Ethel Eichelberger honored in Howl!’s “Pantheon Parade” - would she be pissed too?

It's not just me, and I didn't make it up.

I'm talking respectively about my disappointment with the narrow focus of the HOWL! Festival, and the Festival organizers' ouster of ACT UP from Tompkins Square Park.

It's right here, and in hard print.

Many long-time residents felt that the festival was not for them, but for the people who recently took over the area. Members of ACT UP claim that police force was threatened against them by the very organizers of the festival. Latinos were largely invisible, and not even lip service was made to punks.

. . . .

Exclusion still exists on a large-scale, and it can be sensed everywhere these days in the East Village. Perhaps that is the most authentic part of the HOWL festival, that the inequalities and discriminatory practices that prevailed reflect some of the themes that influenced the scene back in the 80s and 90s.

The Gay City News article explains why some in the community, especially those concerned about the largely absent Latino and punk representation, are complaining that the Festival "was engineered for the people who gentrified the East Village," and describes in some detail how ACT UP, a part of the neighborhood since the 80's, was evicted from a very public park last week.

The most hopeful note in the entire account was sounded in its report of a call for an "Anti-Howl Festival."

A few blocks across from Tompkins Square Park, on St. Mark’s, Bobby Steel, formerly of the punk band “The Misfits,” and now of “The Undead,” mentioned the possibility of an Anti-Howl Festival. Punk rock as a cultural movement had deep roots on the Lower East Side during the 80s and early 90s, with punk venues including ABC No Rio, the World, and the Pyramid, among numerous other clubs. Mohawks, leather, and chains were once common accoutrements in East Village fashion.

Nonetheless, there was little punk visibility, either through nostalgia for the past or a respect for the on-going punk culture. Perhaps Steel was serious, but even as a joke, the idea of an Anti-Festival illustrates how some Lower East cultural actors felt dissatisfied.

- and as ever, both playful and provocative.

[image: Villager photo by Elisabeth Robert]

In a short post about the fluidity of male sexuality, where he references the legendary six beer theory, Welshcake evokes the media's latest tizzy over the supposed ascendancy of the gay aesthetic, commenting:

Metrosexual? Heteroflexible? Whatever. As my late friend, Richard, was fond of saying, "Ah, they all help out when we're busy..!"

exactly six beers each [uncoolcentral.com]

Chelsea, August 28, 6pm, SGS Hardware, 157 8th Ave., between 17th and 18th Sts.

Our tiny neighborhood hardware store has always had interesting windows, but this special end-of-summer-2003 set excels. The guys tell me it's a work in progress, so I'll be going back.

Ole von Beust

Rex Wochner reported two days ago:

The mayor of Hamburg, Germany, Ole von Beust, came out Aug. 19 after firing the city-state's interior minister, Ronald Schill, for allegedly trying to blackmail him.

. . . .

Von Beust's coming out means Germany's two biggest cities now have openly gay mayors. Berlin Mayor Klaus Wowereit also is gay.

Klaus Wowereit

[photo of Beust from Landesseniorenbereit Hamburg/ photo of Wolvereit from Der Bundesrat]

The Republicans. They really are stupid, but maybe there's a shiny lining for us in that empty cloud.

Am I hopeful? Look at all the headlines these days. Bush and his handlers are dead. Traditional Republicans used to be able to survive their incompetence, because they never really did anything. I suppose that was part of what made them conservatives.

Today's Republicans are radical activists in every aspect of domestic and foreign policy, and they are making a very big mess, as many of us expected they would. They are totally incompetent, and they will not be able to extricate themselves or the nation from the disasters they have created. The world, including even the simplest Americans, now suspects that truth.

They've clearly already lost the 2004 election, but it takes two sides to win office. My fear, and it's a reasonable one, considering what we have seen so far, is that the Democrats will not do their part, and some 14 months from now the incumbent regime will be able to snatch victory from certain defeat.

If that happens, the republic is gone forever.

Jogged by current arguments over New York's Harvey Milk High School, and a recent postcard from his own school, bj has written an honest, beautiful piece about an ugly memory, one whose counterpart I share shamefully, as I'm sure do many others. An excerpt:

John I love You

I actually started thinking a lot about my high school days during the first bits of current "controversey" over the Harvey Milk School's expansion this fall when that postcard arrived. No, I don't have horrible stories about constant harrassment from fellow students (but you can imagine in an all-male high school); yes, harrassment took place, and yes, I managed to survive it. And no, the Harvey Milk School wouldn't have been a good alternative for me. But then I remember John.

See, back then, I would get only the occasional taunts - the name-calling, the teasing. I remember one horrible day just after Christmas. My parents had bought me a leather/vinyl shoulder bag for my books - very 70's, very nice. But the day I brought it to school, the taunting began immediately. Guys grabbed it, put in over their shoulder and "minced" around, lisping words pretending to immitate me. They passed the bag around, wouldn't let me have it back. I tried to ignore them, and eventually got it back. But the day continued like that, name-calling, joking, tugging at the bag, laughing at my expense. When I got home, I walked straight down to the basement, put it on a shelf with all the abandoned toys and games of childhood, and left it there, never touching it again. Oddly, my parents never asked about it (it wasn't cheap, and we didn't have much money), and of course I never mentioned that horrible day to them, I was ashamed. Maybe they knew, and didn't know what to say or do.

But John. He was the "obvious" one. He had the pronounced lisp, limp-wrists, effeminate manner. He got it every day, all day. I don't know the real extent to what happened to him, I kept my distance. And it makes me feel very sad, and ashamed. Not once did I ever consider befriending him, and not 'til my senior year did I ever raise my voice to defend him, or tell the other guys to knock it off (By then I was into drugs, so that "coolness" aspect trumped my suspected homosexuality.) I remember once, sitting in the assistant principle's office, trying to get a class changed, and John was in the waiting room; our eyes met, a moment of sadness from him, then a determined resolve toughened him up, and he looked away. The assistant principle looked in John's direction, breathed a heavy sigh, and mumbled something like "not him again, won't he ever learn?" I said nothing, but was deeply disappointed in this 'educator'. John never got into trouble, he was no doubt there to complain about whatever latest incident happened to him.

Then I went to my next class, attendance was called, and when John's name came up, some tittering from the students, and I said "Oh, he's in with the assistant principle." The art teacher, who we all assumed was gay, then said "Jeez! What's wrong with him, he brings it on himself, he just needs to stop acting that way." You have no idea how clearly that is set in my memory, 25 years later, as vivid as if it happened yesterday. No, I didn't say anything, but I felt even sadder, more disappointment with the adults, and much, much more isolated. And I must say, I must've secretly been feeling "thank god John's here, otherwise it would be me."

Don't miss the music clip in his headline.

Ten Commandments Cultists pray in Montgomery, Alabama.

Atrios says it:

300 bigots and lunatics protesting around a carved rock, worthy of nonstop coverage. 100,000 people protesting a war, worthy of brief snide commentary.

In fact, there were 3 to 10 times that number in New York City alone on one day. One comment on his post is deliciously, wickedly on:

It's fundie flypaper. Anyone who wants to chain himself to a rock in Birmingham [sic] deserves our buying him free manacles.

[AFP-Getty Images/File/Gary Tramontina, via Yahoo News Photos]

Maple Ave (Digimon)/ Meredith Allen

Meredith Allen now has a full-page image in this week's New Yorker and a website as well. [Don't miss the "kiddie rides."]

We love Meredith!

And we love her work! Obviously the magazine does too, since they use a full-page color image to illustrate a Dave Eggers story. Now people around the world will know why.

See Bloggy for her cute host/webmaster's take on these events.

Illustration by John Heartfield on cover of Arbeiter-Internationale-Zeitung (Workers International Newspaper), October 1932.

There is no war on terror; there is only the terror of war. One of the top stories on Reuters at this minute:

"Our war on terror continues," Bush told about 600 supporters at a lunch in Minnesota that raised $1.2 million for his 2004 re-election bid.

'Nuff said.

____________________

Translation of the Heartfield text:

Der Sinn des Hitlergrusses
The real meaning of the Hitler salute

Kleiner Mann bittet um grosse Gaben
The little man asks for big gifts

Millionen stehen hinter mir!
I've got millions standing behind me

"With a people denied so many basic rights for so long, the only way to stop the terrorism (of the few) is to end the suffering (of the many)."

For an understanding of what actually is the thinking within the beleaguered Palestinian community, both that of the different leadership groups and that of the population generally, read Anees's description posted last night.

"The villagers can't get to the schools or the medical centers. They are surrounded by settlements, extremly aggressive ones, and are not allowed to travel on the Jewish roads. Yes, the Jewish roads. Palestinians are not allowed to travel on the road that goes right past their own villages and towns. They are also not allowed to use their own roads as they have all been blocked. No passage. No movement. If they are caught driving on the Jewish roads, they are fined, jailed or beaten. Sometimes all of the above. They cannot get to work, they cannot get to hospitals, schools, etc. There were hundreds of men walking along the road as we drove, they were walking because they cannot drive and there is no transportation for them. Coming back from what work they manage to keep. They are walking because their roads are blocked and they cannot use the Jewish roads."

