Massive Mumblings from Malaysia

An Average Day: Observations from a Jewish American in Palestine
I wish I were so brave

The following are excerpts from a mass email written by Hannah Mermelstein, who has returned to Palestine a second time to do solidarity work, namely to stop The Wall and assist farmers with the olive harvest.

"The Israeli army began uprooting Palestinian trees in the village of Azzawiya about a week ago to make way for the Wall. The village will lose 90% of its land.

We have been spending our time in Azzawiya these past few days. Every day the men, women, and children go out to demonstrate nonviolently. Yesterday, the day I was there, was apparently typical. About 300 of us began marching up the road towards the land that the bulldozers were destroying...the army immediately fired several canisters of tear gas at us, which split up the crowd.

Some went forward, some went backwards, we went into the olive groves below. About 20 of us – Palestinian women, internationals, and Israelis – wandered through the groves trying to make our way up to where the bulldozers were working. The soldiers could obviously see us, because they kept firing gas directly at us, but we couldn’t see them. I’ll spare you the hot journey through the groves, but we did manage to find our way back up the hill.

Soldiers began running at us and we put our hands up and said as loudly as we could who we were and what we were doing there. As they got closer, I started to relax a bit. I am more familiar with face-to-face confrontation with soldiers, and I still have some faith that they are less likely to injure people when they can see people’s faces.

This is also perhaps the most difficult moment for me, though – the moment at which I myself remember that the soldiers are human. How frustrating to ask an 18-year-old kid, “Do you think what you’re doing is right?” and hear him respond, “It doesn’t matter.” “Of course it matters!” we said. “It’s my job,” he responded, “I’m following orders.” “Do you know who that argument didn’t work for?” asked another Jewish international. “Don’t compare,” said the soldier, but without much conviction.

This is completely insane. I want to believe that nonviolence will prevail, that the army will get tired before the Palestinians do, that Americans will wake up and see where their money (over $13 million a day) is going. Unfortunately, I’m not sure I can confidently say that right now.

I can say that Israeli journalists have been responding to our press releases and showing up more than usual, and also that an overwhelming majority of the internationals I’ve seen so far are Jewish. I just heard that an Israeli lawyer will take this case to the Supreme Court tomorrow to try to change the route of the Wall. I implore you to do something to stop this atrocity. Call someone (a friend, a family member, an army, a Congressperson). Organize an action. Say a prayer. Come to Palestine. Do something.

If you don’t, what’s happening here is likely to become another of our many moments in history that future generations will look back upon and say, “Why did people not act to stop this? What were they thinking?”"

PENGON (Palestinian Environmental NGO Network) has good maps of the projected path of the Wall at www.stopthewall.org.

Hannah is volunteering with International Womens' Peace Service.

To subscribe to her e-mail list, send an e-mail to:
hannahreports-subscribe@lists.riseup.net.