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Families
in Bethlehem
Hope
and compassion survive in a culture of war.
by Kate Rogers Gessert
 Palestinians
bleeding to death in their homes, suicide bombers exploding and killing
Israelis, a Red Crescent ambulance smashed by a tank, corpses lying
unburied in the streets of Bethlehem -- the Internet is awash
in blood. I move through each day as if it were filled with mines,
but here in cozy Eugene, the mines are only emotional: I open e-mail
and cringe as new horrors on the West Bank, cries for help, roll down
the screen; mourning everyone. I try to decipher whether Joe and Liv,
my son and daughter-in-law, are getting hurt in the mayhem described
in these messages. I grieve for the fears and troubles of everyone
in Israel and Palestine, and all the people who love them.
When my husband, Max, and I awaken to morning mist,
it is afternoon in Al Azza, the Bethlehem refugee camp where Joe and
Liv are staying. They are both 26 years old, married two months, and
members of International Solidarity Movement, nonviolent observers
who have been living in refugee camps since March 30 to protect Palestinian
families.
I wonder nervously what "the internationals" are doing
at this moment, on their daily expedition out of camp through the
deserted streets of occupied Bethlehem. Several days ago, when I talked
to him on his cell phone, Joe said they had escorted a little girl
to the hospital for her leukemia treatment, trusting their relative
safety as international citizens. At the hospital, they had tried
to persuade Palestinian doctors to accompany them to the Church of
the Nativity, where hundreds of people inside need food, water and
medical help. But the doctors were afraid of being shot, international
human shields or no. So the shields returned home, disappointed, to
Azza refugee camp.
Joe and Liv don't want to just sit inside waiting.
"Terrified and bored is a really bad combination," Joe told me, laughing.
Waiting for the time when Israeli soldiers may finish off the center
of Bethlehem and begin on the camps, which haven't been attacked since
last month. Last month, Joe says, soldiers came to the house where
he and Liv are now staying. They chopped down trees, bulldozed the
garden, and fired holes in the bedroom walls. Nobody in the immediate
family was killed. When there is heavy firing, everybody in the camp
huddles together in the middle apartments, farthest from the road
and the tanks. However, many of the family's friends, neighbors, and
relatives have died in the four Israeli assaults on the West Bank
that have taken place in the past 18 months.
Will Doolittle calls, asking Max and me to join him
later for a TV interview. Will's daughter, Josina Manu, another native
Eugenean now based in Philadelphia, is staying in the same refugee
camp with Joe and Liv. Will, Max and I have decided that telling people
about what our kids are doing may help keep them safe, so we take
every chance we get.
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Joe
Gessert and his wife, Liv.
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Trying to help our kids keeps us from flipping out.
Will says he isn't a worrier, but he can't sleep well and thinks about
Josina all the time, wondering what she is doing. "I guess that's
worrying," he admits. "But I know this is the right thing in the context
of her life. If all citizens took that kind of stand, the world would
be different."
To stay calm, Max relies on petting our cats, talking
with friends, meditating, an evening glass of tequila. In his opinion,
a certain amount of worrying is appropriate. "And it helps me think
of things to do."
I don't have consistent solutions. I try to be strong,
but last week, after the U.S. consulate offered to evacuate U.S. citizens
from the Bethlehem refugee camps and the internationals refused, I
was terrified that the U.S. government was signaling to the Israelis,
"We tried to get them out, but they won't come. Do what you must."
I was afraid the internationals would become useless in shielding
anyone, and might die along with the Palestinian families. Maybe Joe,
Liv and the others could save their own lives and protect the Palestinians
better by coming home to tell their stories of the attack on Bethlehem.
On the phone that day, I told Joe some of what I was
thinking. "We're staying," he said, annoyed. "We've already considered
the things you are saying, and it doesn't help to hear them again
from you." I apologized.
I had to say what I thought, but afterward I felt
terrible. I want Joe and Liv to feel calm and supported, and I had
not helped.
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Josina
Manu and her father, Will Doolittle.
