The first Israeli review (in English) of Our Way to Fight has just been published online in Challenge magazine:  http://www.challenge-mag.com/en/article__289/laying_the_groundwork_for_change.

It’s thoughtful and perceptive. Please pass on the link to anyone you think might be interested.

The review is also on the Challenge magazine Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Challenge-Online-Magazine/121389134601913.

I understand that you can add a ‘Like’ to the item on the Facebook page.

Our Way to Fight goes forth…

Once again Jawad Siyam is under house arrest in Silwan, a crowded Palestinian neighbourhood in East Jerusalem.

On a steep slope that descends from the walled Old City to the floor of Wadi Al-Hilweh – Kidron Valley to the Israelis – the village is under escalating siege by the powerful settlers’ organization Elad, backed by the governments of Jerusalem and Israel.  In addition to the usual tactics for displacing Palestinians, Elad has introduced a new twist here, a massive archeological dig under the village to occupy it from below.

For several years Jawad Siyam has been a leader in the villagers’ non-violent movement to retain their homes and their shrinking land.  Continuously harassed by municipal police and the Shabak (Israeli secret police), he was placed under house arrest for three months earlier this year, accused of assaulting a Palestinian neighbour.  Since an Israeli judge ordered Jawad released for lack of evidence, the police have re-arrested him twice (most recently this week) on the same charge.

I met Jawad Siyam last autumn during an alternative archeological tour of Silwan, led by Israeli archeologist Yonathan Mizrachi.  Yonathan and other archeologists dispute Elad’s methods and findings in Silwan, and especially its motives.  (See chapter 8, ‘Facts under the ground,’ in Our Way to Fight.)

Part way through the tour, Yonathan ushered us into the protest tent — a circle of plastic chairs under a canvas canopy in a dusty vacant lot.  There he introduced us to Jawad Siyam.

“Welcome to Silwan,” said Jawad, in a quiet assertion of hospitality and homeland.  “By the way,” he warned with a trace of smile, “you are on camera here.  They want to know who comes to the tent.  We are watched all the time, they have cameras everywhere. Elad has a huge camera over the village, which sees everything.  We call it the Guantanamo camera.”

Jawad Siyam has lived here since he was born in 1968, in what was then a rural village. His family grew vegetables for market, raised chickens and sheep, and harvested olives and lemons from their trees.

“Also we used to sell little things to tourists,” says Jawad.  “This is how I paid for my education, but they don’t allow that anymore.  We can’t even sell our own vegetables in the shops here.  It’s a very bad situation economically for us.”  Before the Israeli occupation, Silwan was one of the wealthiest villages in the area.  Now it has become one of the poorest neighbourhoods in East Jerusalem.

Nothing Palestinian is secure here, neither below ground or above.  Elad plans to turn the lot where we are sitting into a parking lot, for the convenience of tourists that flock to their archeological theme park, the City of David.  “We said why a parking lot when we don’t have schools, sport clubs, or a community centre?  The owner of this land said he would give me license to build three floors here, a school or whatever, and he would keep the first floor for parking.  The municipal authorities refused permission.  So we went to court.  We won – for now.  But then the police came to harass people.  Every day they arrest someone.  But when the settlers take our olives and we call the police, nothing happens.”

Jawad Siyam continues to organize for the survival of his village, inch by inch, past and present, above and below the surface.  With co-workers he overcame innumerable obstacles to create a small community centre.  It offers classes in art, music, English and Hebrew, a library, a summer day camp, and simply a place to meet and talk in relative safety.  Jawad also co-founded the Wadi Hilweh Information Center, a vital source of up-to-date information from the village.

For this he is under arrest, again.

In the protest tent I watched Jawad and Yonathan seated side-by-side, explaining to us how their worlds connect, above and below the surface of Silwan.  I saw a Palestinian and an Israeli who have become allies, friends.  Under different circumstances, this is how things could work here.

But Jawad’s parting comment reminded me how very different circumstances would have to be, here in Silwan and throughout this land.  He said, “The problem for us in Silwan is that someone is coming here not to be my neighbour, but to replace me.”

(For updates on Jawad’s current status and the siege of Silwan, visit the Wadi-Hilweh Information Centre.)

