by Tasja Dorkofikis
I felt a compulsion to either love or hate Ramallah intensely; to embrace it as my homeland or to reject it as an abject failure of a Palestinian political system replete with corruption and compromise. To feel ambivalent did not seem like an option for a place that is so hard to get into for people like me and so hard to get out of for its inhabitants. Diplomats, the United Nations and others can glide in and out; those who might possibly have an impact are not encouraged to experience its reality.
The separation barrier or The Wall surrounding Ramallah is guarded by the multi-shedded wired-up Kalandia checkpoint. The entrance to Ramallah is a sight befitting the set of a modernist Wizard of Oz or a remake of Brazil. There is a large red sign before you reach the checkpoint: “This Road leads to Area A under the Palestinian Authority. The Entrance for Israeli Citizens is Forbidden, Dangerous to Your Lives and Against Israeli Law.” To sit in cafes in the city, with names like Pronto and Café de la Ville, consuming Caesar salads and espressos, inspires a sense of banality not compatible with the knowledge of a bigger picture of incarceration. It is, however, human nature to do ordinary things in extraordinary circumstances; to make the extraordinary ordinary, and to just get on with it.
“There is no meta-message for Ramallah,” a political science lecturer friend says to me as we drive past the Ramallah Museum, which according to him leaves a lot to be desired. ”We were discussing this in class and could not come up with a meta-message for this place. Not in art, or history-”
“Could it be the non-violent resistant movements of the first Intifada?” I suggest helpfully.
“What are you talking about?”
His wife says, “Me. I am the meta-message of Ramallah.”
The more I get to understand about this businesswoman, lecturer and mother of four, who from her garden can see the red lights of new settler outposts blinking on the hillside, the more I realize that she isn’t joking.
The Qattan Foundation in Ramallah is a majestic early 20th century stone house with arched windows and a terrace, where John Berger, a former Qattan Guest House Resident, debated long into the night with the Foundation staff under hanging grapes parceled up in papery plastic bags. The offices are empty for much of the time I am there; I arrive before the Eid holiday at the end of Ramadan. Fig thieves drive up one day in a car. “Is everyone away?” they ask as I work at the outside table. “Yes everyone,” I reply to their beaming faces. They set about picking figs and bagging them up before a young man comes towards me offering a small plate of fruits with a gallantry lost many years ago in the West.
The Guest House, behind the Qattan offices, is structured like a CIA safe house, a bare concrete structure with a heavy metal door. Behind it a mobile mast straddles the hill. To the right a 10-storey building is being constructed by two men in T-shirts who, with an air of vagueness, occasionally hang on ropes and tap at it with picks. It is rumoured to belong to Mohammed Dahlan, the controversial Palestinian Authority figure (henchman, spy, murderer of Arafat, himself a victim of conspiracy?). Behind this maybe-one day-it’ll-be-a hotel looming concrete cavity is the locked Christian cemetery where the murdered American archaeologist Albert Glock (central character of Edward Fox’s Brilliant Palestine Twilight: The Murder of Dr. Glock and the Archaeology of the Holy Land) is buried. A lone mongrelly dog pads up to my door, keen on taking a place on the rug. I try to feed it lasagna from a doggy bag, sure that its doting behavior is driven by its stomach, but it couldn’t care less. The day before I leave, a dignified film-maker, with the dapper air of the Rive Gauche, saunters up the path with a see-through plastic bag of freshly chopped meat, and I understand the dog’s contempt for my offerings. A lizard pokes its head through the hole for the television aerials in to my room most evenings.
One writer or artist can occupy the Guest House at a time, for a period of up to three months. Before me was a Brazilian filmmaker who was loved by the unnamed, well-fed dog. The messages in the guestbook rage and lament, and document inspiration from Ramallah. I mull over what my entry will be, am determined not to write a word until just before the end of my two-week stay, waiting for the meta-message to strike me like a holy prophecy. This turns out to be the wrong approach, as my goal of writing three scenes a day, seeing as much as I can (including stand-up comedy by a Palestinian American comedienne with cerebral palsy, Maysoon Ziadeh, who sits down), together with the chaos and agony of my friends’ lives, ends up taking over my life, and my scrawl of “Taxi’s here, must go–” ends up being the testimony I leave the Guest House with, next to the calligraphy and care of Berger et al.
