Nov 19. 2010
This Friday in Nabi Saleh the Israeli border police used its stink water
tank in the center of the village, as a clear and gross collective
punishment measure against the entire village for Friday demonstrations.
Nabi Saleh residents and demonstrators in the village center, where the
stink water was squirted.
The stink water is a foul-smelling liquid that makes it unbearable to
live in the place where it is squirted on for at least one week. It is
not officially intended for use inside a populated area, but that has
been its use against Nabi Saleh residents and demonstration in the past,
and this gross attack is now being retained.
The demonstration in Nabi Saleh against the creeping annexation of land
by the Halamish settlement started with an immediate unprovoked attack
by Israeli border police on a peaceful and non-violent march. Following
this attack, clashes erupted, with some stone-throwers attempting to
ward off the army incursion. Nevertheless the army manage to position
itself just outside the village`s built area and shot its tear gas
canisters towards the village, repressing also non-protesting civilians.
Throughout the demonstration the Israeli army has shot tear gas
canisters directly at the protesters, a dangerous conduct which violates
even the army`s own regulations. Rubber-coated still bullets were also
widely used by the army. As a result at least 10 protesters suffered
injuries.
Wednesday, November 24, 2010
Tuesday, October 26, 2010
Sunday, October 17, 2010
Robert Nichols Died on October 14, 2010
Grace Paley's partner, Bob Nichols passed away this week. They had lived together in Thetford, Vermont for decades. He was 92 years old. Here is a clip, from several years ago, speaking about his concern for Washington Square, which he had helped to preserve in the sixties.
Nichols, a poet and novelist born in Worcester, Massachusetts, left home when he was young and became a landscape architect. He ... has published several volumes, including a collection of short stories published by the Johns Hopkins University Press, In the Air. Nichols’ other books include Slow Newsreel of Man Riding Train, Address to the Smaller Animals, Red Shift, and numerous essays on economics and politics, among other subjects. A graduate of the Harvard School of Design, he described himself as an “activist and sometime organizer, involved in the anti-war, anti-nuclear and conservation movements." -from a Dartmouth College announcement.
Bob was a farmer, a poet, a playwright, a landscape architect and a community activist.
This winter there will be a staging of several of his short plays in New York City and hopefully this presentation will be repeated in Vermont in the early summer.
This is a tape that Liza Bear made with Bob Nichols about Washington Square.
This is alao by Liza Bear-- tape with Bob at a Grace Paley memorial.
Here is an article from 2006 in The Villager about Washington Square:
Square’s fountain to be moved; water jets will move musicians
Luther Harris, author of a definitive book on the history of Washington Square, displayed a large photo of Frederick Law Olmstead, the “father of American landscape design,” as he read his statement at the Art Commission. Harris said he was trying to emphasize that “Washington Square’s landscape is Olmstedian and that Parks is destroying it with its alien axial symmetry.”
Villager photo by Q. Sakamaki
By Lincoln Anderson
Folk singers strummed and warbled ballads against it. Local politicians - not one but four - testified against it. The Fine Arts Federation of New York stated it was opposed to the idea. Disabled advocates in wheelchairs angrily said they were being used as “pawns” - and not to do it in their name. And most of the people offering testimony during four hours of hearings on Monday said they didn't want the Washington Square Park fountain moved 22 feet to the east. But that didn't matter to the Art Commission, which voted to approve the shifting of the fountain, as well as the park's two statues, as part of the Parks Department's $16 million renovation project.
In doing do, they sealed the park's fate, meaning it will change from its historic Olmstedian design of curved pathways to a more formalistic, symmetrical Beaux Arts layout. And coming with the change to a more regimented look will probably be a parallel change in the use of the traditionally freewheeling park - though the Parks Department is avoiding saying that. Nine high-powered water jets in the fountain will make it hard to perform there.
After hearing the copious testimony, the commission took one hour to deliberate and vote on the three issues.
By votes of 10 yes and 1 no they approved moving the Giuseppe Garibaldi and Alexander Lyman Holley statues to the northern areas of the ovals they currently occupy on the park's central east-west pathway. Their vote on the fountain was unanimous. In his presentation of the plan, John Krawchuk, Parks director of historic preservation, said relocating the fountain would be a stunning improvement. Lining up fountain and arch would “enrich the view of the arch and invite people into the park,” he said. “It is a great civic gesture. Keeping the fountain hidden behind the arch is an intellectual nuance that will be seen as a missed opportunity by future generations.”
Just as at the numerous public meetings held before on the renovation, the overwhelming public sentiment at the Art Commission hearing was once again against the plan. State Senator Tom Duane testified against moving the fountain. Duane also said he supports keeping the fountain and sunken central plaza at their current elevation, though the latter was not within the purview of the Art Commission to decide, having been previously approved by the Landmarks Preservation Commission. Calling the fountain relocation “unnecessary,” Duane said, “While I understand the desire for symmetry between the fountain and the arch, Greenwich Village thrives precisely because its geography is not beholden to grids and symmetry. A park serving and representing our eccentric and eclectic neighborhood does not need perfect alignment.”
His remarks drew cheers and applause from the partisan crowd. Councilmember Alan Gerson deferred to the Art Commission on whether to move the fountain, noting this was part of the agreement he and Councilmember Christine Quinn crafted with the Parks Department in which Parks made commitments on other aspects of the renovation. Yet, Gerson added, “My personal view is that the fountain should stay where it's been my whole life. There's something discomfiting to me about having children in bathing suits playing in the fountain in the line of sight of one of our major arteries.”
Again, there were cheers. New Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer and Assemblymember Deborah Glick also issued statements against moving the fountain. However, Kate Seely-Kirk, legislative aide to Quinn, the new Council speaker, read Quinn's statement, which, like Gerson, deferred to the Art Commission's judgment on moving the fountain. Except, Quinn didn't offer her personal view on the issue. “Boo!” hooted one woman in the audience. “Chris wimped!” Melissa Baldock, director of preservation from the Greenwich Village Society of Historic Preservation, read the society's statement in support of moving the fountain and statues.
“We see no reason to reject the location of these elements,” she said. A member of the opposition pointedly filmed Baldock with a handheld minicamera as she departed after testifying. Keen Berger, Greenwich Village Democratic district leader, noted her late husband Martin Berger 40 years ago defended the right of a mandolin player to perform in the park. Her voice rising to a shout, Berger implored, “The park is a living place - don't let them kill it!” However, weighing in in support of the move was Ric Bell, executive director of the American Institute of Architects, who called it the obvious thing to do. On the other hand, Tomas Rossant of the Fine Arts Federation of New York said the organization “opposes the relocation of the fountain and sees no reason why a progressive design can't be done with the fountain in place. This redesign privileges Beaux Arts axial symmetry over real history,” he said.
While the mayor appoints all 11 members of the Art Commission, a majority of the commissioners, seven, are selected from a list from the Fine Arts Federation of New York. Last year the federation wrote to the Art Commission expressing their objection to moving the fountain. Ronald Podolsky, attorney on a community lawsuit set to be filed once the project is ready to start, protested that he filed a Freedom of Information Law request to see the updated park redesign plan, but was only notified it was available for viewing the Friday before the hearing. “It is well known that straight lines are the lines of duty, curved lines are the lines of beauty,” Podolsky noted, knocking the redesign. However, broadening the debate, a speaker in support of the project, asked, “Straight lines don't make art? How about the Taj Mahal?” sparking some laughter. Sharon Woolums, a leader of the Emergency Coalition to Save Washington Square Park, on whose behalf Podolsky is filing the lawsuit, said the existing design from the community-driven renovation of the park led by Robert Nichols in 1969 shouldn't be changed. “Bob Nichols was also a theater director and understood how the fountain plaza would function as a theater,” Woolums said. “There is no need to change this brilliant plan. Do not destroy what works.”
Accompanying himself on guitar, Eric Levine, musical director of the Disabled in Action Singers, chose to sing his testimony: Adrian Benepe, our Park commissioner, Says stop the music and that they will do Let not a note by heard from neither man nor bird Ban the guitarists, they're Benepe's taboo We say no to Benepe's men Fight the good old fight again We are the surging mass We are worth more than grass The park's for all people - not just for N.Y.U. During a break in the testimony, Podolsky fittingly led some of the plan opponents in a round of Appalachian coal miners' songs about John L. Lewis. As testimony resumed, noting she's always been a Frisbee player, former City Councilmember Carol Greitzer said it's not a bad thing that there's lots of asphalt in the park. “To play Frisbee you need a lot of payment.
No one's mentioned that.” The actual use of the fountain once the park is renovated was a concern of the commissioners, most notably Byron Kim. Specifically, Kim and a few others voiced trepidations about the plan for a powerful 45-foot-high water plume and eight arcing side water jets in the fountain, wondering how this would mesh with the fountain's current use as a performance space for acrobats and musicians, or even merely as a place to sit and relax. Just the sound of this water display might discourage musicians from jamming nearby, Kim and some of his colleagues opined. They asked the Parks officials if any noise studies of the fountain had been done yet, to which Parks responded that they had not. “The splash factor,” Kim said. “Will it make it difficult for people to sit on the fountain? If you have a lot of water jets will people be able to hear each other talk?”
Art Commission member Otis Pratt Pearsall said the noisy fountain was “a huge issue that needs to be addressed.” Krawchuk said that musicians can ask a park attendant to adjust the fountain, controls for which will be located near the park house. “It'll all be digitized and electronic,” he assured. “I think that this will not be an issue for park users. Certainly, if we feel that noise is an issue, we can adjust the jets accordingly.”
He said the fountain would operate from April to November. Bill Castro, Manhattan borough Parks commissioner, said, in fact, most impromptu performances happen throughout the park, not in the fountain. Castro said time could be carved out for performances in the fountain when the water will be turned off. But larger performances will need to get permits, he said. The commission nixed the Parks plan to add a set of eight shiny pink granite urns atop the fountain's piers mirroring historic urns that were on the fountain before it was moved from 59th St. and Fifth Ave. to its present location around 1870.
