Subject: skool daze
Date: Tue, 21 Oct 2003 07:55:01 -0600

hi, i'm fine.i hope you are too. i am writing you from Jenin, famous for its resistance to the occupation, hamd'Allah. i am sorta depressed today as i spent part of the morning reading a book about "The Wall" and the facts and realities in that book are overwelming and horrifying. this damn wall is perhaps the biggest lie we've ever swallowed. there is a concerted plan to completely destroy the Palestinian West Bank wrapped up in this wall, its course is designed to cut off farmers from their fields, communities from their wells, villages from other villages. i have mentioned all this before, but the more i learn about it, the less i am able to put it out of my mind. this wall is really intended to be the quiet solution to the Palestinian "question". there is no way that Palestinians can survive, physically or otherwise, with the existence of this wall. that is the intention. the fact that the U.S. pays for it and last week protected it in the UN with our veto makes us complicit and full on players in this eradication of the Palestinian people. we support this evil series of events, so we should be ready to answer for it .Anyway, let me do an actual update. The IOF has been preventing Jenin kids from attending the Arab American University in a neighboring town. Sunday, students on their bus were detained for 3 hours on the way to the school . they were forced to kneel in silence on the side of the road, in the heat, for 3 hours.. i went to the school that day. that night, as they were coming home, they were were unable to re-enter Jenin due to the complete closure of all roads by the IOF. they tried at several places to re-enter, but were unable to do so. finally they hiked thru the mountains, around the road blocks, and were SHOT AT by the iof. the kids were terrified, they ran, it was well past dark. half were women, who were wearing heels etc as is the fashion here. they called me once they had made it in. none were actually hit, hamd'Allah {thanks to God}, but all were really shaken up as these are kids from better off families, with nice clothes, speak english etc. these are not the stonethrowers, and many of them are not really interested in politics, as much as they are in Arab pop culture,banking, $$$ etc. Despite this {-smile, only joking} we agreed to try to help them get to skool yesterday {they are in the middle of finals this week!!!} and we met at the cab station in the morning. the roads were closed even tighter that day, and no busses or cabs would take us. here you could shot just as likely as get a ticket, so no drivers would take us. as we talked there, and the kids looked at us for a solution {naively}, we ascertained that 15 students had gone on their own at 7 am, and were arrested in the Suewetot {a village between Jenin and the university}. we had serious anxieties about the remaining students going, and expressed this to them from the beginning. We feared they were over-estimating our ability to help. so, when word of the 15 arrested came in, the student's bravado gave way to reality based fear, and we all agreed that us ashnabiz {foreigners} would proceed to the Suewetot to try to gain the release of the 15, while the remaining students in Jenin would stay here. we left in a hurry, and the cab took us only halfway out of fear for his safety. we walked the last 20 minutes, to the huge piles of earth which constitute insurmountable roadblocks,all across Palestine. there were 3 of us and one Pal. student who spoke good English.as we climbed the huge mound of earth to enter the expansive series of fields where we knew the students were, i thought alot about what we would see on the other side of the mound, soldiers a foot away with guns pointed at us? a tank close enough to spit on? a group beating in progress? would i see Jenin again, or be arrested and deported? would i see my new friends in Jenin again, or just be another foreigner who came and went? and to be honest, i thought, "am i gonna get shot when i reach the top of this stupid pile of dirt?" when we reached the top {whites up front}, we saw alot of huge fields, and for a moment, nothing else. Then i saw a 15 or so year old Palestinian boy kneeling in the road, but nothing else. we slowly walked towards him with our hands raised {we knew we were being watched, and were weary of snipers etc}, on our way to him we spotted the students, sitting in a field, no soldiers in sight. we approached the students who were happy to see us. they spoke english and told us that they were indeed who we were looking for, that they had been there 2 hours, that the soldiers had taken the I.D. cards of all the males and told them to wait there. the women had stayed too, from loyalty and from fear of continuing alone. the boy kneeling in the road was a village boy who the soldiers had forced to stay there, and if any of the students left it would be his ass. the soldiers knew the students would not leave without their I.D.s, as any Palestinian, anywhere in the entire West Bank, WILL BE SENT TO ISRAELI PRISON FOR RENEWABLE TERMS OF 6 MONTHS FOR FAILURE TO CARRY I.D. This is a part of daily life, in their own cities. So, after getting aquainted with the kids and telling them in what limited capacity we might be able to help {as well as hearing their strong anxieties about missing their final exams}, we set out to talk to an army jeep we had spotted about half a mile away. the jeep was down a straight road which cut thru flat farm fields, we were wide open. walking down that lonesome road towards the jeep defied every natural impulse in my being. i thought of Brian Avery, a brave young man from my home in Nuevo Mexico, shot in the face in Jenin last April, i thought of refugees around the globe, walking down similar roads, i thought of all the brave activists in American prisons, and so i kept walking. The jeep zoomed towards us after about 5 minutes, screeched to a stop and 2 soldiers with guns trained on us jumped out and came towards us. we greeted them, said we would like for them to return the ID cards to the students, said we were teachers from the university. they believed us and lowered their guns, told us that they wouldn't be returning the cards anytime soon, that the students knew that these roads were closed and it was their fault. oh, the biting of the tongue involved in doing this work!!! the soldiers said they had to check the students names in the computer, we asked how long that would take, they said it takes time, and left. we walked back to the field where the kids were sitting, filled them in. we hadn't brought food or water or cigs, so there was none for anyone. it was really hot yesterday, there was shade for 3, we were 18 altogether. every time we {foreigners} saw a jeep we walked out to flag it down, sometimes they stopped, usually not. everytime the exchange was the same, we asked them for the I.D.s back, they said not yet. we explained that the students were hot, hungry, and were only trying to get to final exams after a whole semester of hard work. it was really miserable, i got a bad sunburn, everyone was parched and famished. we got to get to know them pretty good, feel their frustrations, etc. After 5 hours of sitting there {7 for them} we approached the jeeps again and were finally given the I.D.s. Degradation as a rule here in the Ocuupied Territories.when americans marvel at the fact that the 9-11 hijackers were wealthy, educated etc, they should think about stuff like this. In The Trenches, Ben Jenin Palestine