Mahmoud Abu Hashhash, responsible for the Literature Programme at the Qattan Foundation, is one of the few people with something good to say about the peace deals of the 1990s and the impact they have had on Palestinian society. He agrees with me that the upside of Oslo is that there seems to be a new era of iconoclastic writing. Writers feel freer to write about the faults in their society and their personal experiences, rather than being boxed in by the Palestinian national narrative. “Everything changed after Oslo,” Abu Hashhash says. “It both questioned the way that people dealt with themes and political issues as well as making writers more stylistically experimental.” This year 26 novels were submitted for the annual Qattan award, more than double the previous year.
I am here to write a play commissioned by BBC Radio 4 and to record,with a Marantz recorder, which I have been trained to use by my producer in London as though I am assembling a bomb, background noises or ‘Atmos.’ I have a list of atmospheric sounds that I need to collect to fit the scenes of my play.
My play follows the journey of a woman, Rasha, who comes from an old Christian Jerusalemite family, travelling back to the Old City on her one-day permit. During that journey she discovers realities about the father she adored which she would rather not know. My list of required ‘Atmos’ includes the following: (1) EXT. Quiet Jerusalem street. Close to front door. 5’00” time: 1800 (2) EXT. Communal taxi, 1 rear door closing, stationary (3) INT. Humble family home living room. 5’00” very early morning.
I learn to interpret the world through sound. I jump at a horse-drawn cart jangling down the street and put on my headphones, fiddling with sound levels; I appreciate more the lyricism here of the adaan call to prayer (none of the screaming vitriol of some of the mosques I have heard in Pakistan, Egypt and the Gulf) as well as the loudest wedding music ever. At 6 am one morning, I take my character’s journey from the village of Eizariya to Jerusalem. I had lived there when I was 22, travelling into Jerusalem each day (it took 15 minutes then, it takes over an hour now) to write pithy paragraphs on shootings for the human rights organisation where I once worked. The village of Eizariya is now a town; I can’t see the bare rooms where I lived; a town divided by the Wall which is scrawled with graffiti and blotted with the marks left when someone tried to burn an absolutely non-flammable object. The Wall is a horror that disorientates as much as it divides. In East Jerusalem the shabab youth shoot toy bullets and throw silly stones at the car my UN friend drives me around in, as they think we are from the other side. An Israeli flag the size of a billboard flutters over a house bought from a Palestinian, found shot dead days later in Jericho. There are houses taken over by settlers everywhere in East Jerusalem. Fake shrines and false archaeology. It’s an efficient, aggressive and disciplined takeover; a systematic making-ugly of all that is Palestinian.
I carry my Marantz recorder hesitantly as there are soldiers, and then I start asking shopkeepers if I can record here, there, on the street, in the church, by the underwear shop, in the garden, and by the end I am marching through the Old City from the Jewish quarter to Damascus Gate with the orange-headed mike swaddled like a baby in my arms, picking up the sounds of rice falling against brass dishes, Chinese toy dogs barking, soldiers’ radios, touts shouting about the Stations of Christ and souvenirs, the woeful singing of Filipino pilgrims, and the scratch and start of amplifiers calling the faithful to prayer against the bells of others.
Once, I am dropped at Kalandia after going for dinner in Jerusalem. It’s late. 11 pm and for some reason they have closed the checkpoint. The Israeli soldiers have the jitters (“They are always nervous,” my aunt says later). The temperature drops at night. We should all stand here, no there. Stand, wait. They call someone out of the queue randomly. You, you, man come here, I need to check your papers. I am nervous for the man pulled out and I have no vested interest. I am glad it is not me, but I am nothing but privilege in this gathering as I have a maroon document in my bag. You, you, go back. In the cars, women dressed and made-up for parties sit impatiently, children squirm in their seats, horns start beeping. There is no reason for the closure, but everyone talks as though talking enough, asking enough, showing resilience, disdain, contempt will reduce it, make us rise above it. The wall slides open and Israeli soldiers, machismo bristling out of their necks, rev their engine as their jeep drives comfortably through the man-made gateway to the other side.
Government is the #1 enemy of the people and the source of all major problems of humanity. Anarchy is the best political system. Basil Venitis, venitis@gmail.com, http://themostsearched.blogspot.com, @Venitis
UN freaks should go to hell!
Biased UN human rights investigators call on Israel to halt settlement expansion and withdraw all a million Jewish settlers from West Bank! Israel tells the biased Universal Nudnik (UN) freaks to go to hell!