The urns could be seen as a deterrent to the use of the fountain as an active performance space and could become large ornate ashtrays, commissioners said. The commission instead approved for the piers to be topped with new bluestone caps. There were issues with turning the Garibaldi statue to face southward. Parks said this would allow for better sunlight on the monument. However, a representative of the Garibaldi Museum said for the statute to face west showed how Garibaldi - Italy's equivalent of George Washington - was a man of both the Old and New World. But Amy Freitag, Parks director of capital planning, said by turning him south he would be looking at the historic Italian South Village. Where both statues are now is an impediment to people walking on the pathway, plus the Holley monument gets doused with dog urine since it's near the dog run, so it's best to move them, Parks said. These opened-up oval areas will also be improved as performance spaces, Parks officials said.
The use of the fountain for cooling off in hot weather and for a children's play area will also apparently come to an end with the renovation. The fountain was converted to a water-play feature for neighborhood children in 1934 with water jets spurting out of the eight fountain piers. The central fountain plume was installed in 1970. However, to meet the new code put in place after a drought a few years ago, in the renovation, the fountain's system will be changed to use recycled water, or water that keeps recirculating through it, as opposed to waste water, or water that goes down the drain into the sewer. Any fountain that uses more than 2,000 gallons of water a day must conform to the new code. The Washington Square fountain will use more than 2,000 gallons of water an hour, Parks Commissioner Adrian Benepe said.
As for use of the fountain by buskers and children, Freitag said, “Having people in the basin when it's dry is certainly something we'd like to explore. And we'll explore use of a [handicapped-accessible] temporary ramp [into the fountain]…. [But] our policy doesn't allow people to play in our fountains.” The restored fountain will continue to have three steps inside as it currently does. After the lengthy testimony, the commission first discussed and voted on the statues and urns. Signe Nielsen, a landscape architect member of the Art Commission, felt that since the fountain relocation had been the only thing the public had testified about, the commissioners were obligated to discuss it a bit. Alice Aycock, an artist member of the commission, said the fountain had always seemed “in no-man's land” to her: “It's neither here nor there. It's just uhhh.” Another commissioner said it was time for “a rebirth of the park” and a blotting out of any memory of how cars used to run through the park until they were banned in 1963. The plaza and north-south central pathway are roughly in the same spot where roads once ran through the park.
James Stuckey, a commissioner who said he plays 10 musical instruments, said the loss of the sunken plaza won't affect acoustics one bit. During discussion of the fact that a plaque to the Tisch family - who have given $2.5 million for the fountain's renovation - will be affixed to the new fountain, Aycock said perhaps another plaque should be added to acknowledge the famous musicians, like Bob Dylan, who got their start playing around the fountain - “so that it just not ignore that.” After the vote, ECO's Woolums angrily called it “a rubber stamp for the mayor's office. The Fine Arts Federation voted against it,” she noted. However, even the Fine Arts Federation's Roussant had predicted Parks would prevail. “There's too much behind this. Parks is really pushing for it,” he had said. Said Commissioner Benepe afterwards, “We're very pleased with the decision. Also, very happy with the fact that people care very deeply about parks. This was further evidence that New Yorkers care deeply about parks and are passionate about them.” The project should begin this spring or summer, he said. He said Parks will work on the issues of the water plume and jets. During her remarks one woman slammed New York University, accusing, “N.Y.U., which has kept a low profile in all this, is the main gainer, getting a symmetrical, clutter-free space for its graduation ceremonies. What a sorry fate that would be for this most individualistic spirited of parks.”
Yet, some of the project's opponents noted a significant absence at the hearing - no representative from New York University seemed to be present. N.Y.U. spokespersons did not return a call for comment by press time as to why the university did not present testimony or even appear to have an official at the hearing.
This is a letter that Bob wrote in 2006 to The Villager:
To The Editor:
Re “Plaza size matters; judge extends order blocking Wash. Sq. project” (news article, May 24):
I was heartened by the news reported in The Villager two weeks ago of the community’s continuing resistance to the planned reconstruction of Washington Square Park. I haven’t kept up with the legal details or followed recent arguments as to the plaza’s size, but I have to smile at the purported cost of the dramatic deconstruction process, when the actual solution is really so simple and inexpensive. As I explained in The Villager before, the basic failure has been the refusal — perhaps recalcitrance or just plain ignorance — of Parks in maintaining the park. The present Parks Department is not altogether at fault.
The original design by the Committee of Architects in 1970 comprised a number of original elements, park furniture such as the circular benches at the corner entrances and some trees. These were nonstandard and required maintenance procedures unfamiliar to the Parks maintenance crew. They required special supervision and attention. We, the designers, and our sponsors, members of the Greenwich Village Community Association, did not see this as crucial. There was no watch committee to follow up on it or see that the engineering drawings and specifications were forwarded from the engineering firm to the Arsenal in case adjustments were needed.
An example are the trees in the raised sitting walls around the edge of the plaza. A crucial element, why have they not received the same attention to keep them healthy that they would have received on any college campus? The trees need nourishment, the soil needs water and air. It breaks my heart to see them. Years have gone by. While the political and legal battles continue, at the same time this might have been attended to. Nobody has thought to do such a simple thing. Or is it a question of calculated neglect?
The legal and bureaucratic answer is, of course: We have no money. No money for maintenance, only for capital improvement. And so, the park wrecked as $16 million “capital improvement.” Hilarious!
Robert Nichols,
Nichols was a member of the Greenwich Village Architects Committee
Nichols, a poet and novelist born in Worcester, Massachusetts, left home when he was young and became a landscape architect. He ... has published several volumes, including a collection of short stories published by the Johns Hopkins University Press, In the Air. Nichols’ other books include Slow Newsreel of Man Riding Train, Address to the Smaller Animals, Red Shift, and numerous essays on economics and politics, among other subjects. A graduate of the Harvard School of Design, he described himself as an “activist and sometime organizer, involved in the anti-war, anti-nuclear and conservation movements." -from a Dartmouth College announcement.
Bob was a farmer, a poet, a playwright, a landscape architect and a community activist.
This winter there will be a staging of several of his short plays in New York City and hopefully this presentation will be repeated in Vermont in the early summer.
This is a tape that Liza Bear made with Bob Nichols about Washington Square.
This is alao by Liza Bear-- tape with Bob at a Grace Paley memorial.
Here is an article from 2006 in The Villager about Washington Square:
Square’s fountain to be moved; water jets will move musicians
Luther Harris, author of a definitive book on the history of Washington Square, displayed a large photo of Frederick Law Olmstead, the “father of American landscape design,” as he read his statement at the Art Commission. Harris said he was trying to emphasize that “Washington Square’s landscape is Olmstedian and that Parks is destroying it with its alien axial symmetry.”
Villager photo by Q. Sakamaki
By Lincoln Anderson
Folk singers strummed and warbled ballads against it. Local politicians - not one but four - testified against it. The Fine Arts Federation of New York stated it was opposed to the idea. Disabled advocates in wheelchairs angrily said they were being used as “pawns” - and not to do it in their name. And most of the people offering testimony during four hours of hearings on Monday said they didn't want the Washington Square Park fountain moved 22 feet to the east. But that didn't matter to the Art Commission, which voted to approve the shifting of the fountain, as well as the park's two statues, as part of the Parks Department's $16 million renovation project.
In doing do, they sealed the park's fate, meaning it will change from its historic Olmstedian design of curved pathways to a more formalistic, symmetrical Beaux Arts layout. And coming with the change to a more regimented look will probably be a parallel change in the use of the traditionally freewheeling park - though the Parks Department is avoiding saying that. Nine high-powered water jets in the fountain will make it hard to perform there.
After hearing the copious testimony, the commission took one hour to deliberate and vote on the three issues.
By votes of 10 yes and 1 no they approved moving the Giuseppe Garibaldi and Alexander Lyman Holley statues to the northern areas of the ovals they currently occupy on the park's central east-west pathway. Their vote on the fountain was unanimous. In his presentation of the plan, John Krawchuk, Parks director of historic preservation, said relocating the fountain would be a stunning improvement. Lining up fountain and arch would “enrich the view of the arch and invite people into the park,” he said. “It is a great civic gesture. Keeping the fountain hidden behind the arch is an intellectual nuance that will be seen as a missed opportunity by future generations.”
Just as at the numerous public meetings held before on the renovation, the overwhelming public sentiment at the Art Commission hearing was once again against the plan. State Senator Tom Duane testified against moving the fountain. Duane also said he supports keeping the fountain and sunken central plaza at their current elevation, though the latter was not within the purview of the Art Commission to decide, having been previously approved by the Landmarks Preservation Commission. Calling the fountain relocation “unnecessary,” Duane said, “While I understand the desire for symmetry between the fountain and the arch, Greenwich Village thrives precisely because its geography is not beholden to grids and symmetry. A park serving and representing our eccentric and eclectic neighborhood does not need perfect alignment.”
His remarks drew cheers and applause from the partisan crowd. Councilmember Alan Gerson deferred to the Art Commission on whether to move the fountain, noting this was part of the agreement he and Councilmember Christine Quinn crafted with the Parks Department in which Parks made commitments on other aspects of the renovation. Yet, Gerson added, “My personal view is that the fountain should stay where it's been my whole life. There's something discomfiting to me about having children in bathing suits playing in the fountain in the line of sight of one of our major arteries.”
Again, there were cheers. New Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer and Assemblymember Deborah Glick also issued statements against moving the fountain. However, Kate Seely-Kirk, legislative aide to Quinn, the new Council speaker, read Quinn's statement, which, like Gerson, deferred to the Art Commission's judgment on moving the fountain. Except, Quinn didn't offer her personal view on the issue. “Boo!” hooted one woman in the audience. “Chris wimped!” Melissa Baldock, director of preservation from the Greenwich Village Society of Historic Preservation, read the society's statement in support of moving the fountain and statues.
“We see no reason to reject the location of these elements,” she said. A member of the opposition pointedly filmed Baldock with a handheld minicamera as she departed after testifying. Keen Berger, Greenwich Village Democratic district leader, noted her late husband Martin Berger 40 years ago defended the right of a mandolin player to perform in the park. Her voice rising to a shout, Berger implored, “The park is a living place - don't let them kill it!” However, weighing in in support of the move was Ric Bell, executive director of the American Institute of Architects, who called it the obvious thing to do. On the other hand, Tomas Rossant of the Fine Arts Federation of New York said the organization “opposes the relocation of the fountain and sees no reason why a progressive design can't be done with the fountain in place. This redesign privileges Beaux Arts axial symmetry over real history,” he said.