Our friend the activist and filmmaker Ellen Flanders writes today from a tiny, almost totally isolated Palestinian village near Hebron.

Hi folks, well what can I tell you? The situation once again has spun out of control, dead people everywhere, ongoing violence and no-end in sight. Spending time in the West Bank and Gaza as opposed to Tel Aviv and Jerusalem is of course night and day. I read all the reports various others send out and few people who are here doing solidarity work seem to move between both, perspective however, is everything.

Even city to city, village to villlage, it is important to draw the distinctions and the realities of daily life. Leaving Jerusalem for the day and heading to Ramallah in the morning, back to Jerusalem, and then to the Hebron area in the evening, gave me a chance for some of this perspective and perhaps wide-angle lens. I met with a gay Palestinian-American man who was kind enough to take me and my cameraman, Chris, on a little tour of the road from Jerusalem to Ramallah. I was wanting to try and find a visual way of describing this journey and landscape. Words are insufficient and I find that comparing it to Apartheid or ghettos, or anything like that not all that useful in the end. This place has its distinct appearance and history, much of it grisly and worthy of its own terms. I can only try and describe it as I have seen it both over the years and presently. It's funny you know, because in some ways while I know this place and spent some years growing-up here, there are many ways that I do not know it or the people at all. I know slogans, ideologies and symbols. I know the landscape from one angle and then another. But people, take a lifetime to know. And people are what *place* is in the end. And while I have forged friendships here, both Israeli and Palestinian, we have not grown-up together, lived together, or shared in each others lives daily over the years. So I will continue to know this place from anew everytime, which can both be a benefit and a loss.

I will try to describe for you some of the things that seemed both new and old in the past days: The roads leading from Jerusalem to Ramallah are often named in the most honest and blatent of terms. At some point we were on the *Okef Ramallah Road.* Okef means to go around, hence it was the road that bypassed Ramallah. As an Israeli, one does not want to be anywhere near Ramallah, one does not want to see what is happening there. Ignorance is serving the Israeli population all to well. It is amazing how many Israelis I talk to that know NOTHING of these towns, nothing (well, except that they are dangerous). The road leads to all the settlements surrounding Ramallah from Jerusalem. The settlements are spreading like a tangled web, getting longer, wider and more populous. They are sometimes quaint, sometimes more like small cities. They surround the nearby Palestinian villages and towns, cutting them off from their fields and taking the surrounding agricultural land as their own. This then impoverishes the Palestinian villages/towns, as they now have no means of income. They take the water, 80% of it, and control whatever flows in and out of the Palestinan towns. And the electricity. Visually, when you stand high above the settlements you can see them virtually strangling these places. It is quite clear. And then we passed the outposts and the new settlements being built. What? You say there has been a halt on settlement activity? No fear! They are growing rapidly, often attaching the new settlement to one right next to it, so hence now it is a *suburb* of the former settlement. Using it's name allows the Israelis to claim that no new *legal* (although all are in fact illegal), settlements are being built. Then there are the ones that we don't even talk about, as they slip under the radar screen of all press and media, not to mention general public interest.

When you look at the network of settlements you think, this is not going anywhere. These *facts on the ground* that have been established long ago, so incredibly strategically, and continue to do so, does not give me much hope. When the mainstream Israeli peace group, Peace Now, says *dismantle the settlements,* most of the individuals (the few that are left there anyhow), have no idea what would really be involved in this and how intricate and intrinsic they have become (hece there has never been a real plan in place to do this removal). How they choke and clog all that they surround and at the same time have families, trees, yards, dogs, schools, shops etc many who have been lead here by a government offering many benefits, easing the economic burdens they would experience elsewhere. I read this over and over, but a walk around brings it home again differently everytime.

Now contrast this with the lovely cafe that Chris and I sat in for lunch in Ramallah, talking to our neighbours about what we are doing there etc. It all can seem like anywhere else in those moments, lunch, drinks, cafe, conversation and a beautiful breeze. Nasser, who is at the next table inquiring what we are doing here, teaches at Beir Zeit University. He starts to give me a lot of pointers about all the politics and surrounding areas etc. When he realizes however that I seem to be quite in the know, he asks me how I know what I do? Am I local? I tell him, no, but I did grow-up in Jerusalem for years in my youth and so I am somewhat familiar. He asked me if my father was a diplomat or something? I said no, they were Jews, Zionists, coming to live in Israel. He was stunned for a moment and then said *Really? so you are a Jew?* *Really,* I said, I am a Jew. *And you are here, talking about Occupation?* Yes, there are many others like me, I am by far unique I told him. But nonetheless Nasser was shocked. And I continue to have this experience. There are only two sides to this conflict heavily endorsed by the media, there is us and them. The people are all but removed.

We leave Ramallah via the Kalandia crossing and it takes us an hour to cross. We sit in the car with the smell of garbage all around, the dust flying and a view of the new fence cordoning off Ramalla. The soldiers are rude by the time we get to the checkpoint and wave us through. We were lucky, some people saw that we had a camera and obviously wanting this documented, told us to go ahead of them. It is bedlam and it causes such frustration that you think you are going to lose it. But here, everyone does this daily. Humiliation does not begin to describe what it is like to be at the mercy of these 18 year olds that decide whether you pass or go back.

We then pick-up Rauda in Jerusalem, one of the women in my film, a Palestinian lesbian and poet, who is joining me and Chris and Ezra, another character in my film, to head down on the road to Hebron. Ezra has been working with this one tiny village that has had their access to the nearest Palestinian town completely cut off. He helps them to remove roadblacks, only to be replaced the next day. The villagers can't get to the schools or the medical centers. They are surrounded by settlements, extremly aggressive ones, and are not allowed to travel on the Jewish roads. Yes, the Jewish roads. Palestinians are not allowed to travel on the road that goes right past their own villages and towns. They are also not allowed to use their own roads as they have all been blocked. No passage. No movement. If they are caught driving on the Jewish roads, they are fined, jailed or beaten. Sometimes all of the above. They cannot get to work, they cannot get to hospitals, schools, etc. There were hundreds of men walking along the road as we drove, they were walking because they cannot drive and there is no transportation for them. Coming back from what work they manage to keep. They are walking because their roads are blocked and they cannot use the Jewish roads.

We got to the village to help open one of the blockades by removing a steel highway barrier and by removing enough of the mound of dirt that had been piled high to cut off access, to get one car through. Ezra says this is the third time in a week he has done this as the army or the settlers come and reblock it daily. We worked at night, in the dark mostly, with the hood up on my car, pretending whenever a settler of army jeep passed that we were having car trouble. If anyone from the village is caught doing this, they are severly punished.

After, when we were invited to sit for tea with the villagers, I was told horror stories. The settlers coming into the village and chasing the women and children in jeeps, beatings of old and young (the head of the village's mother who is 80 was beaten by nine settlers and had to be hospitalized). Ta'ayush, a Palestinian-Israeli peace group, brought a tent to the village where they set-up activites for the kids (as they couldn't get to school). They were chased from the tent and told, the children that is, by settlers and army, that if they have anything to do with peace groups or go near that tent again, they will come in the night and chop their heads off. Needless to say, the children did not return. I was talking to a little girl who was about three and was asking her about her sisters etc. She turned to her mum after our chat and asked her if the army would come and slice her head off that night because she was speaking with me. They sleep on the roofs of their houses in the summer because of the heat and the ants. The settlers come by at night and throw rocks as they sleep. They have torn down some of their few olive trees, destroyed their few vegtable patches, drive their jeeps through the village, terrorizing them, especially as they have now had contact with peace groups. Let's talk about terrorism!

The village has no electricity or water beacause the settlements will not allow them to run a wire or a pipe. The village has about 20 houses.

Again, I read these stories as you must as well, from others who are spending time working here, but truly words are insufficent to describe how horrific it is. When you are sitting there, listening, you are also trying to figure-out what these people have done to deserve this lot? To be treated as less than human, as people without children, without elderly or illness, without any needs. I am sitting by the light of the kerosene lamp under the most incredible desert sky and I am paralyzed. I am helpless and my rage surges. I can see how easy it is to want revenge, to want to take a machine-gun and terrorize these bullies back, to take away their rights and dignity. I climb down the stairs to my car, the dogs of the settlers are barking in the night and their towns glow from above in the most menacing of ways. I try not break-down and leave most reluctantly, both wanting to stay and help and flee at the same time.

That was just one day, and I get to go home.

