nakba.Beneficiaries – First and foremost, we are aiming to influence the Jewish Israeli public education system. We also aim to offer various educational experiences for the general public. The largest beneficiary group would be the younger generation: we believe that a generation that grows knowing more about 1948 and has the Nakba within its world view will be better equipped to be a part of a reconciliation process. Evaluation- The criteria to evaluate this program are:Number of schools or teachers that are involved with ZochrotThe variety of educational materials that are available for educating about the Nakba in Hebrew.The number and variety of different NGOs and youth groups / movements which are ready to approach these issues, including them in their agendas.The number of participants at the public evening events.The variation of topics and speakers who are willing to speak to the public about these issues.
The Projects include:Education Packet – Collecting and developing various educational materials for a Nakba course, in schools and elsewhere. Groups of teachers – Organizing regional groups for support and learning from teachers who are teaching the Nakba in their daily work. We plan to initiate regional teachers groups that will serve a supporting and learning purposes. We also wish to start collecting the knowledge manufactured in those monthly meetings into a written course that will allow others to engage in educating the Nakba. As part of this project we also wish to make contact with new schools and different educational frameworks, and to incorporate them into this project or other projects that Zochrot operates, including the tours and memorial events we put on.Developing Children’s Games – Searching possibilities to bring the issues to children as games or in different medias.Reaching Youth Groups – Connecting with various youth groups and NGOs in order to bring Zochrot’s agenda closer to their activities.Public Evenings – As part of the Visitor’s Center we invite people for regular lectures and presentations, from a variety of focuses, about the Nakba and related issues. We intend to conduct public events on a regular basis dedicated to many of the controversial issues concerning the Nakba, the Palestinian refugees issue or the right of return. We are currently using our new Nakba Information Center in Tel-Aviv / Jaffa for that purpose and using different spaces in other cities (Haifa). This is in order to produce lectures, movie screenings, or open discussions about some aspects of the Nakba (for example- we did an influential and well reported evening about the Nakba and Israeli architecture and a full-day about Women and the Nakba). We will distribute an invitation to these events and will publicize it in relevant media bodies. The events will be documented and reported-on in our website and our larger mailing list (over 1500 listed). Facilitating Dialogue between Israelis and Palestinian refugees from the same location – Bringing together Palestinian refugees with Jewish Israelis that live on their lands today: we are offering to organize and facilitate a Dialogue Workshop in small groups (up to 20 in each group – 10 Jews and 10 Palestinians). The workshops will include two main stages: the first will be the learning and discussion of the history and the second will be looking to the future with possible outcomes to the dialogue, and with suggested actions that might be taken, in order to move towards a just solution for the Palestinian refugees. A first stage will be to collect a group of people interested in this kind of dialogue. Then we plan to hold a workshop over a weekend (two days) for an introduction and ventilation of hard feelings and anger; then we wish to move the workshop to a "neutral" area, preferably abroad (Cyprus or Turkey can be a close-by possibility), for another four days of work (usually Thursday to Sunday). In these four days the main work can be done with the possibility of spending twenty-four hours together helping to achieve positive results for the working group. (An alternative to going abroad, where such a possibility would be difficult for the participants, we intend to replace the four days with two long weekends, thus achieving the wished for 4 days of work).Participating in Conferences about the Nakba and the refugee’s issue – Taking part in different public conferences: local, regional and international. Zochrot is invited time and again to different regional and international conferences that deal with the framework of refugees' issues in general, and with the regional issues of the Palestinian refugees in particular. Zochrot is also taking part in organizing such conferences, for example with the Tel-Aviv University or the Emil Tomma Institute in Haifa.
Capacity Building – Additionally to the above programs, Zochrot will develop its own capacities and capabilities in order to strengthen the organization and develop this knowledge from internal and external resources. This we wish to do in participating in courses by different organizations and coalitions, initiating our own internal seminars and learning days, developing a Media team that will learn how to enhance our Media exposure and by conducting empowering events for Zochrot's activists and staff.
The following is our formal statement....our business plan, if you will.....
Zochrot - 2006 'Zochrot' (ReMembering) is a registered Israeli Not-for-Profit NGO (580389526) that was established in 2002 in order to introduce the Palestinian Nakba to the Israeli public, especially to the Jewish population in Israel. The Palestinian Nakba refers to the "Catastrophe" the Palestinians suffered in 1948 when Israel moved into the Holy Land, dispersing the Palestinians and declaring statehood. Between the years 2002-2005 Zochrot has worked mostly as a volunteer organization, working from activists' homes and mobile phones. Throughout 2005 Zochrot has managed, thanks to many world-wide supporters, to develop a physical office and to open and operate the first-ever Information and Visitors’ Center about the Nakba in Israel. We have enlarged our staff to include six workers to support our programs. And we also welcomed a full-time intern to work in our offices for the next three years. Our organizational structure has developed to include a full-time manager, working alongside five part-time coordinators: the Visitors’ Center Coordinator; an Information Center Coordinator; the Haifa Region Coordinator; an Educational Programs Coordinator; and a Resources and Development Coordinator; and our Intern.In 2006 Zochrot will continue to develope organically, both responding to grassroots' needs and initiating various activities in order to fulfill our mission.
Our Vision - Is that a true reconciliation process will develop between two peoples: Israelis and Palestinians, which will aim at resolving, rightfully, the ongoing tragedy of the Palestinian refugees. This process must be based on an Israeli recognition of the refugee’s rights and the State’s responsibility in creating their tragedy. Our Mission – Is to initiate, support and sustain an ongoing Israeli public-debate about the Palestinian Nakba, the Refugee Problem and their right of return. This is our mission because Israeli Jews are rarely aware of what happened in Palestine in 1948; they are oblivious to the destruction and the intended demolition of most of Palestine's villages and towns and the expulsion of inhabitants. We believe that this same ongoing and directed ignorance is what now stands in the way of finding a just solution to the Palestinian Refugee Problem. Moreover, this ignorance promotes and strengthens ethnocentric and even racist attitudes amongst Israeli-Jews. It also prevents Israelis from deeply understanding the reality of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and its historical sources, thus leaving little hope for real reconciliation between the two peoples in the future. We see the ongoing oppression of the Palestinians, both inside and outside the 1948 borders of Israel, as a continuation of the form of relations established during the Nakba of 1948. We also support a solution for Palestinians refugees based on their right of return and hope that the Israeli government and official establishments recognize their responsibility for some part of the events taking place in 1948 and thereafter. Our main goal is to bring as many people, and especially Jewish Israelis, as possible to meet the facts and the stories of the Palestinian Nakba of 1948 and to understand the ongoing reality created by it.
Our Programs – As part of our mission of ‘ReMembering’, we wish to accomplish all the above by operating three major programs that include several projects in each category: ’RePlacing’, ’ReSourcing’ and ‘ReEducating’.
‘RePlacing’– Background – This program aims to counter the physical erasure and the way the space and landscape was, and still is, re-organized by Israel since 1948. Our goals here are to Re-visit and Re-name as many existing and destroyed locations as possible, including establishing connection to refugees from these locations and to collect and translate as many materials as possible into Hebrew (see also below in ‘ReSourcing’). Goals – Our goal in this program is to put forward alternative physical landmarks and signs, and / or to initiate events that mark the physical landscape and will challenge both the public and authorities with the erasure and forgetfulness of Palestine and Palestinian life.Beneficiaries – First and foremost we are aiming to influence the Jewish Israeli public. A second group, which we consider as major beneficiaries, are the Palestinian refugees’ communities inside, and outside of, Israel. We also look at a third group, which is a global, international group that should benefit from Zochrot’s actions, and thus are all supporters of a Palestine state and of reconciliation and just peace in the region and around the world. Evaluation - There are several criteria by which we can evaluate this program: Number of activities.The amount of new knowledge and materials the actions produce.The number and variety of participants and their willingness to get involved in further engagement with Zochrot or the concerned issues. The impact of the activities on the local populations, the public and the general political public-debate, through our website / center and through various Media forums and online-debates.The possibility to produce further actions out of the action taken. Many of Zochrot’s activities do trigger new ideas and initiatives for ongoing projects.
