[-empyre-] images hard to watch

Mon Nov 10 02:18:58 EST 2014

Dear Pia, many thanks for sharing your stories of your stay in
Palestine, in the occupied territories. And I am a bit apalled you
never saw any terror or killings (for me the checkpoints ARE terror).
By the way here it's a link to an extraordinary documental film about
Checkpoint, directed by Shoav Shamir, an Israeli director,
http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/checkpoint/

I come to Jenin the last day of the Jenin battle, when the Israeli
army left the town after ten days of besieging and closure, several
dead, many wounded and an enormous destruction, a Palestine ground
zero,

www.ceciliaparsberg.se/jenin

At the morgue we saw toddlers killed by shrapnel and the calcinated
rests of a doctor killed in his own ambulance.

Next year we come to Palestine at well and we share beds and rooms
with Rachel Corrie one week before she was killed. My friend Cecilia
Parsberg went back to Rafah to see the dead body of Rachel and made a
film, to Rachel, http://vimeo.com/93608273

Palestine was for me after being direct involved as a victim of our
dictatorship in Uruguay at the 70:s as a direct reproduction of our
process, it was the same jails, tortures, feeling of frustration and
dispair. But it was also hope, struggle, resistence.

I mean maybe it's the key to all our discussions here, the human being
unbelievable capacity of resistance, we resist terror, blind killings,
mayhem, massacres, genocides, but we resist, they kill our children
they rape us but we resist they burn our orchards and put salt on our
earth as Rome did with Carthago but we resist.