While the mayor appoints all 11 members of the Art Commission, a majority of the commissioners, seven, are selected from a list from the Fine Arts Federation of New York. Last year the federation wrote to the Art Commission expressing their objection to moving the fountain. Ronald Podolsky, attorney on a community lawsuit set to be filed once the project is ready to start, protested that he filed a Freedom of Information Law request to see the updated park redesign plan, but was only notified it was available for viewing the Friday before the hearing. “It is well known that straight lines are the lines of duty, curved lines are the lines of beauty,” Podolsky noted, knocking the redesign. However, broadening the debate, a speaker in support of the project, asked, “Straight lines don't make art? How about the Taj Mahal?” sparking some laughter. Sharon Woolums, a leader of the Emergency Coalition to Save Washington Square Park, on whose behalf Podolsky is filing the lawsuit, said the existing design from the community-driven renovation of the park led by Robert Nichols in 1969 shouldn't be changed. “Bob Nichols was also a theater director and understood how the fountain plaza would function as a theater,” Woolums said. “There is no need to change this brilliant plan. Do not destroy what works.”
Accompanying himself on guitar, Eric Levine, musical director of the Disabled in Action Singers, chose to sing his testimony: Adrian Benepe, our Park commissioner, Says stop the music and that they will do Let not a note by heard from neither man nor bird Ban the guitarists, they're Benepe's taboo We say no to Benepe's men Fight the good old fight again We are the surging mass We are worth more than grass The park's for all people - not just for N.Y.U. During a break in the testimony, Podolsky fittingly led some of the plan opponents in a round of Appalachian coal miners' songs about John L. Lewis. As testimony resumed, noting she's always been a Frisbee player, former City Councilmember Carol Greitzer said it's not a bad thing that there's lots of asphalt in the park. “To play Frisbee you need a lot of payment.
No one's mentioned that.” The actual use of the fountain once the park is renovated was a concern of the commissioners, most notably Byron Kim. Specifically, Kim and a few others voiced trepidations about the plan for a powerful 45-foot-high water plume and eight arcing side water jets in the fountain, wondering how this would mesh with the fountain's current use as a performance space for acrobats and musicians, or even merely as a place to sit and relax. Just the sound of this water display might discourage musicians from jamming nearby, Kim and some of his colleagues opined. They asked the Parks officials if any noise studies of the fountain had been done yet, to which Parks responded that they had not. “The splash factor,” Kim said. “Will it make it difficult for people to sit on the fountain? If you have a lot of water jets will people be able to hear each other talk?”
Art Commission member Otis Pratt Pearsall said the noisy fountain was “a huge issue that needs to be addressed.” Krawchuk said that musicians can ask a park attendant to adjust the fountain, controls for which will be located near the park house. “It'll all be digitized and electronic,” he assured. “I think that this will not be an issue for park users. Certainly, if we feel that noise is an issue, we can adjust the jets accordingly.”
He said the fountain would operate from April to November. Bill Castro, Manhattan borough Parks commissioner, said, in fact, most impromptu performances happen throughout the park, not in the fountain. Castro said time could be carved out for performances in the fountain when the water will be turned off. But larger performances will need to get permits, he said. The commission nixed the Parks plan to add a set of eight shiny pink granite urns atop the fountain's piers mirroring historic urns that were on the fountain before it was moved from 59th St. and Fifth Ave. to its present location around 1870.
The urns could be seen as a deterrent to the use of the fountain as an active performance space and could become large ornate ashtrays, commissioners said. The commission instead approved for the piers to be topped with new bluestone caps. There were issues with turning the Garibaldi statue to face southward. Parks said this would allow for better sunlight on the monument. However, a representative of the Garibaldi Museum said for the statute to face west showed how Garibaldi - Italy's equivalent of George Washington - was a man of both the Old and New World. But Amy Freitag, Parks director of capital planning, said by turning him south he would be looking at the historic Italian South Village. Where both statues are now is an impediment to people walking on the pathway, plus the Holley monument gets doused with dog urine since it's near the dog run, so it's best to move them, Parks said. These opened-up oval areas will also be improved as performance spaces, Parks officials said.
The use of the fountain for cooling off in hot weather and for a children's play area will also apparently come to an end with the renovation. The fountain was converted to a water-play feature for neighborhood children in 1934 with water jets spurting out of the eight fountain piers. The central fountain plume was installed in 1970. However, to meet the new code put in place after a drought a few years ago, in the renovation, the fountain's system will be changed to use recycled water, or water that keeps recirculating through it, as opposed to waste water, or water that goes down the drain into the sewer. Any fountain that uses more than 2,000 gallons of water a day must conform to the new code. The Washington Square fountain will use more than 2,000 gallons of water an hour, Parks Commissioner Adrian Benepe said.
As for use of the fountain by buskers and children, Freitag said, “Having people in the basin when it's dry is certainly something we'd like to explore. And we'll explore use of a [handicapped-accessible] temporary ramp [into the fountain]…. [But] our policy doesn't allow people to play in our fountains.” The restored fountain will continue to have three steps inside as it currently does. After the lengthy testimony, the commission first discussed and voted on the statues and urns. Signe Nielsen, a landscape architect member of the Art Commission, felt that since the fountain relocation had been the only thing the public had testified about, the commissioners were obligated to discuss it a bit. Alice Aycock, an artist member of the commission, said the fountain had always seemed “in no-man's land” to her: “It's neither here nor there. It's just uhhh.” Another commissioner said it was time for “a rebirth of the park” and a blotting out of any memory of how cars used to run through the park until they were banned in 1963. The plaza and north-south central pathway are roughly in the same spot where roads once ran through the park.
James Stuckey, a commissioner who said he plays 10 musical instruments, said the loss of the sunken plaza won't affect acoustics one bit. During discussion of the fact that a plaque to the Tisch family - who have given $2.5 million for the fountain's renovation - will be affixed to the new fountain, Aycock said perhaps another plaque should be added to acknowledge the famous musicians, like Bob Dylan, who got their start playing around the fountain - “so that it just not ignore that.” After the vote, ECO's Woolums angrily called it “a rubber stamp for the mayor's office. The Fine Arts Federation voted against it,” she noted. However, even the Fine Arts Federation's Roussant had predicted Parks would prevail. “There's too much behind this. Parks is really pushing for it,” he had said. Said Commissioner Benepe afterwards, “We're very pleased with the decision. Also, very happy with the fact that people care very deeply about parks. This was further evidence that New Yorkers care deeply about parks and are passionate about them.” The project should begin this spring or summer, he said. He said Parks will work on the issues of the water plume and jets. During her remarks one woman slammed New York University, accusing, “N.Y.U., which has kept a low profile in all this, is the main gainer, getting a symmetrical, clutter-free space for its graduation ceremonies. What a sorry fate that would be for this most individualistic spirited of parks.”
Yet, some of the project's opponents noted a significant absence at the hearing - no representative from New York University seemed to be present. N.Y.U. spokespersons did not return a call for comment by press time as to why the university did not present testimony or even appear to have an official at the hearing.
This is a letter that Bob wrote in 2006 to The Villager:
To The Editor:
Re “Plaza size matters; judge extends order blocking Wash. Sq. project” (news article, May 24):
I was heartened by the news reported in The Villager two weeks ago of the community’s continuing resistance to the planned reconstruction of Washington Square Park. I haven’t kept up with the legal details or followed recent arguments as to the plaza’s size, but I have to smile at the purported cost of the dramatic deconstruction process, when the actual solution is really so simple and inexpensive. As I explained in The Villager before, the basic failure has been the refusal — perhaps recalcitrance or just plain ignorance — of Parks in maintaining the park. The present Parks Department is not altogether at fault.
The original design by the Committee of Architects in 1970 comprised a number of original elements, park furniture such as the circular benches at the corner entrances and some trees. These were nonstandard and required maintenance procedures unfamiliar to the Parks maintenance crew. They required special supervision and attention. We, the designers, and our sponsors, members of the Greenwich Village Community Association, did not see this as crucial. There was no watch committee to follow up on it or see that the engineering drawings and specifications were forwarded from the engineering firm to the Arsenal in case adjustments were needed.
An example are the trees in the raised sitting walls around the edge of the plaza. A crucial element, why have they not received the same attention to keep them healthy that they would have received on any college campus? The trees need nourishment, the soil needs water and air. It breaks my heart to see them. Years have gone by. While the political and legal battles continue, at the same time this might have been attended to. Nobody has thought to do such a simple thing. Or is it a question of calculated neglect?
The legal and bureaucratic answer is, of course: We have no money. No money for maintenance, only for capital improvement. And so, the park wrecked as $16 million “capital improvement.” Hilarious!
Robert Nichols,
Nichols was a member of the Greenwich Village Architects Committee
Friday, October 1, 2010
Film about Grace Paley is Premiered at the Woodstock Film Festival
In the opening moments of “Grace Paley: Collected Shorts,” Paley rhetorically asks an audience, “What is the responsibility of a poet?” We soon learn that Gracy Paley answered that question emphatically throughout her entire life.Lilly Rivlin’s inspiring film brings to life the momentous times in which this author and activist lived and worked as she reads from her short stories, poems and essays. Paley was a firebrand on the front line of protest. She opposed war and nuclear proliferation, and fought for the rights of women, which often landed her in jail. As a teacher she influences generations of writers. Grace Paley is a New York icon whose life attests to the possibility that one person can combine public responsibility with individual creativity. Paley not only broke the mold, she created a new approach to her life’s work that combined equal parts writer, activist, woman and mother.
In “Grace Paley: Collected Shorts” we learn the story of this child of Russian-Jewish immigrants, raised in New York City in the 1930s. We hear from her daughter, granddaughter and a wide range of fellow writers and activists. We also hear many of Grace Paley’s own words, the greatest joy of Rivlin’s revealing film. (David Becker)
Thursday, August 19, 2010
The checkpoint, the campus, the museum, the shopping mall, Neve Tzedek, the Jaffa port, the flea market, the beach
A chronicle of a joyous and profoundly moving day of forbidden fun in Tel Aviv
By Ilana Hammerman
Jaffa. A summery evening. Between the blue metal police barriers, in the dark, narrow passage that leads into the flea market, from whose alleyways comes an enticing cacophony, a crowd of people squeeze their way past two policemen standing on either side. The people hand their bags to be checked, craning their necks to get a look inside, toward the source of the shouts and bits of music that promise them and those behind them in line great bargains and plenty of fun at the fair inside. We, too, are squashed with the rest - myself and three young women: Lin, Aya and Yasmin.