In 2006, this Program will include several ongoing projects:Tours and Visits - Touring and posting signs at destroyed Palestinian villages and towns: before every new tour we will have a preparatory process of research in order to see the place and decide where to post the signs and to locate materials, and tour guides from the local communities. We will publicize the event beforehand in local newspapers, on the Internet, in our website and other related sites, and in other relevant public arenas. After finishing the preparations, Zochrot will organize transportation that will travel to the location of a destroyed village in a certain area. The tour will be guided either by refugees from the destroyed village, by their children or by other experts on the location. We aim to include as many women as possible as such guides and experts. Whenever possible, some Hebrew and Arabic material about the villages will be produced and provided, including map-transcripts of the places before '48 (see below ‘ReSourcing’ for more details). In every village we visit, we intend to affect the participants towards understanding and sensitivity and to listen to testimonies or conduct a ceremony. We will also post signs at the location in Hebrew and in Arabic, with the names of the villages and other important information. We plan to visit as many destroyed villages as possible and to have a geographical spread which will not exclude any area of the country.Official Campaigns and Objections – Campainging for the official signing of destroyed Palestinian locations and to object to the further destruction of them, where still possible: in every possible case Zochrot will engage with the authorities in order to stress the need to officially and clearly sign the remains and location of destroyed Palestinian villages and towns. We will also conduct official objections' procedures, where still possible, to prevent official plans of further destruction of Palestinian sites, in order to start a debate on the authorities' plans. Memorial Events – Commemorating special dates relating to the Nakba: this project intends to produce special events on three specific dates: first, the Israeli day of Independence (on which we usually join in the "March of Return" organized by the Central Committee of the Internally Displaced Palestinians in Israel). Each year the march is conducted in a different village and we usually commemorate this village by a sign(s) and organize some special input by Zochrot for that day. Second, around April 9th, the Deir-Yassin Memorial Day, we join "Deir-Yassin Remembered" in a ceremony, or other event, in the village itself. Third, on the official Nakba day on May 15th, we usually conduct a public event in a central location in order to introduce the Israeli public with the importance of the day to Palestinian refugees.Operating Local Volunteers Groups – Initiating and supporting local groups to take on activities on the Nakba in their region: Zochrot wishes to empower and support local organizations of activists from existing organizations and as new initiatives to take up activities and research concerning the Nakba and the refugees. We will keep close contact with such groups and will push forward to initiate such groups wherever a substantial group of activists exist.A Hebrew Map of Palestine – Recreating a map of Palestine in Hebrew: Zochrot wishes to produce a map of the Nakba of Palestine in Hebrew to serve the public. This is based on existing maps and research and on our own research and experience.Travel Guide to Destroyed Villages – Offering a counter-tour-guide to destroyed Palestinian locations: towards the main Jewish holidays the daily newspapers offer families in Israel additional sections with tours in the country. It goes without saying that these sections do not even mention the Palestinian locations, still existing, yet destroyed. We wish to prepare and distribute a small booklet offering some alternative tours for families and individuals interested in exploring what is also erased from the landscape.
‘ReSourcing’ – Background – This program aims to counter the lack of information resources in Hebrew about the Nakba. We wish to collect and translate as many new materials as possible into Hebrew and to operate a growing and dynamic Information and Visitor’s Center to help interested people have a reachable place to help their interest. This Center will also serve as a communal and cultural center for the distribution of knowledge and information about the Nakba. We wish to operate and update a dynamic and interactive website that will serve as a database for introductory information about the Nakba and will invite visitors for further research on the subject.Goals – Our goals here are to put forward as many materials as possible, preferably new ones (or at least new in Hebrew) and to serve the need for more knowledge and data about the Nakba, the Refugees Problem and the right of return. Beneficiaries – First and foremost we are aiming to influence the Jewish Israeli public and the Hebrew speaking public outside Israel. We also specially target students at schools and universities, and researchers from various fields and disciplines. Evaluation- The impact of this program can be evaluated by the following criteria:Number of Publications added to the Information Center (Printed, Audio and Visual).Number of new web pages added to the website.New features and an ongoing upgrading of the website.Amount of new testimonies available in Hebrew.Increased access to our website and contacts through it.Number of visitors to the center and number of students, and other individuals, using the resources available there to investigate and research about the Nakba.
The Projects of this program includes:Hebrew website about the Nakba – Operating, maintaining and upgrading the first and largest Hebrew-speaking virtual center on the web about the Palestinian Nakba – www.zochrot.org. As of today, Zochrot's web site serves as the biggest online Hebrew source devoted to the Palestinian narrative of the Nakba. We announce all our activities through this site; we also communicate with pictures and individual stories; we upload testimonies to the site and we offer there a virtual library, including academic lectures and reports about the Nakba and the Palestinian refugees from such people as Benny Morris, Ilan Pape, Salman Abu Sita, Scott Leckie, Salim Tammary, the “Badil” organization and others. In our site we also have interactive maps of Palestine that show the location of every Palestinian village and town in Palestine before 1948. We are working today, and throughout 2006, to upgrade the website with new media forms and new presentations.Library and Visitors and Information Center – Operating a physical center for Zochrot's activities, to serve as an address for collecting and distributing knowledge (through all sorts of media); and for conducting research about the Palestinian Nakba. We intend to keep a dynamic center that will collect whatever new materials are available on the subject and that will serve as a resources bank for researchers and individuals interested in the subject.Publications and Presentations – Publishing booklets about the toured Palestinian villages (see above at RePlacing), and developing various forms of presentations on the subject of the Nakba to the general public. Here, we include the booklets we intend to produce before embarking on a tour to a new location. We also intend to produce smaller publications, such as brochures and different invitations to specific events and and specific dates. Collecting Testimonies – Countering the aging of the first generation witnesses of the Nakba of 1948 by collecting oral histories and existing testimonies to establish a large database for further educating and research: we intend to contact as many survivors in different regions of Israel, Palestine and elsewhere as possible, and to collect their testimonies. This is intended to be done with the participation of our activists and supporters everywhere, in order to offer avenues to investigate the local region and to be involved with learning about close communities.
‘ReEducating’ – Background – This program aims to counter the educational efforts by Israel to erase any memory of Palestine and the Nakba of 1948. As was mentioned above, the Palestinian Nakba is systematically erased from the Israeli landscape and consciousness. In this process the educational system plays a major role: the history and geography of Palestine and the events that changed it into the Jewish state of Israel are not addressed both in the official and in the non-official educational systems. We operate with different methods and in alternative forums to include the issues of the Nakba and the refugees in the educational agenda.Goals – Our goals here are to develop an option for formal and informal systems of education to engage in learning and teaching about the Palestinian Nakba.Beneficiaries – First and foremost, we are aiming to influence the Jewish Israeli public education system. We also aim to offer various educational experiences for the general public. The largest beneficiary group would be the younger generation: we believe that a generation that grows knowing more about 1948 and has the Nakba within its world view will be better equipped to be a part of a reconciliation process. Evaluation- The criteria to evaluate this program are:Number of schools or teachers that are involved with ZochrotThe variety of educational materials that are available for educating about the Nakba in Hebrew.The number and variety of different NGOs and youth groups / movements which are ready to approach these issues, including them in their agendas.The number of participants at the public evening events.The variation of topics and speakers who are willing to speak to the public about these issues.
The Projects include:Education Packet – Collecting and developing various educational materials for a Nakba course, in schools and elsewhere. Groups of teachers – Organizing regional groups for support and learning from teachers who are teaching the Nakba in their daily work. We plan to initiate regional teachers groups that will serve a supporting and learning purposes. We also wish to start collecting the knowledge manufactured in those monthly meetings into a written course that will allow others to engage in educating the Nakba. As part of this project we also wish to make contact with new schools and different educational frameworks, and to incorporate them into this project or other projects that Zochrot operates, including the tours and memorial events we put on.Developing Children’s Games – Searching possibilities to bring the issues to children as games or in different medias.Reaching Youth Groups – Connecting with various youth groups and NGOs in order to bring Zochrot’s agenda closer to their activities.Public Evenings – As part of the Visitor’s Center we invite people for regular lectures and presentations, from a variety of focuses, about the Nakba and related issues. We intend to conduct public events on a regular basis dedicated to many of the controversial issues concerning the Nakba, the Palestinian refugees issue or the right of return. We are currently using our new Nakba Information Center in Tel-Aviv / Jaffa for that purpose and using different spaces in other cities (Haifa). This is in order to produce lectures, movie screenings, or open discussions about some aspects of the Nakba (for example- we did an influential and well reported evening about the Nakba and Israeli architecture and a full-day about Women and the Nakba). We will distribute an invitation to these events and will publicize it in relevant media bodies. The events will be documented and reported-on in our website and our larger mailing list (over 1500 listed). Facilitating Dialogue between Israelis and Palestinian refugees from the same location – Bringing together Palestinian refugees with Jewish Israelis that live on their lands today: we are offering to organize and facilitate a Dialogue Workshop in small groups (up to 20 in each group – 10 Jews and 10 Palestinians). The workshops will include two main stages: the first will be the learning and discussion of the history and the second will be looking to the future with possible outcomes to the dialogue, and with suggested actions that might be taken, in order to move towards a just solution for the Palestinian refugees. A first stage will be to collect a group of people interested in this kind of dialogue. Then we plan to hold a workshop over a weekend (two days) for an introduction and ventilation of hard feelings and anger; then we wish to move the workshop to a "neutral" area, preferably abroad (Cyprus or Turkey can be a close-by possibility), for another four days of work (usually Thursday to Sunday). In these four days the main work can be done with the possibility of spending twenty-four hours together helping to achieve positive results for the working group. (An alternative to going abroad, where such a possibility would be difficult for the participants, we intend to replace the four days with two long weekends, thus achieving the wished for 4 days of work).Participating in Conferences about the Nakba and the refugee’s issue – Taking part in different public conferences: local, regional and international. Zochrot is invited time and again to different regional and international conferences that deal with the framework of refugees' issues in general, and with the regional issues of the Palestinian refugees in particular. Zochrot is also taking part in organizing such conferences, for example with the Tel-Aviv University or the Emil Tomma Institute in Haifa.