The whole world is against us!
Bibi Netanyahu lectures the international community over its criticism of settlement expansion on occupied territory. Netanyahu brings a resonance in Israel, where the song "The whole world is against us" is a hit. Netanyahu vows to continue building settlements in Jerusalem, defying stupid international criticism. Netanyahu declares the Western Wall is not occupied territory, and he does not care what the Universal Nudnik (UN) has to say about it. Netanyahu points out all Israeli citizens live in the Jewish state, and the capital of the Jewish state, for three millennia, has been Jerusalem.
In 2012, the UN General Assembly awarded Palestine non-member observer state status. With this move, the Palestinians simply tore to pieces all the agreements with Israel. Netanyahu had warned that Israel would not react by sitting with its arms folded. Netanyahu has repeatedly accused corrupt Mahmoud Abbas of obstructing peace talks. Abbas has refused to negotiate unless Netanyahu and his government adhere to certain stupid preconditions, among which is a settlement freeze.
Israel has not cooperated with the probe set up by the Human Rights Council to examine the impact of settlements in the territory, including East Jerusalem. Israel says the forum has an inherent bias against it and defends its settlement policy by citing historical and Biblical links to the West Bank.
Israel's foreign ministry swiftly rejects the biased UN reports as counterproductive and unfortunate. The only way to resolve all pending issues between Israel and the Palestinians, including the settlements issue, is through direct negotiations without preconditions. Counterproductive measures, such as reports, will only hamper efforts to find a sustainable solution to the Israel-Palestinian conflict.
About three hundred settlements in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, have been established since 1967 and they hold a million settlers. UN asserts the settlements impede Palestinian access to water and farmland. UN laments the settlements are leading to a creeping annexation that prevents the establishment of a contiguous and viable Palestinian state and undermines the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination.
Israel always faces hypocrisy and a biased rush to judgment
Israel follows nuclear opacity, a great deterrent against its malevolent neighbors. Erdogan threatens Israel again. Ankara's condemnation of the only longstanding democracy in the Middle East is always swift and unequivocal. The Arab League always engages in a frenzy of denunciation, even before all the facts are established. Israel is the UN's favorite whipping boy. In the past four years, three quarters of the resolutions passed by the UN Human Rights Council (HRC) condemned Israel. Israel always faces hypocrisy and a biased rush to judgment.
A bastion of freedom and Graecoroman culture
Israel is a bastion of freedom and Graecoroman culture, an economic miracle, and a leader in science and technology. Israel is the only free country in a region dominated by Arab monarchies, theocracies and dictatorships. It is only the citizens of Israel, Arabs and Jews alike, who enjoy the right to express their views, to criticize their government, to form political parties, to publish private newspapers, to hold free elections.
When Islamists deny the most basic freedoms to their own people, it is obscene for them to start claiming that Israel is violating the Palestinians' rights. All Muslims who are genuinely concerned with human rights should, as their very first action, seek to oust their own despotic rulers and adopt the type of freesociety that characterizes Israel.
Land-for-peace is a repugnant formula for Israel's self-immolation. The right of a civilized nation to self-defense against its barbarous enemies is a moral absolute. It should not be surrendered in a vain attempt to appease the initiators of war. It is a moral perversion to demand that Israel give back the very land it captured in the process of defending itself against wars launched by the Arab aggressors.
Netanyahu notes the days when bulldozers uprooted Jews are behind us, not in front of us. A million Jews live in more than 100 settlements built in the West Bank and East Jerusalem since Israel occupied the area in 1967. Netanyahu has long championed settlements, but has also said he would be prepared to make painful concessions to non-settled parts of West Bank.
Netanyahu has not uprooted any settlements, he has expanded them. Nobody has any lessons to give Netanyahu about love for the Land of Israel or commitment to Zionism and the settlements. Tenders and approvals for construction in East Jerusalem have reached record levels under Netanyahu's government. Isolated settlements accounted for nearly 40% of all new constructions, nearly double that of previous years.
When Israel ended its occupation of Gaza, it did not impose a blockade. Indeed it left behind agricultural facilities in the hope that the newly liberated Gaza Strip would become a peaceful and productive area. Instead, Hamas seized control over Gaza and engaged in acts of warfare against Israel. These acts of warfare featured 10,000 rockets directed at Israeli civilians. This was not only an act of warfare, it was a war crime.