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Several days later, just after I talked to Joe again,
I had a moment of clarity. I felt overjoyed that Joe was alive that
day -- only that day, no matter what happened the next. I was happy
and grateful that he is exactly the person he is, doing what he believes
to be true and necessary. It would make sense to feel that way about
everybody I love, since nothing in life is certain, on the West Bank
or anywhere else.
Joe
Joe tells us, "There are incredible
contrasts here. Our family has a pleasant apartment, cable TV, a computer,
video games for the kids when the electricity is on. But outside tanks
are shooting all the time. The dad is a teacher, with children from
grammar school to university. But nobody can go anywhere. The schools
are closed.
"People feel despair. But kids still want to play,
people cook for each other, even when there are explosions all the
time. The families are full of joy. They're still laughing. They love
each other. They're not destroyed at all. Tonight we had a birthday
party for one of the kids. Gummi snakes and Jell-O. The food here
is fantastic! Hummus and foul [pronounced fool] mashed up fava beans,
garlic, and olive oil. They make their own bread, because they can't
get bread right now. Everything involves olive oil."
"Adam, don't do that!" says Joe suddenly, his voice
sharp. "No, stop!"
It sounds to me as if one of the little kids in Joe's
family is messing with his cell phone.
"No!" says Joe, louder. "Mazha, tell him to stop.
When he turns the blinds, the light pours out."
Joe talks to us again and explains that when tanks
go by, the kids run to look. To an edgy soldier, the shifting light
might look like a signal.
Joe describes the view from the apartment windows
-- when the blinds are open. The main road lies 100 feet away,
beyond tree stumps and bulldozed garden. The pavement is torn up,
lampposts knocked down. Tanks and armored cars rumble back and forth,
firing randomly as they go. Across the road is Aida refugee camp,
a crowded jumble of ramshackle cinderblock buildings, and beyond,
a mile away, Geeleh Hill. On top towers an Israeli settlement, a cluster
of fortified apartment buildings. Immigrant families who have no idea
of the situation are subsidized to move in, colonizing Palestinian
land.
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IDF
troops arrest a Palestinian boy in Bethlehem Market.
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This fortress atop Geeleh has bulletproof glass and
a high wall, with a landscape painted on the inside. Israeli settlers
drive to work and shopping on a special road to which only they have
access. Palestinians travel a more roundabout way, waiting at roadblocks
and checkpoints where Israeli soldiers check their IDs, may turn them
back, confiscate their car keys or IDs, stripsearch them, beat them,
or arrest them. This is what happens under peaceful circumstances.
At the moment, Bethlehem is a war zone and no Palestinians can travel
in or out.
Joe didn't know much about Palestine before this trip.
He and Liv were driving across the Brooklyn Bridge when they saw the
World Trade Center towers get hit. "We felt a lot of sorrow," Joe
says, "and a desire to find out why people are so mad at our country.
We wanted to know more about what the U.S. is doing in the Middle
East.
"Also, I felt paralyzed by how bad things got after
September 11. This was a small opportunity to have a constructive
American presence in the Middle East. But this isn't what we expected
to be doing. The original plans for our group were to help Palestinians
rebuild houses and prune fruit trees."
I tell Joe that Congressman DeFazio said, "'I always
said they should send UN peacekeepers there! The internationals are
the peacekeepers.'"
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Acting
for Peace
Events supporting
the desire to live in a peaceful world.
-- Interfaith prayer service, 7 pm Thursday,
April 11, at First Christian Church, 1166 Oak St.
-- "We Refuse to be Enemies" vigil to protest
violence between Israel and Palestine, 5 to 6 pm Friday, April
12 at the Eugene Federal Building. Sponsored by Eugene Middle
East Peace Group. Call Avishai at 344-8741.
-- Peace tent with information and people to
talk with about the Israel-Palestine crisis, 10 am to 2 pm Saturday,
April 13 at Saturday Market. Bring a strip of cloth with a hope,
prayer, or thought written on it to attach to the peace tent.
Sponsored by Eugene Middle East Peace Group.