That's the update for this week,
with love,
Ellen

Ellen Flanders
Graphic Pictures

TABBOO!

click here for more pictures

On Saturday my Wigstock experience began on a sour note, and it had nothing to do with wigs. As Barry and I were about to cross Avenue A at 8th Street I spotted a small, dedicated contingent from ACT UP with their table of literature on the sidewalk. They had been thrown out of Tompkins Square Park by the HOWL! Festival organizers because they had not paid a concession fee.

ACT UP doesn’t pay concession fees, and ACT UP has always been a part of Wigstock. [In the interest of complete disclosure I must say that I have been a member of ACT UP almost since its beginnings, but in recent years I have been more neglectful than supportive.] I understand the costs of the festival have to be met somehow, but I also understand that, at least the last time I checked, Tompkins Square is a public park. Surely something could have been arranged for the inclusion of genuine public service organizations in a celebration of the creative and radical tradition of the East Village.

Now feeling a little like contraband myself after hearing of their experience with the authorities, we entered the park which had once been a very major civic battleground.

Wigstock’s return to the park where it was first conceived (and delivered) 18 years ago by a gaggle of not-so-mad drag queens was of course wonderful - with at least one, no two or even more, reservations. The Lady Bunny emceed of course, operating in the customary, tired bitchy form she shares with too many of her sisters, and significantly she had even managed to sorta witches-kiss and make up with Mistress Formica in consideration of this momentous occasion. But where were the new artists? The question could, and should well, be asked of the entire HOWL! enterprise.

The Dazzle Dancers wound up the afternoon's program with a spectacular salute to the ultimate irrelevance of costume as a quantity – except of course for the glitter, which they generously shared with the first hundred feet of the fans packed around the stage.

I was sorry to see that in spite of the good vibe among those in the bois propre below the latest Wigstock incarnation had attracted far less spectator hair, makeup and costume involvement than those of legend, and yet I have to admit that I didn’t wear my wired golden pigtails this year myself.

The tiny ATM Gallery on Avenue B (yes, it's behind the ATM machine), just north of the park, was showing what was billed as the “First Annual HOWL! Invitational” through late Sunday. Just inside the door on the right in this group show were Chris Tanner’s three colorful works on fabric with built-up patterns which suggested chenille bedspreads gone mad. They were pretty wonderful.

The Festival’s community-driven "Art Wall" around much of the park was, not surprisingly, very political, and some of its statements managed to ignite tempers, arguably a good thing even for a festival. Much of it had something to do with Bush, Israel, police states, etc., and we can report with satisfaction that Michael Stewart has not been forgotten.

The East Village today is not your father’s East Village, and ironically the best evidence of that may have been the strong presence of child-friendly elements in the HOWL! Festival schedule.

Local color to straddle the two generations: At 8pm Saturday night, while we were walking about the neighborhood, we passed a barely-30-something mother and her young 7-something son out “walking” their house pets. The mother was pushing a folding grocery cart which supported a gold fish in a stormy bowl of water on its lower shelf and a hamster merrily racing on its treadmill in a cage on the upper.

As darkness replaced twilight, we slipped into the Sixth Street and Avenue B Garden for a few minutes to walk through the green stuff and to listen to the music of Mr. Raga’s Neighborhood players (a very nice ECM-ish ambience).

As we started to go out I realized the beautiful tree we had been standing under was a perfectly healthy and fructiferous fig, something I am still not accustomed to, having lived most of my life in northern temperate zones. Do the magnificent branches and the perfectly-formed fruits reveal gardening care or betray global warming?

We managed to find a table at Raga on 6th Street for a leisurely dinner, followed by a slow walk home.

The next afternoon we returned to the same scenes to meet our friend Kate, who is visiting from Antwerp for a few weeks. We went back to the ATM Gallery, which was just then cleaning out the bottles from what appeared to have been a very successful opening party the night before. We talked to Bill Brady, the delightful artist behind the space, and we easily became somewhat enchanted with his very adventurous curatorial choices.

Aside from the work of Chris Tanner, the show, which was created especially for the HOWL! Festival, included UFO-imaged work by Ionel Talpazan, the geometric devices of Vince Roark, the sweet/scary world of Min Kim, the graphite Altamont of Mike Paré, Karen Finley's efficient, Titian-esque nudes, and her menstrual blood flower drawings, the delicate collage-drawings of Yuh-Shioh Wong, Jack Davidson's cloud landscapes which were oil paintings passing as cottoncandy pastels, David Leslie's wonderful soap sculpture of a not-quite-successful Evel Knievel outing, and Bill Brady curating himself with an exciting, strangely iconic, somehow-non-objective, neo-op oil in very primary colors.

We lingered at the music lot on Avenue A and 11th Street for a bit, unfortunately missing the magnificent John Moran but very pleased and provoked by Rebecca Moore and her band, Prevention of Blindness. We bought her CD. We already owned all of the recordings of John’s operas spread out on the table next to it, and a good thing, too.

Passing through the willow tree oasis of La Plaza Cultural Garden we hung out for a few songs by a wonderful [unfortunately unidentified to us] performer who was part of the WOW Café Cabaret, before we had to leave to call our friend Anees to settle on a time and place for dinner, always the day’s paramount event for the both of us.

We now four soon found ourselves at Gnocco on 10th Street, in their beautiful back garden sheltered by Trumpet Vines and heating ductwork ready for the winter. Anees had arrived bearing gifts from Palestine, two keffiyahs and a beautiful CD of a young Palestinian oud player, Samir Jubran.

And so, after another hike home to the northwest, to bed.

Steve writes from Tel Aviv, on his last full day before he returns to New York.

The pictures above, of the Apartheid Wall from the side of the imprisoned, are my own choice, from the International Solidarity Movement site.

Context Is Everything

Tel Aviv, Sunday, August 24, 2003

I came to Tel Aviv from Jayyous on Thursday evening
intending to stay for one night, but I awoke on Friday
morning with one of my all-too-familiar sinus
infections. I saw a doctor, got some antibiotics, and
extended my stay at the Tel Aviv hotel until my
departure in the wee hours of Monday morning. It's
Sunday afternoon now and I'm fever-free, although
still a little nervous about flying with congestion.

My hotel is right on the beach, and it's lovely here.
Lots of people out and about, bar-restaurant-cafes
right out on the sand, streets bustling until late
into the night. Jayyous is 10km from here, and my
friends there haven't seen the sea for 4 years. You'd
never know here that there's so much suffering so
close, being inflicted by the Israeli army.

On Wednesday night two Palestinian-American friends
were staying at the same hotel. They were not
permitted to bring their Palestinian Israeli friends
to the room--the armed security guard was quite
insistent. I, in contrast, have had free run of the
place, welcome to come and go as I please, even when I
was their late-night guest before I registered at the
hotel myself.

I've been pretty starved for news all summer. I've
been living without radio or TV, in communities where
all the newspapers are in Arabic. Poor email access
kept me away from Internet news sites. Now that I'm
in Tel Aviv, lolling about in front of the TV and with
English-language newspapers, I see how the present
grisly turn of events is being framed.

Israeli media are forefronting the suffering inflicted
by the bombing in Jerusalem. This is perfectly
reasonable. It was a horrific attack, and its
ultra-Orthodox victims conjure up images of terrible
Jewish suffering in Europe in the 20th century and
before. The sequence of events presented in the U.S.
and Israeli press seems to be (1) bombing in
Jerusalem, (2)assassination in Gaza (3) end of Hudna
[cease fire]. Journalists (or their editors) don't
seem interested in what happened prior to the
Jerusalem bombing, in what the Hudna was really like.

A look at the website of B'Tselem, the Israeli
Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied
Territories (www.btselem.org) shows that between July
1 and August 13 of this year, 9 Palestinians (1 of
them a minor) were killed by Israeli security forces
in the Occupied Territories. In addition, the
construction of the Apartheid Wall and destruction of
Palestinian property continued apace, as did the daily
violence and humiliation that is part and parcel of 36
years of military control of a civilian population of
millions.

During the same period, 4 Israeli civilians (none of
them minors) and one member of the Israeli security
forces were killed by Palestinians.

Then came the Israeli attack on Askar Refugee Camp in
Nablus, in which 4 Palestinians were killed by Israeli
security forces. The Rosh Ha'Ayin and Ariel bombings
followed, with one Israeli death in each case,
followed by the Israeli assassination of an Islamic
Jihad student activist. Then the bombing in
Jerusalem.

The attack on the bus of worshippers was not
justified. It was sickening. Its planners and its
perpetrator distort Islam beyond all recognition. But
it was, without a doubt, provoked, and the Sharon
government knew it. They knew it when they attacked
Askar, and they knew it when they went into Hebron.
Now the situation has spun out of control again,
Israelis will again see their buses, cafes, and
restaurants blowing up, and Palestinians will die (as
always, in much larger numbers) as the occupation army
storms through Nablus, Jenin, Tulkarm, and Gaza. The
Israeli media today are proudly showing photos of
dozens of tanks assembled at Erez Checkpoint ready to
reinvade Gaza; I can only think of the 1.3 million
desperately poor Palestinians packed into ramshackle
housing in the tiny Gaza Strip, and what these killing
machines are going to do them.

