Breaking In/Out to/of Israel

Posted on 20th March 2014 in Articles, Nonviolence Resistance, Reflections, Self Determination

Israel, a w(W)hite W(w)estern Jewish democracy (Orwellian Newspeak), is not always that easy to get into. You have to be crafty to break into such a fortress (aka Enchanted Prison). Those amongst we holy wanderers, political dissidents and ignorant travelers have different types of preparation to perpetrate. Some just have to pack their clothes and get on and off of a plane or two. Others have to clean up their facebook accounts, look tired, and prepare names and phone numbers of friends or friends of friends or acquaintances of friends and/or family and their friends and/or associates who might lend a phone number and rough location along with a corroborative report. Others, I’m certain, spend a little extra money on the latest grunge fads to like they are already a part of the Tel Aviv hipster crowd.

 

When you arrive, your boyfriend may not be allowed to enter. He will call you when he is at the gate departing with the news that he is being sent back and he is not exactly sure why and neither were the Israeli’s who are making him go back. You might get asked a series of questions pertaining to your travel intentions, who you’re staying with, and how long you’ll be there. You might have to provide a phone number and an address or two and watch as they call the number to make sure your story holds water. If you are a known activist or know any known activists you might likely be taken to another room and undergo an interrogation. You may be asked to strip. You may be asked to open your computer and login to your accounts so they can see what you’ve been up to. You might get a stamp on your passport indicating you are not welcome back to Israel for a decade – presumably when the social and political order is a bit more chill.

 

Whether you are entering or leaving, if you are actually acting with dubious intentions (maybe you’re an intellectual studying Palestinian Art as a form of resistance, or your teaching Pal children to build skateboard parks and learn how to skate, or your a young German girl working for the UN in Ramallah), you’ve gotta do a minimum of two things to enter safely: you have to have a viable story worked out and you’ve got to de-arabize or de-palestinianize your travel articles. Maybe you won’t abring Said’s book on the Question of Palestine or the book on Dabka but would rather grab yourself a copy of Hertzl’s Jewish State and pretend your coming to visit the holy sites and explore your Jewish or Christian roots. Maybe your contemplating Aliyah to get some of your tax dollars back. You’ll learn a couple of Hebrew words to pretend your on in being in on the know. Most of all, deep down inside, you’re prepared to be carted and cordoned off, questioned, cross examined, caressed, and sent back across the Mediterranean lest you be suspected of seeking a dialogue with like minded humanists (Allah forbid they be Arabs), learning a little bit about the cultures of both sides: the indigenous Arab populations and the mostly white implants (read colonizers) in Israel proper. [Note: everyone should have the right to a decent and safe place to live but the history of colonization implies dispossessing others of their homes and land and that tends to piss people off and cause protracted conflicts – something Hertzl was well aware of and wrote about].

 

Then, of course, there is a sort of un-re-decolonizing of the mind/heart/spirit triad that has to take place. It goes something like this: you realize that your spending so much time coming up with stories so that you can continue to enter and exit Israel. You realize that realizing how much time and energy realizing it takes up more time and energy. You realize that it is this way intentionally. You realize that for a brief period of time you are Israel’s bitch because they’re forcing you to make unethical decisions – you feel boxed into lying. You invent the term “flying ethics” (once again, to mock the flying checkpoints that Palestinians are subject to): literally ethics on the fly, a tactic used to avoid telling incriminating truths in the face of arbitrary and unreasonable searches and seizures such as: I was in Hebron, I visited the Darwish Museum, I purchased olive soap and sweets in Nablus, I ate felafel in Birzeit, there is a really beautiful human being that I’ve fallen in love with that lives in East jerusalem, and/or I am an ardent supporter and promoter of human rights and I support the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement.

 

You realize its fuck all that you’re forced into this shituation to begin with and you can’t just smile and be honest and travel freely to visit a beautiful peoples in a beautiful culture in a not too beautiful circumstance. You realize that if you make it in or out you might not make it in or out again. You realize that this cycle is precisely what your being forced into again and you argue the virtues of honesty versus the virtues of lying knowing full well that they’re just toying with you and they know where you’ve been in any case and since they can’t really do to you what they do to the Palestinians at least they can have some fun with you, own your ass, watch you sweat, catalog the inventions that you’ve come up with, and determine whether or not you should be made an example of.

