- They're all women, all Israeli and every day they go
to West Bank checkpoints to try to stop soldiers harassing Palestinians.
Linda Grant went with them.
-
- When I came to Tel Aviv last July to find an apartment
to rent for a few months, an estate agent introduced me to Yael Boss whom
I have come to think of as the DNA of Zionism - one of the tough, fearless
women Israel produced in multitudes in the 1950s and who terrified me on
my first teenage visit to the country in 1967.
-
- Now 65, she married a French non-Jew and lived with him
in Paris for 11 years but was so homesick for Israel that she would walk
into El Al offices just to hear Hebrew spoken. When one of her sons was
doing his military service in Lebanon, and disappeared, she delivered an
order to her other son: "Go to Lebanon and find your brother, bring
him home on your back if you have to." He did - I don't think he would
have dared fail.
-
- In our many conversations about the country, she spoke
sharply of those who try to harm Israel in Europe. "I will not criticise
Israel abroad," she said. "I have enough work of this kind to
do at home, without letting people abroad read what they want into what
I say."
-
- There is little Yael can do to alter the policies of
her government beyond the ballot box. In the autumn she had gone to help
Palestinian farmers pick their olive harvest where army road blocks separate
them from their land. So I asked her if she would come with me to meet
the women of Machsom Watch.
-
- Machsom is the Hebrew word for checkpoint; the organisation
was set up in January 2001 in response to repeated reports about human
rights abuses of Palestinians at the checkpoints which inhibit the movement
of Palestinians not only into Israel but between Palestinian towns. The
founders were three Israeli women who set out three goals: to monitor the
behaviour of soldiers and police, to ensure that the human rights of the
Palestinians were protected, and to record their observations and make
them known to the widest possible audiences. Unlike international solidarity
volunteers, the members are all women, and all Israeli, from a wide range
of backgrounds and political opinions.
-
- Yael and I met at the Jerusalem house of Hannah Barag,
68, and together with 74-year-old Ora Ardon, we set off in Hannah's car
to Abu Dis where the "separation fence" manifests itself as a
massive wall, already covered with political graffiti, slicing through
the town.
-
- During my time in Israel, my over-riding impression of
the current government is of incompetence and corruption which manifests
itself in almost every aspect of civil and military life. Hannah and Ora
showed us a place where the wall was easily crossed if you were reasonably
agile, though difficult if you were old, blind, disabled or carrying a
baby. What, Ora asked, was the point of a wall that held up the least likely
suspects for suicide bombing and created no difficulty for the fit and
determined?
-
- We drove on to Qalandia, where the checkpoint divides
the town in half. It was a bright, very cold day. A long queue of Palestinians
waited with their documents to be checked by a few teenage soldiers. They
were of every type: well-dressed businessmen, fashionable young women,
hard young men, teenagers, a lot of women carrying babies in their arms.
The roads are so rutted round the checkpoints that it is hard to wheel
a child in a pushchair. "It's very quiet today," Hannah said,
though there was a cacophony of noise. She pointed at a fence a few metres
away. "Palestinian children throw stones at the soldiers and the soldiers
fire back, a number of children have been killed here. It seems quiet now
but when it gets dark it is more violent."
-
- "But this is now a different place from what I remember,"
Pierre, the photographer said. "Since the women volunteers have been
coming it's much quieter."
-
- Two volunteers, Phyllis and Tamar, were already at the
checkpoint. I watched Tamar approach a woman carrying a baby and heavy
shopping and escort her to the front of the queue. A female soldier checked
her documents and waved her through. They tried to help another young woman
who had borrowed her 16-year-old cousin's identity card and had been caught.
Despite the intervention on her behalf she was put into a police van and
driven off.
-
- The attitude of both the soldiers and the Palestinians
to the women varies. "The first time I went to Qalandia a soldier
at the checkpoint called me a Palestinian whore," Hannah said. "I
said, 'Listen, with my looks and my age do you think I still have a future
in this profession?' Then I said, 'Do you talk to your grandmother like
that?' The next time I saw him he apologised."
-
- But other soldiers are susceptible to the fact that the
women have themselves served in the Israeli army and have sons and daughters
or grandchildren who are currently serving. "One soldier shouted at
me, 'Is your son in the army?'" said Tamar. "I said to him, 'Yes
he's a pilot.' He said, 'A pilot! What does he think of you?' I told him,
'He's very proud.' Sometimes the soldiers say to me, 'Why are you doing
this?' I say, 'Because I am Jewish and my grandparents were in the Holocaust.'"