The hand rummaging through my leather backpack stops all of a sudden and I hear the policeman, whom I haven't even looked at until now, calling: "Hey, hold on, wait, wait! I haven't checked your bags!" I see Lin and Aya and Yasmin swallowed up by the stream of people making its way toward the heart of the action. In the bright light of flashlights, I am just able to catch the gleam of their long straight hair, and a glimpse of the small, dainty purse that Lin, the eldest of the three, is holding above her head for some reason. I call out to them to come back, but it's no use. They are out of sight.
"They're with me, don't worry," I tell the policeman, squinting to try to see which way they went. They won't disappear on you, don't worry, I tell myself. Meanwhile, the crush of people behind me has prompted the policeman to remove his hand from my backpack and now I'm inside, weaving my way through the slow-moving throng. Clusters form around a jewelry peddler, around a pair of musicians, some clowns and a magician - and I see Aya, the youngest of the trio, standing on his carpet and staring wide-eyed at something. Next to her I spy the other two, one combing and smoothing her disheveled hair and the other tucking in the bottom of her blouse and adjusting her glittery belt buckle.
All this excitement actually came near the end of a long day which had begun in the morning in another place altogether, in an alien landscape - perhaps another country. This is the story.
Aya is a young woman of about 18, whom I love. Lin and Yasmin are her cousins, and are about a year or so older. All three live in the same village in the "Land of Judea." Let's call it Tekoa, Bani Na'im, Beit Umar, Battir - the exact name isn't important. One day I was sitting with Aya in front of her home in the Land of Judea, and I asked her why she was looking a little sad. She was bored, she told me. She was tired of being stuck in the village all the time, never going anywhere, never seeing new things.
Arab teens Aya and Yasmin at Tel Aviv University.
Photo by: Ilana Hammerman
"Where would you like to go?" I asked her. The slender girl, wearing a traditional headscarf that hid every last strand of hair, thought for a moment and then said, "Maybe to Istanbul." She watched me with her large brown eyes, waiting for an answer.
"Well," I said, "I can't take you to Istanbul, but I can take you to Tel Aviv! And Tel Aviv is beautiful, too. There are really tall buildings," I stretched one arm up high, "and a giant shopping mall," I spread my hands wide, "and a gorgeous beach! Tel Aviv is always celebrating something. It'll be very interesting. You've never been to the big city. We'll have a good time."
Her big brown eyes filled with joy, truly beaming from her delicate face, whose round features were highlighted by her dark-blue headscarf with a black stripe. But she didn't feel like traveling alone with me, she said. She wanted to bring along her cousins, Lin and Yasmin.
They're older, I said hesitantly, and they look their age, unlike you - you still kind of look like a girl. Though the truth is that because of her age, Aya too, was forbidden from traveling to Tel Aviv without a tasrih, an entry permit to Israel. It really doesn't matter, I thought, making up my mind, and it would be nicer for them to go together. You'll all be traveling there illegally, I told her, which means that I am going to be smuggling you in, but I'm up for it. And you girls? All three were ready and willing, too.
We picked a date and agreed they would all wear modern Western-style clothes and no headscarves. A headscarf was out of the question! On this day they would be free and pretty - secular, young Israeli women. We decided on a Thursday, so we could end our day at the weekly bazaar in Jaffa.
When I got home I checked the map and mentally reviewed the conditions at the checkpoints that I know in the Land of Judea. I was stopped once before at Tarqumiya with a girl I was taking to an appointment at a hospital in Israel, and her mother. The mother had a tasrih, but the daughter, who was ill, did not. The soldiers checked the mother's ID and saw that the daughter was over 16 - meaning she was only allowed to pass through with an ID and a permit. And anyway, they said, this crossing was supposed to be just for laborers, plus Israelis can't go through the same checkpoint with Palestinians. We should try the Bethlehem checkpoint, they suggested; maybe there they would let us through on humanitarian grounds. These soldiers didn't deal with humanitarian issues, that wasn't their job. But we knew that at the Bethlehem checkpoint only Palestinians are entitled to pass - if they have a permit, of course - while Israelis cannot go through.
Nevertheless, because of the importance of the appointment, scheduled after much effort, we tried our luck at the Al-Khader checkpoint, where we were prohibited from crossing together. I let the two off so they could take a taxi to the "Palestinian" side of the checkpoint, while I drove around to the "Israeli" side. I arrived quickly and waited by the booths, where female soldiers sit behind reinforced glass and check the papers of the people wanting to enter. But the mother and daughter didn't show up; maybe they couldn't find a taxi or there was a long line on the Palestinian side that was not visible from the Israeli side.
When they finally did reach the soldiers, they were told the same thing: The girl needed her own ID card as well as an entry permit into Israel. This time, too, our pleas were of no avail - nor was a document showing that the girl had an appointment at the hospital, which we were not going to make on time. We helplessly bid one another farewell from either side of the electric turnstile and went our separate ways.
Signs and warnings
So, Tarqumiya was out this time. I was a little sorry about that because of the lovely scenery on the way from there to the Elah Valley; I'd wanted to include beautiful views in our fun day out. I also ruled out the checkpoint on Highway 60: There were private security guards there now, who are often even stricter than the soldiers, and detain and inspect each and every car. Sliding my finger down the map, I reached the Betar Ilit checkpoint, on Highway 375. I cross this checkpoint on my bike sometimes and know it well. It could be easier to get through.
The Betar crossing separates 20th-century Israel from 21st-century Israel and has numerous signs posted on either side, some yellow and some red, providing detailed instructions on just about everything. The signs inform people coming from Israel that they are prohibited from bringing a vehicle into the Palestinian Authority for repairs; that the transport of agricultural goods into Israeli localities or to a military facility is permissible solely via the inspection points at Bak'a, Eliyahu, Shomron, Maccabim, Bahurim, Za'ayam, Derech Ha'avot, Lamed-Heh and Meitar; that transport of agricultural goods destined for another West Bank locale is permissible solely via "back-to-back" crossings, at Bak'a, Gilboa, Sha'ar Efraim, Bitunia, Har Homa and Tarqumiya; and that the transport of animals and animal products from PA territory is illegal.
That's one side. For those continuing on the other side - in a vehicle that is not, for example, headed for repairs inside the PA and not carrying goods or animals out of the PA - a red sign offers these caring words of caution: "Dear Citizen!!! Due to a fear that you may be entering PA-controlled areas which Israelis are prohibited from entering by mistake/against your will, the soldiers at the checkpoint have taken down your personal and vehicle information, for your safety. This information will be kept by security officials and used for security purposes if it is discovered that you entered PA territory. Have a good and safe trip - Command Center of the Israel Defense Forces in the West Bank."
A person who passes from one side to the other at this crossing, feeling reassured by the discreet security services promised him in such a personal way, learns from the next set of signs that he is in fact invited to visit Betar Ilit, the city of Torah and Hasidism in the Judean Hills, to head south on Highway 60 to Gush Etzion, Efrat, Elazar and Neve Daniel and on to Alon Shvut and Carmei Tzur, or to continue to Kiryat Arba and Hebron - without actually knowing whether he entered or was brought into PA territory, deliberately or unknowingly. But all that didn't matter to me, because I knew that the village from which I planned to take the trio was located in PA territory, and I was about to enter it deliberately, so as to pick them up and take them to Tel Aviv.
I was particularly interested in the yellow sign that greets those coming from the new Israel to the old Israel - i.e., the sign that would greet me, Lin, Aya and Yasmin on our way out. The sign said "Welcome to the Betar crossing point. This crossing is designated for Israelis only. Crossing over or transporting of someone who is not Israeli is prohibited!! An 'Israeli' is a resident of Israel, someone whose place of residence is in the area or is eligible to immigrate in accordance with the 1950 Law of Return, as valid in Israel."
Despite the awkward wording, I understood what was written on the sign and what was permissible and prohibited. Granted, I could be a stickler and say definitively that not only was the three teens' place of residence "in the area," but they had never left it, to their dismay. On the other hand, it was impossible to claim that they were Israelis or were eligible to make aliyah in accordance with the Law of Return. So, I read the sign and understood it quite well, but I did not agree. I simply could not agree with it.
I arrived at Aya's home at the appointed time, determined to carry out our plans. But I still felt I had to warn the threesome and their mothers. A casual observer that Thursday morning would have seen this picture at the doorway of the house in the village in the Land of Judea: three middle-aged women covered from head to toe in traditional garb - the mothers; another middle-aged woman with glasses, dressed in jeans and a T-shirt and sweater - me; three young women, their pretty long hair falling on their shoulders, their faces tastefully made up, wearing fashionable jeans adorned with glitter, tight-fitting knit tops (not midriff-baring ones, though ) and casual jackets - Lin, Aya and Yasmin.
It looked as though they had dressed up for Purim, I thought to myself. Three cuties, ready for Tel Aviv! After expressing my astonishment and admiration, I explained the situation, in no uncertain terms: We were setting off on a somewhat adventurous journey, at any rate an illegal one, in a land where military force is the form of governance, which puts us in a weak position. So, I urged, think it over a little more. Do you really want to go? Yes, they said. You're not afraid? Silence. Lin hesitantly shook her head and said, at last: They're afraid but they still want to go.
"Okay, then in that case let's do a quick rehearsal: If they stop us at the checkpoint and ask us: What's up? How are things? How are you doing? You say: hakol beseder - everything's fine. Might even be a good idea to pronounce it like this: hakol be-say-der."
Hakol beseder, they all muttered, all six, and then we quietly got into the car. Lin, the eldest, who was partly responsible for this undertaking, sat next to me. Aya and Yasmin sat in the back.
'We made it!'
The trip to the Betar crossing point passed in almost complete silence. When we approached the checkpoint, the red sign, the metal tower, the speed bumps, the concrete barriers, the soldiers' position, I felt my legs shaking - and not because of the bumpy road. I took a deep breath, slowed down but didn't stop, rolled down the window, gave the soldier a causal wave and he indifferently motioned for me to keep going. "We made it!"
I drove a few hundred more meters and then stopped the car on the side of the road to breathe a sigh of relief and turned to look at my three Palestinian passengers. There was no need for words: We had made it through and now we were free to go have fun. I suggested we start off with a quick stop at a cafe. Yes, I was feeling a bit worn out, too.