 

They know you’ve spent countless hours with your friends telling stories of what happened to them or people they know. They know you’ve been busy coming up with stories of your own. They know it doesn’t matter what you say, where you’re from or your station in life. If they want to fuck with you, in many splendid ways, they will. So, for just a little amount of time you are their bitch.

 

You can imagine the kind of intellectual tai chi chuan that is required to skate flawlessly through the system of checkpoints, questions and border crossings. It is, in many ways, however, like roulette. The outcome is seemingly random.

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Wall Vaulting: The New Fad Sport of Nonviolent Popular Resistance in Palestine

Posted on 10th March 2014 in Nonviolence Resistance, Peace, Peace Pedagogy, Practice, Self Determination, Theory
by Enchanted Prison Guard

 

There are many forms of non-violent popular resistance – of which there are many types. There is the type in which civil society is simply rebuilding its own identity through the forms. There is the type of direct confrontation between belligerent occupier and the occupied. There is the type in which individuals educate themselves and act with the intention to educate others of the forms and types of non-violent popular resistance. I’m sure there are more. Please send me your thoughts.

Of course, some forms employ a mix of types. Sports for example, no matter where they are played, tend to build relationships of many types, some cooperative, some competitive, some mutually inductive and some mutually restrictive. In any case, so it seems, a new fad sport appears to be evolving in the West Bank of Palestine incorporating a study of the forms and types of Nonviolent Popular Resistance using sport, education, team building, media outreach, and communication with the police and military on both sides which directly engages both occupier and occupied with the intention of having fun and making a point. As you can tell from the title of this piece, pole vaulting the wall/Wall appears to becoming a popular sport in the West Bank of Palestine.

Teams are training in class rooms studying the principles of peaceful beautiful resistance: Gandhi, Sharp, King Jr., Galtung and international law are just a small part of the required reading material for the curriculum. Then of course there is the rigorous training in sport employing a mutually inductive cooperation through competition. These people are strong. Intellectually. Physically. Morally.

People are reaching out to the media to inform the world of who they are and what is their intention. To put it simply, in the words of one of the participants, “simply stated, the wall is not impenetrable. We penetrate it with love… in our hearts and we make it known that we are non-violent and this has a profound effect on any act of physical violence the Israeli Defense Force or Police might take against us. We get arrested. We have lawyers. Some of us spend time in jail. Some of us get tortured. A few of us have been brutally wounded. One of us was killed. We know the risks. We’re Committed. We just turn around and do it again. The word is getting out and it’s making it difficult for the Israeli Army to do anything in terms of physical violence at this point. We have a lot of international support through the media, the internet, and even the Secretary General of the U.N. Has commented in support of our actions.”

The group, of course, calls themselves Palestinian Wall Vaulters for Peace and they work with a group affiliated with security called Fighters for Peace which is comprised of former Palestinian and Israeli combatants who act, essentially as observers and human shields. They also work with “Doctors Beyond Boundaries” for obvious reasons as well as Free Legal Aid, an array of international lawyers working pro bono publico for other obvious reasons.

I am told there is a website in the works. Apparently some one bought the best combinations of domain names when they heard of the group and the group is not yet in a position to purchase any of them (for not so obvious reasons) and is reluctant to choose amongst the list of poor combinations that might be available.

Needless to say, they’re looking for support. They’re not asking for any money. Poles are cheap and the attire is not well defined yet. The wall/Wall is where it is and it is what it is so there are many locations for practice and performance.  The type of support they are looking for is in the form of acknowledgement (if not solidarity with the same forms and types they are engaged with): that they have the inalienable right to self determine, to human rights (at least at its current theory and practice) and to provide for their human needs unimpeded.

At the moment they are asking not to take or expose any pictures since it just makes it easier to be spotted as they usually set up “flying break points” spoofing on the “flying checkpoints” the Israeli Defense Force might set up. “We hope people will come to Palestine and experience our beautiful culture and experience all there is to experience in the West Bank,” says one of the organizers for the group.

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Immodest Proposal

Posted on 6th February 2014 in Peace, Reflections, Self Determination

Due to the longevity of the Israeli Palestinian conflict and the obvious lack of political will mixed with sheer political ineptitude – on a global scale, really – to properly transform the situation (at least to enforce international law) I’ve come up with a somewhat absurd partial solution towards transforming and transcending the conflict. The idea itself is nothing new – I’m not that creative or knowledgeable about the shituation: the boundaries of Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories will be combined into a bi-national state. There are many reasons why this is favorable for Israelis, Palestinians and Peace (the rest of us) and that complex of simple reasons emerges as the answer to the following question: what would a Palestinian state of scattered and segregated lands look like as a result of settlements, the wall, and the harsh economic, political and military sanctions driving the Palestinians into a fragmented and isolated society?