Capacity Building – Additionally to the above programs, Zochrot will develop its own capacities and capabilities in order to strengthen the organization and develop this knowledge from internal and external resources. This we wish to do in participating in courses by different organizations and coalitions, initiating our own internal seminars and learning days, developing a Media team that will learn how to enhance our Media exposure and by conducting empowering events for Zochrot's activists and staff.
ShaNa ToVa
Sunday, October 02, 2005
The day before the Eve of Rosh Hashana, 5765, becoming 5766!
Hello!
Tomorrow night, when three stars show themselves in the sky, the year will change to 5766. I am very surprised that there are no flying cars in the future or that teleporting has not become a viable mode of transportation. I came to Israel / Palestine in 2005, stayed two months and it became 5766. Wow! Am I any older? What does that make me for MCC...a Super-Continuing-Worker?
As you may or may not know, there is a religious Jewish calendar, as well as the Roman one the world uses. Col Olam: the whole world....
So, apparently, if you add up all the numbers in the Bible right and do all the math, like the Orthodox Jews do, then God rested 5766 years ago. Of course, we know through science that the earth is millions of years in the making; and that the Bible is loaded with all sorts of symbolism and special emphasis on numbers like 40 and 7; but this is a sort of dualism and apparent-contradiction that one can live with. What I mean is, even though we equip ourselves to intelligently understand that the evolutionary process takes millions of years, with God lovingly moving creation along its destined course, there is also a distinct connection with God by going through the Hebrew Bible, pouring over it and adding all the numbers, determining the value and worth of things.
Madonna and Britney Spears think it is the coolest thing since Pepsi and the Mickey Mouse Club; but kaballa is something that has a mysterious order about it, which those two croonettes somehow cheapen. Every letter in the Hebrew alphabet is assigned a number, up to 22, and then each word or name is added for a value. Maybe you keep adding until you get a single number? There are apparently some legitimate Kabbalists who can know your name and your mother's name and then tell you your life's path. Yes, yes, numerology...and no, no, I am not endorsing it....I am simply talking about what I learned today.
Okay. I think I'll stick to what I got going on; but good to know....
Today at the ulpan - Hebrew language school - all us talmeedeem - students - came dressed up in white shirts, ate apple slices dipped in honey, heard the story about the New Year's symbolism: about how it is the beginning of the two weeks of apologies to God and people while God records our behaviour before Yom Kippur, where-upon God stamps his approval or disapproval of us for the year. Very different from my experiences with Christianity but I respect the tradition and eagerly soaked up the information. The coolest part was all the info was given to us in Hebrew but we are at the point now where we can understand what things mean...that is if someone talks to us like to a child. But like I told my friend, Matan, the other day: there is no Yom Kippur for Christians because in our narrative Jesus paid, once and for all time, for the grievances of humanity. Okay, I won't ramble on.....
We had a school-wide assembly where some buzz-cut old folk-singing lady with a rainbow scarf draped around her neck led us for an hour in Hebrew songs, traditional songs, celebrating the New Year. I enjoyed clapping out cool beats to the delight of my friends and chair dancing, having a good time. I think the weirdest part was when they handed out all these glasses of sweet wine. I have never drinken alcohol at a school-sanctioned event...well, I mean, I have never drinken alcohol given to me by teachers....Is that even legal in Canada? It was certainly SWEET wine. Wow. Darren likes sweet wine; the other students don't...who helps them with their sweet wine? Certainly not Darren!
Tomorrow, at about noon-time, I am going with my friends Matan and Yael to Matan's mother's house in Haifa to celebrate Rosh hashana with their whole family (rosh means head and shana is year and the ha is the article "the"). There will be Matan's brother, his wife and kids, her parents. The Grandparents, the aunts and uncles....and me. Interesting to say the least. I told Matan not to worry about me being a vegetarian; I'd rather eat meat than feel uncomfortable about telling his family no, especially to traditional and honoured dishes....here's hoping there no goat testicles on the table, eh? Apparently there's fish heads...but Matan said I don't have to eat one... I'd do lousy on Fear Factor.
On Tuesday I am going to a Zochrot employee's Rosh Hashana (New Year's) party; so weird, I keep thinking, that this is going to be the year 5766. Where's ziggy stardust and my spacesuit? Maybe I'll play the song, A Dream, by welkin, over and over.
I had a wonderful meeting today with Eitan Bronsten, the director of Zochrot, today after school. We talked for an hour and ate two bowls of hummous each. In fact, we made plans to go to Akka on the 20th of October to go to the Israeli-Palestinian man, Said's, restaurant to have the best hummous in all Israel (hey BETHLEHEM...I'M NOT KNOCKING FATEEM'S....I SAID ISRAEL). In regards to Zochrot, I have been feeling a little out of the loop, lately, with being so busy with ulpan and living that I never saw Zochrot. We agreed that I should come into the office Tuesdays for a couple of hours in the afternoon, so that I can just be around - do some work and continue on in the video editing stuff; really trying to get the streaming going. If you know anyone who knows about streaming, let me know; I need to figure it out. It just confuses me....
I am relaxing right now, really grooving out to my favourite band's latest album, Strangers and Exiles. Welkin is AWESOME- they make me feel alive. they remind me that I have a mission in life and they show me where to draw my Energy. Porterhus, listen to Welkin, will you - that'll make your day! And if your name ends in Powell, listen to Welkin tonight, eh? Do it for the Dude, will ya?
Okay, peace out and lehitra'ot (goodbye) for now from Tel Aviv...a crazy city in a crazy place
with a crazy Canadian living in it!
That's what Matan has been calling me lately....the Crazy Canadian!
Darren
The day before the Eve of Rosh Hashana, 5765, becoming 5766!
Hello!
Tomorrow night, when three stars show themselves in the sky, the year will change to 5766. I am very surprised that there are no flying cars in the future or that teleporting has not become a viable mode of transportation. I came to Israel / Palestine in 2005, stayed two months and it became 5766. Wow! Am I any older? What does that make me for MCC...a Super-Continuing-Worker?
As you may or may not know, there is a religious Jewish calendar, as well as the Roman one the world uses. Col Olam: the whole world....
So, apparently, if you add up all the numbers in the Bible right and do all the math, like the Orthodox Jews do, then God rested 5766 years ago. Of course, we know through science that the earth is millions of years in the making; and that the Bible is loaded with all sorts of symbolism and special emphasis on numbers like 40 and 7; but this is a sort of dualism and apparent-contradiction that one can live with. What I mean is, even though we equip ourselves to intelligently understand that the evolutionary process takes millions of years, with God lovingly moving creation along its destined course, there is also a distinct connection with God by going through the Hebrew Bible, pouring over it and adding all the numbers, determining the value and worth of things.
Madonna and Britney Spears think it is the coolest thing since Pepsi and the Mickey Mouse Club; but kaballa is something that has a mysterious order about it, which those two croonettes somehow cheapen. Every letter in the Hebrew alphabet is assigned a number, up to 22, and then each word or name is added for a value. Maybe you keep adding until you get a single number? There are apparently some legitimate Kabbalists who can know your name and your mother's name and then tell you your life's path. Yes, yes, numerology...and no, no, I am not endorsing it....I am simply talking about what I learned today.
Okay. I think I'll stick to what I got going on; but good to know....
Today at the ulpan - Hebrew language school - all us talmeedeem - students - came dressed up in white shirts, ate apple slices dipped in honey, heard the story about the New Year's symbolism: about how it is the beginning of the two weeks of apologies to God and people while God records our behaviour before Yom Kippur, where-upon God stamps his approval or disapproval of us for the year. Very different from my experiences with Christianity but I respect the tradition and eagerly soaked up the information. The coolest part was all the info was given to us in Hebrew but we are at the point now where we can understand what things mean...that is if someone talks to us like to a child. But like I told my friend, Matan, the other day: there is no Yom Kippur for Christians because in our narrative Jesus paid, once and for all time, for the grievances of humanity. Okay, I won't ramble on.....
We had a school-wide assembly where some buzz-cut old folk-singing lady with a rainbow scarf draped around her neck led us for an hour in Hebrew songs, traditional songs, celebrating the New Year. I enjoyed clapping out cool beats to the delight of my friends and chair dancing, having a good time. I think the weirdest part was when they handed out all these glasses of sweet wine. I have never drinken alcohol at a school-sanctioned event...well, I mean, I have never drinken alcohol given to me by teachers....Is that even legal in Canada? It was certainly SWEET wine. Wow. Darren likes sweet wine; the other students don't...who helps them with their sweet wine? Certainly not Darren!
Tomorrow, at about noon-time, I am going with my friends Matan and Yael to Matan's mother's house in Haifa to celebrate Rosh hashana with their whole family (rosh means head and shana is year and the ha is the article "the"). There will be Matan's brother, his wife and kids, her parents. The Grandparents, the aunts and uncles....and me. Interesting to say the least. I told Matan not to worry about me being a vegetarian; I'd rather eat meat than feel uncomfortable about telling his family no, especially to traditional and honoured dishes....here's hoping there no goat testicles on the table, eh? Apparently there's fish heads...but Matan said I don't have to eat one... I'd do lousy on Fear Factor.