On April 4, 2011, Israeli actor and theatre director Juliano Mer-Khamis was murdered in Jenin, a city in the occupied West Bank.  He was 53.

According to Israeli news reports, Jenin police chief Mohammed Tayyim said that Mer-Khamis was shot five times by “Palestinian militants.”  Tayyim added that Palestinian Authority police have made no arrests, but will continue to investigate.

Since 2006, when Juliano Mer-Khamis opened a theatre for young people in the Jenin refugee camp, he has risked a great deal — everything, as it turns out — for his fervent belief in the life-transforming power of art.

The opening chapter in Our Way to Fight explores the vibrant, dangerous work of the Freedom Theatre and its new acting school.

It emerged from the passion for freedom of Juliano’s mother, Arna Mer.  Born in 1929 to Jewish parents in Palestine, she served in an elite brigade fighting for a Jewish homeland in the 1948 war, then fought for Palestinian freedom until she died of cancer in 1995.  Following the 1967 war, Arna Mer-Khamis (by then she had married Saliba Khamis, the Palestinian secretary of the Israeli Communist Party) was imprisoned several times for protesting the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza.

During the first intifada Arna started a project to advocate for Palestinian children held in Israeli prisons, and to provide education after the military occupiers shut down Palestinian schools.  When she won the 1993 Right Living Award (a Swedish people’s alternative to the Nobel Peace Prize), she used the proceeds to establish the Stone Theatre in Jenin, working with her son Juliano.

In the 2002 invasion, Israeli army bulldozers demolished the theatre; several former acting students of Arna’s died in the resistance, and others were imprisoned.  Arna’s life and theirs are featured in the moving documentary Arna’s Children, co-directed by Juliano Mer-Khamis.

In 2005 Juliano left a prominent acting and directing career in Israel, returned to Jenin, and worked with a team of Palestinian, Israeli and Swedish volunteers to build the Freedom Theatre.

It provides young people of both sexes – a conscious, even provocative choice in a male-dominated society – with a safe space to express themselves, and to develop skills, self-knowledge and confidence through art-work.  Its ambitious program includes theatre, dance, circus, theatre training, drama therapy, film and video, photography, English classes, an online magazine, a summer camp, festivals and field trips.

All this has endured and grown under the suffocating pall of military occupation. Though Jenin is nominally under control of the Palestinian Authority, Israeli army incursions continue.  People in Jenin told me they’re relieved when the armoured jeeps show up only once a week instead of every second night.  Sometimes the soldiers shoot, and nearly always they arrest someone, usually someone young, the Freedom Theatre’s primary constituency.

I walked through the refugee camp with Mustafa Staiti, a talented young film-maker who teaches at the Freedom Theatre.  Our walk concluded at a small graveyard, where we stood in the welcome shade of an olive tree.  The graves follow the slope of the land, descending in a series of shallow terraces.

“From that step down,” Mustafa explained, “those people were all killed during the Israeli invasion, sixty-four of them.  Twenty are fighters, the rest civilians.  At first all of them were buried in one hole, there was no time to do anything else.  But then later they had to be re-buried so their families could communicate with them.  Some of them are in pieces, some of them burned.”  He let out a soft sigh.  I heard it only because I was standing by his side.  “Up there,” he concluded, pointing at another terrace, “it’s people killed since the invasion.”

Not everyone in the Jenin refugee camp is a fan of the Freedom Theatre.  The theatre’s high-energy adaptation of George Orwell’s famous novel, Animal Farm, played to full houses every night.  But it also touched some very sensitive nerves.  Though originally about the corruption of revolutionaries in Stalinist Russia, when transferred to the context of Palestine it raised provocative questions about the current Palestinian leadership, and collaboration with the Israeli occupiers.

One night in April 2009, someone set fire to the main door of the Freedom Theatre. The door was destroyed, but apparently it prevented the fire from spreading into the building.  Three weeks earlier, a previous arson attempt on the theatre had failed; that same night in Jenin, the Al Kamandjati Music Centre was destroyed by fire.

In time it may become clear who murdered Juliano Mer-Khamis, and why.  Or it may not.  After both arson attacks the Palestinian Authority police were informed, but to date no suspects have been identified.

Still, the Freedom Theatre lives.  When it outgrew its rented premises, land was purchased and construction of a new theatre is now underway.  Eventually it will include the largest stage in the West Bank, seating for up to 400 people, four workshop spaces, and offices.