-- Jerusalem in the Heart, a concert presented
by the Center For Spiritual Development, will be performed at
7 pm Saturday, April 13 at Trinity Episcopal Cathedral Church
in Portland, 147 NW 19th Ave. It features The Tiferet Jewish
Meditational Chorus, The Peregrine Medieval Vocal Ensemble,
and The Taneen Sufi Music Ensemble in an interfaith evening
of chanting and prayer, representing the three Abrahamic traditions:
Judaism, rooted in Kabalistic tradition, Sufism, in the language
of Islam, and Christianity. The Center for Spiritual Development
will soon begin an educational forum on discovering the commonalities
of the three traditions. Call (503) 229-4887 for more info.
-- Mobilization for Global Justice, noon to
2 pm, Saturday, April 20. Thousands of people around the world
will be demonstrating for peace and justice during this weekend.
In Eugene, speakers will discuss the International Monetary
Fund, the World Bank, the School of the Americas, Plan Colombia,
and the war on terrorism. A march begins at noon at 13th and
Chambers and makes its way downtown, ending with a rally at
1:15 pm at the Free Speech Plaza outside the Lane County Courthouse.
Call CISCAP, 485-8633, or Eugene Peaceworks, 343-8548, for more
information.
-- Community Alliance of Lane County (CALC)
has a new wing called Progressive Response. Volunteers have
already held two events with speakers on the war on terrorism
and are gearing up for activities to pressure Congress to act
properly. Call CALC, 485-1755.
-- Peace -- The Great Peace OM In! is at 12:12
pm Saturday, May 12 at Lord Leebrick Theatre. The event includes
speakers, music, ceremony and dance to commemorate Gov. Kitzhaber's
naming of May, 2001 a month of peace in honor of the Dalai Lama's
visit to Oregon last year, and to raise awareness to call on
the governor to name every May a month of peace. Call Star Gate,
342-8348 for further info.
-- Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio), advocate
for a new U.S. Department of Peace, will be in Eugene May 25-26.
Time, location TBA. Call, Eugene Children's Peace Academy, 685-1335,
for further info.
-- Call, write, e-mail and shout for peace:
Congressman DeFazio: 465-6732, (202) 225-6416,
www.house.gov/defazio
Senator Smith: 465-6750, (202) 224-3753, http://gsmith.senate.gov
Senator Wyden: 431-0229, (202) 224-5244, http://wyden.senate.gov
Secretary of State Powell: (202) 647-6575, secretary@state.gov
White House: (202) 456-1111; (202) 456-1414
(president's office), president@whitehouse.gov
Fax: (202) 456-2461
-- Thank everyone who does anything positive.
--Aria Seligmann
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Joe laughs. "Tell him to send a check."
He continues, "I always imagined the U.S. had a bad
effect on this part of the world, but this is worse than I ever imagined.
People here hate Americans. Our Palestinian families don't hate us.
But when we first came, they had expected we would be Europeans.
"Suicide bombings are horrible. There's no way for
me to justify them. But some Palestinians feel they are the only way
left to resist. Moderate groups are pushed around or ignored, and
militant resistance groups are seen by a desperate populace as the
only alternative, a way to get the world's attention. In a stabilized,
more equitable society, these groups would be fringe groups."
Joe frets that he spends a lot of time just watching
TV news with the family, but it sounds to me like he and Liv and other
internationals have had a busy couple of days. They finally convinced
medics to go with them to the Church of the Nativity, filled an ambulance
with food and water, and walked on all sides to protect it. At the
church, internationals tried to convince Israeli soldiers to allow
the medics in, but the soldiers said no one needed help and fired
warning shots above their heads.
Yesterday internationals began working in shifts,
riding in ambulances to protect medical personnel. Joe's shift was
last night. His ambulance responded to Bethlehem domestic emergencies:
a baby with respiratory failure, a child accidentally burned with
hot water, a pregnant woman. Soldiers stopped the ambulance repeatedly,
and finally told everyone, "There is a curfew in effect. Get back
to the hospital and stay there, or there will be trouble." But tonight
internationals are riding again in the ambulances.
After Joe, I talk to Layna, the youngest daughter
in the family. She is 15 and misses school. "It's been six days now.
I can't read or study. Every minute we hear shooting. So we listen
to what's happening, we watch the news and talk."