On Tuesday I am going to a Zochrot employee's Rosh Hashana (New Year's) party; so weird, I keep thinking, that this is going to be the year 5766. Where's ziggy stardust and my spacesuit? Maybe I'll play the song, A Dream, by welkin, over and over.
I had a wonderful meeting today with Eitan Bronsten, the director of Zochrot, today after school. We talked for an hour and ate two bowls of hummous each. In fact, we made plans to go to Akka on the 20th of October to go to the Israeli-Palestinian man, Said's, restaurant to have the best hummous in all Israel (hey BETHLEHEM...I'M NOT KNOCKING FATEEM'S....I SAID ISRAEL). In regards to Zochrot, I have been feeling a little out of the loop, lately, with being so busy with ulpan and living that I never saw Zochrot. We agreed that I should come into the office Tuesdays for a couple of hours in the afternoon, so that I can just be around - do some work and continue on in the video editing stuff; really trying to get the streaming going. If you know anyone who knows about streaming, let me know; I need to figure it out. It just confuses me....
I am relaxing right now, really grooving out to my favourite band's latest album, Strangers and Exiles. Welkin is AWESOME- they make me feel alive. they remind me that I have a mission in life and they show me where to draw my Energy. Porterhus, listen to Welkin, will you - that'll make your day! And if your name ends in Powell, listen to Welkin tonight, eh? Do it for the Dude, will ya?
Okay, peace out and lehitra'ot (goodbye) for now from Tel Aviv...a crazy city in a crazy place
with a crazy Canadian living in it!
That's what Matan has been calling me lately....the Crazy Canadian!
Darren
Thursday, September 29, 2005
A New Day
Thursday, September 29, 2005
In the beginning I was as happy as a tourist. But I was riding on newness of being and adrenaline and my conceptions of Israel were empty and raw. Then darkness washed over the Darren, darker than a steer's tucus on a moonless night; but what the darkness hid was the deep that had come. I looked at the darkness, then plunged in and searched with extended arms, stumbling around looking for my way; I stumbled into the deep. The Spirit of God was moving all around me, like wind through city streets. Then, I realised I could see. The darkness was dissolved by light. The light is good.
Two months in Tel Aviv has come and gone and I didn't even notice the exact day; it's nearly three since I left BC. I have been really busy and exploring the deep that the darkness hid. I have developed a fondness for my fellow city-dweller. A very small sense of understanding and insight does much to dispel confusion and be a salve for the negative emotions that use confusion as a ladder to climb into the mind. The expression, "If you don't understand it - kill it," seems appropriate for the negativity that arises through perpetual confusion.
Realising you are lost always brings a sense of panic and when you try to run and your legs don't work; it' s supposed to mean that you are dreaming. But when you feel like PacMan and you are awake, the trouble comes. The biggest trouble is trying to learn how to be confused in the best possible way. Once I learned that, I started to feel better.
As an extrovert, I found that too much time alone took its toll on me. I found that I became agoraphobic. Especially of the marketplace. That's what agoraphobia means: fear of the marketplace. But even just parties or meetings or conversations about how I was or "the situation" here or just normal socialisation began to seem frightening. After some days, I said Forget It, and then I met some friends. My buddy Mattan did much explaining to me about the culture of Israel and how much the military service affects the people here. I had wondered why people talk to each other like they've known each other for years and are arguing over the last beer; and his insights to me have made that clearer.
Oh, speaking of the meaning of words, how 'bout this one: Baal means husband, it is also the name of a Caanaite god from the old-school. But what does it REALLY mean? Owner. Amazing. That is why some women, these days, in Israel, don't like to refer to their husbands as "husband" or "Baal" (owner).
Things always happen when one is not frantically searching for it. At least to me. With friends, I have been able to feel like I'm not invisible and see that there is more to people here than mad drivers and pushy people. I got so busy with homework and the friends I've met, from Zochrot, from school and from just living here, that I didn't even notice the darkness disappearing. I just noticed over the space of a couple of days that I like the breeze in my apartment; I like the (relative) coolness of the morning bike ride to school; I like riding or walking around the streets; I like watching people. I noticed my laugh once again causing people to turn their heads to see the source. I noticed a smile on my face and a joke on my lips. I still hate the car alarms and blaring techno; but hey, at least I can hear them. I'm glad to be able to hear.
Hebrew is coming along well. I am still too shy to speak to people when they look at me and say, ma shlom kha? with a fun look on their face. I know they are just playing a game with me, to hear the student speak. But I do say stuff when I'm in a store or in the market or just out. Not much, just a few words, usually, maybe a couple of sentences. I can't hear people here very well, because of their speed, so when they find out I suck at Hebrew they switch to English. Very rarely do I switch them back unless I am in an extended conversation and the words come to me in Hebrew of what I want to say in English.
I find it amazing, though, to look back on those first couple weeks of class when I felt like I just got a super-duper bad concussion and couldn't understand a thing. Now, I can understand what the teacher says and she talks for five hours in nearly all Hebrew. She talks faster now than she did, too. When she really motors I get lost and am grateful for her repeating for us beginner folks.
I am having lunch with Eitan Bronstein on Sunday to discuss the next couple of months at Zochrot. I think they want to have me in the office a day or two a week for whatever reason. I only really get a couple hours of social time per day because of how much studying is required for each class, so I don't know how much time they want. I also am not sure why they want me to go there right now. I have never been given responsibility. The work I did for them was extra stuff they hadn't had before and so when I started school their operation is not affected. Maybe they just miss my mug around the office space.
Oh, I shaved. Just 'cause. It'll grow back. It's a nice change-up. My beard had never been so bushy - the Osama beard wasn't even close.
If you had noticed at the beginning of this letter that I said I lived in Israel, rather than saying Israel / Palestine, it is because Tel Aviv is so far away from Israel / Palestine that it really is only Israel. People here talk about poverty and homelessness and how those things should be non-existent and I just want to tell them about Palestine. I usually don't say anything. Today, I entered a conversation about how poor people are poor because they choose it and I talked about Vancouver and gave a perspective that my brother taught me about "choice" for some people, rather the lack of it. One girl, in the conversation, told me it was very rare to be abused and broken and born into hopeless situations. I shook my head at her ignorance and told her it is much more common than she thinks.
I got in an interesting conversation today with this same girl: a New Yorker turned Israeli Immigrant, who is in my class. She was asking me about my "NGO" since I had explained about MCC and Zochrot to her in the past. I told her that I was the only one from MCC living in Israel, although there were half-a-dozen, or so, volunteers in Palestine.
She looked surprised and said, "Oh, after being here for a couple months you must really have a
different opinion than them." I shrugged my shoulders and said, "Sure, about a lot of stuff, but not about the political or human rights issues in Israel / Palestine." She looked at me very suspicously and I followed up with, "I absolutely believe that Israel has a right to exist....on the 1948 borders.....and they should STICK to the Greenline and not build their wall on Palestinian land."
She seemed a little assured that I wasn't a hater and she said, "Well, it's a good thing we have the wall; we need it to protect our homes." She said, "I mean, if someone was killing my family and bombing my house, I'd want a wall too."
I said, "But it was Israel who built the wall."
She looked at me like I was crazy and said, "Yeah, I was talking about my house."
"Yeah," I said, "But Israel has been killing Palestinian families and destroying their houses for sixty years; they never put a wall up."
Her eyes narrowed and she said condescendingly, "Well, I can see that you and I don't agree about the historical FACTS." She really said FACTS strongly and loudly. I was so tempted to enter that avenue and take her for a walk and talk about her FACTS, but I thought to myself, later, later, I will know her for the next four months.
Tonight I am going to James' apartment, who is an Irish dude from class. He's having a "mess-eBah." I think most of the class is coming as well as other students from the ulpan, plus his girlfriend's friends and their roomate's friends. Sounds like it will a bash. Interesting! I wonder what the French guys will be up to; not to mention the Brazilians! Maybe I'll wear my Zochrot shirt and get the crap beat out of me!
Okay,
Burro D-Block OUT
In the beginning I was as happy as a tourist. But I was riding on newness of being and adrenaline and my conceptions of Israel were empty and raw. Then darkness washed over the Darren, darker than a steer's tucus on a moonless night; but what the darkness hid was the deep that had come. I looked at the darkness, then plunged in and searched with extended arms, stumbling around looking for my way; I stumbled into the deep. The Spirit of God was moving all around me, like wind through city streets. Then, I realised I could see. The darkness was dissolved by light. The light is good.
Two months in Tel Aviv has come and gone and I didn't even notice the exact day; it's nearly three since I left BC. I have been really busy and exploring the deep that the darkness hid. I have developed a fondness for my fellow city-dweller. A very small sense of understanding and insight does much to dispel confusion and be a salve for the negative emotions that use confusion as a ladder to climb into the mind. The expression, "If you don't understand it - kill it," seems appropriate for the negativity that arises through perpetual confusion.
