Shades of Hebron

“How is it that they show up whenever you’re here?” I asked Nadav in considerable irritation.

I had opened the front door to find that a blue metal barrier and two occupation soldiers had sprung up like mushrooms overnight. (Sadly not the edible kind.) They were blocking the mouth of our street. The wall surrounds us and the only way to get into Bethlehem lay past them. And I was going to have to walk past them with an illegal Israeli, which is not the ideal accessory to have about your person when confronted with an unexpected military roadblock.

Finding Bethlehem in East London: a Christmas journey

I’m not a London sort of person. Before I left for Palestine I lived in a remote Northumberland hamlet (population three people and a sheep) with a mile-long walk across the fields to reach the nearest bus stop. London has an awful lot of people and no sheep, and I have several grievances against it. It always seems so easy to navigate when you look at the Monopoly board, but when you actually get there nothing is arranged in orderly squares and you’re lost before you even know where you are.

Last year, one late December day, I alighted at Euston Station and caught the Tube into the East End. I was introduced to this part of the capital through Rachel Liechtenstein’s book Rodinsky’s Room, a semi-autobiographical work that tries to solve the mystery surrounding the disappearance of David Rodinsky, a reclusive man who lived above the old synagogue on Princelet Street. My present-day destination was a flat on the thirteenth floor of a tower block in a densely populated housing estate.

Just a thought

Earlier today this picture appeared on the Facebook page of the Israeli Embassy in Ireland. It is an image of the Sacred and Immaculate Heart, with the festive caption, “A thought for Christmas…If Jesus and mother Mary were alive today, they would, as Jews without security, probably end up being lynched in Bethlehem by hostile Palestinians. Just a thought…”

My initial reaction was, “Smooth move, directing this picture and caption at a country where the population is a.) predominantly Catholic and b.) generally sympathetic to Palestine. PR skillz, u no have any.” Then I thought of something else.

This image of the Holy Hearts is hanging on the wall of my host family’s house in Bethlehem (only ours is kitschier and better). When I saw the embassy’s Christmas message, I thought of the family’s experiences during the Intifada, when the house was constantly being requisitioned by Israeli troops. They used to corral everyone into one corner, and my landlady was never allowed to be the one to wake her children: the soldiers pulled them out of bed at gunpoint. When the soldiers got thirsty my landlady used to give them water. Occasionally some of them became distressed and she and her husband would try to comfort them. There were times when the curfew lasted so long that the family ran out of food. Soldiers would bring their own meals into the house (sometimes hot pizza, with its appetising smell) and the kids just had to sit there and try to bear the hunger until such time as curfew was lifted and they could go to the shop.

Last year I ended up bringing an Israeli friend who was then performing his own military service into the house. (He was off-duty at the time, obviously, and before you ask – it’s a long story. I may tell it some day.) I was worried about how the family would react to him. Sure enough, my landlady wasn’t best pleased – but not because he was an Israeli Jew and a soldier to boot, but because, “If the army find out he has been here they can hurt him. You need to look after your friends, Vicky, he is a good boy.” She sat in the living room and talked with him, underneath the Holy Hearts image and the equally kitschy representation of the Last Supper.

That picture on the wall of one Bethlehem family home has witnessed a lot of things, but never hate of the sort that was exhibited by the embassy this afternoon. Just a thought.

Updates

It has been a while since I wrote regularly on my blog, thanks to a very heavy workload. Time for some brief updates.

1.) I’ve published a short piece on Gaza over on +972mag. Scribbled in the middle of the night, it’s the prelude to the post I wrote here yesterday. I’ve heard more from Sameeha since. She has been taking painkillers to help her get to sleep. I’m not sure this is the way to go, but I’m glad she was able to rest and is all in one piece still. Oh, and her thesis has been marked and she was awarded an MA with distinction (one of only three students on her course to receive one).