We sat at Bar Bahar, a restaurant and parks information center, on a terrace overlooking a landscape in the Judean Hills, where no city of Torah and Hasidism had yet been built. Rolling green hills as far as the eye could see; a little slice of Tuscany right here. Suddenly a cell phone rang. It was Lin's (she was the only one with a phone, a gift from her fiance ). He wanted to know if everything was okay. Hakol beseder, I heard her tell him in Hebrew. He wanted to know where we were exactly and she handed me the phone. Bar Giora, I said. He didn't understand. Nes Harim, I added. He still didn't get it. I looked at the map at the observation point: Mount Eitan, Mount Hatayasim - how could I explain? Finally I said that we were somewhere in the middle of the Judean Hills, between Ein Karem and Beit Shemesh. He was happy to hear it. He knew Beit Shemesh, having worked there illegally, and the name Ein Karem was familiar, too. So you're in ____, right?
I didn't understand what he had said. I gave the phone back to Lin and asked her to repeat the name. She listened and said some Arabic name - perhaps the name of a village or region. I'm still not quite sure. But I did recall that I had had this same experience once before with Palestinians, a young girl and her parents, whom I transported from the Land of Judea to the coastal plain. On the trip from Bar Giora to the Karem junction, the parents kept mentioning names of Arab villages that their parents or grandparents or other relatives had once lived in, whose ruins they had visited before the general closure of the West Bank was declared. I only remember the strange sounds of the words - and my embarrassment - but not a single name. Not that any of this would interest these young women. They were feeling joyful and focused solely on the present. They wanted to get going already.
Museum escapade
Once in Tel Aviv, I took out my camera, and today I can remember the adventure with the help of the photographs. Here they are, chasing one another like little girls on the Tel Aviv University lawn, our first stop. Leaning back under a tree, sitting at a metal table in the big plaza outside the big restaurant building, eating McDonald's hamburgers and fries and drinking Coke; in front of my empty seat is a salad and carrot juice. Here they are slowly entering the library, where, I clearly remember, they listened politely to my explanations about the different wings and about the fact that anyone can enter the reading halls freely - something they were not and might not ever be interested in. I also remember how they gazed at a group of female students who were speaking Arabic, one wearing a headscarf and the others bareheaded. They turned an even more curious gaze upon a young man and woman who also spoke Arabic, straining to hear their conversation; the young woman was bareheaded and her blouse was quite revealing.
Now that I look at the photographs, I notice that in one shot, where Lin is sitting with arms crossed against a gravel backdrop in the campus garden, even through her modest dress, the curve of her young, full breasts is visible. In this picture her black hair is pulled back, revealing a bare earlobe that's a little seductive in its nakedness. There are also the perfect lines of a very feminine shoulder and strong neck, neither slender nor thick, and the bone structure of a cheek that draws the eye to a dimple, to a pinched smile, a chin that is both a little rounded and angular, and from there down to the dark slit of her cleavage.
In the next photos, the three are at the Eretz Israel Museum, which used to be called the Museum of the Land and was given its present name by Rehavam Ze'evi when he was the director. But I didn't remember that when I suggested to the three teens that we visit the museum. I wanted them to be amused by "Faces, Inside and Out," the exhibit that was showing there at the time. When we went in, we discovered to our chagrin that all the captions were in Hebrew.
I did manage to interest them in various masks and caricatures, and especially in the exhibit that explained the connection between a person's facial features and his character traits: In one portrait Aya found an explanation for her nightmares, and Yasmin learned something about why her features were a little less delicate than those of the other two.
At my request, Yasmin and Lin posed for a picture beneath three political caricatures: of Yitzhak Rabin, Shimon Peres and Amir Peretz. Aya refused. In the picture the two young women don't look like they're enjoying themselves much, but they are smiling politely and their heads appear to be trapped between Rabin's bowtie, Peres' double chin, which looks like it is practically resting on Lin's hair, and Peretz' mustache, though only about half of his face is visible in the picture. The three of them did not know about the Rabin assassination. Meanwhile, with their newfound sensation of freedom growing from moment to moment, they disappeared while I read about deciphering facial expressions according to the kabbala and the Book of the Zohar.
When I noticed they'd gone, I hurried off too, looked around with alarm, ran down the stairs and called out their names. I finally found them walking around the "In the Land of the Baron" exhibit, trying to decipher, without much success, the importance of the various photographs and artifacts on display there. They were curious and asked me questions, but since I didn't know what to tell them and could only think of singing to them "If I Were a Rich Man," I suggested that we get out of there and go into the city.
When we got back to the car, I asked them what they wanted to see most for the first time in their lives, the sea or downtown Tel Aviv and Dizengoff Center. They wanted both but it seemed more urgent to get to the mall, which they had heard about. The blue sea wasn't going anywhere.
Dizengoff Center captivated them immediately. They rode the escalators, stopped outside the shops and eventually felt bold enough to touch some of the garments hanging on display. They glanced at the prices and were stunned, going from store to store, from display to display. I didn't know how to tempt them away from this place, which held no allure whatsoever for me. But still, the photo on a bench by the exit from the mall shows me looking happy, with pretty Lin leaning on me and both of us smiling broadly at the camera.
Just an hour's drive
Our next stop was the picturesque Neve Tzedek quarter - "the first official Jewish neighborhood built outside the Jaffa walls in 1887." There I told them about the rest of the plans: We'd have ice cream and walk around, then go to the Jaffa port and see the sea, and then to the flea market. Unfortunately, I didn't photograph them standing there in awe before the array of ice cream flavors, which even amazed me. And I didn't get a photo of the young vendor there, with his earrings and dreadlocks, who was so excited to have the girls at his shop, especially when he heard that they'd come from the West Bank for a day out in Tel Aviv. When the few Arabic words he knew didn't suffice, he just let them sample everything on little plastic spoons and waited patiently until they made their choices. He then stuffed their three cones with as much ice cream as they could hold.
The next photos show them, one at a time, striking different romantic and theatrical poses in the Suzanne Dellal Center plaza - kneeling, standing, leaning against a palm tree in front of one of the brightly illuminated buildings. Their smiles are serious and yet dreamy. Beautiful girls with hearts brimming with hope. It was getting dark so we went off to see the sea, at last! At this hour, it wasn't blue, but still, there it was, the vast body of water they had never seen before even though their village was only an hour's drive away.
From the visit to the Jaffa port, which was shorter than we had planned, I have just one photo - showing two fishing boats moored next to a narrow pier. I was the only one who took a walk on the pier, because the girls sat down right at the beginning of it, took off their sandals, rolled up their pants and waded in the dark waters, refusing to budge.
As I began to drift into a reverie, gazing at the boats rocking there gently in the softly rippling water, a man's voice brought me back to reality. Two burly men were standing behind the girls, and they didn't understand each other. This is a private, fenced-in area and entry is forbidden, they scolded. How dare we enter? I had seen the fence - after all, there aren't many places without fences in this country - but the small gate in it was wide open. Still, given the hour and the circumstances, I realized it wasn't prudent to get into a confrontation with one of the men, who said he was a security guard. So I apologized, took the frightened girls and headed out. They were still barefoot and I was a bit confused.
The man heard the girls speaking Arabic and asked where they were from. I couldn't say that they were from Jaffa, because when I tried to win his sympathy beforehand, I told him that I just wanted them to see and feel the sea for the first time in their lives. They're from East Jerusalem and Israeli residents, I said. He showed his official police ID to me patiently and demanded that we show him our IDs and the girls' entry permits. At that moment, Lin's cell phone rang again: It was her fiance, calling for the umpteenth time to check in on her. I heard her mumble something and she hurriedly hung up. I picked up the word mashakil ("problems" ) despite all the stress - the Arabic word that I'm most familiar with.
Anyway, I somehow managed to get the policeman to let us go with a warning and admonition that this was "the last time" he would do so, as if we'd met this way many times before.
Free on the beach
So, that's the story. I recounted what happened next at the beginning: About three minutes after the encounter with the undercover cop, we arrived at the security checkpoint at the entrance to the flea market, an utterly ordinary security checkpoint, but the three girls, who hadn't quite calmed down yet, pressed by, past the policemen and fled inside without showing their bags.
The end was wonderful. The last photos show them about two hours after the trip to the flea market, running in the darkness on Tel Aviv's Banana Beach. They didn't want to stop for even a minute at the restaurant there to have a bite to eat or something to drink, or even to just relax a bit. Instead they immediately removed their sandals again, rolled up their pants and ran into the water. And ran and ran, back and forth, in zig-zags, along the huge beach, ponytails flying in the wind. From time to time, they knelt down in the sand or crowded together in the shallow water to have their picture taken. The final photo shows two of them standing in the water, arms around each others' waists, their backs to the camera. Only the bright color of their shirts contrasting with the dark water and the sky reveals that the two are Yasmin and Aya, because Lin was wearing a black shirt.
And it wasn't the last time I'll do something like this. There will certainly be other times. Because I, who returned them safely to their village at 2 A.M., bursting with joy, do not recognize the legality of the checkpoints and fences, or the legality of military rule over the places that Lin and Aya and Yasmin are from. And it seems to me that the ice-cream guy in Neve Tzedek, with his earrings and dreadlocks - and, above all, his kindness and sanity - would have agreed to join me, if I had known him. And then we would have taken two cars and six young women, and maybe men too, and given not only them but also ourselves a feeling of freedom, temporary but still profound and meaningful. W
The Huffington Post August 19, 2010
"A State of Mind; Why Israel should become Secular and Democratic"
Ofra Yeshua-Lyth, Author,
Posted: August 12, 2010 02:40 PM
A note in the Israeli daily Haaretz informing that the state attorney's office has asked police to start an investigation against author and editor Ilana Hammerman justly outraged human rights activists. Hammerman drew attention when she bravely published, in May of this year, a detailed magazine article describing a trip to an Israeli beach in the company of three Palestinian girls.
According to Israeli law and Israeli military regulations, no resident of the occupied Palestinian lands is allowed into "Israel proper" without a special permit. Since 2000, permits are rarely issued and so Palestinians are kept out of the Israeli view and space. They also have an extremely hard time just moving within the West Bank between villages and towns. Israeli Jews, by contrast, are free to travel in and out of most of the West Bank, and are waved politely through the checkpoints by the friendly (to them) guards.