Realising you are lost always brings a sense of panic and when you try to run and your legs don't work; it' s supposed to mean that you are dreaming. But when you feel like PacMan and you are awake, the trouble comes. The biggest trouble is trying to learn how to be confused in the best possible way. Once I learned that, I started to feel better.
As an extrovert, I found that too much time alone took its toll on me. I found that I became agoraphobic. Especially of the marketplace. That's what agoraphobia means: fear of the marketplace. But even just parties or meetings or conversations about how I was or "the situation" here or just normal socialisation began to seem frightening. After some days, I said Forget It, and then I met some friends. My buddy Mattan did much explaining to me about the culture of Israel and how much the military service affects the people here. I had wondered why people talk to each other like they've known each other for years and are arguing over the last beer; and his insights to me have made that clearer.
Oh, speaking of the meaning of words, how 'bout this one: Baal means husband, it is also the name of a Caanaite god from the old-school. But what does it REALLY mean? Owner. Amazing. That is why some women, these days, in Israel, don't like to refer to their husbands as "husband" or "Baal" (owner).
Things always happen when one is not frantically searching for it. At least to me. With friends, I have been able to feel like I'm not invisible and see that there is more to people here than mad drivers and pushy people. I got so busy with homework and the friends I've met, from Zochrot, from school and from just living here, that I didn't even notice the darkness disappearing. I just noticed over the space of a couple of days that I like the breeze in my apartment; I like the (relative) coolness of the morning bike ride to school; I like riding or walking around the streets; I like watching people. I noticed my laugh once again causing people to turn their heads to see the source. I noticed a smile on my face and a joke on my lips. I still hate the car alarms and blaring techno; but hey, at least I can hear them. I'm glad to be able to hear.
Hebrew is coming along well. I am still too shy to speak to people when they look at me and say, ma shlom kha? with a fun look on their face. I know they are just playing a game with me, to hear the student speak. But I do say stuff when I'm in a store or in the market or just out. Not much, just a few words, usually, maybe a couple of sentences. I can't hear people here very well, because of their speed, so when they find out I suck at Hebrew they switch to English. Very rarely do I switch them back unless I am in an extended conversation and the words come to me in Hebrew of what I want to say in English.
I find it amazing, though, to look back on those first couple weeks of class when I felt like I just got a super-duper bad concussion and couldn't understand a thing. Now, I can understand what the teacher says and she talks for five hours in nearly all Hebrew. She talks faster now than she did, too. When she really motors I get lost and am grateful for her repeating for us beginner folks.
I am having lunch with Eitan Bronstein on Sunday to discuss the next couple of months at Zochrot. I think they want to have me in the office a day or two a week for whatever reason. I only really get a couple hours of social time per day because of how much studying is required for each class, so I don't know how much time they want. I also am not sure why they want me to go there right now. I have never been given responsibility. The work I did for them was extra stuff they hadn't had before and so when I started school their operation is not affected. Maybe they just miss my mug around the office space.
Oh, I shaved. Just 'cause. It'll grow back. It's a nice change-up. My beard had never been so bushy - the Osama beard wasn't even close.
If you had noticed at the beginning of this letter that I said I lived in Israel, rather than saying Israel / Palestine, it is because Tel Aviv is so far away from Israel / Palestine that it really is only Israel. People here talk about poverty and homelessness and how those things should be non-existent and I just want to tell them about Palestine. I usually don't say anything. Today, I entered a conversation about how poor people are poor because they choose it and I talked about Vancouver and gave a perspective that my brother taught me about "choice" for some people, rather the lack of it. One girl, in the conversation, told me it was very rare to be abused and broken and born into hopeless situations. I shook my head at her ignorance and told her it is much more common than she thinks.
I got in an interesting conversation today with this same girl: a New Yorker turned Israeli Immigrant, who is in my class. She was asking me about my "NGO" since I had explained about MCC and Zochrot to her in the past. I told her that I was the only one from MCC living in Israel, although there were half-a-dozen, or so, volunteers in Palestine.
She looked surprised and said, "Oh, after being here for a couple months you must really have a
different opinion than them." I shrugged my shoulders and said, "Sure, about a lot of stuff, but not about the political or human rights issues in Israel / Palestine." She looked at me very suspicously and I followed up with, "I absolutely believe that Israel has a right to exist....on the 1948 borders.....and they should STICK to the Greenline and not build their wall on Palestinian land."
She seemed a little assured that I wasn't a hater and she said, "Well, it's a good thing we have the wall; we need it to protect our homes." She said, "I mean, if someone was killing my family and bombing my house, I'd want a wall too."
I said, "But it was Israel who built the wall."
She looked at me like I was crazy and said, "Yeah, I was talking about my house."
"Yeah," I said, "But Israel has been killing Palestinian families and destroying their houses for sixty years; they never put a wall up."
Her eyes narrowed and she said condescendingly, "Well, I can see that you and I don't agree about the historical FACTS." She really said FACTS strongly and loudly. I was so tempted to enter that avenue and take her for a walk and talk about her FACTS, but I thought to myself, later, later, I will know her for the next four months.
Tonight I am going to James' apartment, who is an Irish dude from class. He's having a "mess-eBah." I think most of the class is coming as well as other students from the ulpan, plus his girlfriend's friends and their roomate's friends. Sounds like it will a bash. Interesting! I wonder what the French guys will be up to; not to mention the Brazilians! Maybe I'll wear my Zochrot shirt and get the crap beat out of me!
Okay,
Burro D-Block OUT
Saturday, September 24, 2005
How Can There Be Peace When Everyone is Shooting Each Other?
Hey,
I found the following article at http://www.alternativenews.org/
I think it is interesting how there is much accusation and speculation over what caused the exposion at the disengagement celebration in Gaza yesterday (Friday). I also thought that the other skirmishes, including Palestinian police and Hamas fighters shooting at each other, is just plain sad. Anyway, read the article if you feel like it....
http://www.alternativenews.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=261&Itemid=1&lang=ISO-8859-1
photo from al-jazeera.
Many killed in Gaza blast
Several people, including children, have been killed and many more injured in northern Gaza today after a car exploded at a military parade organized by the Islamic resistance group Hamas to celebrate the Israeli withdrawl from the Gaza strip.
Haaretz reported that at least 19 people were killed and 80 are wounded. Ten of the wounded were in serious condition, hospital doctors said.
The explosion occurred as thousands of Hamas members and supporters attended a rally in the impoverished Jabaliya refugee camp to celebrate Israel's pullout from the Gaza Strip, witnesses said.
The blast ripped through the camp just before one of the main leaders of Hamas, Ismail Haniya, was to address the crowd.
Israel or Accident?
AP quoted witnesses as saying the truck carried homemade weapons, and Palestinian security officials as saying that the blast apparently was caused by the mishandling of explosives.
Hamas blamed Israel, saying Israeli aircraft flew overhead during the rally. Israel denied it was involved.
Witnesses said participants crowded around the pickup truck carrying fighters when the explosion went off. The witnesses added that the truck carried homemade weapons, but did not know whether they were rockets or grenade launchers.
Earlier on Friday, Israeli soldiers killed three Palestinian fighters in Tulkarim in the West Bank, drawing strong condemnation from another Palestinian resistance group, Islamic Jihad.
The three fighters from al-Quds Brigades, the military arm of Islamic Jihad, were killed just hours after Israeli soldiers evacuated an army base.
Afterwards, Aljazeera reported that nine rockets were fired from Gaza towards the Israeli township of Sderot, in the first such incident since Israeli forces completed a pullout from the territory 10 days ago. No casualties or damage were reported from the rocket.
Israeli Military radio confirmed only one rocket impact. "Other explosions were heard in the region but no (other impact in Israel) has been confirmed," a source said.
Khalid al-Batsh, a spokesman for Islamic Jihad, held Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Defence Minister Saul Mofaz responsible for what he called "a deliberate assassination".
Also on Friday, Palestinian police and Hamas fighters briefly exchanged fire, leaving an armed Hamas man wounded, security officials and hospital doctors said.
At talks between Palestinian leader Mahmud Abbas and Gaza representatives of the main factions on Wednesday, fighters agreed to stop by Saturday all armed rallies and marches celebrating Israel's pullout from Gaza.
I found the following article at http://www.alternativenews.org/
I think it is interesting how there is much accusation and speculation over what caused the exposion at the disengagement celebration in Gaza yesterday (Friday). I also thought that the other skirmishes, including Palestinian police and Hamas fighters shooting at each other, is just plain sad. Anyway, read the article if you feel like it....
http://www.alternativenews.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=261&Itemid=1&lang=ISO-8859-1
photo from al-jazeera.
Many killed in Gaza blast
Several people, including children, have been killed and many more injured in northern Gaza today after a car exploded at a military parade organized by the Islamic resistance group Hamas to celebrate the Israeli withdrawl from the Gaza strip.
Haaretz reported that at least 19 people were killed and 80 are wounded. Ten of the wounded were in serious condition, hospital doctors said.
The explosion occurred as thousands of Hamas members and supporters attended a rally in the impoverished Jabaliya refugee camp to celebrate Israel's pullout from the Gaza Strip, witnesses said.