So now Bush and Powell and Rice have stopped bugging
Sharon about the Apartheid Wall, and Mayor Bloomberg
is flying to Jerusalem tomorrow to stand with Israeli
victims of terror, even as the Israeli army creates
untold numbers of Palestinian victims of state terror
in the Gaza invasion. So it seems like the Sharon
government got exactly what it wanted.

I'll he home tomorrow afternoon. I'm looking forward
to doing lots of public speaking about the occupation,
as well as reconnecting with family and friends.

Peace,
Steve

[images of Qalqilya on August 12, 2003, by Niki Dean of the UK]

Bloggy has an extended post "On Israel/Palestine, violence, and ethnic cleansing."

Silipups explains.

He's describing the intent of his own weblog, but on the subject of Palestine he could be speaking for many of us.

Hi, my name is Anees. As per many questions I was recently asked:

I THINK SUICIDE BOMBINGS AGAINST ISRAELIS ARE AN ABOMINATION AND A CRIME. LIKE ALL CRIMES, I WISH THEY WOULD STOP FOREVER.

I AM NOT A JEW-HATER AND HAVE MANY DEAR JEWISH FRIENDS. DO I HATE ISRAEL? ANSWER: I RESENT ISRAEL FOR HAVING INFLICTED MUCH PAIN ON A POWERLESS PEOPLE FOR SO LONG. DO I BELIEVE ISRAEL HAS THE RIGHT TO EXIST? ANSWER: AS THE FORCE WHICH ENACTS A RACIST AGENDA IN BRUTAL WAYS, 'ISRAEL THE IDEA', DOES NOT HAVE THE RIGHT TO EXIST AS IS. IT MUST CHANGE. BUT AS FOR ITS PEOPLE, I BELIEVE ISRAELIS LIKE ALL HUMANS HAVE THE RIGHT TO EXIST IN THE LAND WHICH HAS BECOME THEIR HOME.

THE MAIN PURPOSE OF STARTING THIS BLOG WAS TO SPREAD INFORMATION ABOUT ISRAEL'S MISTREATMENT OF PALESTINIANS. WHY NOT SPREAD INFORMATION ABOUT PALESTINIAN'S CRIMES AGAINST ISRAELIS AS WELL? THE ANSWER IS: BECAUSE AMERICAN MEDIA ALREADY COVERS THAT, AND I BELIEVE THAT IT IS BIASED TOWARDS OBSCURING THE SUFFERING OF PALESTINIANS UNDER ISRAEL'S BRUTAL RULE.

WHY JUST TALK ABOUT PALESTINIANS? AREN'T THERE OTHER PEOPLE WORTHY OF MORE ATTENTION BECAUSE OF THEIR SUFFERING? ANSWER: YES THERE CERTAINLY ARE AND PALESTINIANS DO NOT HAVE A MONOPOLY ON BEING VICTIMS, AND IF YOU CONSIDER THE AFRICAN CONTINENT AND WHAT'S BEEN GOING ON THERE, IT IS EASILY MORE HORRIFIC AND WORTHY OF MORE URGENT ATTENTION. BUT ONE FIGHTS AND PROTECTS THE PEOPLE AND THE AREA AROUND HIM, BECAUSE THESE ARE WHAT HE SEES AND FEELS. THIS IS HOW HUMAN EXISTENCE WORKS.

MY HOPE (SOME WOULD SAY AN UNREALISTIC DREAM) IS FOR PALESTINIAN ARABS AND ISRAELI JEWS TO LIVE IN PEACE IN ONE STATE.

Stupid can't even hear himself. Bush to reporters in Seattle today:

"There's a foreign element that's moving into Iraq."

The mayor of New York is going to Israel to show his support.

Am I the only one who finds this news appalling? Are Israelis the only victims of this horrible conflict?

Bloomberg's either a fool or a political opportunist who asssumes there are no New Yorkers, even Palestinians, who will question the limited object of his sympathy. Here is his reading of the current situation in Israel and Palestine:

"You can't let somebody start to bomb you or shoot you and then give up everything that they want in return for them to stop. They stop terrorism, then you talk. They don't stop, you hit back and you hit back with everything you have and as hard as you can repeatedly. And if you don't do that, shame on you."

"They" equals terrorists equals every Palestinian. Simple. Stupid. Disastrous policy. Moreover, the history of terrorism in the areas which he will visit began earlier in the 20th century. Palestinians did not start the conflict, and Palestinians cannot end it.

Our mayor should know that.

Ted Rall

Not only does the new world order keep its own subjects from the real news, but it keeps those who would report it from reaching an audience anywhere. Two days ago we murdered a journalist in Baghdad. It wasn't the first time.

Bloggy has lots more.

I guess it's probably a very good thing when activists are also very beautiful.

For the story of these two very young International Solidarity Movement volunteers chained to a Palestinian house in the dark, see this site, sections in the post below and in this post, and reports across the world web.

Andreas Koninek

Andrew Muncie

Steve gets a bit of beach-y R&R, but only a bit.

"I continue to believe that this
is exactly what the Israeli Right
wants--the more warfare there is,
the more support they get."

Tel Aviv, Thursday, August 21, 2003

Again, no photos attached--my apologies. I forgot to
bring my CD-ROM to the Internet cafe.

Yesterday was a stressful and depressing day in
Jayyous. In the evening, some farmers and
internationals went down to the gate to try and cut
the wire that was holding it shut (for some reason,
the chain and lock had not been put back on after the
gate was opened for some construction workers working
on the Wall). We were especially concerned about
"Farhat's" 12,000 cabbage seedlings, which needed to
be planted before they died.

We had a complex operation, with some folks at the
municipality on the top of the hill watching out for
security cars approaching, some of us halfway down the
hill, out of sight, with big clippers, and some folks
at the gate. Work on the wire ceased when security
showed up, followed by Border Guard and army--8
vehicles in all. Ora from JAtO and Abu Ali negotiated
and pleaded with the uniformed men to open the gate
for the farmers waiting. Eventually, they allowed the
3 farmers through--without internationals. We were
concerned about their safety out there with all those
soldiers, but they were OK. The affront to Jayyous
farmers' dignity, pleading for permission to enter
their own land, makes me want to cry.

This morning, we went down to plant the cabbage
seedlings. The farmers came down to the gate in a
taxi, and the security refused to let it
through--totally arbitrarily, and completely beyond
their mandate. We proceeded on foot, and managed to
get all the cabbage into the ground.

Afterward, Gabriel from SUSTAIN, Ora from JAtO,
Christy from Olympia and I left Jayyous for Tel Aviv.
It was really hard to say goodbye to the Jayyous Peace
Activists--I can't wait to see them again next year.

Gabriel had a long talk with the Israeli Society for
Citizens' Rights about the situation with the gates in
the Apartheid Wall. They may be able to mount a
successful case in the High Court of Israel to change
the situation.

We had planned to go to Nablus tomorrow for a Saturday
demonstration, but with the invasions of Nablus,
Tulkarm and Jenin by the Israeli army, the demo may be
called off. The Israeli army assassination of a Hamas
leader in Gaza today signals a whole new round of
strike and counterstrike. I continue to believe that
this is exactly what the Israeli Right wants--the more
warfare there is, the more support they get.

It's good to be able to relax on the beach in Tel
Aviv. In the morning, we'll go to Tel Aviv District
Court to attend a hearing of Andreas and Andrew, Swede
and Scot from ISM Nablus who were arrested for
chaining themselves to a home slated for demolition in
Balata Refugee Camp (the cruelty of bulldozing
refugees' homes boggles the mind). [see the photo and
link on my post yesterday, and now the "after" photo
below]

After that, perhaps to Nazlat Isa. It's a village
right over the Green Line from the Baqa el-Gharbiya,
the town I lived in 1985-1986. Nazlat Isa is one of
the communities isolated between the Wall to the east
and the Green Line to the west. Most of Nazlat Isa's
commercial district was demolished to make way for the
Wall last winter, and the Israeli army began
demolishing what's left today.

Steve

The Salim famliy in their destroyed home in Balata on Sunday.
[photo from International Middle East Media Center]

The White House may be ready to admit failure in Iraq, but how are they going to do it? - by asking the United Nations to give them moral and physical cover. The UN is supposed to make it an ok thing and its members are supposed to sacrifice their own young, effectively to draw the fire from ours.

All this is supposed to happen without the U.S. sharing with others the overall control of Iraq, the credit for any possible successes, the profits which are still anticipated to result from our fiendish venture, and of course our Middle East, and planetary, hegemony.