2.) I got my MA result yesterday. I also passed with distinction (less impressive in my case as I was writing in my own language) with a dissertation on Jewish theological responses to the Nakba. As there is so little written scholarship on this I had to rely on interviews, one of which was with Rabbi Brant Rosen who blogs at Shalom Rav. I contacted him because a couple of years ago he organised a congregational trip to Dheisheh refugee camp, which intrigued me. The information and insights he provided were central to my thesis. If you haven’t read his blog already, you’re missing out. Go and have a look (and it will give you something nice to read the next time I pull a disappearing act).

3.) Now that this is over and I have nothing much to focus on apart from the slight matter of the doctorate, I’m getting to work on my book. Stay tuned.

4.) The Bethlehem youth group should be at a conference on peace, justice, and reconciliation in Rwanda now. We weren’t successful in raising the amount needed to send them in time. We were offered a grant of four thousand euros to enable them to go, but it came too late. However, this isn’t the end of it. We’re going to use the money for a similar project, as it’s important to bring our (often isolated) teenagers into contact with other young people who have experienced violence in their lives and are working to make things different. Thank you to everyone who helped. If you’d like to donate, let me know.

5.) Earlier today there were four Israeli tanks sitting on top of the hill in Beit Jala, right next to Talitha Kumi school and the shop that always has a reliable stock of my favourite ice cream. I’m not sure if they’re still there or what on earth they’re doing (perhaps the soldiers have also heard about the ice cream and decided to bunk off a scheduled Gaza invasion in favour of getting some?) but the neighbourhood is unnerved. It doesn’t like tanks. Please keep it in your prayers.

Wedding bells

My sister’s wedding is approaching. When I told the neighbours about it, the congratulations were accompanied by fits of giggling that mystified me until my friend Farah tracked me down, took me by the elbow, and hissed, “Vicky, when you talk about weddings, I want you to say urus, OK? Not urs.”

“What’s wrong with urs?”

“It’s the way you say it. You are telling everyone that you are looking forward to your sister’s bastard.”

‘Resistance: which way the future?’

The main entrance to the arts centre was bedecked with bands of white plastic tape, with ‘Peace Week’ printed on each strip in blue letters. It reminded me immediately of the tape used to cordon off crime scenes while police gather forensic evidence. The organisers of the week were playing on that image deliberately: Peace Week was established in response to violent street crime in inner city Manchester. Now it is in its tenth year.

The arts centre was hosting a film installation by Liz Crow, Resistance: Which Way the Future?. I don’t know if the centre deliberately arranged to feature this artwork during Peace Week. It may just have been a coincidence – but coincidental or not, the installation has something tough and dark and powerful to say about non-violence.

Entering the room, you sit down before the first of three screens. The film coughs into life with the sound of an engine. The first image: an exhaust trailing smoke, the underbelly of the bus. You watch for a long time. At first you are expectant. Then the wait starts to grate on you. What’s happening? What are you waiting for? With a sudden roar, the bus drives off, revealing a young nurse with a clipboard standing outside a creeper-covered country house. She makes a decisive mark on her clipboard, then walks briskly into the house.

Wrong on the Internet

The Internet is a terrific invention. Without it, I would never have found myself living on top of a pizza shop in Newcastle with my close friend Danni and a wheezy arthritic old cat, having to wear heavy-duty earplugs to block out the cheerful karaoke coming from the pub next door. (‘Mr Blue Sky’ and ‘I Am the One and Only’ were popular numbers, sung very loudly and with Geordie accents.) Without the Internet, I would never have found myself being force-fed vast quantities of dubious makloubeh by a Palestinian girl from Gaza in a kitchen in northern England. I would never have made the acquaintance of Shai (who has been quite invaluable in helping me with colloquial Hebrew – now I can even ask for a drug dealer and a wide selection of other things that I am unlikely to want). Without the Internet, I doubt that I would ever have smuggled an off-duty Israeli soldier into Bethlehem and sent him home wearing a kuffiyeh. (That story has yet to be told on this blog – I’ll get to it.)