The blast ripped through the camp just before one of the main leaders of Hamas, Ismail Haniya, was to address the crowd.
Israel or Accident?
AP quoted witnesses as saying the truck carried homemade weapons, and Palestinian security officials as saying that the blast apparently was caused by the mishandling of explosives.
Hamas blamed Israel, saying Israeli aircraft flew overhead during the rally. Israel denied it was involved.
Witnesses said participants crowded around the pickup truck carrying fighters when the explosion went off. The witnesses added that the truck carried homemade weapons, but did not know whether they were rockets or grenade launchers.
Earlier on Friday, Israeli soldiers killed three Palestinian fighters in Tulkarim in the West Bank, drawing strong condemnation from another Palestinian resistance group, Islamic Jihad.
The three fighters from al-Quds Brigades, the military arm of Islamic Jihad, were killed just hours after Israeli soldiers evacuated an army base.
Afterwards, Aljazeera reported that nine rockets were fired from Gaza towards the Israeli township of Sderot, in the first such incident since Israeli forces completed a pullout from the territory 10 days ago. No casualties or damage were reported from the rocket.
Israeli Military radio confirmed only one rocket impact. "Other explosions were heard in the region but no (other impact in Israel) has been confirmed," a source said.
Khalid al-Batsh, a spokesman for Islamic Jihad, held Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Defence Minister Saul Mofaz responsible for what he called "a deliberate assassination".
Also on Friday, Palestinian police and Hamas fighters briefly exchanged fire, leaving an armed Hamas man wounded, security officials and hospital doctors said.
At talks between Palestinian leader Mahmud Abbas and Gaza representatives of the main factions on Wednesday, fighters agreed to stop by Saturday all armed rallies and marches celebrating Israel's pullout from Gaza.
Monday, September 19, 2005
To the Movies?
Hey There,
I wanted to invite you guys to go see a movie, if you're bored or if you are already going to go and don't know what to see.
THe EXorcism Of Emily Rose.
See if you can see me on the jury.
I am not endorsing the content, nor am I NOT endorsing the content; I was simply on the jury and wanted to see it and it's not out, here, yet.
DB
I wanted to invite you guys to go see a movie, if you're bored or if you are already going to go and don't know what to see.
THe EXorcism Of Emily Rose.
See if you can see me on the jury.
I am not endorsing the content, nor am I NOT endorsing the content; I was simply on the jury and wanted to see it and it's not out, here, yet.
DB
Saturday, September 17, 2005
enjoy Yasself
Next time you are in a tacky bar, with sticky tables and a lonely discoball spinning, and Oasis' Champange SuperNova comes on, think of me; you'll smile and enjoy yasself. Burro
Article About Sharon
Does a man need to answer for everything he's done? Can good deeds erase the bad? Is there any good done in highlighting a political leader's participation in atrocities? Or is it just gossip and character maligning?
Decide for yourself.
The following article was passed on to me by the Seidels in Bethlehem. It was written over a year ago, but I thought that it offers some insight into the ongoing juggling act of trying to establish peace in Israel / Palestine.
Sharon addressed the UN the other day, and I only heard part of his speech. It sounded lofty and peace-oriented. I started to wonder if in his ageing years, he is experiencing a change of ideology for humanity and Israel's place in Palestine (or vice-versa). I am rather confused because everything I know about the man makes his speech at the UN seem like a joke.
The following article is a little choppy at points, but if you can get through it, delivers some decent information and perspective about what it is that makes the man of peace, as Bush called Sharon after he won the election in 2004.
DB
“Thanking Sharon” April 24th, 2004 By Mike Odetalla www.hanini.org
According to our thoughtful and intelligent president, George W. Bush, the world owes Ariel Sharon a "Thank You" for his “courage” and “Vision”!
Well, I happen to agree. The world owes Sharon many "Thank Yous".
Let examine the history of Sharon and what we should be "thanking" him for:
Sharon's first documented sortie in this role was in August of 1953 on the refugee camp of El-Bureig, south of Gaza. An Israeli history of the 101 unit records 50 refugees as having been killed; other sources allege 15 or 20. Major-General Vagn Bennike, the UN commander, reported that "bombs were thrown" by Sharon's men "through the windows of huts in which the refugees were sleeping and, as they fled, they were attacked by small arms and automatic weapons".
In October of 1953 came the attack by Sharon's unit 101 on the Jordanian village of Qibya, whose "stain" Israel's foreign minister at the time, Moshe Sharett, confided to his diary "would stick to us and not be washed away for many years". He was wrong. Though even strongly pro-Israel commentators in the West compared it to Lidice, Qibya and Sharon's role are scarcely evoked in the West today, least of all by journalists such as Deborah Sontag of the New York Times who recently wrote a whitewash of Sharon, describing him as "feisty", or the Washington Post's man in Jerusalem who fondly invoked him after his fateful excursion to the Holy Places in Jerusalem as "the portly old warrior".
Israeli historian Avi Shlaim describes the massacre thus: "Sharon's order was to penetrate Qibya, blow up houses and inflict heavy casualties on its inhabitants. His success in carrying out the order surpassed all expectations. The full and macabre story of what happened at Qibya was revealed only during the morning after the attack. The village had been reduced to rubble: forty-five houses had been blown up, and sixty-nine civilians, two thirds of them women and children, had been killed. Sharon and his men claimed that they believed that all the inhabitants had run away and that they had no idea that anyone was hiding inside the houses."
The UN observer on the scene reached a different conclusion: "One story was repeated time after time: the bullet splintered door, the body sprawled across the threshold, indicating that the inhabitants had been forced by heavy fire to stay inside until their homes were blown up over them." The slaughter in Qibya was described contemporaneously in a letter to the president of the United Nations Security Council dated 16 October 1953 (S/3113) from the Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary of Jordan to the United States. On 14 October 1953 at 9:30 at night, he wrote, Israeli troops launched a battalion-scale attack on the village of Qibya in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan (at the time the West Bank was annexed to Jordan).
According to the diplomat's account, Israeli forces had entered the village and systematically murdered all occupants of houses, using automatic weapons, grenades and incendiaries. On 14 October, the bodies of 42 Arab civilians had been recovered; several more bodies were still under the wreckage. Forty houses, the village school and a reservoir had been destroyed. Quantities of unused explosives, bearing Israel army markings in Hebrew, had been found in the village. At about 3 a.m., to cover their withdrawal, Israeli support troops had begun shelling the neighboring villages of Budrus and Shuqba from positions in Israel.
And what of Sharon's conduct when he was head of the Southern Command of Israel's Defense Forces in the early 1970s? The Gaza "clearances" were vividly described by Phil Reeves in a piece in The London Independent on January 21 of this year.
"Thirty years have elapsed since Ariel Sharon, favorite to win Israel's forthcoming election, was the head of the Israel Defense Forces' southern command, charged with the task of 'pacifying' the recalcitrant Gaza Strip after the 1967 war. But the old men still remember it well, especially the old men on Wreckage Street. Until late 1970, Wreckage, or Had'd, Street wasn't a street, just one of scores of narrow, nameless alleys weaving through Gaza City's Beach Camp, a shantytown cluttered with low, two-roomed houses, built with UN aid for refugees from the 1948 war who then, as now, were waiting for the international community to settle their future. The street acquired its name after an unusually prolonged visit from Mr Sharon's soldiers. Their orders were to bulldoze hundreds of homes to carve a wide, straight street. This would allow Israeli troops and their heavy armored vehicles to move easily through the camp, to exert control and hunt down men from the Palestinian Liberation Army.
"'They came at night and began marking the houses they wanted to demolish with red paint,' said Ibrahim Ghanim, 70, a retired labourer. 'In the morning they came back, and ordered everyone to leave. I remember all the soldiers shouting at people, Yalla, yalla, yalla, yalla [let's go]! They threw everyone's belongings into the street. Then Sharon brought in bulldozers and started flattening the street. He did the whole lot, almost in one day. And the soldiers would beat people. Can you imagine soldiers with guns, beating little kids? By the time the Israeli army's work was done, hundreds of homes were destroyed, not only on Wreckage Street but throughout the camp, as Sharon ploughed out a grid of wide security roads. Many of the refugees took shelter in schools, or squeezed into the already badly over-crowded homes of relatives. Other families, usually those with a Palestinian political activist, were loaded into trucks and taken to exile in a town in the heart of the Sinai Desert, then controlled by Israel."
As Reeves reported, the devastation of Beach Camp was far from the exception. "In August 1971 alone, troops under Mr Sharon's command destroyed some 2,000 homes in the Gaza Strip, uprooting 16,000 people for the second time in their lives. Hundreds of young Palestinian men were arrested and deported to Jordan and Lebanon. Six hundred relatives of suspected guerrillas were exiled to Sinai. In the second half of 1971, 104 guerrillas were assassinated. 'The policy at that time was not to arrest suspects, but to assassinate them', said Raji Sourani, director of the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights in Gaza City".
Israeli complacency leading to their initial defeat by the Egyptians in the 1973 war was in part nurtured by the supposed impregnability of the "Bar Lev line" constructed by Sharon on the east bank of the Suez Canal. The Egyptians pierced the line without undue difficulty.