We’ve just murdered 23 UN workers in Baghdad. International aid groups are withdrawing from the entire country. Months ago we eagerly invaded a defenseless people for reasons which will shame this republic for all time. We have destroyed a nation physically and morally. We occupy Iraq. All security there is our responsibility alone. We are killing Iraqis and our own people daily. Our ignorance, our ideological fanaticism and our greed for energy and world economic and political power have all blinded us. We’ve botched everything and are continuing to botch everything, and obviously not just in Iraq.

I trust a majority even of the UN Security Council cannot be suckered now into becoming our accomplices - and their own executioners, but our nation’s unrestrained power has done such contrived or insane evil in Iraq and elsewhere, there may now be no possible prescription for the plagues we have unleashed.

“For all time” may last just a cosmic moment longer.

____________________

For a related post, see Bloggy and the comments posted there.

Rude rube

They can’t win office or policy by democratic or constitutional means, so they’re doing it by any means they can.

The most dramatic examples are the Clinton impeachment attempt, the 2000 election outcome, the California governor recall, the Texas redistricting outrage, perpetual war for perpetual radical-conservative majorities and strong-arming or bribing both the UN and NATO. But it’s happening on every level across the country and around the world. It’s all part of the new Republicanism.

The republicrats have adopted and turned inside out Malcom X’s warning phrase, later the Black Panthers’ call for action, “by any means necessary.” The words were originally used to confront racism and were later directed toward capitalism as well, but of course Karl Rove and his friends have very different ideas. Their confrontation is with democracy itself and with the common good. And the non-violence thing? Just look around. Only the state is permitted to use violence, and in fact it is more and more strongly encouraged to do so.

Andreas Koninek, 20, an International Solidarity Movement volunteer from Stockholm, chained to a Palestinian house in Balata refugee camp, waiting for the Israeli military to arrive on August 17. [ISM story]

Steve writes from Joyyous today. He includes accounts of Israel retaliating against farmers for the attacks of unrelated terrorists, Israel gasing Palestinians in their prison cells, Israel stealing Palestinian farmland to build ghetto walls which will isolate their victims, Israeli bulldozers destroying lemon orchards, Palestinians forced by Israelis to build their own cages in order to have work which will support their families.

After I read through it I concluded that the caption which Steve gives to his report was too restrained. He addresses the real story early in the text which illustrates it, and he elaborates on his conclusion near the end.

"Preventing a farmer in Jayyous from planting his
seedlings carries no benefit for Jews in Jerusalem
wishing to return home safely from the Western Wall.
What the closure does is make life in Palestine that
much more unlivable, Palestinians' access to their
land and water that much more tenuous, "voluntary"
ethnic cleansing that much closer to reality.
That's the real purpose of locking the gates in the
Wall.

. . . .

I'm convinced that the goal is not land and water
theft, it's ethnic cleansing. The Israeli government
wants to make the Palestinian communities within 5 or
6 kilometers of the Wall unlivable, forcing the
thousands living there to move deeper into the West
Bank or into another country. Perhaps the plan is
then to repeat this process a little further in, until
the West Bank is virtually Arabrein from the Green
Line to the Jordan River. Sharon's governing
coalition includes parties that support expulsion of
all Palestinians from Palestine; it seems that the
"moderates" have the same plan, but wish to make it
appear voluntary."

Gates As a Form of Collective Punishment

Jayyous, Wednesday, August 20, 2003

Ras Atiyah's gate has been closed since the
demonstration last Friday. The people of Ras e-Tira,
Dab'a and the other communities walled in with Alfe
Menashe have been cut off from Palestinian life,
apparently as punishment for their daring to hold a
peaceful demonstration in favor of children's access
to school.

Today, every gate in the Apartheid Wall in the West
Bank, from Tubas to Jenin to Tulkarm to Qalqilya to
Mas'ha, is chained shut. Thousands of Palestinian
farmers are unable to reach their land. The reason?
A member of Islamic Jihad from Hebron in the southern
West Bank, in retaliation for the Israeli army's
assassination of an Islamic Jihad activist in Hebron
last week, carried out a dastardly attack on
ultra-Orthodox Jewish worshippers in Jerusalem
yesterday. The connection with Palestinian farmers in
Jayyous? Absolutely none.

None of the 35 farmers who lined up at the gate in
Jayyous this morning had anything to do with events in
relatively far-off Hebron and Jerusalem. Most of them
probably condemn the attack in Jerusalem, as well as
Sharon's provocations. But all of them were kept off
of their land, as were farmers up and down the
northern West Bank.

The idea here is of course not to make Israelis safer.
Preventing a farmer in Jayyous from planting his
seedlings carries no benefit for Jews in Jerusalem
wishing to return home safely from the Western Wall.
What the closure does is make life in Palestine that
much more unlivable, Palestinians' access to their
land and water that much more tenuous, "voluntary"
ethnic cleansing that much closer to reality.
That's the real purpose of locking the gates in the
Wall.

I'm sorry I haven't been in touch for a while. Here's
my journal for the last ten days. No photos - the
computers in the Internet cafe in Jayyous won't let me
attach.

--Steve

Jayyous, Sunday, August 10, 2003

"Nabil", ISM coordinator from Tulkarm, is in Jayyous
for a visit. He told us a hair-raising story last
night. He was taken from his house and imprisoned at
age 17œ during the waning days of the first Intifada.

He said that the Israeli forces used to target the
top students for arrest. He was only in jail for 21
days, a very short term compared to most of the
Palestinian men I know, but during that time the
guards went from underground cell to underground cell,
opened a hatch in the very heavy metal door, and
dropped in a half kilo of powder with an action like
tear gas, only stronger. (I assume that the Jews
reading this journal have the same horrible
association that I have with this image, even though
the substance in question here is not Zyklon B and is
usually not lethal.) Nabil says that it took about
80 hours for the irritant to dissipate. "Rashid",
head of the Prisoners' Club in Qalqilya, had told us
about the same process in all 3 of the Israeli prisons
he was in. Last week, about 100 prisoners at Ashqelon
Prison were injured while being gassed in their cells,
9 of them critically.

Gabriel and I went to the Falamiya Gate this morning,
and then walked over to the Jayyous Gate with John.
Very few farmers passed through either gate.I wonder
if a lot of them are sleeping in their fields beyond
the wall these days? The Border Guard was patrolling
and there were security at the Jayyous gate where
workers with heavy equipment (Caterpillar, natch) were
digging a trench, but we didn't see any harassment.
It's a tough call deciding whether or not to do Gate
Watch.one doesn't want to get up at 5:30 in the
morning to waste one's time, but we'd be devastated if
there were another incident at a time that we could
have been there.

Walking back up to the village, a man stopped us and
told me about his 70 dunums of land taken from him by
the Wall. He referenced boulders on his land and the
nearby settlement of Tsufim, so his land must be near
the quarry. He said, "Can you help me?" I can't, of
course, and we both walked away feeling pretty bad.
A new crop of ISM activists came into Jayyous
today-all Jews, including Liat, a staff member of
Jewish Voices for Peace in San Francisco, Ora from
JAtO/NYC, and Rann, an Israeli who lives in Britain.

Qalqilya, Monday, August 11, 2003

Today, ISM activists from all over Palestine once
again converged on Qalqilya for a big demo against the
Wall. The demo was called by the Qaliqilya political
parties in response to Democratic members of the U.S.
House of Representatives who visited Israel as guests
of the American Israel Political Action Committee.and
who didn't visit the wall. It was the usual
Underground Railroad scenario, and all of us, each in
a small group, managed to slip in undetected. We
spent a lot of time making signs and props for the
demo. (There are two ways to get media: someone gets
shot, or activists get creative. We prefer the
latter.) One activist drew a picture of Qalqilya
being hanged by a noose (representing the Apartheid
Wall that surrounds it), with an Israeli soldier
holding the noose. The soldier was drawn as an evil
looking guy with a big nose and Stars of David on
him.it looked more like a Nazi propaganda poster than
a sign for Palestinian freedom. David from JAtO/NYC
pointed it out to me, I said something, and the sign
was trashed.

Tracie called me from Jayyous to say that some farmers
came to the house to look for us-there's a bulldozer
in the orchards beyond the fence knocking down lemon
trees. One of the farmers stood in front of the
bulldozer and stopped the work for the afternoon.
Tracie, Michelle and David went out to the orchards,
where an elderly farmer was holding branched of a
ruined lemon tree and wailing "Allahu akbar" over and
over again.

Jayyous, Tuesday, August 12, 2003

Today was the 2nd big Qalqilya demonstration at the
wall. In the morning, we heard on the news about the
attacks in Rosh Ha'ayin and Ariel (undoubtedly a
response to the much deadlier Israeli army attack on
Askar Refugee Camp on Saturday night), and prepared
ourselves for soldiers with a hair trigger. The
Israeli authorities in the meantime closed Qalqilya
checkpoint, meaning that no media could get in to
cover our action.