In 2009, more than 16,000 young people took part in activities at the Theatre.

Last year, Juliano Mer-Khamis wrote: “We feel the burden of responsibility toward our future.  The political future of the Occupied West Bank is not clear and bears dangerous currents of social and political unrest.  Therefore our main task is to work closely with our community and to deepen our roots in the area.  The Freedom Theatre gives space to all strands of political thought, encouraging pluralism, respect for the other and free expression.  We believe that these values, which form the foundations to our work, will not be easily shaken by future political earthquakes.”

In this short video, Juliano makes an eloquent plea for support, essential to completing the new Freedom Theatre.

Live theatre.  There could be no better tribute to Juliano Mer-Khamis.

On 21 March 2011, an Israeli military court sentenced Ajuad Zidan to 20 more days of imprisonment for his refusal to serve in the army.

When his current sentence ends, once again he will be ordered to report for his compulsory three-year military service.  Each time he refuses, he is sentenced again and returned to prison.  The current prison term is his seventh.

Ajuad Zidan, 18, is a Palestinian member of the Druze religious community, from the town of Beit Jann in northern Israel.  Unlike most other Palestinian citizens of Israel, members of the Druze community are conscripted into the Israeli army.

Ajuad is a conscientious objector to military service.  He told the press, “The loneliness of the prison cell is one thousand times better than standing in front of my people while pointing a gun at them, or imposing a curfew on them.”  He also confirmed his refusal to carry weapons or to be part of any military force.

In Israel military conscription is hard to resist.  Ruth Hiller, an Israeli mother and a co-founding member of New Profile (see below*) describes the induction process as a funnel that conditions Israelis from birth, and pours thousands of young people into the military, year after year.  She explains, “The formal induction process starts when you’re sixteen, when your name – your identity really – moves from the Ministry of the Interior to the Ministry of Defence.  At that point your child is not your child anymore, but the state’s.”

New Profile seeks to counter this pervasive militarization of all aspects of life by building a more civil society.  Their motto: Civil-izing Israel.  One of the organization’s primary functions is to support Israeli citizens like Ajuad Zidan who resist the military funnel.

In a chapter of Our Way to Fight, several young Israelis — shministim, refusers — speak freely to me about the life journeys that led them to refuse, their experience of prison, and their continuing resistance to militarism and the Israeli occupation of Palestine.

Ajuad Zidan needs and deserves our support.  Seven consecutive prison terms is an especially brutal punishment; more usually the military releases conscientious objectors quietly after three to four prison terms, hoping to limit public scrutiny of what they are resisting, and why.

New Profile* requests that as many people as possible write support letters to Ajuad, also letters to the military authorities and the media requesting his release as a conscientious objector.  Addresses are provided in this appeal from New Profile.

Please pass this message on to others.

One refuser told me that the support letters she received in military prison were life-lines.  “They remind you why are you doing this. In prison the authorities want you to think it doesn’t mean anything.  Then you get so many letters, and it reminds you that what you are doing matters to someone.  Maybe it makes people think, maybe it makes a small change.”

* To read about New Profile, and recent attempts to shut it down, see the chapter Civil-izing Israel, in Our Way to Fight.

Earlier I wrote that, with Our Way to Fight now out in the world (though not until May in the US), I would use this blog primarily to post news related to people and organizations that you’ll meet in the book.  My goal is to extend electronically the range of the finite entity that is a book, in other words to create a sort of open book.

The first such item is this news that arrived this morning from Gila Norich of Physicians for Human Rights – Israel:

“I’m excited to report that for the first time in over 18 months, Physicians for Human Rights-Israel has received clearance to enter Gaza to provide medical services. PHR-Israel’s medical delegation will spend the next 48 hours at Al Shifa’ Hospital in Gaza City seeing patients, training physicians, and expressing solidarity with our Palestinian counterparts living under nearly four years of closure and ongoing movement and access restrictions.

PHR-Israel’s Mobile Clinics Coordinator Salah Haj Yihyeh (more on him below*) organized the visit just last night upon receiving official permission from the Army’s coordination office.  Joining him are three senior physicians, Dr. Mustafa Yassin, orthopedist, Dr. Abdallah Burak, and Dr Rafiq Masalha, both neurologists.

