04.05.02 - Here in Seattle, after a long and dreary winter, it is an utterly
perfect, sunny spring Thursday. I should be out in the garden, or down
by
the lake, or doing something to soak up the idyllic glory of springtime.
Instead, I am on the phone, talking with Kristen Schurr, who is living
in a
war zone, being shot at every day. It is life in a Palestinian refugee
camp.
Hers happens to be Al- Azzeh, outside Bethlehem.
"The first night I was here, just crossing the alley in front of the
apartment, I was shot at," she says matter-of-factly. "They showed me
how to duck and run." She's used her new skills regularly in the past few
days. "Just today, I went into a little shop inside of camp, we got shot
at."
During our last three days of conversations, Schurr practiced the
maneuver several times, pausing during a sentence as she scurried across
some alley; at times, I could hear the gunshots and shelling over the
phone, as kids played outside my window.
Yesterday in this space, I laid out just a few of the eyewitness accounts
emerging as Israeli forces begin to carry out Ariel Sharon's stated intention
to sweep through every single Palestinian city, village, and refugee camp
in the coming weeks. The reports of what that means aren't hard to find
on the Internet or in foreign media, and they are hair-raising.
Ariel Sharon's version of reality includes "disappearings" of all Palestinian
men between the ages of about 15 and 45, with some being beaten and
released, the rest beaten and not released, or beaten and shot, or simply
shot; arrests of ambulance and medical personnel while the injured lie
dying for want of simple medical care; whole cities running out of food,
medicines, and other basics of life; widespread reports of soldiers
destroying or stealing simply for the apparent viciousness of it. Sniper
fire
and tanks directed at the birthplace of the Prince of Peace. An economy
destroyed, a people who will never forget nor forgive this latest escalation
of what British journalist Robert Fisk today called "the world's last colonial
war -- between a settlement-planting nation and an occupied people."
And then, on this lovely spring day, I look at my local newspaper, whose
version of "reality" is so completely out of sync with that of Sharon,
Kristen Schurr, or even British and European media as to be surreal.
The Seattle Times' 20-paragraph front-page lead story is a wire service
amalgam that manages to ignore the realities of what Israel is doing, other
than to analyze which towns the army has occupied -- as if the order
matters. The article also finds space to explore the future prospects for
implementing the Oslo peace accords, for which the Times should be
nominated for some sort of anti-Pulitzer for complete irrelevance. The
one
Palestinian voice quoted in the story is an Arafat aide venting his hatred
for Israel; none of the bountiful present-day reasons for that hatred were
cited. Nor was any connection made between the events and the United
States.
The United States is, alone in the world, remarkably oblivious to how the
rest of the world perceives that connection. It starts with George W.
Bush, whose initial failure for days to even question Israel's brutal tactics
solidified his place as a figure despised by much of the world -- at a
time
when his constituents are particularly vulnerable to anti-U.S. rage .
Bush condemns suicide bombings, which is reasonable enough. But he
expects Yasser Arafat, from his newly elevated stature in the
Arabic-speaking world as primetime martyr, to not only reverse course and
simply capitulate but to then control the radicals who have hated him
nearly as much as Sharon, and who will NEVER capitulate. That's
delusional, and it's also the Israeli line; it's not a surprising stance,
however, for the cue-dependent Dubya. The men doing the cuing,
particularly Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, despise Yasser Arafat, and
it shows.
What is truly astonishing is that even when, on the offensive's 4th day,
Bush and his handlers finally uttered "enough is enough," it was for political
and tactical reasons -- not because of the breathtaking barbarity and
illegality of many of Israel's actions. No provocation can possibly justify
Israel's treatment of the civilian population, which includes herding
Palestinian men with numbers written on their forearms into "camps"
surrounded by electric fences.
Bush seems especially unable to comprehend that when such an attack is
carried out with American approval, American money, American weapons,
and American advisors present, the rest of the world leaps to conclusions.
Of course, if he is reading the country's antiseptic evening newscasts
and
morning papers, he maybe partly excused; it is difficult for Americans
to
understand the barbarity of what is going on, or its importance, when the
folks who would normally tell us either don't get it or won't say it.
Which brings us back to people like Kristen Schurr.
"Palestinians are forced to live in unimaginable conditions," she says.
"Just
to cross the street they have to duck and run, that's life here. There
are
no schools here, people aren't able to work, we have two or three days'
worth of food left inside the camp. Israel has been continually attacking
Palestinians and putting them in a humiliating position where they're
supposed to beg for the most basic human rights."
Schurr, who now lives in New York, used to live in Seattle, where she
worked at Seattle Weekly (for which I also work). She's in Palestine as
one
of a few hundred delegates for the present tour of the International
Solidarity Movement. It's the third such tour for the ISM, recently
organized by the Center for Rapproachment, a Palestinian NGO based in
Bethlehem.