Danni and I met on a forum for disabled teenagers, which was my intro to the power of the Internet in bringing about change for the better. That forum gave me some of my best friends. It provided advice for teenagers who were struggling to cope with their condition. It even saved a few lives (literally). When Britain’s coalition government began to draft in an unjust and dangerous series of welfare reform policies, disabled and chronically ill people took to the Internet to launch a counter campaign. Many of the participants couldn’t leave their houses – some even struggled to get out of bed – but they turned to their keyboards. I was particularly moved by people’s response to Ali, a severely ill woman who shared on her personal blog that suicide would be her only choice if her benefits were revoked. She had lived on the streets once, she wrote, and she would never go back there again. Within hours, a group of disabled people had conceived of ’5 Quid for Life’. Donors contribute five pounds per month to the organisation, and the money will be distributed to people facing Ali’s trouble.

For something that has accomplished so much good in my life, the Internet is also a terrible headache. I read and comment on a variety of blogs – about Palestine/Israel, about disability, about feminism, special needs education, mental health, ecology, veganism, theology, and so on. Sometimes the comment threads dissolve into a cesspool of petty spite. The topic of discussion is abandoned in favour of having the last word or taking another commenter down a peg or two. When the topic of discussion is a family who has lost their home or a prisoner who is dying, this absence of compassion is inexcusable, and I find myself asking why I am joining in with these conversations. What does it achieve?

Through a child’s eyes

Some graffiti by Banksy in Bethlehem: A Palestinian girl frisks a soldier.

One evening late last summer, as I walked home from a day spent in Dheisheh refugee camp, I was stopped at a flying checkpoint. (These are blockades that pop up unexpectedly for a few days, or even a few hours, as opposed to the permanent checkpoints.) I took off my jacket so that they could search the pockets and waited patiently. This wasn’t anything out of the ordinary. What was unusual was the age and appearance of the ‘soldiers’. The eldest of them was nine. She is a little girl who lives just round the corner.

“Shoes!” she said imperiously, in a magnificent imitation of our local IDF, and I removed my shoes. She had a long wooden stick slung across her body in the manner of a gun. She made the motions of scanning my shoes, and then demanded, “ID!” To my horror, I didn’t have my ID on me. I stood and waited while they discussed what to do with me – would they just refuse to let me pass, or would I have to be interrogated first? Should I be arrested? In the end, needing the toilet rather badly, I bribed the occupation army by proffering a squashed packet of Oreos that I may or may not have sat on at some point. They accepted cheerfully. After I had dashed in to the bathroom, I came back out to them, and we spent a happy evening playing tag and hide-and-seek.

A family affair

I have imported a new weapon against injustice in Palestine. Initially top secret and deadly, it ceased to be top secret when the plane touched down on the tarmac at Ben-Gurion Airport and my father’s unmistakeable tones rang out across the cabin: “Whatever you do, don’t mention the war!”

It is a pity he didn’t have a loudspeaker to hand. I was sure there were some fishermen bobbing about in the Gulf of Aqaba who hadn’t quite caught that. “Err, Dad, you might want to try and be a bit discreet just while we’re in the -”

“I am always discreet. You did inherit your diplomacy skills from somewhere, you know, Victoria. You can count on me!”

I paled. Once again I caught myself wondering about the wisdom of this trip.

Reasoning that the elderly parents might be in need of some stimulating activity to keep them occupied (no pun intended) during their retirement, I had invited them to visit me in Bethlehem. I’ve been nagging them to come for years, but they’ve always had some excuse to stay in their quiet house in England, filling up their time with ballroom dancing classes and devising increasingly obsessive ways to keep the squirrels off the bird feeder. This time I managed to persuade them. We agreed that I would spend Christmas with them, and in the New Year we would travel to Palestine together.

Kacha za b’ivrit

Mishnah fragment in the handwriting of Maimonides.