Hammerman decided she will have no more of this. Having heard that her young Palestinian acquaintances had never had a chance to see the sea -- just 30 miles west of their village -- she promptly invited them to disguise as Israelis (namely, drop the traditional Mandil headscarf and dress casually) and get into her small car. They joyfully cooperated, knowing full well that any suspicion at the checkpoint would land them and their families in trouble. Their reward was a happy day of fun and recreation.
The published story touched many Israelis and aroused some heated discussions. An Israeli nationalist organization pompously urged the State Attorney's office to start a criminal investigation against the law-breaking writer. Many in the Zionist Left and the "Peace Movement" expressed sympathy with Ilana but were quick to register their reservations on this "boundary crossing" of civil disobedience.
To some of us, however, it seemed that "doing an Ilana" is exactly what we were longing to do for awhile. The action fully reflected our long-felt disgust with the Israeli legal system that discriminates people according to their ethnic origins and religion.
"Preserving a Jewish State with a Jewish majority" has become an axiomatic notion in Israel and abroad. An absolute majority of Israeli Jews feel there is a "must" to turn a blind eye to all evil "necessary" to facilitate it. For too long we have been demonstrating, writing and complaining about the sorry state of mind Israelis have locked themselves into. Now we saw a chance to actively break away with all this, as Ilana Hammerman had done.
Motivated by the urgency of the direct threat to Hammerman -- her act could potentially lead to up to two years in prison -- we decided to join her and follow her example. A group of twelve women (11+ Ilana) quickly organized. We soon found counterparts: courageous Palestinian women willing to make a political statement and interested in a day trip outside their harsh reality. They all knew the risk they were taking in case their identities should be revealed, but could not care less. At the appointed day we set off in six cars with 12 Israeli drivers and escorts, 12 Palestinian women, four children and one baby.
It was a beautiful adventure. The day started with much tension. There was always the chance that an overzealous checkpoint guard would ask for paperwork and spoil the plan. Fortunately this did not happen. Less than half an hour after we set off we were able to assemble in a state of euphoric joy -- we made it. The unlawful laws were broken, and from now on it was just a question of finding a good beach and nice cafés and restaurants. Israeli cities have plenty of those.
The recreational aspect was indeed rewarding, but it was merely a side product. Our purpose was and still is to make a political point. We aimed to go public and force a public debate. It soon became clear that the Israeli media will not take too much notice without further prompting, and we opted to place an advertisement titled "We Do Not Obey: Women in the footsteps of Ilana Hammerman". Reactions are still coming, and we are gratified to have many positive ones besides the many angry expected condemnations.
Our group is determined to continue with similar acts of civil disobedience. We are encouraged with the response to the ad, published August 6 and slowly picked up by some media and websites. While Israeli officials, diplomats, academics and spin doctors raise alarms through the media and Jewish communities all over the world in the face of a so called "global delegitimization campaign against Israel", we call on fellow Israelis to start cleaning our act back home. We ask good, honest, liberal democratic Israelis to join us in refusing to comply with laws and regulations that deny basic human rights from fellow humans. It is as simple as it sounds, and long overdue.
Friday, July 23, 2010
Non-Violent Protest in Bil'in
Sent: Friday, July 23, 2010 7:22 PM
Dozens suffered from tear gas inhalation in Bil'ins weekly protest , former vice president of the European Parliament detained by the army and one Israeli protester arrested
http://www.bilin-ffj.org/Today the people of Bil'in were joined by about 100 international supporters, among them an Italian group including Lousia Morgantini, the former vice president of the European Parliament. The army fired tear gas at the protesters, and managed to grab and detain Morgantini. She was released after about half an hour, while an Israeli protester who tried to help her ended up getting arrested.
The protest started as usual after the midday prayer, and Palestinian, Israeli and International protesters went together towards the gate leading to the military post. People were dancing, singing and shouting slogans, and Argentine and others were carrying the flag of the European Union. Morgantini has been participating in a number of Bil'ins demonstrations over the last years, and is seen as great supporter of the struggle.
As people started to reach the gate, it took about ten minutes until the army started shooting tear gas. After another few minutes the army decided to storm the gate and chase the protesters. In the chaos Morgantini ended being grabbed by soldiers and separated from rest of the demonstration, that were forced back. As Morgantini was held by the military, some protesters decided to negotiate, walking up to the soldiers, who were lined up in several blocks to prevent people from coming up. One Israeli activist, Kobi Snitz was arrested while trying to speak to the army, and was then taken to a police station. Morgantini was released after about half an hour, and is in good condition.
No injuries were reported, though many people suffered from tear gas inhalation. Some stun grenades were also thrown into the field, and caused a fire. Todays protest in Bil'in proved that the army is serious about their threats of arresting protesters who are taking part in the weekly non violent demonstration, as witnessed several times the previous months.
Sunday, July 11, 2010
Discussion of Non-Violence in Palestine
Nicolas Kristof in NYT
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/
Despite being stoned and tear-gassed on this trip, I find a reed of hope here. It’s that some Palestinians are dabbling in a strategy of nonviolent resistance that just might be a game-changer.
The organizers hail the methods of Gandhi and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., recognizing that nonviolent resistance could be a more powerful tool to achieve a Palestinian state than rockets and missiles. Bilin is one of several West Bank villages experimenting with these methods, so I followed protesters here as they marched to the Israeli security fence.
Most of the marchers were Palestinians, but some were also Israeli Jews and foreigners who support the Palestinian cause. They chanted slogans and waved placards as photographers snapped photos. At first the mood was festive and peaceful, and you could glimpse the potential of this approach.
But then a group of Palestinian youths began to throw rocks at Israeli troops. That’s the biggest challenge: many Palestinians define “nonviolence” to include stone-throwing.
Soon after, the Israeli forces fired volleys of tear gas at us, and then charged. The protesters fled, some throwing rocks backward as they ran. It’s a far cry from the heroism of Gandhi’s followers, who refused even to raise their arms to ward off blows as they were clubbed.
(I brought my family with me on this trip, and my kids experienced the gamut: we were stoned by Palestinian kids in East Jerusalem, and tear-gassed by Israeli security forces in the West Bank.)
Another problem with these protests, aside from the fact that they aren’t truly nonviolent, is they typically don’t much confound the occupation authorities.
But imagine if Palestinians stopped the rock-throwing and put female pacifists in the lead. What if 1,000 women sat down peacefully on a road to block access to an illegal Jewish settlement built on Palestinian farmland? What if the women allowed themselves to be tear-gassed, beaten and arrested without a single rock being thrown? Those images would be on televisions around the world — particularly if hundreds more women marched in to replace those hauled away.
“This is what Israel is most afraid of,” said Dr. Mustafa Barghouthi, a prominent Palestinian who is calling for a nonviolent mass movement. He says Palestinians need to create their own version of Gandhi’s famous 1930 salt march.
One genuinely peaceful initiative is a local boycott of goods produced by Jewish settlements on the West Bank. Another is the weekly demonstrations in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah against evictions of Palestinians there. And in Gaza, some farmers have protested Israel’s no-go security zones by publicly marching into those zones, even at the risk of being shot.
So far there is no Palestinian version of Martin Luther King Jr. But one candidate might be Ayed Morrar. A balding, mild-mannered activist, he was the mastermind behind the most successful initiative so far: nonviolent demonstrations a half-dozen years ago in the West Bank village of Budrus against Israel’s construction of a security fence there. More than many other Palestinians, he has a shrewd sense of public relations.
“With nonviolent struggle, we can win the media battle,” Mr. Morrar told me, speaking in English. “They always used to say that Palestinians are killers. With nonviolence, we can show that we are victims, that we are not against Jews but are against occupation.”
Mr. Morrar spent six years in Israeli prisons but seems devoid of bitterness. He says that Israel has a right to protect itself by building a fence — but on its own land, not on the West Bank.
Most Palestinian demonstrations are overwhelmingly male, but in Budrus women played a central role. They were led by Mr. Morrar’s quite amazing daughter, Iltezam Morrar. Then 15, she once blocked an Israeli bulldozer by diving in front of it (the bulldozer retreated, and she was unhurt).
Israeli security forces knew how to deal with bombers but were flummoxed by peaceful Palestinian women. Even when beaten and fired on with rubber bullets, the women persevered. Finally, Israel gave up. It rerouted the security fence to bypass nearly all of Budrus.
The saga is chronicled in this year’s must-see documentary “Budrus,” a riveting window into what might be possible if Palestinians adopted civil disobedience on a huge scale. In a sign of interest in nonviolent strategies, the documentary is scheduled to play in dozens of West Bank villages in the coming months, as well as at international film festivals.
I don’t know whether Palestinians can create a peaceful mass movement that might change history, and their first challenge will be to suppress the stone-throwers and bring women into the forefront. But this grass-roots movement offers a ray of hope for less violence and more change.
ANSWER TO KRISTOF
HIGHLIGHT Patrick Connors July 11th, 2010
Dear Mr. Kristof,
Thank you for writing about the Palestinian protest movement against Israeli apartheid. You did convey some valuable information, but missed some important, larger context.
First, Palestinians are not "dabbling" in nonviolent protest. They have a long. rich history of nonviolent protest, and Israel similarly has a long history of brutally repressing nonviolent Palestinian protest, a sign indeed that Israel fears nonviolent protest.
The first intifada, as just one historical example, was largely nonviolent, with strikes, marches, refusal to pay taxes, etc., in addition to youth throwing rocks at armed Israeli soldiers.
In this more recent intifada, as another example, Palestinians have held thousands of largely nonviolent protests from 2002 to present against Israel's wall built on West Bank land. The protests you mentioned in Budrus and Bil'in are some of the more prominent campaigns during the last eight years, but are not at all the only ones. Budrus was indeed unique in the success that was achieved there, and Ayed Morrar, Iltezam Morrar and others - friends of mine - deserve tremendous credit for that great success. They did mobilize their entire community in a very effective manner, with women and girls playing extremely important roles.
Still, you are missing vital information when you set Budrus as the good example and Bil'in as the bad example of Palestinian protest. The reality is much more subtle and explains some major Palestinian problems in conducting nonviolent campaigns against Israeli repression. Israel routed its wall was routed through Budrus' land in the West Bank to eat up land for an Israeli military area - as I remember, a firing range - and not for the expansion of a Jewish settlement. In Bil'in and many other places where protests are being held, Israel built the wall deep in the West Bank to steal more of those village's land for settlement expansion. The settlement enterprise, homes for thousands of settlers and the fortunes of Israeli real estate companies like Israeli billionaire Lev Leviev's Africa Israel depend upon completing those settlements - in Mattityahu East on Bil'in's land, as just one example.