Israel responded to the rockets by declaring a blockade, the purpose of which was to assure that no rockets, or other material that could be used for making war against Israeli civilians, was permitted into Gaza. Israel allowed humanitarian aid through its checkpoints. There was never a humanitarian crisis in Gaza, merely a shortage of certain goods that would end if the rocket attacks ended.
The Palestinians never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity!
Palestinian behavior was captured so well by Abba Eban's phrase that the Palestinians never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity. There is a tendency by the international community to encourage the very behavior that has caused the Palestinians such heartache.
What is particularly ironic about this, whether it manifested itself in diplomatic resolutions at the UN, media coverage, or boycotts, is that all of this has taken place under the rubric of helping the Palestinians. If the Palestinian leadership has been the worst enemy of the Palestinian people, the international community and international media, in the name of helping the Palestinians, are not far behind.
A history of holocausts
Persecution has driven the Jews nearly to extinction. So many murdered, so many forcibly converted to Christianity and Islam, so many choosing the dubious path of assimilation as a defense against hatred and isolation. The Jews of today are a remnant of a remnant. It wasn’t merely the German Holocaust, but a history of holocausts, that brought the Jewish people to such an infinitesimal position.
The Spanish Inquisition was not motivated by religious feeling, but by racial hatred. Conversion wasn’t enough to save the Jews. The Spaniards hated the idea of Jewish blood mixing with their own. The Inquisition presaged the Holocaust. Physical acts of antisemitism are always preceded by years of hate-filled rhetoric meant to desensitize the world to the coming slaughter.
Netanyahu would never sell out Israeli interests for a Nobel Peace Prize
Benjamin Netanyahu is the only Israeli politician today who could deliver the majority of Israel’s Jewish population to a painful compromise with the Palestinians. He is also one of the few whose endorsement of a deal between Tehran and Washington would allay the concerns of even more hawkish Israelis. The average Israeli trusts that Netanyahu would not sell out their interests for a Nobel Peace Prize.
Disgusting pictures of Palestinians celebrating 9/11
I will never forget the disgusting pictures of Palestinians celebrating on 9/11. That was enough to enhance my support for Israel. Israel is a beacon of freedom in an unfree region, a beacon of life in a place of darkness. If Israel falls, the West falls. Mothers in the West can sleep safely because Israeli mothers at night worry about their sons in the army. Their fight is our fight. We should support it. Israel is, indeed, a vital outpost of Graecoroman civilization. That is why Islam conditions the faithful to hate the Jewish state and to view its destruction as an imperative. It is our duty to stand with Israel.
Squandering the taxpayers' hard-earned money, UN-funded Palestinian NGOs brainwash kids for martyrdom! The Burj Luq-Luq Community Center and Society performs puppet shows for children in East Jerusalem, telling kids to put down the cigarette and pick up a machine gun to fight the Jewish enemy!
The kids learn that while smoking cigarettes is bad, the smoking barrel of a gun is good! The puppets scream Jerusalem doesn't need men who hold cigarettes. It needs men who hold machine guns! The puppets then break into songs, glorifying martyrdom: Jerusalem, we are coming, Jerusalem, the time of death has arrived. Jerusalem, we will not surrender to the enemies or be humiliated! The UN-funded Palestinian children's magazine Zayzafouna published an article written by a teenage girl who recounts a dream about Adolf Hitler, who told her he killed Jews because they spread destruction all over the world!
The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion is a classic in paranoid racist literature
Palestinian students are brainwashed with false conspiracy theories. Most people believe the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, a classic in paranoid racist literature. Taken by the gullible as the confidential minutes of a Jewish conclave convened in the last years of the nineteenth century, this hoax has been heralded by antisemites as proof that Jews are plotting to take over the world. Since its contrivance around the turn of the century by the Czarist secret police has taken root in bigoted frightened minds around the world.
The Protocols spells out the alleged secret plans of Jewish leaders seeking to attain world domination. It represents the most notorious political hoax of the last two centuries. Although thoroughly discredited, the document is still being used to stir up antisemitic hatred. The world-control myth was actually lifted from a 19th century French political satire in which the alleged plotters weren’t even Jewish!
Antisemite is anyone who senses a pervasive, worldwide Jewish conspiracy or who holds the Jews responsible for all bad things that transpire among nations. Anyone who denies Israel's right to exist, demonizes it or is prepared to accept its annihilation. Anyone who makes plump comparisons with Nazis to condemn Israeli policies.
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