When I ask Layna about her hopes, she answers quickly,
"I hope I will soon go back to my own village. My grandmother and
grandfather left it in 1948. It's a big village. Now we are in a small
camp. There is nothing. No school, no clinics, no playgrounds. I go
to school in Aida camp. It's bigger, so it has a school.
"Our village is near Hebron, half an hour away. I've
been there once with my family. We ask the soldiers at the checkpoints,
and if they are good, we can go."
When Joe comes back on the phone, he explains that
the family displays photographs on the apartment walls showing their
village and the tents they used to live in. Everyone talks about "When
we go back to our village ..." even though it was the grandparents
who lived there, long ago when they were very young.
The grandmother and grandfather lived in tents for
10 years, then in cramped U.N. housing. Gradually they built their
own house. This past October Israeli soldiers burned it down. "We
went to see the ruins," Joe said. "There's a closet riddled with bullet
holes, and inside are the grandfather's boots, shot full of holes."
Tonight the family showed Joe and Liv a video of their
village. Only one building still stands, an ancient mosque. The land
has become an Israeli national park.
Josina
Josina, Will's daughter, has
come to Palestine "because as an American, I have blood on my hands.
As a Jew, I must stand up for justice." I ask her if she talks much
about being Jewish with the Palestinians in the camp. "When it's relevant
to a conversation, I out myself. But it's not necessarily more important
to anyone that I'm here as a Jew. What's important is the universal
cooperation, regardless of who any of us are. I've made new friends
here, found new family.
"I'm overwhelmed by the love and compassion of everyone
around me. It will be very hard to leave. I hope when we go, the Israelis
won't come into the camps for a bloodbath, that the people I now know
and love will survive after we leave them."
Josina is one of the internationals who stay in Azza
all the time. Some people, like Joe, leave the camp on various projects,
while others are a constant presence. Yesterday the residents of the
camp called Josina and other internationals to protect ambulance drivers,
who were kneeling by the road with their hands over their heads. Soldiers
stood over them with guns. "We're here to watch, we're here to help,"
said the internationals. "Go away!" answered the soldiers. The internationals
stayed until the ambulance drivers were safely on their way.
What Josina sees around her on the West Bank is "a
culture established through war. Although Palestinians have been here
for thousands of years, during the past 50 years many of them have
lived in refugee camps; their families, schools, and interactions
have been strongly affected by this experience. There is so much mourning
-- no time to finish mourning one beloved person before another
is dead.
"During these past days, I've sometimes been sitting
in a family's living room when they find out someone close to them
has died. Since it is the fourth invasion in 18 months, imagine how
often this has been happening to people. People shouldn't have to
integrate so much death in their lives."
Ibrahim
Here in Eugene, too, someone
lost a family member in last week's invasion of Bethlehem. Ibrahim
Hamide, who owns Café Soriah, has two sisters and three brothers
in Bethlehem, with all their children and grandchildren, plus an enormous
extended family. An elderly woman in Ibrahim's family died April 2
when Israeli soldiers charged into her house in the old city and shot
her dead while she sat in her living room. "She probably yelled at
them to get out," Ibrahim explains. For one long night, Ibrahim did
not know whether his brother was alive. Neighbors had seen Israeli
soldiers enter the house, and no one answered the telephone. It was
night, too dangerous to check.
His brother survived. Ibrahim explains, "There are
storms, times more difficult than others -- 1987 and this last
one. It ebbs and flows -- I'm afraid mostly it's getting worse.
My relatives can't travel now, the job situation and the economy is
bad, freedom is more restricted, our farmland has been confiscated.
We used to grow vegetables, wheat, olives, almonds, fruits, food for
our animals. Everything we ate was from our farm. My father's dream
was that all of us kids would come back there and build homes.
"I've had moments of euphoria, when there were peace
agreements. It's tough to learn not to get euphoric. You start seeing
a ray of sunshine ahead -- and all these years later, we are
still under occupation."
Ibrahim worries about his family in Bethlehem. "You
can't keep it inside," he says. "You have to speak or it will fester.
You can talk with your friends, with the public. And you have a core
of faith, where you entrust the things you can't do anything about.