Despite monthly requests for over a year, PHR-Israel has been repeatedly banned from carrying out its mobile clinic in the the Gaza Strip.

Between January 2008- June 2009, PHR-Israel was permitted to enter and successfully carried out 13 physician delegations during that time.

Our professional cooperation on the eve of the December 2008 Israeli offensive led senior medical officials in Gaza to turn to us for help in obtaining medications and medical supplies needed to care for the injured during the attacks.  In response, PHR-Israel released an appeal for donations to which hundreds of our Israeli and international friends generously responded, enabling us to send seven dispatches of medications and supplies, including intensive care unit beds, surgical equipment, rods for orthopedic procedures and other emergency surgical equipment totaling nearly 400,000 USD.  Following Operation Cast Lead, PHR’s requests for medical delegations to enter Gaza were summarily rejected, we believe due to the ongoing targeting of the human rights community and our work.

We hope this visit to Gaza signals a new moment, and that the presence of our doctors in Gaza will enable us to better understand the effects of the ongoing closure on public health and secure livelihoods in the Strip.  We hope as well that the medical information and professional observations released by Israeli physicians following this visit will influence the local public and policy makers to question the State’s Gaza policy, a policy which condemns 1.5 million people to the confines of daily collective punishment.”

* More on Salah Haj Yihyeh, mobile clinics coordinator, from the chapter on PHR-Israel in Our Way to Fight:

I travelled with a van-load of Israeli medical personnel and supplies to the PHR mobile clinic in the Jenin refugee camp.  At the military checkpoint we watched Salah negotiate with the soldiers to let us enter the occupied West Bank.  He is fluent in Hebrew, his second language since childhood.  To the nurse seated beside me I commented: “To do this kind of negotiation he has to be quite skilled in diplomacy.”

“Oh,” she replied, “he has to be skilled in many things.”

Born in the year of the Six-Day War, 1967, Salah Haj Yihyeh grew up a refugee in the town of Taybeh, his grandparents and parents having been expelled from their own village in 1948.   He explains, “Every year on Nakba day – for Israelis the day of independence, but for us the day we lost our land – we go to what was my grandmother’s house in a village that is now Kibbutz Yakum near Netanya.  All the village land was confiscated in 1948 by the state of Israel.  My family still have the documents that prove they own this land, but it means nothing.”

Salah is a citizen of Israel.  I asked him how he defines his national identity.  “I’m Palestinian,” he replied, in a quiet, even voice that I imagine well suited to negotiating with soldiers.  “Ever since I was born, I’ve seen myself as Palestinian, and it is very important for me that my children grow up with this national identity.  We are Palestinians who live in Israel, but still, we are Palestinians.  This will continue.”

I asked Salah if he could see the occupation ending in his lifetime.  He shook his head.  “It won’t end as long as Israel continues to deceive the international community into believing that it is the Palestinians who oppose peace, even though when you look at what happens on the ground, you see that it is Israel, whether governed by the left or the right, which continues the occupation and gives no sign of any willingness to give up the occupied territories in order to achieve peace. Even when you have an international court decision that the separation barrier is illegal, even then nothing happens – quite the contrary, Israel continues to build whatever it wants in the occupied territories.  The Obama administration has failed to achieve any progress.  And even if tomorrow international pressure pushed Israel into a corner, I fear that Israel would engage in some sort of provocation, maybe start a third intifada, for example over the holy places in Jerusalem, to divert attention from everything it is doing to maintain the occupation.  This is why I am pessimistic.”

Recently the Israeli Knesset (parliament) approved a measure to investigate Israeli human rights organizations that criticize government policies.  Physicians for Human Rights-Israel is one of the targets.

Even so, Salah Haj Yiyheh and his colleagues continue to work as if a just peace is still possible.  What sustains him?  “I believe the work PHR does can still provide some solidarity, some sort of comfort that we are able to work together in this very depressing situation.  This is one of the few things we can do to show that perhaps a bridge to peace can still be built, even though it is small, narrow and weak.”

(Excerpt from A drop in the sea, chapter 9, Our Way to Fight.)

For more information on PHR-Israel, see their website at http://www.phr.org.il/default.asp?PageID=4.