In any case, my level, or style if you will, of creativity is in the naming of this new nation; a new name that will satisfy both cultures: PalIstein/stien. Its construction is obvious taking the first three letters of the word Palestine, the first two letters of Israel, and then changing the “stine” of Palestine into “stein/stien” so that it resonates with the suffix of many Jewish peoples names,  yet the pronunciation could be in dispute as to whether there is a hard “e” vowel sound or a hard “i” vowel sound (which, no doubt, would make Palestinians smile, even though it was at the sacrifice of switching the “e” in the English spelling of their countries name with the “i”, capitalized, from the English spelling of Israel). One country, one name with two pronunciations and still something to fight about.

As one nation, there will be a shared economy, a shared political system, shared roadways, shared schools, and above all and encompassing all, equality as citizens and all of the benefits that come with getting to know and love your neighbor. No doubt it will take a generation or two (or seven) to work things out, but under the current circumstances there is such a limited cultural exchange because of the inability of Palestinians and Israelis to freely move from the OPTs to the NonOPTs as well as the taboo of normalization for Pals to engage with Izzies in any way that legitimizes the regime of inequality. Since the respective and collective governments who are stakeholders in this process have proven incapable of establishing equality this task will have to be accomplished by Israeli and Palestinian civil societies who will, themselves, have to transcend the walls of normalization and the convolution of victim and perpetrator.

In addition to a new name, one other important piece of propaganda is essential to forging a new common narrative: a banner. At first thought it would be interesting to have a two faced flag with the Israeli flag on one side and the Palestinian flag on the other but after some immodest consideration I’m thinking the flag should be  a screen playing pixelated permutations of both flags along with other randomly generated visualizations. Let’s leave it at that.

For now, changing the name and flying the first kaleidobanner is enough. When people get use to seeing and hearing these new implants, civil society will begin to change and, again, in a generation or two when all of the old school dogmaticians die off, peace will begin to flourish. Let freedom reign. Pass the felafel, please.

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On the Right to Legal Vegetable-hood(edness)

Posted on 24th January 2014 in Reflections, Self Determination, Theory

I have debated such things with some of my vegan friends: should vegetables be given legal person-hood? Of course, an affirmative is founded in vegetable sentience. If vegetables are sentient, then they, according to the UN charter, have the right to self-determine. I ask myself then, should Palestinians not have the right to legal vegetable-hood. Yes, it sounds stupid to even think of at first bite, but if you peel of the skin and pith you begin to realize that the whole idea of legal person-hood is speciesist and we would serve the unambiguous idiology of justice to question the language we bow to.

 

“But vegetables don’t have neurons” is a common argument for why its ok to eat vegetables and not ok to eat animals. For me, survival is a good reason to eat, period. It’s not what you eat, its why you eat it and where it comes from. That’s my parable paradigm. What is yours? Because plants don’t have the same structures humans do to conduct information is no good cause to assume they don’t have some apparatus to conduct information from one place to another, register it, respond to it – in some cases to engage or avoid things we associate with pleasure or pain.

 

I know humans are still struggling with legal person-hood for any other-than human species. To ask people to accept monkeys and turtles as people is asking a lot. It is a big stretch of the moral imagination arc somewhere over the rainbow outside of the comfort zone of an identity that exists on its better-ness because of other-ness. Yet, within this context we can see that when it comes time to compare ourselves to wombats and groove billed anis, all of a sudden we are all one as a species and can stand together in solidarity (perhaps as a species belligerent occupant to the earth). This speciesist perspective is then a unifying cause to champion racism, nationalism and, in some very strange sense, is the cause celebre for championing human rights and equality under the law to all those currently under a belligerent occupancy or under and kind of enslavement be it physical or mental.

 

In any case, what I’m getting at here is that it is way beyond anyone’s intellectual capacity at this point to realize that we might well just apply rights universally to all living beings – make it a part of our common culture and enshrine it in international law. We can think of the right to self determine as universal – and I don’t mean just universal on the tiny universe of earth. I mean, since the universe is vast (don’t hurt yourself trying to think about it too much) and it is a commonly accepted belief (yes, so common that you believe it too, now) that life exists everywhere where it can and that requires two things: a percolating solution (in our case, water), and a thermal threshold for certain reactions to take place that are not inherent to the environment (solution). These conditions exist all over the place and so life exists all over the place. To think otherwise is foolish because it would set your beliefs outside of the norm of indigenous beliefs (which is, by definition, just one small part of being a fool).