Belief that God is bigger than tanks and airplanes, justice is bigger.
"I keep as much freedom as I can. They can occupy
my land, but not, God willing, my heart. But I get frustrated with
the media. How come both terrors, Palestinian and Israeli, are not
wrong? Why is Israeli state terror somehow more sanitized, nicer?
But I have my own conviction -- I am not going to become a bitter,
angry person.
"For me and my generation, the clock is ticking, and
I am starting to accept that I may never see peace in my lifetime.
But I won't accept that my young children, and young Jewish children,
will grow up to remain locked in conflict. I hope that logic will
not fail us, that we can resolve our differences by talking."
Internationals on the West Bank
Like the Peace Brigades and Witness for Peace that protected the campesinos
in Nicaragua in the 1980s, citizens from many countries who are part
of International Solidarity Movement and other groups are an integral
part of what is happening during the Israeli invasion of the West
Bank. Dozens of international observers remain with Arafat. According
to Francis Boyle, professor of international law, "They probably saved
Arafat's life." In Bethlehem, 15 internationals are in the Star Hotel,
19 in Azza camp, and 15 in Aida camp. Christian Peace Teams are in
Hebron. International Solidarity members have just reached Nablus.
What is their role? Are they a real help to Palestinian
people?
In Azza camp, Joe says, "I have no idea -- I
know so little. Are we an asset or a liability? Polite as everyone
is, I also think they are genuinely glad we are here. We internationals
have more ability to move outside, so we can do stuff like walk a
little girl to the hospital." Layna in Joe's host family adds, "It's
the first time. It's great! People are feeling with us."
According to Josani Manu, "There are tense moments
with tanks and guns where the presence of internationals has allowed
Palestinians to go to safety. We can help in this practical way. And
people tell us every day, 'We're not used to feeling the world cares.
We have been in a vacuum, as if we have been getting killed with the
permission of the entire world.' So we are good for Palestinians'
morale. And what they say makes us feel like we are not just idiots
here on vacation. We're not heroes. We're here out of a sense that
something must be done."
This fourth invasion is the first time Israeli soldiers
have stayed out of Azza camp. Usually they come to round up all the
young men and young women. People in the camp think the internationals
may be part of the reason the soldiers haven't come. At least, not
yet.
Will, Josina Manu's father, thinks that here in Eugene,
and in the U.S., there is a new focus on Palestine and Israel. We
are challenged to speak out "because some of our own are there, as
U.S. citizens, saving lives, putting themselves between the guns and
the targets."
Ibrahim adds, "They come from all over, these people
of conscience who show the way compassion works. People ask, 'What
can I do?' Each person can prevent the killing of one person. God
bless them all. God bless all our families and keep them safe."
Back to top
West of the Jordan
A
personal essay.
by Orna Izakson
Hanan Awwad was the first Palestinian I ever met,
and after speaking two sentences to her I fell sobbing into her arms.
It was 1989. I was 23. My post-college travels had
taken me to Adelaide, South Australia, fortuitously in time for the
First International Indigenous Women's Conference.
I was hanging out with Marie, a journalist from Northern
Ireland and Levana, a Maori woman who'd been forced from her parents
in New Zealand and adopted to a white Australian family. We went together
to hear Hanan's presentation, the words of a Palestinian leader with
the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom.
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Orna
and Ganit in 1973 at the beach in Tel Aviv.
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As a Jew, I sort of knew what was going on in the
land west of the Jordan River, both Hanan's and mine. All these many
years later, I remember not a word of what she told that group, only
how deeply it cut.
When she finished her presentation, I waited for the
crowd around her to disperse.
"My name is Orna Izakson," I said, pronouncing my
unmistakably Israeli name. "My family lives in Israel."
And then I collapsed into sobs.
Hanan gathered me into her arms and told me: "We are
family. Come visit me in Jerusalem."