Thus while Budrus' mobilization was excellent, it was against a target with fewer vested Israeli interests behind it. After ten months of powerful protests in Budrus, the Israeli government decided it was not worth it to hold onto a military area, whereas, to my knowledge, the Israeli government has not substantially conceded and rerouted the wall anywhere in the West Bank where the Wall's route was designed to create more space for settlement expansion.
Ayed, Iltezam and Budrus deserve all the credit for the reasons you note, but Bil'in and other villages do not deserve to be cast as failed examples of Palestinian nonviolent leadership and protest. Due to the importance to Israel of the Mattityahu East settlement, the people of Bil'in have been forced to continue their protest campaign for five years against the wall and settlements on their land, and have weathered a ferocious assault by the Israeli military, leading to the death of one nonviolent Palestinian protester, injuries to hundreds of others, and the arrest of tens of protesters. This Israeli strategy of crushing Palestinian protest in places like Bil'in and Ni'lin, arresting and harrassing the protest leaders (Abdullah and Adeeb Abu Rahmah from Bil'in are still sitting in Israeli jails), has achieved some success in fragmenting protests over time, resulting in more chaotic scenes like those you witnessed in Bil'in.
Yes, an important lesson of Budrus and Bil'in is the value of the whole community, including women, participating in protests, but other major lessons include Israel's refusal to give up on settlement expansion despite Palestinian protests, and the systematic strategy that Israel employs to attempt to break any sustained, long-term campaign of Palestinian protests.
Finally, thank you for mentioning the growing Palestinian and international boycott movement as another example of nonviolent Palestinian protest. However, by focusing on the boycott of settlement products recently championed by the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, you have only recognized a small portion of the large and growing international boycott movement, which focuses on all Israeli products, as well as a boycott of Israeli cultural and academic institutions. The Palestinian BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) Movement was founded by Palestinian civil society groups five years ago, has been endorsed by a wide range of Palestinian and international organizations, and has achieved many successes worldwide. Information on this growing movement can be found at www.bdsmovement.net
Thanks again for your column. It conveyed a brief snapshot, but missed some important context and history that I'm sure you were unable to glean during a very brief visit.
Patrick Connors
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/
Despite being stoned and tear-gassed on this trip, I find a reed of hope here. It’s that some Palestinians are dabbling in a strategy of nonviolent resistance that just might be a game-changer.
The organizers hail the methods of Gandhi and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., recognizing that nonviolent resistance could be a more powerful tool to achieve a Palestinian state than rockets and missiles. Bilin is one of several West Bank villages experimenting with these methods, so I followed protesters here as they marched to the Israeli security fence.
Most of the marchers were Palestinians, but some were also Israeli Jews and foreigners who support the Palestinian cause. They chanted slogans and waved placards as photographers snapped photos. At first the mood was festive and peaceful, and you could glimpse the potential of this approach.
But then a group of Palestinian youths began to throw rocks at Israeli troops. That’s the biggest challenge: many Palestinians define “nonviolence” to include stone-throwing.
Soon after, the Israeli forces fired volleys of tear gas at us, and then charged. The protesters fled, some throwing rocks backward as they ran. It’s a far cry from the heroism of Gandhi’s followers, who refused even to raise their arms to ward off blows as they were clubbed.
(I brought my family with me on this trip, and my kids experienced the gamut: we were stoned by Palestinian kids in East Jerusalem, and tear-gassed by Israeli security forces in the West Bank.)
Another problem with these protests, aside from the fact that they aren’t truly nonviolent, is they typically don’t much confound the occupation authorities.
But imagine if Palestinians stopped the rock-throwing and put female pacifists in the lead. What if 1,000 women sat down peacefully on a road to block access to an illegal Jewish settlement built on Palestinian farmland? What if the women allowed themselves to be tear-gassed, beaten and arrested without a single rock being thrown? Those images would be on televisions around the world — particularly if hundreds more women marched in to replace those hauled away.
“This is what Israel is most afraid of,” said Dr. Mustafa Barghouthi, a prominent Palestinian who is calling for a nonviolent mass movement. He says Palestinians need to create their own version of Gandhi’s famous 1930 salt march.
One genuinely peaceful initiative is a local boycott of goods produced by Jewish settlements on the West Bank. Another is the weekly demonstrations in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah against evictions of Palestinians there. And in Gaza, some farmers have protested Israel’s no-go security zones by publicly marching into those zones, even at the risk of being shot.
So far there is no Palestinian version of Martin Luther King Jr. But one candidate might be Ayed Morrar. A balding, mild-mannered activist, he was the mastermind behind the most successful initiative so far: nonviolent demonstrations a half-dozen years ago in the West Bank village of Budrus against Israel’s construction of a security fence there. More than many other Palestinians, he has a shrewd sense of public relations.
“With nonviolent struggle, we can win the media battle,” Mr. Morrar told me, speaking in English. “They always used to say that Palestinians are killers. With nonviolence, we can show that we are victims, that we are not against Jews but are against occupation.”
Mr. Morrar spent six years in Israeli prisons but seems devoid of bitterness. He says that Israel has a right to protect itself by building a fence — but on its own land, not on the West Bank.
Most Palestinian demonstrations are overwhelmingly male, but in Budrus women played a central role. They were led by Mr. Morrar’s quite amazing daughter, Iltezam Morrar. Then 15, she once blocked an Israeli bulldozer by diving in front of it (the bulldozer retreated, and she was unhurt).
Israeli security forces knew how to deal with bombers but were flummoxed by peaceful Palestinian women. Even when beaten and fired on with rubber bullets, the women persevered. Finally, Israel gave up. It rerouted the security fence to bypass nearly all of Budrus.
The saga is chronicled in this year’s must-see documentary “Budrus,” a riveting window into what might be possible if Palestinians adopted civil disobedience on a huge scale. In a sign of interest in nonviolent strategies, the documentary is scheduled to play in dozens of West Bank villages in the coming months, as well as at international film festivals.
I don’t know whether Palestinians can create a peaceful mass movement that might change history, and their first challenge will be to suppress the stone-throwers and bring women into the forefront. But this grass-roots movement offers a ray of hope for less violence and more change.
ANSWER TO KRISTOF
HIGHLIGHT Patrick Connors July 11th, 2010
Dear Mr. Kristof,
Thank you for writing about the Palestinian protest movement against Israeli apartheid. You did convey some valuable information, but missed some important, larger context.
First, Palestinians are not "dabbling" in nonviolent protest. They have a long. rich history of nonviolent protest, and Israel similarly has a long history of brutally repressing nonviolent Palestinian protest, a sign indeed that Israel fears nonviolent protest.
The first intifada, as just one historical example, was largely nonviolent, with strikes, marches, refusal to pay taxes, etc., in addition to youth throwing rocks at armed Israeli soldiers.
In this more recent intifada, as another example, Palestinians have held thousands of largely nonviolent protests from 2002 to present against Israel's wall built on West Bank land. The protests you mentioned in Budrus and Bil'in are some of the more prominent campaigns during the last eight years, but are not at all the only ones. Budrus was indeed unique in the success that was achieved there, and Ayed Morrar, Iltezam Morrar and others - friends of mine - deserve tremendous credit for that great success. They did mobilize their entire community in a very effective manner, with women and girls playing extremely important roles.
Still, you are missing vital information when you set Budrus as the good example and Bil'in as the bad example of Palestinian protest. The reality is much more subtle and explains some major Palestinian problems in conducting nonviolent campaigns against Israeli repression. Israel routed its wall was routed through Budrus' land in the West Bank to eat up land for an Israeli military area - as I remember, a firing range - and not for the expansion of a Jewish settlement. In Bil'in and many other places where protests are being held, Israel built the wall deep in the West Bank to steal more of those village's land for settlement expansion. The settlement enterprise, homes for thousands of settlers and the fortunes of Israeli real estate companies like Israeli billionaire Lev Leviev's Africa Israel depend upon completing those settlements - in Mattityahu East on Bil'in's land, as just one example.
Thus while Budrus' mobilization was excellent, it was against a target with fewer vested Israeli interests behind it. After ten months of powerful protests in Budrus, the Israeli government decided it was not worth it to hold onto a military area, whereas, to my knowledge, the Israeli government has not substantially conceded and rerouted the wall anywhere in the West Bank where the Wall's route was designed to create more space for settlement expansion.
Ayed, Iltezam and Budrus deserve all the credit for the reasons you note, but Bil'in and other villages do not deserve to be cast as failed examples of Palestinian nonviolent leadership and protest. Due to the importance to Israel of the Mattityahu East settlement, the people of Bil'in have been forced to continue their protest campaign for five years against the wall and settlements on their land, and have weathered a ferocious assault by the Israeli military, leading to the death of one nonviolent Palestinian protester, injuries to hundreds of others, and the arrest of tens of protesters. This Israeli strategy of crushing Palestinian protest in places like Bil'in and Ni'lin, arresting and harrassing the protest leaders (Abdullah and Adeeb Abu Rahmah from Bil'in are still sitting in Israeli jails), has achieved some success in fragmenting protests over time, resulting in more chaotic scenes like those you witnessed in Bil'in.
Yes, an important lesson of Budrus and Bil'in is the value of the whole community, including women, participating in protests, but other major lessons include Israel's refusal to give up on settlement expansion despite Palestinian protests, and the systematic strategy that Israel employs to attempt to break any sustained, long-term campaign of Palestinian protests.
Finally, thank you for mentioning the growing Palestinian and international boycott movement as another example of nonviolent Palestinian protest. However, by focusing on the boycott of settlement products recently championed by the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, you have only recognized a small portion of the large and growing international boycott movement, which focuses on all Israeli products, as well as a boycott of Israeli cultural and academic institutions. The Palestinian BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) Movement was founded by Palestinian civil society groups five years ago, has been endorsed by a wide range of Palestinian and international organizations, and has achieved many successes worldwide. Information on this growing movement can be found at www.bdsmovement.net
Thanks again for your column. It conveyed a brief snapshot, but missed some important context and history that I'm sure you were unable to glean during a very brief visit.
