Our Fears, Our Future?

Those who have jobs are afraid of losing them.
Those who do not have a job are afraid of never finding one.
Those who are not afraid of hunger are afraid of food.
Drivers are afraid to walk, and pedestrians are afraid of getting run
over.
Democracy is afraid to remember and language is afraid to say.
Civilians are afraid of the military, and the military is afraid of
running out of weapons.
Weapons are afraid of running out of wars.
It is a time of fear.
Women fear the violence of men and men fear women without fear.
Fear of thieves, fear of the police, fear of doors without locks, of
time without clocks, of children without television.
Fear of nights without sleeping pills and of days without waking pills.
Fear of the multitude, fear of solitude.
Fear of what has been and of what may be.
Fear of dying, fear of living.

The Global Fear, Eduardo Galeano

Views from a Hotel in Bethlehem

Bethlehem is a most Christian city, visited by hundreds of thousands of pilgrims and tourists every year. Many of these, perhaps most, do not realize, do not recognize that Bethlehem is also a walled in city, slowly shrinking in size and robustness due to land grabs by Israel and Israeli settlers. I had the opportunity of spending three days off, living in a hotel not far from the Wall, able to view the Barrier in its many aspects from my window. Following are some remarks and photos, which convey the effect of the structure on the observer.

The Gate to Hell?

Palestinians Walled In!

Palestinian Olive Groves Walled Out!

Under Constant Observation

How do the walled in Palestinians then cope with this oppressive environment, the daily experience of being caged in, in a most Christian city, outsiders in their own land, unseen by the real outsiders? They paint their hopes and tribulations on the Barrier, crying out to the visitors to help them, succor them.

Peace in Captivity

Liberty in Mourning

Collateral Damage

Face to Face

Another Way of Celebrating Christmas

 

Captive Christmas Greetings

 

Not Meant Cynically

Music School for Children in Silwan

I met Gregor, a young musician from Frankfurt, who lives in Ramallah and teaches music at the Barenboim-Said Foundation and also in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, for a walk around the walls of the Old City on our way to Silwan. He introduced me to the Silwan Ta’aze Music School in Silwan, Wadi Hilweh area. There we met Danny Felsteiner and his wife Fabienne van Eck. They instruct about 100 local children the basics of music, theory, rhythm and dance, with simple objects and classical instruments. I participated in 2 x 45-minute classes with the younger children, aged 5 to about 12, and joined in the various exercises. Danny played the guitar, Gregor his very impressive flute, and Fabienne danced and sang – all in Arabic, of which I understood nothing. But it was great fun being fully accepted by the children. The school teaches piano, daf, violin, cello, oud, guitar and darbuka/tabla; the instruments are lent to the children, who are really eager to participate in the program.

The children listen intently during rhythm exercises.

Danny and Gregor.

Dancing with the children.

The efforts of the music school are supported by the Dutch Stiching Prelude Foundation, Amsterdam „creating playgrounds in the middle east“, which was founded by the couple.The school is also financed by the Dutch “Kinderpostzegels”, an organization which sells „stamps“ door-to-door in Holland as donations to the school. The music school is part of the Madaa Silwan Creative Center, established in 2007, which offers subsidized courses and classes for children and youth in music, art, theater, dabke (Palestinian traditional dance) and languages.

 

 

 

 

Erläuterung zum Banner

Die drei Fotos im Banner habe ich im Oktober  letztes Jahr in Jerusalem aufgenommen. Sie stellen zwei typische Erreignisse dar.

Ein Tränengasattacke durch die IDF im Qualandia Check Point, mit einer Kollgein war ich auch dabei.

Das Ergebniss einer Hausdemolition in Ost-Jerusalem, Beit Hanina.

Es bleibt nur der Hausrat übrig, um an das bisherige Familienleben zu erinnern.

Before I Leave

As I will not be leaving for Jerusalem until October 4, 2011, this site is still under construction.

My mission in the Jerusalem and the OPT, under the auspices of the EAPPI, is to accompany Palestinians and Israelis in their non-violent actions and to carry out concerted advocacy efforts to end the occupation. Participants in the program monitor and report violations of human rights and international humanitarian law, support acts of non-violent resistance alongside local Palestinians and Israeli peace activists, offer protection through non-violent presence, engage in public policy advocacy and, in general, stand in solidarity with all those struggling for a just peace in the region.

As an introduction to the theme of „words against walls“ I find the poem by Robert Frost as very apposite:

MENDING WALL

Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,

That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,

And spills the upper boulders in the sun,

And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.

The work of hunters is another thing:

I have come after them and made repair

Where they have left not one stone on a stone,

But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,

To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,

No one has seen them made or heard them made,

But at spring mending-time we find them there.

I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;

And on a day we meet to walk the line

And set the wall between us once again.

We keep the wall between us as we go.

To each the boulders that have fallen to each.

And some are loaves and some so nearly balls

We have to use a spell to make them balance:

‚Stay where you are until our backs are turned!‘

We wear our fingers rough with handling them.

Oh, just another kind of out-door game,

One on a side. It comes to little more:

There where it is we do not need the wall:

He is all pine and I am apple orchard.

My apple trees will never get across

And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.

He only says, ‚Good fences make good neighbors‘.

Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder

If I could put a notion in his head:

‚Why do they make good neighbors? Isn’t it

Where there are cows?

But here there are no cows.

Before I built a wall I’d ask to know

What I was walling in or walling out,

And to whom I was like to give offence.

Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,

That wants it down.‘ I could say ‚Elves‘ to him,

But it’s not elves exactly, and I’d rather

He said it for himself. I see him there

Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top

In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.

He moves in darkness as it seems to me~

Not of woods only and the shade of trees.

He will not go behind his father’s saying,

And he likes having thought of it so well

He says again, „Good fences make good neighbors.“

(Text nach: R.F.: Promises to keep. 2002. S. S. 21f.)

Personally, I am of the opinion that all messianic and apocalyptic movements, messianic expectations, whatever their origin, are both dynamic and dangerous. Dynamic because they may energize and motivate the deprived, marginalized and dispossessed (to improve and change their current situations). Dangerous because the „elected“ members of the movement consider themselves as the sole bearers of an unique, absolute and incorrigible knowledge – especially devastating in the attempted realization of this secret wisdom in real historical time.

I may very well be confronted with such movements in Israel and Palestine.

Pertinent in a more political sense is the following quote from Daniel Defoe, which refers to the land enclosures in England during the 17^th century. It expresses an anti-capitalist sentiment equally as relevant to the current Middle East situation. All of the globalized and neo-liberal western powers (including the USA and the EU – with Germany calling the tune) follow their own scripts in dealing with the Israel-Palestine conflict, and all seem reluctant to press for a serious solution. They continue to supply arms to all of the (conflicting) neighboring countries to support their own shaky economies and are deeply involved in “private” or “research” projects in the region. I leave it to the reader to follow-up on this line of thought, as it will not often be part of my  monitoring activities in Jerusalem and the OPT.

The very lands we all along enjoyed

They ravaged from the people they destroyed

‘Tis all invasion, usurpation all . . .

‘Tis all by fraud and force that we possess

And length of time can make no crime the less . . .

Religion’s always on the strongest side.

(From: Defoe, Jure Divino [1706], quoted in Christopher Hill, Liberty Against the Law [1996])

Please read the disclaimer section, as this blog is an expression of my own opinions and description of my personal observations and does not reflect the official positions of EAPPI or the WCC or their supporting organizations.

My family has supported me immeasurably during the run up to my departure and my son has done all of the working installing this blog.