We had many more participants from Qalqilya than last
time. We marched to the vicinity of the military gate
in the southwest corner of what's left of Qalqilya,
just like last time. This time, instead of hoisting a
giant banner with balloons, we used paint rollers on
very long poles to paint giant Palestinian flags up
above the graffiti from July 31. We also tied strings
of names of prisoners to tennis balls, and threw them
over the wall, and girls from Qalqilya released doves.

Check out www.palsolidarity.org for photos.

Our two negotiators, Lisa from Italy and Sam from the
U.S., were awesome. At one point, a few boys from
Qalqilya threw stones in the direction of the troops
who were watching the demonstration with guns cocked.
Despite the fact that older boys and men from Qalqilya
exposed themselves to the troops by running out front
and literally tackling the stone throwers in order to
stop them, the Israeli soldiers began throwing sound
grenades at us (not exactly a de-escalatory tactic).
The usual Israeli army tactic is to follow the sound
grenades with tear gas, then rubber bullets, and
eventually live ammunition. Sam and Lisa, however,
who had positioned themselves among the soldiers from
the beginning of the demo, convinced them to stop
throwing the grenades and allow the demo to wind down
naturally. There were a few speeches and we withdrew.

As we left, Israeli soldiers were spotted in hiding
in the orchards off to the side (something the
commander denied to our negotiators), which was a
provocation that sparked more stone throwing and tire
burning. Fortunately, the army, withdrew, and no
Palestinian boys were hurt.

Tel Aviv, Wednesday, August 13, 2003

In the morning, Rann and Ora and I from ISM went down
to the gate in the Apartheid Wall near the village of
Falamiya-the next gate to the north after Jayyous's
gate. The gate was open (although, ominously, the
same chain and lock that had recently appeared on
Jayyous's gate was hangin on this one), farmer traffic
was very light, and there was no military presence in
evidence. We chatted with a farmer working on is
trees right inside the Wall, who spoke with us in
Hebrew. He said that there would be a process
regarding the Wall and its gates: first the gates are
always open. Then the gates are always open, but
there's a lock and chain hanging on it. Then they're
locked at night. Then they're locked during the day
as well, except for certain hours. Finally, the gates
are locked for good, paving the way for the
confiscation of all the land outside the fence. We've
heard these same predictions from a number of farmers;
when you've lived under occupation for 36 years, you
tend to know the ways of the occupier.

Later in the afternoon, the internationals from ISM
and Ahmed and Farouq from Jayyous Peace Activists went
down to the orchards where lemon trees were being
bulldozed. It seems that a farm road is being paved
and widened-for reasons we can't understand and quite
against the wishes of the farmers whose trees are
being destroyed. The farmers we met, however, asked
the Jayyous Peace Activists and ISM not to mount a
demonstration. They noted that the workers widening
the road are Palestinian, and were being careful not
to damage irrigation pipes or trees other than the
hundreds in the path of the widened road. They felt
that any protest against this unnanounced invasion of
their land would cause the contractors to replace the
Palestinian workers with Druze or Jewish workers who
would carelessly destroy anything in their path. They
were also afraid that any protest would lead to a
retaliatory locking of the gate; now that the
Apartheid Wall is up, the Israeli army has enormous
control over Palestinians' behavior just by holding
the keys to the gate.

A group of us New Yorkers spent the evening in Tel
Aviv (the privilege to pass freely between Israel and
the West Bank of course being one that our Palestinian
friends and hosts don't have). We went to the Tel
Aviv Beer Festival because D.A.M., a Palestinian
hip-hop artist from Haifa whom we admire for his
political songs, was scheduled to appear on the
Israeli hip-hop and reggae stage. We spent a few
hours there, but were so disgusted by the acts that
preceded D.A.M. that we had to leave. Some were just
amateurish and stupid, but others were pro-occupation
hip-hop artists who rapped about crushing Gaza among
other things, and who were introduced as having "blue
and white flowing in their veins". Ugh.

Jerusalem, Thursday, August 14, 20003

I went up to Jerusalem early in the morning for an ISM
Core Group meeting in El-Ram, a Palestinian West Bank
community illegally annexed to Israeli Jerusalem. It
was wonderful to see Lysander from New York's Direct
Action Palestine there; I hadn't seen her since she
was arrested in Mas'ha and banned from the West Bank.
The meeting was long and involved; ISM is an ambitious
international project committed to grassroots
democracy and consensus process. I had to miss the
second day of the meeting because of my region's
scheduled action in Ras Atiyah.

Jayyous, Friday, August 15, 2003

Early in the morning I got on a bus chartered by Yesh
Gvul, a 20-year-old Israeli organization for military
refusers, to go to a demonstration in Ras Atiyah
organized by the Committee Against the Wall/Committee
Against the Settlements with ISM participation. It
was interesting to talk with Itai, an organizer from
Yesh Gvul, during the ride. He downplayed the time he
and others have spent in jail for refusing their
Israeli military service, noting that it's the
Palestinians who live in a jail all the time.

I also talked with other ISM internationals on the bus
about the previous night's house demolition in Askar
Refugee Camp in Nablus, where I spent time last year.
The house demolished was under ISM's protection, and
the internationals in the house chose to stay with the
family when the family decided to evacuate (as per the
orders of the Israeli soldiers who arrived in the
middle of the night). It was hard news to take for
the many Nablus ISM members who would have wanted to
be there to help, but were in Jerusalem either to
attend the Core Group meeting, or because of their
arrest in Mas'ha.

As I've written here before, Qalqilya is entirely
surrounded by the Apartheid Wall. South of Qalqilya
is a corridor outside the wall that allows passage
from Israel to the illegal settlement of Alfe Menashe,
east of Qalqilya. South of that are the villages of
Habla and Ras Atiyah, themselves surrounded by the
Wall. The Wall has been constructed in such a way
that 3 Palestinian villages and 2 Bedouin settlements
have been walled in with Alfe Menashe. 1000 people in
these 5 communities have been cut off from access to
the rest of the West Bank, but forbidden to enter
Israel. The stage is set for ethnic cleansing there.

Ras e-Tira is one of those 5 communities in the Alfe
Menashe enclave created by the Wall. Children from
Ras e-Tira go to school in Ras Atiyah, which is in the
Habla-Ras Atiyah enclave created by the wall. The
school in Ras Atiyah is right next to the Wall
(children painted slogans against the Wall's
construction on the school), and the kids from Ras
e-Tira have to pass through a gate there in order to
reach the school. They are often prevented from doing
so, and the demonstration was planned to call
attention to Ras e-Tira's lack of access to education.

We were met at the demonstration site by the usual
private security paid to guard the construction of the
wall. They were their usual aggressive selves, but we
were able to put a protective line of internationals
and Israelis in front of the Palestinian demonstrators
who held signs, chanted, sang, and made speeches
against the Wall. The security called the army and
the Border Guard, who showed up and demanded that
everyone withdraw inside the gate. We were asked by
the organizers not to give up the gate, because it
would be closed and locked, stranding the
demonstrators from Ras e-Tira. It was pretty tense
for a while, as soldiers and Border Guard gave us five
minutes to disperse before they began using force, but
our negotiators were wonderful, and Palestinian and
international demonstrators showed incredible
discipline in the face of verbal and physical
provocations by the soldiers, Border Guard, and
security. The Israeli demonstrators were not as
disciplined, and one got into a verbal confrontation
with a security guard that ended with the guard
slapping the activist, after which the activist
(natch) was arrested. They also tried to arrest
Jackie, a videographer from New York, but we swallowed
her up into the crowd (but not before a soldier
grabbed and broker her camera).

As the time for Friday prayers approached, the
Palestinian activists prayed in the schoolyard rather
than going to the mosque, which put the soldiers and
Border Guard in a bind. When they were done, Ras
e-Tira demonstrators were permitted to cross the gate
and return to their village. Jackie crossed too,
since her bags were in Ras e-Tira, and the Border
Guard tried again to arrest her. Fortunately, she got
away. We then withdrew into the schoolyard, and the
Israeli soldiers closed and locked the gate.
The Jayyous Peace Activists were really happy with the
demonstration, and we're looking forward to more work
with the villages south of Qalqilya. One suggestion
from a member of the Land Defense Committee in Ras
e-Tira is that we set up a fence in the schoolyard in
Ras Atiyah to help ensure kids' access once school
starts on September 1.

At 7 in the evening, a boy came to our door to tell us
that the gate in the Wall had been closed and locked,
and many farmers were stranded outside. We walked
down the hill, and found Abu Ali there among the
others, waiting to get out to his lands to spend the
night. He called the mayor, who called the Israeli
army District Commanding Officer, and at about 8:30
soldiers came by and opened the gate for the people
waiting to get in and out. I took a flask photograph
while they were re-locking the gate behind the last of
the farmers, which enraged the commander of the
soldiers. He demanded repeatedly to know who I was,
but I was long gone.

The soldiers said that they'd be opening the gate for
a few hours each morning and evening from now on.
It's hard to describe how humiliating the whole
experience was, with farmers on their own land locked
out of their own homes by a capricious and vindictive
foreign army, an army that's been here for 36 years.

