Posts
Killing of Peace Activist Rachel Corrie
March 17, 2003
Hi everyone,
Sorry my email was down last night before the nightly newscast in the States. I've been on CBS, Fox, and have also given interviews to the AP and am heading out to give more on the killing of one of the ISM volunteers I trained this winter. She was deliberately run over twice by a bulldozer while trying to prevent a Palestinian doctor's house from being demolished in Gaza. The Israeli military is trying to cover up the incident by saying
the bulldozer driver never saw her, but that's pretty weak when she and the driver were shouting at her and she was wearing a bright orange jacket in broad daylight. It is not the first time that Israeli military bulldozers have attacked international peace workers. Anyway the international community here is outraged. We were all at the Bethlehem peace vigil when we found out. You can check out http://www.palsolidarity.org for the press release and some photos of the girl who was killed.
Le Anne
Monday, March 17, 2003
Sunday, March 16, 2003
On Black Mold and Related Outlooks
Black Mold and Related Outlooks
March 16, 2003
Hi everyone,
I was greeted this morning with a relatively warm sunny day, though not really much warmer than what I left in Iowa. I am using the afternoon here to air all our linens--a pretty necessary task because _everything_ here in the Jerusalem apartment develops a dampness over time. If you don't realize your duvet has absorbed the air moisture,for example, you can catch hypothermia while bundled inside it. Fortunately for me last night we had synthetic options at hand. I bought what I presume to be quick-dry underwear precisely for this reason. I may be tempted to give you a performance report on this later on, but probably only if it's going badly. Either way, I'm sure it will fall squarely into the category of 'too much information.' I'll try to exercise restraint.
Today I have also been waging the war with black mold--it is crawling up the walls and every surface in this apartment. My teammate Anne told me the apartment actually flooded when moisture seeped through a stone wall. Settlers are building next door and have not been heedful of the watershed from their roof. Until the dry season begins next month, we'll need to keep all the furniture away from the walls, since condensation just sits on them without evaporating. I begin to understand the Palestinian decorating preference for plastic everything. In the midwest, they say the only two seasons of the year are snow and road construction. Here it is also two: dust and mold. Both give me allergy problems, but I came prepared for that also.
Maybe the dampness is affecting my mood. Of course, it could be jet lag too. What I'm feeling isn't necessarily tired, but not as much energy as I'm used to upon returning. (this said after scrubbing down a whole house...) More likely this time it is the shadow of war pressing down on me, and the feeling that it will be a long three months. I guess I'll cope
with it a week at a time, trying to focus on the individual tasks I'll have to do.
I'm headed to a peace vigil outside the Lutheran church in Bethlehem tonight. Two of my friends from a relief organization have a car and are willing to drive in and out. I'm looking forward to doing something proactive. It sounds like the next several weeks will be grim calls for response.
My friends driving the car are with World Vision. They said today that they had tried to purchase gas masks for their 70 Palestinian staff members, so they can carry on working if things get bad. "But nobody will sell them to us. Our money's no good." All Israelis are issued gas masks, as well as stocks kept on hand for tourists at hotels. Alan said that 3.2 million Palestinians have no such access to the masks. International law states that residents of an occupied territory are considered 'protected persons' and must be offered access to such protections by the occupying power. I know racism exists here, but sometimes it is difficult to deal when laid out as kick-in-the-teeth reality.
I saw the pictures in the paper today of the car which two Israeli settler security guards were traveling in when Israeli military squads mistook them for armed Palestinians, south of Hebron. It made Swiss cheese look opaque, a worse job than what the Israeli military and a Palestinian militant did jointly to the TIPH workers north of Hebron a year ago this month. There was no way anyone could have survived. I felt pretty sickened. There's a
sizeable military investigation of the mistake underway. The front page of the HaAretz Israeli newspaper said that if it had been the wrong two Palestinians mistakenly shot, it would have barely merited mention in the press, and no investigation. So sometimes I'm also surprised by the honesty of self-reproach in the news here.
In a way, I'm glad to be back in a country where I am surrounded by propaganda all the time, but it is easy to recognize as such and increasing numbers of people do recognize it and get on with life. Being home, it was hard to accept being surrounded by propaganda all the time, only very few people could recognize it as such and everyone was getting mired in it, rather than asking relevant questions. Or to sum it up, we're surrounded by
'information,' but very little news. There really seems to be no point in cable news, I've concluded from seeing about a month's worth of it. A good question to ask when viewing is, who will profit from this war? Well, ratings and advertising time make round-the-clock news coverage very lucrative. A good measure of objective news reporting is that for every military or pro-violence political stance reported on, equal time is given
to humanitarian organisations or concerns about civilian impact on every party involved. This applies not only to our conflict with Iraq, but about every conflict situation you might investigate. Another good measure is that numbers are given, not just opinions. Unfortunately, in order to get the numbers or the likely civilian impacts, you have to usually go online and do the footwork. It just doesn't seem to get hand-delivered to you over the airwaves. Maybe Amnesty International should buy spots on the Super
Bowl.