Along with other "internationals" from Europe, Asia, and North America,
they are nonviolent witnesses to the occupation -- human cameras, doing
the work U.S. media mostly won't, who have also become human shields
as war erupted in front of them, a war that has flowed naturally from the
conditions of the last 35 years of military occupation.
"This camp is made of stone buildings with narrow alleyways. There's no
room to build out, so they build up, generations of families living on
top of
one another," she said. "The Israeli military comes in sometimes and rounds
up men and disappears them. Sometimes some of them come home,
sometimes not. It's not safe to sleep at night, so we sleep in the early
light hours; we get shot at in the night, and have to run from one room
to
another. With the U.S. weapons, they have night vision, they have access
to weapons ... I don't know how to say it.
"Just passing from the door of the apartment to the stairway, inside the
house, we get shot at through the door. All the windows have bags of
sand stacked one on top of another inside. This is how they live their
life.
This is constant.
"I've been befriended by all the little girls in the camp. They call my
name
and get me to run around with them. It's kind of amazing that people's
life
goes on in this way.
"There's so much despair but there's also this laughter that's as prevalent
as the despair is. And [there's] this incredible brightness in peoples'
eyes.
They look at each other when the shelling is over and the eye contact
here is amazing, and people start laughing. It's like, what else are you
gonna do?
"It's getting harder to be clear about it the longer I'm here. When I was
in
New York and Seattle this was a really political situation, but being here
now it's become very personal. I have a family here now, I have friends
here now, I'm called a daughter, a sister. It's harder to face the reality
of
the situation. People I'm living with, they say this is no life, that their
children won't be able to live."
As she says this, I am wondering whether Kristen's "not being clear" and
taking the issue personally leads to greater insight, or is a symptom of
how
easy it is for participants to get sucked into the rage that seemingly
provides endless fuel for this conflict.
Schurr was also among the group of internationals and Israeli peace
activists set upon in the Ramallah incident I described yesterday; after
soldiers, in their American-made tanks, attacked the group as it tried
to
deliver food and medical aid, it destroyed the aid. The bullets fired at
the
group hit the ground in front of them and ricocheted into the crowd;
Schurr is convinced that had the front row of people been Palestinians,
the soldiers would not have aimed at the ground.
Another friend of mine, Jackie Wolf of Lopez Island in Puget Sound -- she
distributes a community newspaper I help publish, Eat the State!, in that
area - - was among the nonviolent activists shot at on Monday, eight of
whom were seriously wounded. Jackie was hit by a bullet fragment and
only slightly injured, bruised in the scuffle with attacking soldiers.
She says
it "hurt like hell" But she's staying put for now.
Some internationals have left -- not expecting to be dropped into the
midst of a war zone, not prepared for the terror of it. More have not left.
Another ETS! volunteer, Jake Mundy, is now holed up in the Bethlehem
Star Hotel. Along with Kristen and five others, he signed a statement this
week pointedly declining a U.S. Embassy offer of evacuation:
"We wish to demonstrate our solidarity with the Palestinian people who
do
not share the choice we have to go to safety. We are here to act as
witnesses to the persecution of the Palestinians and to provide an
accurate and reliable source of information for the rest of the world and
to
represent the support of the international community. It is important to
realize that our presence is known and is a concern to our ambassadors.
The U.S. consulate's offer is an indication to the danger we are in. We
hope the United States' commitment to our safety extends to that of the
Palestinian people."
I happen to know several of the other internationals present, too. And
more are coming -- including one of the two other Seattle co-founders of
Eat the State! He leaves for Tel-Aviv on Monday. As reinforcements join
the internationals, their purpose, while there, is to witness, to act as
human shields, and to tell the world what is happening. For all of these
activities, they are targeted by an Israeli army desperate to keep the
details of its "victory" secret; their survival is no assured thing. As
Tax
Day approaches, and as U.S. money, weaponry, and White House
apologias keep flowing to Israel, they are heroes in a war that inspires
boredom or despair in most Americans.
Near the end of our long conversation, I ask Kristen what she will do when
she returns to the United States. She starts into a well-practiced recital
of the work that is needed to end U.S. support of the Israeli occupation,
but stops:
"I could have answered that question before I left, but now that I'm here
... I don't know. I don't know that I want to come back."
And, softly, on the phone from Bethlehem: "The stars are out tonight."
Outside, in my big American city, it's a warm and sunny day. There's a
helicopter overhead. It's a traffic copter. But what if it weren't? What
if it
were an F-16, or some gunship, hovering over a highway only the
occupiers were allowed on, spitting fire or bullets at us? What if it were
impossible to step outside without dodging bullets?
What if, my health conditions notwithstanding, I could expect to be
rounded up, arrested, jailed, and beaten every now and then, just for my
age, gender, and race, just so I knew who was boss? What if I couldn't
get electricity, or water, or medical care, or food, let alone a job or
a
future for my children? What if my whole city were in the same situation?
And what if the rest of the world was doing nothing about it?
Would we be acting any differently from the Palestinians?