FW: Imagine This...
Ed Nicholas
This is an heartbreaking personal account from a friend of mine that is working with the Michigan Peace Team in the Palestinian West Bank areas. She is a classmate of mine working on her MA in Conflict Transformation at Eastern Mennonite University. For more information, check her team's blog at http://mptinpalestine.blogspot.com.
Regards - Ed Nicholas
You and your
family are sound asleep in your home, when all of a sudden you are awoken by an
explosion that came from within your house. Men dressed in uniforms rip
you from your bed. You are desperately looking around for your family
members to see if they are ok, but the police are surrounding you and trying to
drag you out of your house. The explosion noise that you heard was your
front door being blasted open, and you see the remnants of it in the open
doorway. A brick is thrown through the window and lands on the
floor. More officers come in though the windows. You manage to get
your family together. The police tell you that you must leave your house
immediately without getting any of your belongings. When you refuse, the
police force you out the front door at gunpoint. One of them beats you
with a billy club and injures your arm. As you are pushed out the doorway
and across the street, you look back at the home where you have lived your
whole life and notice that a carload of intruders have already come and are
moving their things into the house, while your belongings are thrown onto the
sidewalk.
This is what happened yesterday morning at 5:30 a.m. to the Hanoun family in
the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah. Two family homes, including
the Hanoun's, were forcibly evacuated by Israeli police forces and occupied by
settlers. MPT spent two nights with the Hanoun family at their home last
week prior to the evictions. During one of these nights, my teammate
overheard a female resident talking to her son about his new shoes. She
asked him why he was sleeping in his shoes. He replied that they were his
new favorite shoes and he did not want to have to leave them behind when they
came to evict him from his home.
Yesterday I went along with two other teammates to demonstrate outside the
Hanoun house with the family. We said our apologies to the two of the
young girls who were evacuated and asked them where they were staying.
They said that they were staying on the street and refused to leave the
area. Their older brother, Rami, was also at the demo with a cast on his
arm due to a beating he received from Israeli police forces during the
eviction.
The demonstration lasted 2 1/2 hours, during which many internationals,
Israeli, and Palestinian activists were arrested. The entire time
demonstrators remained peaceful. At the very beginning of the protest the
soldiers picked out our friend who works with the International Solidarity
Movement who was doing nothing special, simply linking arms with the rest of
us, and pulled him out of the crowd. His shirt was completely ripped open
by the border police. One of my teammates has a big red mark on her
shoulder from an officer grabbing her and pulling her off the man who was being
arrested. Toward the end of the action, as border police officers
attempted to arrest myself and my teammates we reminded them that we were
demonstrating peacefully and that we had that right. There were two
activists who we saw beaten by the border police, but there may have been
more. One was strangled by a banner while he was hunched over on the
ground and then punched in the head; another was lifted up by his neck, then
thrown on the ground, and beaten. This second man was Palestinian.
We tried to put our bodies in front of the people being beaten but the police
pulled us off them as we screamed, "you're hurting them". Once
they took away the people they were arresting we started to walk away as the
border police were pushing us and yelling at us to leave. We told them we
were going and walking very quickly, but they continued to push us hard nearly
causing us to fall to the ground.
The reason I have not shared many of my personal experiences with you all about
this trip is that I know your time is limited and you already have a lot to
read with the blogs. Additionally, I know I will be talking to most of
you upon my return. However, I wanted to share this experience with you
because it has shaken me to my core. Demonstrating with the Hanouns
outside the home they have lived in for 50 some years was heart
wrenching. They still have hope that in the end, they will be able to
return to their house. I wish that everyone could have the chance to come
here and witness what is really happening, the things that you do not get to
hear about in the media. The occupation and ethnic cleansing of the
Palestinians by Israel is hurting not only the Palestinians but also Israeli
society.
You will be able to read more about this situation in our upcoming blog.
Thanks for reading,
Beth
talkingsticknews
appreciative as he has also taken on this cause.
I fear the Israelis have crossed a line behind which they cannot
retreat and there are gallons more blood to be shed.. Forgiveness
will come with difficulty.
Though the responsibility of personal conscience has been, if
tenuously, established I lay heavy blame at the feet of the U.S.
corporate politicians. They have not only supported and enabled
through supply of horrendous weaponry but in recent years incited a
profoundly wounded people to unspeakable behavior..
This generation of nations that has received the gifts of Nuremberg,
Gandhi, Mandela and King now seems determined to turn away from those
great lessons of peace in the search for profit.
Not to compare my experiences with those much less fortunate but to
provide perhaps some insight into the lingering aftermath at the
personal level. I just wrote in my online personal journal a bit about
the still present feelings just the movie The Grapes of Wrath. brings
forth. http://firefliesandbonfires.com/weblog
On Aug 4, 8:39 am, "Ed Nicholas" <ed.nicho...@sbcglobal.net> wrote:
> This is an heartbreaking personal account from a friend of mine that is
> working with the Michigan Peace Team in the Palestinian West Bank areas.
> She is a classmate of mine working on her MA in Conflict Transformation at
> Eastern Mennonite University. For more information, check her team's blog
> Regards - Ed Nicholas
>
> You and your family are sound asleep in your home, when all of a sudden you
> are awoken by an explosion that came from within your house. Men dressed in
> uniforms rip you from your bed. You are desperately looking around for your
> family members to see if they are ok, but the police are surrounding you and
> trying to drag you out of your house. The explosion noise that you heard
> was your front door being blasted open, and you see the remnants of it in