In 1981 Sharon, then minister of defense, paid a visit to Israel's good friend, President Mobutu of Zaire. Lunching on Mobutu's yacht the Israeli party was asked by their host to use their good offices to get the US Congress to be more forthcoming with aid. This, the Israelis managed to accomplish. As a quid pro quo Mobutu reestablished diplomatic relations with Israel. This was not Sharon's only contact with Africa. Among friends he relays fond memories of trips to Angola to observe and advise the South African forces then fighting in support of the murderous CIA stooge Jonas Savimbi.
As defense minister in Menachem Begin's second government, Sharon was the commander who led the full dress 1982 assault on Lebanon, with the express design of destroying the PLO, driving as many Palestinians as possible to Jordan and making Lebanon a client state of Israel. It was a war plan that cost untold suffering, around 20,000 Palestinian and Lebanese lives, and also the deaths of over one thousand Israeli soldiers. The Israelis bombed civilian populations at will. Sharon also oversaw the infamous massacres at Sabra and Shatilla refugee camps. The Lebanese government counted 762 bodies recovered and a further 1,200 buried privately by relatives. However, the Middle East may have been spared worse, thanks to Menachem Begin. Just as the '82 war was getting under way; Sharon approached Begin, then Prime Minister, and suggested that Begin cede control over Israel's nuclear trigger to him. Begin had just enough sense to refuse.
The slaughter in the two contiguous camps at Sabra and Shatila took place from 6:00 at night on September 16, 1982 until 8:00 in the morning on September 18, 1982, in an area under the control of the Israel Defense Forces. The perpetrators were members of the Phalange militia, the Lebanese force that was armed by and closely allied with Israel since the onset of Lebanon's civil war in 1975. The victims during the 62-hour rampage included infants, children, women (including pregnant women), and the elderly, some of whom were mutilated or disemboweled before or after they were killed.
An official Israeli commission of inquiry - chaired by Yitzhak Kahan, president of Israel's Supreme Court - investigated the massacre, and in February 1983 publicly released its findings (without Appendix B, which remains secret until now).
Amid desperate attempts to cover up the evidence of direct knowledge of what was going on by Israeli military personnel, the Kahan Commission found itself compelled to find that Ariel Sharon, among other Israelis, had responsibility for the massacre. The commission's report stated: "It is our view that responsibility is to be imputed to the Minister of Defense for having disregarded ["entirely cognizant of" would have been a better choice of words] the danger of acts of vengeance and bloodshed by the Phalangists against the population of the refugee camps, and having failed [i.e." eagerly taken this into consideration"] to take this danger into account when he decided to have the Phalangists enter the camps. In addition, responsibility is to be imputed to the Minister of Defense for not ordering appropriate measures for preventing or reducing the danger of massacre as a condition for the Phalangists' entry into the camps. These blunders constitute the non-fulfillment of a duty with which the Defense Minister was charged". (For those who want to refresh their memories of Operation Peace for Galilee, of the massacres and the Kahan cover up I recommend Noam Chomsky's The Fateful Triangle.)
Sharon refused to resign. Finally, on February 14, 1983, he was relieved of his duties as defense minister, though he remained in the cabinet as minister without portfolio.
Sharon's career was in eclipse, but he continued to burnish his credentials as a Likud ultra.
Sharon has always been against any sort of peace deal, unless on terms entirely impossible for Palestinians to accept. As Nehemia Strasler outlined in Ha'aretz on January 18 of this year, in 1979, as a member of Begin's cabinet, he voted against a peace treaty with Egypt. In 1985 he voted against the withdrawal of Israeli troops to the so-called security zone in Southern Lebanon. In 1991 he opposed Israel's participation in the Madrid peace conference. In 1993 he voted No in the Knesset on the Oslo agreement. The following year he abstained in the Knesset on a vote over a peace treaty with Jordan. He voted against the Hebron agreement in 1997 and objected to the way in which the withdrawal from southern Lebanon was conducted.
As Begin's minister of agriculture in the late 1970s he established many of the West Bank settlements that are now a major obstruction to any peace deal. His present position: Not another square inch of land for Palestinians on the West Bank. He will agree to a Palestinian state on the existing areas presently under either total or partial Palestinian control, amounting to merely 42 per cent of the West Bank. Israel will retain control of the highways across the West Bank and the water sources. All settlements will stay in place with access by the IDF to them. Jerusalem will remain under Israeli sovereignty and he plans to continue building around the city. The Golan Heights would remain under Israel's control.
It can be strongly argued that Sharon represents the long-term policy of all Israeli governments, without any obscuring fluff or verbal embroidery. For example: Ben-Gurion approved the terror missions of Unit 101. Every Israeli government has condoned settlements and building around Jerusalem. It was Labor's Ehud Barak who Okayed the military escort for Sharon on his provocative sortie that sparked the second Intifada and Barak who has overseen the lethal military repression of recent months. But that doesn't diminish Sharon's sinister shadow across the past half century. That shadow is better evoked by Palestinians and Lebanese grieving for the dead, the maimed, the displaced, or by a young Israeli woman, Ilil Komey, 16, who confronted Sharon recently when he visited her agricultural high school outside Beersheba. "I think you sent my father into Lebanon", Ilil said. "Ariel Sharon, I accuse you of having made me suffer for 16 some odd years. I accuse you of having made my father suffer for over 16 years. I accuse you of a lot of things that made a lot of people suffer in this country. I don't think that you can now be elected as prime minister".
Well, Sharon is the "elected" Prime Minister of Israel and true to his ghoulish blood soaked history, he continues to slaughter, destroy, and torment the Palestinian people. His policy of death, murder, and oppression has earned him the title of "A Man of Peace" and a “visionary” according to George W. Bush. In fact, according to our "wise and noble" president George W. Bush, we all should be very thankful to Ariel “The Butcher of Beirut” Sharon.
-Mike Odetalla..."A seed in the eternal fruit of Palestine"
Decide for yourself.
The following article was passed on to me by the Seidels in Bethlehem. It was written over a year ago, but I thought that it offers some insight into the ongoing juggling act of trying to establish peace in Israel / Palestine.
Sharon addressed the UN the other day, and I only heard part of his speech. It sounded lofty and peace-oriented. I started to wonder if in his ageing years, he is experiencing a change of ideology for humanity and Israel's place in Palestine (or vice-versa). I am rather confused because everything I know about the man makes his speech at the UN seem like a joke.
The following article is a little choppy at points, but if you can get through it, delivers some decent information and perspective about what it is that makes the man of peace, as Bush called Sharon after he won the election in 2004.
DB
“Thanking Sharon” April 24th, 2004 By Mike Odetalla www.hanini.org
According to our thoughtful and intelligent president, George W. Bush, the world owes Ariel Sharon a "Thank You" for his “courage” and “Vision”!
Well, I happen to agree. The world owes Sharon many "Thank Yous".
Let examine the history of Sharon and what we should be "thanking" him for:
Sharon's first documented sortie in this role was in August of 1953 on the refugee camp of El-Bureig, south of Gaza. An Israeli history of the 101 unit records 50 refugees as having been killed; other sources allege 15 or 20. Major-General Vagn Bennike, the UN commander, reported that "bombs were thrown" by Sharon's men "through the windows of huts in which the refugees were sleeping and, as they fled, they were attacked by small arms and automatic weapons".
In October of 1953 came the attack by Sharon's unit 101 on the Jordanian village of Qibya, whose "stain" Israel's foreign minister at the time, Moshe Sharett, confided to his diary "would stick to us and not be washed away for many years". He was wrong. Though even strongly pro-Israel commentators in the West compared it to Lidice, Qibya and Sharon's role are scarcely evoked in the West today, least of all by journalists such as Deborah Sontag of the New York Times who recently wrote a whitewash of Sharon, describing him as "feisty", or the Washington Post's man in Jerusalem who fondly invoked him after his fateful excursion to the Holy Places in Jerusalem as "the portly old warrior".
Israeli historian Avi Shlaim describes the massacre thus: "Sharon's order was to penetrate Qibya, blow up houses and inflict heavy casualties on its inhabitants. His success in carrying out the order surpassed all expectations. The full and macabre story of what happened at Qibya was revealed only during the morning after the attack. The village had been reduced to rubble: forty-five houses had been blown up, and sixty-nine civilians, two thirds of them women and children, had been killed. Sharon and his men claimed that they believed that all the inhabitants had run away and that they had no idea that anyone was hiding inside the houses."
The UN observer on the scene reached a different conclusion: "One story was repeated time after time: the bullet splintered door, the body sprawled across the threshold, indicating that the inhabitants had been forced by heavy fire to stay inside until their homes were blown up over them." The slaughter in Qibya was described contemporaneously in a letter to the president of the United Nations Security Council dated 16 October 1953 (S/3113) from the Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary of Jordan to the United States. On 14 October 1953 at 9:30 at night, he wrote, Israeli troops launched a battalion-scale attack on the village of Qibya in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan (at the time the West Bank was annexed to Jordan).