What tore my heart was that I'd accepted my Jewishness
through a political vision of a people that had survived wave of genocide
even in my parents' generation. I owe my existence to the fight to
create Israel. My mother and her parents were refugees in Europe in
the '30s, having fled their Berlin home on a day's notice. The first
place that officially took them in was Palestine, and even then they
escaped the Nazis by a hair's breadth on the last legal boat out of
Marseilles. My aunts and uncles and cousins all live in Israel; all
but one was born there. I stood up proudly into that heritage in a
way that's only possible when you assume that, for a brief moment
in history, you are safe.
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Building
Peace
How can we build peace between factions that
appear bent on destroying each other? Dr. Marshall Rosenberg
and his associates have worked with groups in conflict in Israel
and elsewhere and discovered that, "real safety and peace can
be achieved, despite enormous odds, only when people are able
to see the 'humanity' of those who attack them. This requires
something far more difficult than turning the other cheek; it
requires empathizing with the fears, hurt, rage and unmet human
needs that are behind the attacks."
Rosenberg is founder of the Center for Nonviolent
Communication (www.cnvc.org)
and will be in Eugene to speak on an "Introduction to Nonviolent
Communication" from 7 to 9:30 pm Wednesday. April 17, at Unity
of the Valley, corner of Hilyard and 39th in south Eugene. The
evening session is offered on a donation basis (requested $5-$15),
and will be followed by two days of in-depth trainings. For
more information, see www.orncc.net,
e-mail mayab@efn.org, or
call 345-7621.
"The premise underlying NVC is that all human
actions are attempts to meet our human needs, and that understanding
and empathizing with these needs creates trust, connection,
and more broadly -- peace," says author Inbal Kashtan. "This
premise is translated into a very concrete and practical set
of tools for communication that increases our ability to recognize
and empathize with our own and others' feelings and needs. When
used consistently (or even occasionally), NVC can create deep
connection, trust and cooperation."
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Hanan's talk showed me that the evils done to my people
did not wipe the blood from our hands. But whatever she saw as I cried
in her arms -- snuffling apologies for being the oppressor seeking
solace in the arms of the oppressed -- she treated me as family in
that moment, with no distinctions of religion or politics.
Increasingly this happens to me now as I read and
hear about suicide bombings and invasion. Sometimes it's just words
on paper, a distant, intellectual, political tragedy. But sometimes
I see a contorted, crying face in a photograph and think, that could
be my cousin Ganit, crying for her daughter, Gal. And then the gears
turn in my head and suddenly it really is Ganit, and the dead person
is someone I know, someone whose blood I share.
In the past week this process has shifted, and I no
longer need visual stimuli to turn the gears. When I heard that the
brother of Ibrahim Hamide, the owner of Café Soriah here in Eugene,
might have died in Beth-lehem, it could have been my father calling
to tell me about one of my cousins. When Kate Gessert and I talked
about her son (see main story), an Oregonian in the Palestinian Territories
acting as a human shield against any killing, the welfare of the child
I've never met of a woman I've never seen became something I must
now track as if he were my blood.
In the end, it doesn't matter who faces danger, who
is hurt, who dies. It's close. It's us. It doesn't matter that it
isn't my literal blood; in this we are tied as family.
And literally, the Israelis and Palestinians are family.
The difference between me and Hanan or Ibrahim is that their people
descended from Abraham's son Ishmael, while mine descended from Abraham's
son Isaac. Our blood is inextricably tied to each other's, just as
it is inextricably tied to -- and spilled upon -- that land.
This doesn't mean I know what do to, whom to trust,
what to believe.
I know that Israel is important to me, that my body's
cells recognize that land when I am there. I know that without the
call to Zion my family and I would not exist. I know that without
Israel there is no other place for the bulk of my people, embattled
for millennia, to go.
But I believe, too, that governments obfuscate and
lie. I believe that leaders often represent their own goals above
those of their populace. I believe as a matter of faith that all people
-- the people getting blown up in the streets and the people
shut into their homes in Bethlehem and Ramallah and Nablus --
long for dignity and freedom and peace.
The 13-year-old memory of Hanan's words to me and
her arms around me still reverberate in my heart. I can offer no solutions,
only prayers for my family, tied by blood passed by birth and blood
spilled in death. When I lift my eyes and hold out my hands, I hope
that others will be there to meet me.
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