-
- On the Palestinian side, the women of Machsom Watch are
often the only Israelis they ever see who are not in uniform, the only
Israelis who exhibit human kindness, and sometimes that is enough even
though the women often fail to succeed in persuading the soldiers to open
a gate in the fence to let children through to school. Other Palestinians
vent their anger against them because they are the only unarmed Israelis
available. "I tell them, you are at the wrong address," Hannah
said. "But some tell us that we are no different, we are part of the
same game." When Ora told a group of Palestinians she was a peace
activist, one cried out that he wanted war and not peace.
-
- The contradictions of their position are plenty. Ten
days earlier, a woman suicide bomber at the Eerez crossing at Gaza had
managed to persuade a soldier that she was disabled and could not pass
through the metal detector because of a metal plate in her leg. She killed
four people and the Israeli radio phone-in shows were full of furious callers
complaining that the Palestinians were abusing the pressure on commanders
to treat women and children more humanely. "That woman did a big disservice
to her people and her own gender," Ora said. "It's the same as
when they transported military equipment in ambulances."
-
- I had asked her what she felt about the possibility that
she would abet a suicide bomber passing through a checkpoint. "I can't
say I've never thought of it," she replied, "but if you sit on
a jury you have the same dilemma." She pointed to a small hill beyond
the checkpoint. "We call it Tora Bora, it is easy to pass across that
way."
-
- There is a growing climate of opinion in Israel, including
from a former Likud mayor of Tel Aviv, that the checkpoints only exist
to harass the Palestinian population and are ineffective at stopping suicide
bombers. Ora is not opposed to fences on principle. She wants the Israeli
government to end the occupation, withdraw to the Green Line and build
a border. "There will still be terror," she said, "but we
will be justified if we hit back."
-
- We drove back to Ora's house in Jerusalem and I asked
her why, at 74, she chooses to stand in freezing conditions at the checkpoints.
"My grandparents came here from Odessa in 1905," she said. "They
were idealists, they wanted to create a new Jew who would do moral work.
At 13 years old I was a radio operator in the Haganah [the Jewish militias
opposing British Mandate rule in Palestine]. I was smuggling radio parts
and no one stopped me because I was so small and so young. During the war
of independence in 1948 I was a corporal. It was a just war. From the very
beginning I was with Peace Now, I was on all the demonstrations, but Ariel
Sharon pays no attention to us so one day I went over to a woman whose
face I recognised and said, 'I'm desperate, I want to do something other
than demonstrate,' and she took me to Machsom Watch.
-
- "I am an ordinary member of the organisation, not
a spokesperson, but I think I am typical. The settlers call themselves
Zionists but they are not Zionists as far as the founders of the state
were concerned. I am a Zionist, and this is why the checkpoints are a terrible
blow to us Israelis as well as the Palestinians. My daughters are very
unhappy, they think I am quite right to go to the checkpoints but they
want someone else's mother to go. But I say that only by doing this can
we reclaim the humanistic revolution of Zionism. We are calling on the
world to help us reclaim our humanistic values."
-
- On the drive home to Tel Aviv I asked Yael what she thought
about what she had seen. "I already have a shift organised,"
she said with steel in her eyes. "I will bring all my friends."
I thought of Yael multiplied, and wondered if the hard men of Israel could
withstand the pressure if thousands of Israeli women created very different
facts on the ground.
-
- Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited
2004
-
- http://www.guardian.co.uk/women/story/0,3604,1136689,00.html
-
-
-
-
- Comment
- From George Spacek
- 2-2-4
-
- This is quite a 'tricky trixie' article. On the surface
it seems commendable, but it is just another piece of zionist propaganda
to put a better face on stealing other peoples land, imprisoning them in
aparteid and controlling their movements. Is this showing the 'softer'
side of zionism? I think not! There is no good or righteous side of zionism,
the stealing of Palestine to give it to Ashke-nazi settler Jews. The stealing,
marauding, dehumanizing and demonization of another group of people is
still zionism and the woman this author lionizes claim to be 'real zionists'.
They and their forefathers fought for the zionist state of Israel to steal
land from indigenous people and keep it for themselves while driving off,
killing and destroying another culture, entirly. Slow genocide, now speeding
up. All 'trixie' maneuvers to put a more human face on zionism. How very
schizoid, good cop-bad cop, good Smeagle-bad Smeagle and all bulls*it.
(G)
-
- They're all women, all Israeli and every day they go
to West Bank checkpoints to try to stop soldiers harassing Palestinians.
Linda Grant went with them.