According to the diplomat's account, Israeli forces had entered the village and systematically murdered all occupants of houses, using automatic weapons, grenades and incendiaries. On 14 October, the bodies of 42 Arab civilians had been recovered; several more bodies were still under the wreckage. Forty houses, the village school and a reservoir had been destroyed. Quantities of unused explosives, bearing Israel army markings in Hebrew, had been found in the village. At about 3 a.m., to cover their withdrawal, Israeli support troops had begun shelling the neighboring villages of Budrus and Shuqba from positions in Israel.
And what of Sharon's conduct when he was head of the Southern Command of Israel's Defense Forces in the early 1970s? The Gaza "clearances" were vividly described by Phil Reeves in a piece in The London Independent on January 21 of this year.
"Thirty years have elapsed since Ariel Sharon, favorite to win Israel's forthcoming election, was the head of the Israel Defense Forces' southern command, charged with the task of 'pacifying' the recalcitrant Gaza Strip after the 1967 war. But the old men still remember it well, especially the old men on Wreckage Street. Until late 1970, Wreckage, or Had'd, Street wasn't a street, just one of scores of narrow, nameless alleys weaving through Gaza City's Beach Camp, a shantytown cluttered with low, two-roomed houses, built with UN aid for refugees from the 1948 war who then, as now, were waiting for the international community to settle their future. The street acquired its name after an unusually prolonged visit from Mr Sharon's soldiers. Their orders were to bulldoze hundreds of homes to carve a wide, straight street. This would allow Israeli troops and their heavy armored vehicles to move easily through the camp, to exert control and hunt down men from the Palestinian Liberation Army.
"'They came at night and began marking the houses they wanted to demolish with red paint,' said Ibrahim Ghanim, 70, a retired labourer. 'In the morning they came back, and ordered everyone to leave. I remember all the soldiers shouting at people, Yalla, yalla, yalla, yalla [let's go]! They threw everyone's belongings into the street. Then Sharon brought in bulldozers and started flattening the street. He did the whole lot, almost in one day. And the soldiers would beat people. Can you imagine soldiers with guns, beating little kids? By the time the Israeli army's work was done, hundreds of homes were destroyed, not only on Wreckage Street but throughout the camp, as Sharon ploughed out a grid of wide security roads. Many of the refugees took shelter in schools, or squeezed into the already badly over-crowded homes of relatives. Other families, usually those with a Palestinian political activist, were loaded into trucks and taken to exile in a town in the heart of the Sinai Desert, then controlled by Israel."
As Reeves reported, the devastation of Beach Camp was far from the exception. "In August 1971 alone, troops under Mr Sharon's command destroyed some 2,000 homes in the Gaza Strip, uprooting 16,000 people for the second time in their lives. Hundreds of young Palestinian men were arrested and deported to Jordan and Lebanon. Six hundred relatives of suspected guerrillas were exiled to Sinai. In the second half of 1971, 104 guerrillas were assassinated. 'The policy at that time was not to arrest suspects, but to assassinate them', said Raji Sourani, director of the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights in Gaza City".
Israeli complacency leading to their initial defeat by the Egyptians in the 1973 war was in part nurtured by the supposed impregnability of the "Bar Lev line" constructed by Sharon on the east bank of the Suez Canal. The Egyptians pierced the line without undue difficulty.
In 1981 Sharon, then minister of defense, paid a visit to Israel's good friend, President Mobutu of Zaire. Lunching on Mobutu's yacht the Israeli party was asked by their host to use their good offices to get the US Congress to be more forthcoming with aid. This, the Israelis managed to accomplish. As a quid pro quo Mobutu reestablished diplomatic relations with Israel. This was not Sharon's only contact with Africa. Among friends he relays fond memories of trips to Angola to observe and advise the South African forces then fighting in support of the murderous CIA stooge Jonas Savimbi.
As defense minister in Menachem Begin's second government, Sharon was the commander who led the full dress 1982 assault on Lebanon, with the express design of destroying the PLO, driving as many Palestinians as possible to Jordan and making Lebanon a client state of Israel. It was a war plan that cost untold suffering, around 20,000 Palestinian and Lebanese lives, and also the deaths of over one thousand Israeli soldiers. The Israelis bombed civilian populations at will. Sharon also oversaw the infamous massacres at Sabra and Shatilla refugee camps. The Lebanese government counted 762 bodies recovered and a further 1,200 buried privately by relatives. However, the Middle East may have been spared worse, thanks to Menachem Begin. Just as the '82 war was getting under way; Sharon approached Begin, then Prime Minister, and suggested that Begin cede control over Israel's nuclear trigger to him. Begin had just enough sense to refuse.
The slaughter in the two contiguous camps at Sabra and Shatila took place from 6:00 at night on September 16, 1982 until 8:00 in the morning on September 18, 1982, in an area under the control of the Israel Defense Forces. The perpetrators were members of the Phalange militia, the Lebanese force that was armed by and closely allied with Israel since the onset of Lebanon's civil war in 1975. The victims during the 62-hour rampage included infants, children, women (including pregnant women), and the elderly, some of whom were mutilated or disemboweled before or after they were killed.
An official Israeli commission of inquiry - chaired by Yitzhak Kahan, president of Israel's Supreme Court - investigated the massacre, and in February 1983 publicly released its findings (without Appendix B, which remains secret until now).
Amid desperate attempts to cover up the evidence of direct knowledge of what was going on by Israeli military personnel, the Kahan Commission found itself compelled to find that Ariel Sharon, among other Israelis, had responsibility for the massacre. The commission's report stated: "It is our view that responsibility is to be imputed to the Minister of Defense for having disregarded ["entirely cognizant of" would have been a better choice of words] the danger of acts of vengeance and bloodshed by the Phalangists against the population of the refugee camps, and having failed [i.e." eagerly taken this into consideration"] to take this danger into account when he decided to have the Phalangists enter the camps. In addition, responsibility is to be imputed to the Minister of Defense for not ordering appropriate measures for preventing or reducing the danger of massacre as a condition for the Phalangists' entry into the camps. These blunders constitute the non-fulfillment of a duty with which the Defense Minister was charged". (For those who want to refresh their memories of Operation Peace for Galilee, of the massacres and the Kahan cover up I recommend Noam Chomsky's The Fateful Triangle.)
Sharon refused to resign. Finally, on February 14, 1983, he was relieved of his duties as defense minister, though he remained in the cabinet as minister without portfolio.
Sharon's career was in eclipse, but he continued to burnish his credentials as a Likud ultra.
Sharon has always been against any sort of peace deal, unless on terms entirely impossible for Palestinians to accept. As Nehemia Strasler outlined in Ha'aretz on January 18 of this year, in 1979, as a member of Begin's cabinet, he voted against a peace treaty with Egypt. In 1985 he voted against the withdrawal of Israeli troops to the so-called security zone in Southern Lebanon. In 1991 he opposed Israel's participation in the Madrid peace conference. In 1993 he voted No in the Knesset on the Oslo agreement. The following year he abstained in the Knesset on a vote over a peace treaty with Jordan. He voted against the Hebron agreement in 1997 and objected to the way in which the withdrawal from southern Lebanon was conducted.
As Begin's minister of agriculture in the late 1970s he established many of the West Bank settlements that are now a major obstruction to any peace deal. His present position: Not another square inch of land for Palestinians on the West Bank. He will agree to a Palestinian state on the existing areas presently under either total or partial Palestinian control, amounting to merely 42 per cent of the West Bank. Israel will retain control of the highways across the West Bank and the water sources. All settlements will stay in place with access by the IDF to them. Jerusalem will remain under Israeli sovereignty and he plans to continue building around the city. The Golan Heights would remain under Israel's control.
It can be strongly argued that Sharon represents the long-term policy of all Israeli governments, without any obscuring fluff or verbal embroidery. For example: Ben-Gurion approved the terror missions of Unit 101. Every Israeli government has condoned settlements and building around Jerusalem. It was Labor's Ehud Barak who Okayed the military escort for Sharon on his provocative sortie that sparked the second Intifada and Barak who has overseen the lethal military repression of recent months. But that doesn't diminish Sharon's sinister shadow across the past half century. That shadow is better evoked by Palestinians and Lebanese grieving for the dead, the maimed, the displaced, or by a young Israeli woman, Ilil Komey, 16, who confronted Sharon recently when he visited her agricultural high school outside Beersheba. "I think you sent my father into Lebanon", Ilil said. "Ariel Sharon, I accuse you of having made me suffer for 16 some odd years. I accuse you of having made my father suffer for over 16 years. I accuse you of a lot of things that made a lot of people suffer in this country. I don't think that you can now be elected as prime minister".
Well, Sharon is the "elected" Prime Minister of Israel and true to his ghoulish blood soaked history, he continues to slaughter, destroy, and torment the Palestinian people. His policy of death, murder, and oppression has earned him the title of "A Man of Peace" and a “visionary” according to George W. Bush. In fact, according to our "wise and noble" president George W. Bush, we all should be very thankful to Ariel “The Butcher of Beirut” Sharon.
-Mike Odetalla..."A seed in the eternal fruit of Palestine"
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