Jayyous, Saturday, August 16, 2003

I descended to the gate four times today, as it was
locked, unlocked, locked and unlocked again, each time
with a different story of what hours it would be open.

Tracie and Michelle, ISM Jayyous, told me about our
friend "Mortaza" and why he stays away from the gate
and from demonstrations-he was arrested, held tied to
a chair for 72 days, and then imprisoned for 17
months. He was never charged. He's been told that if
he's seen "causing trouble", he'll be reimprisoned.

On Gate watch I chatted with "Abd el-Wahid", who told
me about his grandfather's land, now in Tel Aviv, and
how he still has the Ottoman deed to it. Tracie and I
also had tea with Khaled, a shepherd who was taken by
the army a month ago while tending his flock outside
the fence, and taken to Jaljulya checkpoint and
released at 3:00 in the morning.

Liat (of the Bay Area's Jewish Voices for Peace) and I
went to visit the Bedouin family trapped outside the
Wall. We were pretty worried about walking through
Jayyous's south gate, since Palestinians and
internationals have been threatened and shot at for
passing through, but we thought it was important to
check on the welfare of this family. The mom and some
of the kids were home, and they enthusiastically
welcomed us and served us tea as we sat and talked
amongst their rabbits and chickens (dad was out with
the sheep). They're running low on water, because the
pump in the nearby village of Azzun is broken. That
pump directs water from the aquifer to villages all
over the area. People in the village buy water ($150
for 11 cubic meters), but they can't get the tank
delivered from the other side of the Wall (not to
mention the obstacle of the money). The mom has
diabetes, and had medical papers indicating her
permission to pass through to Qalqilya for treatment,
but the security guards ripped up her papers and
denied her passage. She was also worried about the
kids' ability to pass through the gate to get to
school next month.

We committed to having internationals walk the kids to
and from school each day starting in September, on the
assumption that the security, soldiers and Border
Guard would hesitate to harass them with
internationals present. We also went back to the
Jayyous peace activists, who said they'd talk to the
mayor about trying to get permission from the District
Commanding Officer to have a tractor with the water
tank cross the gate. We committed to raising the
money.

When we returned to the gate, we saw that boys who had
seen us walk through the gate ventured to do the same
themselves, and set tires on fire in the road. We
were pretty mad about it, because of the danger it put
us in, but the boys were nowhere to be found. We
passed through the gate unmolested.

The farmers were locked out of Jayyous again tonight,
and the mayor had to call the DCO to send soldiers to
open briefly.

Qalqilya Sunday August 17, 2003

During Gate Watch this morning, some Palestinian
construction workers who are building the Apartheid
Wall sat down with us to chat (needless to say,
they're not from Jayyous). I kept my distance from
them. Israel's economic war on Palestine is so severe
that some Palestinians will build their own cages for
a daily wage. Later in the day, a reporter and
photographer from a regional newspaper in the Sharon
region of Israel came to interview people, see the
Wall, and met the Bedouin family. When the two
journalists, accompanied by a group of Jayyous Peace
Activists and internationals, tried to return to the
village, we found the gate closed and blocked by one
of the security guards. After we stood in the sun
arguing with them for a while, a jeep came along and a
soldier ordered the security guard to open the gate.
He told the two Israeli journalists (he didn't know
that one of the internationals is also Israeli) that
they couldn't go back into Jayyous without permission.

This is nonsense, of course; Jayyous is in Area C
according to the Oslo Accords, which means that there
are no restrictions on Israeli access. Nevertheless,
the journalists chose not to go back to Jayyous with
us.and accepted a ride with the soldiers in the jeep.
Now I understand why Palestinians distrust Israeli
journalists. What would we think if a Daily News
reporter interviewed people in Red Hook about police
brutality, and then got a ride out of there in a
police car?

In the evening we were called to Qalqilya to help with
a situation there. A giant military bulldozer had
shown up with a surveyor, attempting to destroy all
the greenhouses, sheds, and farmlands within 50 meters
of the 8-meter high wall on the west side of Qalqilya.

The bulldozer stopped working and left when
internationals arrived on the scene, but was expected
to return during the night or the next day. ISM
activists converged on the city to block the
destruction. We decided that we would not allow tear
gas, rubber bullets, or threat of arrest keep us from
blocking the bulldozer.

Jayyous Monday, August 18, 2003

We waited at a greenhouse by the Wall in Qalqilya,
watching a military bulldozer work outside of the
Wall. It never came in to destroy the lands within 50
meters. I heard that the political establishment in
Qalqilya wants a third Wall action, which I was
delighted about. The group assembled decided to stay
at the greenhouse, day and night, but John and I chose
to return to Jayyous.

Jayyous Tuesday, August 19, 2003

At Gate Watch this morning, I asked Abu Ali why there
were so few farmers going out to the fields. (Most of
the people who passed were workers on the Wall.) He
said that many farmers were now living on their land,
a development he heartily approves of. He feels that
when farmers live on the land, the power of the Wall
and its gates is neutralized. This is tricky
business, though. If any farmer builds a shed that is
too comfortable or sturdy, it will be demolished by
the Israeli army because the land is zoned for
agriculture and not residence. We had long talks with
our closest partners in Jayyous today about how the
mood in the village had changed since last year, when
the olive trees were first being uprooted to make way
for the Wall. Ahmed said that people are now in
despair; the village united in a campaign of
non-violent resistance, and the Wall was built anyway.

Now the Israeli government has a noose in place,
which it's slowly tightening around Jayyous's neck.
I'm convinced that the goal is not land and water
theft, it's ethnic cleansing. The Israeli government
wants to make the Palestinian communities within 5 or
6 kilometers of the Wall unlivable, forcing the
thousands living there to move deeper into the West
Bank or into another country. Perhaps the plan is
then to repeat this process a little further in, until
the West Bank is virtually Arabrein from the Green
Line to the Jordan River. Sharon's governing
coalition includes parties that support expulsion of
all Palestinians from Palestine; it seems that the
"moderates" have the same plan, but wish to make it
appear voluntary.

No bulldozer in Qalqilya again today-the oppressor is
patient.

[image from ISM site]

The HOWL! Opening Night Party is this evening at Angel Orensanz Foundation, with stuff and things beginning at 7pm and continuing until 11.

I wrote about the festival earlier, and this kick-off sounds more than passing promising. The details, from their own site:

Wednesday Aug 20th
7:00 PM - 11:00 PM
HOWL! opening night party
Art Salon & Auction
What: 7:00 PM Book Release Party for 2 FEVA publications

Captured - A History of Film and Video on the Lower East Side Created by Clayton Patterson, Designed by Alexandra Bourdelon, Edited by Paul Barlett and Urania Mylonas.

8:30 PM Art Auction & Exhibition on the Bohemian Balcony Curators: James Romberger and Marguerite Van Cook with David Leslie, Steven Kaplan, Gary Ray, Norman Douglas Howl Souvenir Book, edited by Greg Masters

9p.m. Fashion Show
DJ Liquid Todd from K Rock, Go-Go Boys and Girls, Beer and more..
Where: Angel Orensanz Foundation 172 Norfolk St. (between Houston & Stanton)
Tickets: $5.00

I'm definitely going to be there, but since Barry may have to come late, HOWL! and I could both use a few dozen dates.

When the power went off we were upstairs at the Metropolitan Museum. We had just finished walking through the extraordinary “Art of the First Cities” exhibit on one of its very last days, and I had picked up, but not yet paid for, a book in the adjacent little tie-in shop. That whole area of the Museum was immediately thrown into total darkness, but no one was the least upset, and once we were in rooms with natural light, most people, including the guards, seemed not even to have become distracted. There wasn’t a crack of light visible in the “Cities” galleries, so we decided to wander around the grand permanent-collection areas where there was natural light from skylights, until we eventually decided it might be more interesting, if not wiser, to be out on the street. First I slipped around the ropes blocking the men's room on the first floor (absolutely no light inside, but I knew it well, and I was to be very glad I did that!). I reluctantly gave up my book at another museum shop just outside.

Our only delay getting home was the line of hundreds of people wanting to pick up bags and other interesting stuff from the checkrooms all at just about the same moment. Even now, about a half hour into it, no one seemed to have a clue about the scale of the blackout, but I was beginning to suspect the worse (short of a terrorist attack, which somehow I did not think likely) and I asked a security supervisor about it, since he appeared to have a radio headphone. He told me, “the whole Northeast, including Canada, all the way to Ohio and Michigan." Heavy.

We walked home at a very relaxed pace, stopping for small meals along the way (gosh, I love hotdogs and brownies!), beginning in Central Park and continuing down 5th Avenue to 42d Street, then to Times Sq. and left down 8th Ave., taking pictures as we went. Arrived home early in the evening. The weather? Like September 11, a beautiful, beautiful day.