All of Palestine is under curfew and closure this week, during the Jewish festival of Purim. Outside our apartment, the Israeli kids are dressed up a day early in their costumes (these days kind of like Halloween, lots of commercial characters), while the Palestinian kids stare at them curiously. In the Old City of Jerusalem, there is a kind of coexistence (most settlements are purchased property for extraordinary sums, not attained
through force), but there is not co-community. Anyway, my teammates in Hebron told me, "Good luck getting in" to town tomorrow. If I want this trip to be convenient, I'll take the Israeli bus. Probably I'll just service it and get my bearings that way.
I also saw a news photo of Palestinians in Jenin marching with a large photo-poster of Saddam. I thought to myself, while I understand that here Sharon makes Saddam look pretty good by comparison (has committed more human rights abuses and is responsible for more civilian deaths in his career, anyway), this is not exactly quality PR.
In a way I'd kind of like to be back in Iraq. I saw the delegation update and Anne is headed that way from here tomorrow. I feel a little jealous. I have so many friends I'd like to see again. The air is different somehow there. Even though it could begin at any moment, in the meantime, people are moving about freely, life has a slightly normal pace yet. Here you feel that we are in the 'middle of it,' and no sight of the end. Anne says she
expects the war will start soon or never. I kind of feel the same way. The peace movement seems determined to continue protesting the war even once the bombs start falling. I hope they do. Last time all dissent was silenced when the war began. When I went around speaking this past month, I tried to include that it wasn't helpful to criticize the soldiers themselves. It does more harm than good--many of the soldiers themselves have said they don't want to go, and they don't have the decision making power. Even the
heads of the military have said this isn't a very wise war to be fighting. Or, to sum up another train of thought, a friend told me of a sign up in a Minnesotan cornfield: Support Our Troops--Stop the War.
I've been listening on NPR to the new trend in DC, which is to replace the word 'French' with 'Freedom'--i.e., Freedom fries, freedom toast. Since we're proposing a military occupation and half a million Iraqi casualties, I miss the humor. I thought that perhaps I might walk into McDonald's and ask for an order of 'Genocide Fries.' Of course, the fast food joints at Minneapolis airport are staffed largely with immigrants, somewhat akin to preaching to the choir. In the end, I ordered pizza, catering to my own self-interests.
Before I left, Sarah's dog Ruthie licked me on the mouth (a really gross habit of hers) while I was trying to sleep. I surmised that I'd just been unexpectedly 'Freedom kissed.' Bleh.
There's an Apache helicopter flying over my apartment and I need to go up and change the laundry around. Sometimes I think I should stop writing because it must be very depressing to read. Lots of people tell me that they don't want to write with the mundane details of their lives because it must be meaningless to me given 'my situation.' To the contrary, I live for mundane details. Please send more. Jokes are good too, but please send them to the Hebron team account, not my hotmail. That way ten people can get cheered up instead of one. I try not to send home all bad news. That's why I take the time to add upbeat observations, such as that our curiously hot pink duvet covers are probably being picked up by satellite spycams right this very instant.
Talk to you all soon,
Le Anne
March 16, 2003
Hi everyone,
I was greeted this morning with a relatively warm sunny day, though not really much warmer than what I left in Iowa. I am using the afternoon here to air all our linens--a pretty necessary task because _everything_ here in the Jerusalem apartment develops a dampness over time. If you don't realize your duvet has absorbed the air moisture,for example, you can catch hypothermia while bundled inside it. Fortunately for me last night we had synthetic options at hand. I bought what I presume to be quick-dry underwear precisely for this reason. I may be tempted to give you a performance report on this later on, but probably only if it's going badly. Either way, I'm sure it will fall squarely into the category of 'too much information.' I'll try to exercise restraint.
Today I have also been waging the war with black mold--it is crawling up the walls and every surface in this apartment. My teammate Anne told me the apartment actually flooded when moisture seeped through a stone wall. Settlers are building next door and have not been heedful of the watershed from their roof. Until the dry season begins next month, we'll need to keep all the furniture away from the walls, since condensation just sits on them without evaporating. I begin to understand the Palestinian decorating preference for plastic everything. In the midwest, they say the only two seasons of the year are snow and road construction. Here it is also two: dust and mold. Both give me allergy problems, but I came prepared for that also.
Maybe the dampness is affecting my mood. Of course, it could be jet lag too. What I'm feeling isn't necessarily tired, but not as much energy as I'm used to upon returning. (this said after scrubbing down a whole house...) More likely this time it is the shadow of war pressing down on me, and the feeling that it will be a long three months. I guess I'll cope
with it a week at a time, trying to focus on the individual tasks I'll have to do.
I'm headed to a peace vigil outside the Lutheran church in Bethlehem tonight. Two of my friends from a relief organization have a car and are willing to drive in and out. I'm looking forward to doing something proactive. It sounds like the next several weeks will be grim calls for response.