I am very absorbed in my course. It’s a full-time MA in Jewish Studies, drawing together history, theology, ethics, politics, cultural anthropology, and language study, amongst other things. I’m writing my thesis on a topic relevant to conflict resolution in Palestine and Israel, but I am also getting the chance to explore other areas of interest. Two weeks ago I was in the conservation studio, holding in my hands a Judeo-Arabic manuscript penned by Maimonides himself, which was a pretty special experience. “You can tell he was a doctor,” the tutor commented. “His handwriting’s awful.”

At first I planned to concentrate just on Judeo-Arabic and its dialects, but I ended up registering for modern Hebrew. A long time ago I thought about attending an ulpan (intensive Hebrew school) in Jerusalem, but the checkpoint wouldn’t permit it. Most classes start at eight or eight-thirty in the morning, and there was no guarantee I would even have reached the metal detectors by that time. It would have meant getting up at an hour so obscene it ought to be banned from the clock and standing in an interminable line with thousands of exhausted Palestinian workers who make this trip daily. Sometimes they get through in time for work, sometimes they don’t. It depends on the mood of the soldiers operating the turnstiles.  Often the workers are huddled up in the metal cage leading into the checkpoint building by three a.m., trying to snatch some extra sleep on pieces of cardboard as they wait for the soldiers to begin processing people. Vendors come and poke pitta breads and fruit through the bars by way of breakfast.

Keen as I am to learn Hebrew, I’m not that keen.

So I signed up for modern Hebrew as part of my MA. On the first day of class I felt a bit daunted. The textbook (for beginners) is all in Hebrew – except for the helpful glossary, which is in Russian. Which I don’t speak. Looking at it caused me to experience a sudden flashback from my piano lessons as a child: I was taught by an eccentric Russian lady who always wore full evening wear in the middle of the day and who used to give me my musical theory homework in Russian. If I wasn’t able to complete it (as happened often, seeing as I couldn’t read the instructions) she would pinch me by the shoulders like a tea-towel to be pegged out to dry and drape me over the piano stool with quite unnecessary vim.

I’ve been taking classes for five weeks now, and I’m surprised at the progress I’ve made. I can understand many of the scenarios in the textbook, which are quite typical of language courses. Sometimes they feature Dan and Dina, off to visit their grandmother on the kibbutz; and sometimes it’s Ron and Ruti placing an order for falafel. As reading is my weakest area, a student in the class above brought me a children’s book (Bambi in translation) for extra practice, so my vocabulary has expanded to include lots of words on a pastoral theme. Now our teacher is setting us short compositions to write, encouraging us not only to use the vocabulary we have acquired from the books but to experiment with other words and phrases we might know. I looked at her a bit doubtfully as I thought about the words I had before I came to class, and the sort of thing I now know how to say.

Where are you from?
My mother works at the hospital.
I speak English, Arabic, and French.
I would like falafel with lots of salad.
Excuse me, but would you mind moving your gun?
I want to buy some books.
Bambi is a little deer.
The little deer has fallen over.
This is a closed military zone. If you don’t leave now you will be detained.
The flowers are pretty.
The moles are sweet.
We are being followed by the border police.
That is the student accommodation block.
That is the office.
That is the military command and control post.
I hate the Ministry of the Interior.
Do you agree with torture?
I need to speak with your commander about this.
I don’t like hummus.

It is very difficult to unite these things in a composition, you know. It took all the creative power I possessed. In the end I had Dan and Dina going not to the kibbutz or to the falafel stand, but to a closed military zone (shetach tseva’i sagur) to build a new house (bet chadash) for some Palestinian refugees (plitim falastinim).

I showed the first paragraph to Shai. He objected to the political content, and pointed out that it might not be sensible to submit a piece like this without knowing the political views of the teacher. I saw his point, and made some amendments.

My composition now has the moles (ha’parperot) and the rabbits (ha’arnavim) standing in solidarity (solidariyot) against those amongst them who eat more than their fair share of the flowers.