Ana

On Sun, Nov 9, 2014 at 7:56 AM, Pia Holenstein <pia.holenstein at gmail.com> wrote:
> ----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
>
> Dear friends
>
> Johannes asked me to tell you some of my impressions from staying in the Occupied Palestinian territories as a human rights observer. Which I find hard to fit into your discussion. But let’s go.
>
> While I never experienced open terror and killings directly, I know now something of the ever underlying carpet of terror, fear, and desperation, like a sticky juice of this-is-what-it-is-like-since-always oppressing the private and professional life, childhood and their future.
>
> I witnessed diverse incidents and examples of a life under constant oppression and it took some time to explain to myself what it might implicate to a people.
>
> For the ones who know the situation, just skip the following. It is tiring to recount it, but necessary to know the impression.
>
> Imagine getting up in the mornings at 02.00 in order to catch a taxi to bring you on slow unending streets (while there are direct roads close by that you are not allowed to use; you get 6 months of imprisonment for being caught driving on an Apartheid road.) to a Checkpoint. Checkpoints only for people of your “race”, run by private security firms. They have the possibility to test their equipment for years and and sell to other regions in the world: To secure mines and other spots from enraged people or to keep immigrants and refugees away.
>
> The Checkpoint opens at 04.00 (why are you not allowed to travel before or stay outside for the nights?). There are hundreds of rules of what you have to have and to do in order to get through – a special permit for this place and time, issued for 6 months – fingerprint-check - not more than say 300 grams of food for lunch – no thermos-bottle etc., but complying with all of this is never sufficient to pass. On the other side, if they let you through this day, there are buses; some weeks ago a bill passed that stops Palestinians from using Israeli buses. But there is nothing else, because they are on the occupied ground (still in their own territory, but taken over by settlers), where they are completely at the mercy of the illegal inhabitants. Now they are here, on this side of the wall, for a reasen, to work. The employer is Israeli, and he can refuse the worker from one day to the other. Then there is no permit any more, no work, no income.
>
> Unnecessary to point out that the permits are not given to young men and taken away from fathers whenever one of their sons has been arrested – arrested for no reason mostly.
>
> Or the farmers with own land, that has been taken over when the wall was built . Nobody can dispute that the land is theirs, but they are refused access, sometimes completely, some may go through a gate a certain time in mornings and evenings, but many are allowed to go and see their olive or fruit trees – which make the income for all the family -  just a few days a year.
>
> We watched the “rightfulness” of these passages, whether people are harrassed – which is the case very often – or not. But how should we content with having “smooth” passages through a wall that is illegally there in order to suffocate the people and make them leave or die, to allow the occupier to take it over?
>
> We watched children, being intimidated and harrassed on their way to school, every day, but even worse on exam days. Soldiers arresting one night twenty young and older men out of their beds, blindfolding, handcuffing, throwing them in the jeeps. (And releasing them in the morning, because it was just a military training).
>
> And what of ten army vehicles invading one morning  an autonomous Palestinian town (built up areas are not officially open to Israel army like the rural areas), throwing sound bombs and tear gas into every school?
>
> When the three yeshiva-students were captured and murdered, the army had no restraint any more – though I had not expected before that it could be worse – and invaded every house and school and demolished whatever they choose. And arrested whoever they liked. People knew that they are shot by any move they did, insecurity was at its peak. What I did not really judge right when I saw it first was the blocking of the narrow Palestinian streets by the Israeli army. But after some time you realized, that one blocked tunnel blocked the whole region from every movement: It – and its repetions - strangles economic life, education, professional development, and civil social life, of course. And this is the design.
>
> ***
>
> I should like to tell you of some aspects you might not have realized, even if you heard about the bombing and blockade of Gaza, the “targeted” assassinations and demolishions of the houses of suspects and their families.
>
> There was a marathon runner from Gaza who was prevented from taking part in international competitions. Because he was not eligible to leave Gaza, Israel said. And this was right, but it shows, that roughly no man under fifty is ever allowed to leave Gaza.
>
> You probably did not notice that there is a great hope of the Palestinian youth, a young singer called Muhammad Assaf, who won the “Arab Voice”-competition in 2013. He looks like Justin Bieber and has a very soft and comforting sound, and girls and adults all love him. He grew up in a refugee camp in Gaza and was made Ambassador of Peace 2013. Josef Blatter seems to have invited him to sing at the opening of the world cup. And there is already a song, recorded for the event, in February 2014 it was all ready for this event.
>
> And then you did not hear any more of him. The invitation was retracted, but nobody noticed. I heard, Shakira refused to sing in solidarity with Assaf. But you don’t find anything about the whole proceedings in the internet. Entries in Wikipedia end with 2013.
>
> World Cup 2014 in Palestine: There are no screens showing the games. Not on the streets, not inside the cafés, not even in the hotels of East Jerusalem, the part of Jerusalem left to get ruined to be taken over in due time. Yes, there were ways, Israeli channels were being adapted, some managed to get very expensive Arab channels. But most Palestinians just had their everyday suffering and never heard of what the rest of the world was enjoying. I asked the boys in a town, if they liked football. Yes, they do. But their only football field is not accessible, taken by the Israeli army for training.
>
> **
>
> I try to tell what it felt like when being closer to the hot spots of danger and violence. It is a moment, there are pictures and voices, anger, stress, and fear.  You may know more of the affected people, see more vatieties of the acting, exercing power. You feel the tension. And you may discern the difference in the same place when there is terror or when it’s (more) calm.
>
> There is a lot going on in this society that we were not able to notice, about corruption, collaboration, internal disputes. I tried to gather as much as possible. But even on the „ground“, as a rule with little exeptions, you are never actually and directly there when it happens, or you see a single moment, a spot, one incident, without being able to connect it to a whole. In short – you know even less what is going on or why, than a distant, well-informed TV-watcher.
>
> I found the Video just sent by Simon telling the same story – and much better.
>
>
> Best regards - sorry I cannot revise my long post, as time is running
>
>
> Pia
>
>
>
>
> 2014-11-09 5:24 GMT+01:00 simon <swht at clear.net.nz>:
>>
>> ----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
>> Dear <<empyreans>>,
>>
>> this work struck me as important for the conversation.
>>
>> Akram Al Halabi writes: "Harsh images and videos of massacres published in the media. Images hard to watch. During the last three years, I was writing on these images what I see in the image itself.
>>
>> "Calling upon things by their names ... to remind ourselves that they exist! Writing words or the names of what we see... no more.
>>
>> ""Ear, Eye, Brow, Window, Blood, Nose, Child, Neck, Throat, Chin, Shoulder, Heart, Mother, Fingers, Cheek...""
>>
>> http://vimeo.com/60739363
>>
>> http://vimeo.com/37774195
>>
>> ...
>>
>> Simon
>> _______________________________________________
>> empyre forum
>> empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
>> http://empyre.library.cornell.edu
>
>
>
>
> --
> ***
> Pia Holenstein Weidmann, Dr. phil.
> Bergrain 11
>
> CH- 8910 Affoltern am Albis
>
> piaholenstein.ch
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> empyre forum
> empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
> http://empyre.library.cornell.edu

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