My friends driving the car are with World Vision. They said today that they had tried to purchase gas masks for their 70 Palestinian staff members, so they can carry on working if things get bad. "But nobody will sell them to us. Our money's no good." All Israelis are issued gas masks, as well as stocks kept on hand for tourists at hotels. Alan said that 3.2 million Palestinians have no such access to the masks. International law states that residents of an occupied territory are considered 'protected persons' and must be offered access to such protections by the occupying power. I know racism exists here, but sometimes it is difficult to deal when laid out as kick-in-the-teeth reality.
I saw the pictures in the paper today of the car which two Israeli settler security guards were traveling in when Israeli military squads mistook them for armed Palestinians, south of Hebron. It made Swiss cheese look opaque, a worse job than what the Israeli military and a Palestinian militant did jointly to the TIPH workers north of Hebron a year ago this month. There was no way anyone could have survived. I felt pretty sickened. There's a
sizeable military investigation of the mistake underway. The front page of the HaAretz Israeli newspaper said that if it had been the wrong two Palestinians mistakenly shot, it would have barely merited mention in the press, and no investigation. So sometimes I'm also surprised by the honesty of self-reproach in the news here.
In a way, I'm glad to be back in a country where I am surrounded by propaganda all the time, but it is easy to recognize as such and increasing numbers of people do recognize it and get on with life. Being home, it was hard to accept being surrounded by propaganda all the time, only very few people could recognize it as such and everyone was getting mired in it, rather than asking relevant questions. Or to sum it up, we're surrounded by
'information,' but very little news. There really seems to be no point in cable news, I've concluded from seeing about a month's worth of it. A good question to ask when viewing is, who will profit from this war? Well, ratings and advertising time make round-the-clock news coverage very lucrative. A good measure of objective news reporting is that for every military or pro-violence political stance reported on, equal time is given
to humanitarian organisations or concerns about civilian impact on every party involved. This applies not only to our conflict with Iraq, but about every conflict situation you might investigate. Another good measure is that numbers are given, not just opinions. Unfortunately, in order to get the numbers or the likely civilian impacts, you have to usually go online and do the footwork. It just doesn't seem to get hand-delivered to you over the airwaves. Maybe Amnesty International should buy spots on the Super
Bowl.
All of Palestine is under curfew and closure this week, during the Jewish festival of Purim. Outside our apartment, the Israeli kids are dressed up a day early in their costumes (these days kind of like Halloween, lots of commercial characters), while the Palestinian kids stare at them curiously. In the Old City of Jerusalem, there is a kind of coexistence (most settlements are purchased property for extraordinary sums, not attained
through force), but there is not co-community. Anyway, my teammates in Hebron told me, "Good luck getting in" to town tomorrow. If I want this trip to be convenient, I'll take the Israeli bus. Probably I'll just service it and get my bearings that way.
I also saw a news photo of Palestinians in Jenin marching with a large photo-poster of Saddam. I thought to myself, while I understand that here Sharon makes Saddam look pretty good by comparison (has committed more human rights abuses and is responsible for more civilian deaths in his career, anyway), this is not exactly quality PR.
In a way I'd kind of like to be back in Iraq. I saw the delegation update and Anne is headed that way from here tomorrow. I feel a little jealous. I have so many friends I'd like to see again. The air is different somehow there. Even though it could begin at any moment, in the meantime, people are moving about freely, life has a slightly normal pace yet. Here you feel that we are in the 'middle of it,' and no sight of the end. Anne says she
expects the war will start soon or never. I kind of feel the same way. The peace movement seems determined to continue protesting the war even once the bombs start falling. I hope they do. Last time all dissent was silenced when the war began. When I went around speaking this past month, I tried to include that it wasn't helpful to criticize the soldiers themselves. It does more harm than good--many of the soldiers themselves have said they don't want to go, and they don't have the decision making power. Even the
heads of the military have said this isn't a very wise war to be fighting. Or, to sum up another train of thought, a friend told me of a sign up in a Minnesotan cornfield: Support Our Troops--Stop the War.
I've been listening on NPR to the new trend in DC, which is to replace the word 'French' with 'Freedom'--i.e., Freedom fries, freedom toast. Since we're proposing a military occupation and half a million Iraqi casualties, I miss the humor. I thought that perhaps I might walk into McDonald's and ask for an order of 'Genocide Fries.' Of course, the fast food joints at Minneapolis airport are staffed largely with immigrants, somewhat akin to preaching to the choir. In the end, I ordered pizza, catering to my own self-interests.
Before I left, Sarah's dog Ruthie licked me on the mouth (a really gross habit of hers) while I was trying to sleep. I surmised that I'd just been unexpectedly 'Freedom kissed.' Bleh.
There's an Apache helicopter flying over my apartment and I need to go up and change the laundry around. Sometimes I think I should stop writing because it must be very depressing to read. Lots of people tell me that they don't want to write with the mundane details of their lives because it must be meaningless to me given 'my situation.' To the contrary, I live for mundane details. Please send more. Jokes are good too, but please send them to the Hebron team account, not my hotmail. That way ten people can get cheered up instead of one. I try not to send home all bad news. That's why I take the time to add upbeat observations, such as that our curiously hot pink duvet covers are probably being picked up by satellite spycams right this very instant.
Talk to you all soon,
Le Anne
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