Patrick Connors
Friday, July 9, 2010
Wednesday, June 2, 2010
Monday, May 31, 2010
Two Observations about the Israeli Attack on the Flotilla to Gaza
31 May 2010: An American solidarity activist was shot in the face with a tear gas canister during a demonstration in Qalandiya, today. Emily Henochowicz, 21 year old Cooper Union Art Student, is currently in Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem undergoing surgery to remove her left eye, following the demonstration that was held in protest to Israel’s murder of at least 10 civilians aboard the Gaza Freedom Flotilla in international waters this morning.
– Sol Salbe]
The CRIF deplores the Israeli operation
The CRIF 'profoundly deplores' the Israeli military operation against the maritime convoy heading for Gaza, saying that 'It is not good news for peace,' according to Haim Musicant, the director general of the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions of France.
"We deplore what happened, even if Israel had announced that it would not let this landing occur,' he added. 'Unfortunately, this happens when there are hopes for peace between Palestinians and Israelis, it is not good news for peace." "We deeply regret that there are victims," he added. "We feel sincere compassion and sadness, 'Musicant said again.
The CRIF 'profoundly deplores' the Israeli military operation against the maritime convoy heading for Gaza, saying that 'It is not good news for peace,' according to Haim Musicant, the director general of the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions of France.
"We deplore what happened, even if Israel had announced that it would not let this landing occur,' he added. 'Unfortunately, this happens when there are hopes for peace between Palestinians and Israelis, it is not good news for peace." "We deeply regret that there are victims," he added. "We feel sincere compassion and sadness, 'Musicant said again.
French original: http://www.lefigaro.fr/flash-
Israel's moral decadence
Yariv Oppenheimer | May 31, 2010
(published in Ma’ariv, Hebrew only)
Even if the fleet to Gaza is irritating and outrageous, a sovereign state cannot treat every act of protest as a terror event that has to end in bloodshed
Tonight Israel marked a new low point in the way it chose to contend with its domestic and external policy dissidents. A state that will not let its citizens protest, demonstrate and demand justice, a state that is busy composing loyalty tests for its citizens and passing laws to limit the freedom of expression, failed again in the real test and stopped a protest fleet of civilian ships at the cost of more than ten lives.
Yariv Oppenheimer | May 31, 2010
(published in Ma’ariv, Hebrew only)
Even if the fleet to Gaza is irritating and outrageous, a sovereign state cannot treat every act of protest as a terror event that has to end in bloodshed
Tonight Israel marked a new low point in the way it chose to contend with its domestic and external policy dissidents. A state that will not let its citizens protest, demonstrate and demand justice, a state that is busy composing loyalty tests for its citizens and passing laws to limit the freedom of expression, failed again in the real test and stopped a protest fleet of civilian ships at the cost of more than ten lives.
The fleet that left Turkey a few days ago managed to anger even me. Hundreds of pro-Hamas activists challenged Israel blatantly and outrageously. Not a word of censure of the Hamas government, not a word about Gilad Shalit and not a word about the desire for peace. Nonetheless, a sovereign state cannot treat every show of protest, however outrageous and irritating it is, as a terror event that has to end in bloodshed. Instead of using the fleet to generate an internal Israeli discussion about the effectiveness of the policy of the siege of Gaza and its moral and political implications for Israel, all of the government spokesmen chose to focus on the handful of activists on the ships and grace them with the title of existential threats to Israel's security. From here to unnecessary bloodshed the path was short.
It is not the soldiers' fault, nor the commanders' nor the heads of the IDF's. Israeli society as a whole is responsible for the grim results of the IDF takeover of the protest ships. The radicalization of Israeli society is yielding its fruit. The message to the soldiers and police is crystallizing. When Arabs are involved in an activity, the hand on the trigger is light. Determination boards the ship while sensitivity stays in the water.
But have no fear, the domestic Israeli propaganda machine began to work and in just a few hours every Israeli will be recounting how Hamas helicopters took over a Jewish ship and shot illegal immigrants in all directions. With the use of our repression mechanisms and the encouragement of the IDF spokesman we will again dissociate from reality and the world and manufacture our own unique script in which we are the victims and the whole world is against us as usual. Will the outcome of tonight's confrontation end with an official commission of inquiry? No chance.
Israel justifies its brutal and violent image
The price for the unfortunate results of the fleet will be paid primarily by the families of those who were killed at sea last night. Next in line to pay the price will be the residents of Israel who want peace and the end of the conflict with all their hearts, and who wish to stop the cycle of bloodshed and live in a saner country. We, the silent majority, watch with despair as Israel with its own actions justifies the brutal and violent image it acquired in the last years and gives our biggest enemies in Hamas and Iran a reason to rejoice.
If the miserable naval clash had any winners, they are in Tehran, in the bunkers of Beirut and in the Hamas headquarters in Gaza. The Hamas government succeeded with the Israeli government's active support to receive international recognition, to gain the support of the Arab world and to be seen as a hero standing up to Israel.
The enemies of peace and the extremists on both sides can again find reasons to attack each other and deepen the hatred and hostility between Jews and Arabs in Israel and outside of it. Again the moderates on both sides are silenced and the voice of reason is drowned out by the voices of incitement and hatred. Without a loud voice of protest by a patriotic Israeli public calling on its leaders to change course, we will all find ourselves in a morally and politically decadent country, slowly sinking into the depths.
It is not the soldiers' fault, nor the commanders' nor the heads of the IDF's. Israeli society as a whole is responsible for the grim results of the IDF takeover of the protest ships. The radicalization of Israeli society is yielding its fruit. The message to the soldiers and police is crystallizing. When Arabs are involved in an activity, the hand on the trigger is light. Determination boards the ship while sensitivity stays in the water.
But have no fear, the domestic Israeli propaganda machine began to work and in just a few hours every Israeli will be recounting how Hamas helicopters took over a Jewish ship and shot illegal immigrants in all directions. With the use of our repression mechanisms and the encouragement of the IDF spokesman we will again dissociate from reality and the world and manufacture our own unique script in which we are the victims and the whole world is against us as usual. Will the outcome of tonight's confrontation end with an official commission of inquiry? No chance.
Israel justifies its brutal and violent image
The price for the unfortunate results of the fleet will be paid primarily by the families of those who were killed at sea last night. Next in line to pay the price will be the residents of Israel who want peace and the end of the conflict with all their hearts, and who wish to stop the cycle of bloodshed and live in a saner country. We, the silent majority, watch with despair as Israel with its own actions justifies the brutal and violent image it acquired in the last years and gives our biggest enemies in Hamas and Iran a reason to rejoice.
If the miserable naval clash had any winners, they are in Tehran, in the bunkers of Beirut and in the Hamas headquarters in Gaza. The Hamas government succeeded with the Israeli government's active support to receive international recognition, to gain the support of the Arab world and to be seen as a hero standing up to Israel.
The enemies of peace and the extremists on both sides can again find reasons to attack each other and deepen the hatred and hostility between Jews and Arabs in Israel and outside of it. Again the moderates on both sides are silenced and the voice of reason is drowned out by the voices of incitement and hatred. Without a loud voice of protest by a patriotic Israeli public calling on its leaders to change course, we will all find ourselves in a morally and politically decadent country, slowly sinking into the depths.
Friday, May 28, 2010
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Monday, May 17, 2010
Wonderful New Documentary about Grace Paley
Sonya Friedman has finished a documentary about GRACE. Please let your friends know.
The url of the trailer: www.gracepaleyvideo.com
In this new 51-minute video, GRACE reminisces about her work, life, family and her early literary and political influences. We see Grace at home, in interviews, and at her fabled readings. Grace's close friends and colleagues remember her as a "combative pacifist and cooperative anarchist" and "a writer of genius."
Best regards,
Sonya Friedman
Producer, co-director
Sunday, May 9, 2010
Tuesday, May 4, 2010
22 Arrested Declaring Grand Central Station a Nuclear Weapons-Free Zone
May 3, 2010 Posted by Ellen Davidson, IndyBlog
Twenty-two activists were arrested May 3 at Grand Central Station for dropping banners off the balconies of the main hall and staging a die-in.
Organized by the War Resisters League, the action declared Grand Central a nuclear weapons-free zone and called for disarmament here in the United States first. Wearing t-shirts that said “No Nukes Begin with U.S.,” the protesters handed out thousands of leaflets to rush-hour commuters and circled the information booth with a picket with large signs shaped like skulls with the names of all the nuclear-armed nations. Participants came from around the country and the world; they were in New York for actions relating to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Review Conference.
At 9 am, banners were dropped from the balconies at the west end of the large hall. One set read “Nuclear Weapons = Terrorism,” while the other urged “Talk Less, Disarm More.” After the banner-droppers were arrested, other protesters began to lie down by the stairs. They too were taken away by police, but everyone was released from custody by 11 am.
The day before, NPT Review 2010 International Planning Committee for Nuclear Abolition, Peace and Justice mobilized Disarm Now! For Peace and Human Needs, a march of 8,000-10,000 from Times Square to Dag Hammarskjold Place, where booths and tables were set up in a Peace Fair. A significant portion of the protesters came from Japan, the only country ever to have been the target of a nuclear attack.
The demonstration’s points of unity were:
We want a Nuclear Free Future!
Fund Human Needs, Not War!
End the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan!
Protect the planet instead of destroying it with war and nuclear proliferation!
Organized by the War Resisters League, the action declared Grand Central a nuclear weapons-free zone and called for disarmament here in the United States first. Wearing t-shirts that said “No Nukes Begin with U.S.,” the protesters handed out thousands of leaflets to rush-hour commuters and circled the information booth with a picket with large signs shaped like skulls with the names of all the nuclear-armed nations. Participants came from around the country and the world; they were in New York for actions relating to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Review Conference.
At 9 am, banners were dropped from the balconies at the west end of the large hall. One set read “Nuclear Weapons = Terrorism,” while the other urged “Talk Less, Disarm More.” After the banner-droppers were arrested, other protesters began to lie down by the stairs. They too were taken away by police, but everyone was released from custody by 11 am.
The day before, NPT Review 2010 International Planning Committee for Nuclear Abolition, Peace and Justice mobilized Disarm Now! For Peace and Human Needs, a march of 8,000-10,000 from Times Square to Dag Hammarskjold Place, where booths and tables were set up in a Peace Fair. A significant portion of the protesters came from Japan, the only country ever to have been the target of a nuclear attack.
The demonstration’s points of unity were:
We want a Nuclear Free Future!
Fund Human Needs, Not War!
End the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan!
Protect the planet instead of destroying it with war and nuclear proliferation!
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