- When I came to Tel Aviv last July to find an apartment
to rent for a few months, an estate agent introduced me to Yael Boss whom
I have come to think of as the DNA of Zionism - one of the tough, fearless
women Israel produced in multitudes in the 1950s and who terrified me on
my first teenage visit to the country in 1967.
- Now 65, she married a French non-Jew and lived with him
in Paris for 11 years but was so homesick for Israel that she would walk
into El Al offices just to hear Hebrew spoken. When one of her sons was
doing his military service in Lebanon, and disappeared, she delivered an
order to her other son: "Go to Lebanon and find your brother, bring
him home on your back if you have to." He did - I don't think he would
have dared fail.
- In our many conversations about the country, she spoke
sharply of those who try to harm Israel in Europe. "I will not criticise
Israel abroad," she said. "I have enough work of this kind to
do at home, without letting people abroad read what they want into what
I say."
- There is little Yael can do to alter the policies of
her government beyond the ballot box. In the autumn she had gone to help
Palestinian farmers pick their olive harvest where army road blocks separate
them from their land. So I asked her if she would come with me to meet
the women of Machsom Watch.
-
- How 'cute' of little Yael to help the slaves pick olives.
Imagine, "the DNA of zionism" helping poor peasant slaves pick
olives. I'm so impressed. Yet she claims to be a hard core believer in
zionism, does anyone else see the hypocrisy here? Yet, anyone who tries
to 'harm' Israel by speaking out against it's evil zionist policies is
in the doghouse with Yael. 'Listen up Eurotrash, don't you be trashin'
Israel!' What a real Jewish mother too, insisting one son go rescue another
son when he get's lost in Lebanon trying to invade it. This is the stuff
of legends! (a lot of legends are pure fabrication, especially where Israel
is concerned) Little she can do, beyond the ballotbox, just like us penned
up goyim, here in Amurka.(G)
-
- But other soldiers are susceptible to the fact that the
women have themselves served in the Israeli army and have sons and daughters
or grandchildren who are currently serving. "One soldier shouted at
me, 'Is your son in the army?'" said Tamar. "I said to him, 'Yes
he's a pilot.' He said, 'A pilot! What does he think of you?' I told him,
'He's very proud.' Sometimes the soldiers say to me, 'Why are you doing
this?' I say, 'Because I am Jewish and my grandparents were in the Holocaust.'"
-
- Yep, all ex-commando's, soldiers of zionism and mother/nurturers
of the zionist 'ethic'. Oh, the son is a pilot and the grandparents were
in the holocaust, well that makes it all so 'righteous' to be a zionazi
at the wall, trying to keep these teenage zionazi IDF troopers from besmirching
zionism and showing the world what zionism really is, the evil essence
of humanity.(G)
-
- We drove back to Ora's house in Jerusalem and I asked
her why, at 74, she chooses to stand in freezing conditions at the checkpoints.
"My grandparents came here from Odessa in 1905," she said. "They
were idealists, they wanted to create a new Jew who would do moral work.
At 13 years old I was a radio operator in the Haganah [the Jewish militias
opposing British Mandate rule in Palestine]. I was smuggling radio parts
and no one stopped me because I was so small and so young. During the war
of independence in 1948 I was a corporal. It was a just war. From the very
beginning I was with Peace Now, I was on all the demonstrations, but Ariel
Sharon pays no attention to us so one day I went over to a woman whose
face I recognised and said, 'I'm desperate, I want to do something other
than demonstrate,' and she took me to Machsom Watch.
-
- Haganah murdered British, Arab and any who got in the
way of the zionist project. By way of deception..she smuggled stolen parts
to feed the zionist machine..what a 'heroine'. The 1948 war was a 'just'
war for this 'little corporal' (uncle Nap would have been proud). Shows
that 'Peace Now' is a phony org., only meant to act like they believe in
'peace', they only believe in leaving Palestine in 'pieces'.(G)
-
- "I am an ordinary member of the organisation, not
a spokesperson, but I think I am typical. The settlers call themselves
Zionists but they are not Zionists as far as the founders of the state
were concerned. I am a Zionist, and this is why the checkpoints are a terrible
blow to us Israelis as well as the Palestinians. My daughters are very
unhappy, they think I am quite right to go to the checkpoints but they
want someone else's mother to go. But I say that only by doing this can
we reclaim the humanistic revolution of Zionism. We are calling on the
world to help us reclaim our humanistic values."
-
- What 'humanistic' values? These woman are glorified zookeepers.
Feeding some 'animals' and helping to withold from others. Sick psychobabble
and cunning way to soften the real angles of zionism. Make it look good
to the goys, so they stop complaining about zionism vs true Judaism.(G)
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