When we arrived home on 23rd Street, coming in through the lush interior garden from the north, we found ourselves in the midst of a residents and refugees garden party. There was lots of conviviality, the sharing of food, wine, flashlights and candles, much greeting and talking among people who had never taken time to approach each other before (and a certain number who had, of course), soft songs and one mandolin. We were almost half and half "boys" and "girls," but we agreed that it was still just about certain that there would be no new babies in this building 9 months from now.

Back in the apartment at first we even had warmish water for showers! We returned to the garden for a spell, until we became overheated by the zillions of tea candles and their truly monstrous relatives. We headed to the roof for a look at the darkened skyline and streets, and of course the Big Dipper, scads of other stars and red Mars itself.

We came down for a walk around the neighborhood where the real life was concentrated in and outside the gay bars on 8th Avenue, with hundreds of barely- (and bearly-) dressed Tom-of-Finland types hanging out in the dark. Pretty impressive group, even by Chelsea standards, but the most significant difference about the street on Thursday night was probably less the extraordinary subtle lighting than the relaxed friendliness and sociability of the guys. “Attitude” had taken a holiday. It felt like a steroid re-creation of the gyms and playing fields of my all-boy prep school or college experience, but here you could fearlessly look at the musculature.

In the end (if not at the very beginning as well), like those schools, it was a pretty dull scene without any women around. Eventually the cold beer ran out and the crowd started to thin.

On our way out the doors of our building we had run into our friend Glenn, and he was trailing a wheeled suitcase, having just arrived from D.C. in circuitous Greyhound routing. Since he lives pretty far out in Williamsburg and intended to go on to Texas the next day, he stayed here that night. The next morning he set off for the airport. We wished him luck. Hope he made it out that same day.

Now we all really understand why, pre-Edison, people went to bed early, and got up early. What do you do after dark, if it stays dark after dark? We tried sleeping, with only some success.

Friday we walked to our Hudson River Park (in the Village, since the Chelsea Piers corporation owns all of our shore in Chelsea), and had a beautiful day. The new park is wonderful. I hope it manages to be maintained properly. On the way back the power went on in the West Village, but we found it was still dark above 14th Street.

Later that afternoon, between 5 and 6, having just about had it with the information shutdown, I got on my bike and zoomed up and down Manhattan from 80th Street to the Battery, visiting both sides of the island. I found that the only neighborhoods which did not yet have power were either the poorest neighborhoods, or those which were the least important as far as corporations are concerned. Coincidence, political calculation, political reality or a reflection of where we build our substations?

Friday night I decided we'd have a relaxed supper on our own terrace, so I moved a small table and a couple of Windsor chairs out with the potted garden, along with some old candle lanterns, linens, and the food which might not last much longer (Italian salamis, cheese, bread, cooked broccoli salad, fresh plums, wine). Sweetpea joined us out there. It was a delightful meal, in circumstances which probably could not and should not be repeated.

I had reluctantly decided, very much against my nature, and for the first time since the lights and the hot water had disappeared, not to wash the dishes immediately. I was going to just rinse them in the dark and finish them the next day in light, with water heated on the old gas stove. But just after I had brought the dishes into the kitchen, I heard a loud roar, cheering actually, coming from the larger garden below, where there was the now familiar assembly of friendly neighbors being very friendly. The power had returned. Bingo! Hot water for dishes. And showers! We rushed to join the group, but by the time we got downstairs they had dispersed into the walls, and the now exotic hum of air conditioners already surrounded us.

Sleep came easily that night.

The images, from the top: tea lights in the garden, 23rd Street in front of our building, guys outside of Rawhide

Updated August 20, with pictures

We’re back. Time Warner somehow managed finally to push the right remote control button exactly two days after electrical power (but, for our building, not their cable) was restored to Chelsea. We now have our connection once again, for email and the internet, and of course for television as well (although I haven’t looked, and now have no need for its sad contribution to news reporting).

As you see, Barry and I have been pretty much out of touch with the world since Thursday morning (We left the apartment early in the afternoon to visit the Metropolitan Museum, where we were when the power went off). This means that I have little idea of what has already been said on line about the events of last week, so I’m going to limit my comments to personal experience – and I guess I’ll use the opportunity to let off a little steam.

First of all, I am so f ___ing furious about the spin we were getting, and still get! Yes, New Yorkers were wonderful, but the people everywhere at the very top (of the political, energy and communications heaps) who are supposed to be responsible for our security and basic services should be boiled in oil. Instead, we're forever hearing this counter-productive, counter-revolutionary crap about how well we made it through.

For most New Yorkers, at least for those with batteries and portable units, there was nothing but radio for word about what was going on, and that is another problem about which we should be hearing much more from both the cord and remote phone industries. We can at least ask whether it was necessary for our only source of information to give us only what they or the authorities thought would calm us poor children, rather than any real information. I only remember hearing over and over again about how relaxed the City was, about how there was one cooling-off shelter in each borough (one in each?), about calling 311 rather than 911 unless it was a real emergency (how were we going to call any number?) and about the mayor expecting power to be restored very soon, in hours, pretty soon, well, . . . soon, or maybe by some time on Monday. The only practical information I remember hearing (and this from public radio, where I should have expected real reporting and real questions to be asked) was the situation at the airports, certainly not a priority even for New Yorkers not stuck in subways or trying to survive without food or water.

New York did so well, I’m almost surprised we don’t hear some people saying, “Bring it on, again!” - the idea being that we should regularly have this kind of opportunity to prove our mettle and our civic sweetness. Besides selling papers and airtime, it helps the economy – or so the reasoning might go. Even though we know there was no power overload this time, that it was the transmission and other systems that failed, I expect nothing to be done to prevent a recurrence, except what will further enhance the profits of the decision-makers at the top and their paid operatives in Washington, state capitols and cities. Alaskan oil drilling, tax breaks for the oil and gas industry, nuclear energy and countless other destructive rapes of the public and its weal, come to mind immediately. Hey, does anyone remember ENRON? Does anyone recall the vaunted and still very secret Cheney energy meetings that were supposed to result in miracles? The only miracles were the obscene profits of those whose conversations are still kept from us.

Second, do we really have to submit to "Blade Runner"-like assaults by police helicopters? We hardly slept Thursday evening, and the problem was not just the dark, warm, airless room. It was less the heat and humidity that arrested sleep and more the horrendous and mindless whop-clack of the police helicopters (infra-red cameras directed below them in a neighborhood "security" watch) passing every few minutes and hovering directly overhead for a few more, while occasionally and disturbingly shining searchlights onto the ground and the walls outside our rooms. Not knowing at the time how many days and nights this might continue made it even more horrible and obscene.

Can't the police walk, or pedal, or even drive cars anymore? Did they have to terrorize us (disturbing what peace we might have hoped for) in the name of combating terror (keeping the peace) by remote, and in fact secret, control? These may be rhetorical questions, since there is little doubt that helicopters are considered more fun, more manly, than the alternatives, even as they are less risky for the individual officer. If the police were only interested in preventing lootings or controlling what they consider to be the threat to order represented by the large public housing units in our neighborhood, they would have announced they were going to be haunting us all beforehand, but even after the fact you don't see any report of their overhead presence, at least in the print media. I figure it's something like the approach our cops use to catch speeders. In the U.S. they usually try to catch them by hiding; in Europe they are interested in keeping them from speeding in he first place, so they are very visible, especially on dangerous sections of roads.

And finally, why on this tight little island of Manhattan has no one apparently even thought of setting aside at least one or two north-south avenues for emergency vehicles and some routes for pedestrians alone? Why, in the great emergencies unfortunately not unexpected these days, do 10 million people on foot have to compete with the idiots who choose to drive private cars in Manhattan?

Walking down from the Metropolitan, we saw a couple of women try to force their Oldsmobile across Fifth Avenue on 52nd Street through the huge crowd of pedestrians. They nudged a woman pushing a baby carriage. At that moment there were thousands, maybe tens of thousands of pedestrians visible on Fifth Avenue at 52nd Street, and only a handfull of cars and SUVs, each of them carrying but one or two people. And yet the machines still seemed to think they had the right of way – they wouldn't even pull over when an emergency vehicle was blasting its horn immediately behind them, until people on foot engaged the drivers. All this a habit of 50 years, encouraged by the authorities in the name of "keeping [vehicle] traffic moving."

In fact we ourselves were really very little inconvenienced, especially compared to the problems experienced by so many others, and compared to what could have happened to all of us.

There are a few pictures below. For the fun part of the blackout, and more pictures, go to the next post, just above this one.

The images, from the top: 5th Avenue, Pennsylvania Station, Public Library steps across from the station

Posting will resume once Time Warner Cable/Road Runner deigns to get our cable modem running again. 24 hours after Chelsea (the last neighborhood in the city, yes) had its power restored, we have no cable.

Silipups reports the conclusion of a certain research study.