 

Good, Now that we’re all on the same page page we can agree that the words are somewhat interchangeable. I now can claim I have the self evident right to legal kangaroo-hood. You, dear soul, can get down with your vegetables in a state of pure existential existence-hoodedness and, yes, the Palestinian people most certainly have the right to declare themselves as possessing the right to legal vegetable-hood. Why not?

 

Since corporations have such rights, too, they must have some homologous structure to a nervous system and, I suppose, a set of organs and systems complimenting all those structures necessary for survival. I can see it now, there will be fortune 500 companies filing for the right to legal asshole-hood.

Pass the hummus, please.

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DWB, LGM, and Olive Trees

Posted on 22nd January 2014 in Reflections, Self Determination

Racism may be partly natural and partly nurtural. There is probably something coded in our genes that makes cells undergo meiosis every time we see “other” such that we need to reproduce within our tribe – but not with out siblings (cousins are OK in most places). There is definitely something encoded in our brains about “other” from the racist propaganda (read: education) that most people get.

 

I don’t remember being taught in non or secular school that we’all humans have a relatively broad and meaty common set of biological, logical, moral, ethical, religious, spiritual, chemical and physical properties. I don’t recall too many people who actually embrace universal love – in principle or in practice. I’m not suggesting we should.

 

An acquaintance of mine got a DWB. I understood what he meant before I could stop my mouth from asking. It was obvious; though I’ve never gotten a Driving While Black myself since I am heterozygous black recessive. It’s amazing to me, probably because I’m still only in someone else’s late 20′s, and not in my own 400′s, that I can’t relate to the fact that racism is still strong and proud in the United States. Another generation or two will have to die off before things get much better. They are better than they were, but we got a long way to go people. We have to start remembering ourselves from the future, after we’re dead and gone, to get a better perspective on who we are today. See you there.

 

Perhaps the aliens, not the illegal one’s who come here to steal jobs from Americans (that is, the South or Central Americans that come here to steal ‘our’ jobs (the ones that don’t exist anyway)), are Little Green Men. That could mean numerous things in terms of size. Size is relative. Size matters. Two things are clear. The aliens are men and they are green. They are mono-gendered, which is fine with me. We – as a species – are tending towards something similar here anyway. The numbers are increasing (the percentages are staying the same).We don’t know how they reproduce or if they reproduce. It is not implicit in the label (read: name). These men are green. There is nothing ambiguous about green. It is a range of frequencies of the electromagnetic spectrum which, when viewed in one’s own inertial frame, are well defined. Of course you could be looking at someone else’s green and see red. Little for me is about waise height – below the belt: illegal.

 

An approximate acquaintance of mine was shot in the leg by an Israeli Security Forcerer while planting Olive Trees in Gaza. He asked, rhetorically I presume, “What was I doing wrong?” The answer, of course, is that he was Planting While Palestinian. While he is protected under international law, the racism runs so deep that injustice is rampant and accountability slim to none. Salam. Shalom. Pass the hummus, please.

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Interviews: Youth, Art & Levante – Dance in Palestine: Spotlight on the Differently Abled

Posted on 26th December 2013 in Interviews, Self Determination

I hosted Activist Radio on WVKR on Thursday December 26th, 2013 to feature the work of Yante – Youth, Art & Levante  and the remarkable work they do. Yante is a Palestine based dance troupe and teaching center whose work fouses on transforming personal and social trauma into personal and social growth. I spoke with  Yante’s founder, Nadia Arouri, and program manager Nora Markt, as well as DanceAbility Internacional México’s director and choreographer Lulú Arroyo Menéndez and Palestinian/American Composer Tareq Abboushi to discuss the upcoming collaboration with Yante, Lulu and Tarq in April. Please take a look at the indiegogo campaign to learn more about the upcoming performance >>

Interview with Nadia and Nora: 

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Interview with Lulu: 

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Interview with Tareq: 

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A reading of an excerpt from “Rethinking the Palestinian Future” by Richard Falk from a lecture delivered at the The Institute for Palestine Studies in Beirut, Lebanon on 25, April 2013 (reproduced with permission from the author) >> 

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Again, check out the Indiegogo campaign here >>

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