Pre-packaged US State Dept templates

Al Jazeera blogger Imran Garda has a great post about the U.S. response when a U.S. ally is using extreme force against peaceful protestors calling for change, or when a U.S. ally is 'bombing civilians to smithereens.' Here is the template the U.S. uses to respond to U.S. allies:

“We continue to monitor the situation and are very concerned about recent events in ______. We call for restraint on both sides. We urge President/Prime Minister/King ______ to facilitate dialogue and provide concrete steps towards a peaceful resolution.”

The response varies quite a bit if the state using disproportionate force and violating international law/human rights happens to NOT be a U.S. ally:

Luckily, there’s more flexibility if you’re not dealing with an ally - there is no stock template.

Try to throw in as many colourful condemnatory adjectives as possible. Toss in a couple of reminders of International Law, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Geneva Conventions; dig up a few things about what Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have to say - and basically be honest. 

PJ Crowley

As evidence, check out a recent tweet from US State Dept Spokesperson, PJ Crowley:

#SecClinton spoke this afternoon with FM Aboul Gheit of #Egypt. She encouraged restraint and dialogue, and offered U.S. support for reforms.

Look for the US 'ally template' being used by the State Department in the near future. 

Tea, arghileh, and whiskey

After about a week in the South Hebron Hills, I was able to visit one of my favorite families in the area. After being served tea, the following dialogue ensued: 

"Sam, how many times did you have tea in the 4 months you were home?"

"Well, if you mean black tea with sugar...zero."

The family, in unison, let out various expressions of shock. "What! That's unbelievable," the mother exclaimed. "And how many times did you smoke arghileh (hookah) when you were in the States?"

"Not once."

Then the father of the family, the man who always lectures me about religion and often quotes 45-minute sections of the Koran, spoke loudly over the clamor of his family's questions, "Yeah and how many times did you drink whiskey? Wait, don't even answer, we know you drank whiskey every day."

Armed man kills two animals; Escapes to Havat Ma'on settlement

The first day I arrived in at-Tuwani, settlers tried to prevent Palestinian from cultivating their land. The second day, a settler killed two animals belonging to a Palestinian shepherd.  From CPT's release: 

Two teenage shepherds reported that they were watering their family's flock at a well just above their village when a man running through the area, carrying an M-16, fired four or five shots at the dog which accompanies their flock. The shooter proceeded to chase the flock, kicking a ewe and throwing rocks at its head. The dog died immediately from four gunshot wounds and the incapacitated sheep died approximately two hours after the beating.

One of the most startling things about the incident was how the Israeli Police immediately doubted Mukhamri's account. As Mukhamri explained the details of the shooting, he was using the word 'settler' to describe the assailant. The Police detective immediately interrupted him and and asked him how he knew it wasn't an Arab.  Mukhamri laughed in an irritated tone, and asked the Policeman if he had ever seen a Palestinian civilian with a gun in this area. Mukhamri offered that never in his life had he seen a Palestinian civilian carrying a firearm. Yeah, but how did you KNOW he was an Israeli? Mukhamri proceeded to describe the man's dress, including a yarmulke, which suggested he was Jewish. The description of the man's dress seemed to temporarily assuage the Policeman's doubts.

The dog looked pretty gruesome. It had four gunshot wounds, and the blood was still dripping out of the animals' nose and mouth when we arrived. 

If a man can shoot, without second-thought or regard, an innocent animal with an assault rifle, what else can this man do? If a man can walk up to a pregnant ewe, throw rocks at its head and kick the animal in the face and the stomach, what else can this man do?

Israeli settlers lay in front of tractors; attempt to prohibit Palestinian agricultural work

Israeli settlers, living in the West Bank in contravention of international law, engaged in a bizarre act of civil disobedience in an attempt to stop Palestinians from cultivating their own land. Despite the fact that Palestinians legally own the land, and have the paperwork to prove it, settlers were angry because they believe that their land ownership is divinely ordained.  And land ownership from 'on high' certainly supersedes the ownership documents that these Palestinians still hold from the Ottoman empire. Fortunately, these Palestinian farmers wouldn't concede an inch and continued plowing as two settlers laid in the dirt on front of the tractors while other settlers mounted the tractors.  The settlers' harassment wasn't enough to stop the farmers from completing their work.  

An excerpt from the CPT release:

On Saturday, 22nd of January, Palestinian farmers successfully plowed fields in Khoruba valley, despite heavy harassment by settlers from the nearby  settlement of Ma'on.

In the early morning, about twenty farmers from At-Tuwani started sowing seed and plowing fields in Khoruba valley, southeast from At-Tuwani. Soon thereafter, five settlers arrived from nearby Havat Ma'on outpost and positioned themselves in front of the tractors, in an attempt to prevent the farmers from completing their work.  As more settlers arrived, tempers flared and the farmers attempted to move the settlers and physically block them from interfering with the land cultivation.

When the settlers first arrived they headed directly for the tractors without speaking with anyone. The army hadn't arrived yet and I feared the incident would escalate, which of course would result in Palestinians being arrested, or worse. 

Picture Credit: Operation Dove (more available here)

The army soon arrived and thus commenced the charade of Palestinian farmers having to spend hours convincing the soldiers the the civil administration that their documents were legitimate and they did in fact have the right to plow this land.

 

A settler couple, who spoke English as a first language, came out shouting like a broken record that we were all Nazis. After realizing that calling us Nazis wasn't really getting them anywhere, they moved to a more civil discourse about Jewish right to the land and, ironically, European property rights: 

The farmers were extremely positive about the outcome of the day. The civil administration had agreed to let the farmers continue working, and Israeli forces stayed in the area to keep the settlers at bay. I'm certain most farmers in the world wouldn't feel positive about antagonistic, gun-wielding land thieves jumping on and in front of their tractors. Nonetheless, the fields were plowed and will yield wheat for harvest season. 

How to stay connected to CPT's work in Palestine

I'm behind on updating this blog. There are only two of us in At-Tuwani at the moment which means that after a incident happens, I am writing a release, uploading and editing video and pictures, and contacting the media. Once that's done and the media has been notified, I usualy feel the need to get away from the computer, especially if I have been translating/editing video. Thus, the timeliness of posts on this blog suffers a bit.  

One remedy is for you to subscribe to the CPT Palestine (actually named cpthebron) email list. After a release goes out to the press, we next send the release to the cpthebron yahoo group email list. By subscribing to this list, you will get updates as quick as we are getting them out.  Follow this link to sign up for the 'cpthebron' yahoo group email list. This will require you to create a yahoo account if you don't have one, but don't fret, you won't be bombarded with yahoo spam. I would say on average we send out 1-2 releases a week on the cpthebron list.

The second remedy is to subscribe to CPTnet, via RSS or email. CPTnet includes releases, analysis, and multimedia from all of the CPT project teams; including: Palestine, Colombia, Canada (First Nations), and Iraq.  

If I knew that you were all subscribed to CPTnet and/or the cpthebron yahoo group, I wouldn't be as concerned about delays in posting to this blog. So, you should go sign up for cpthebron yahoo group to get immedate releases from the CPT teams in Palestine and to alleviate my anxiety.  

This wasn't supposed to be a full post, but it turned into one...

New documentary: Israeli soldiers asked to 'cleanse' neighborhoods in Gaza

Israeli filmmaker, Nurit Kedar, has finished a documentary composed of a series of testimonies from Israeli soldiers about their experience in Operation Cast Lead, the Israeli bombardment of Gaza in the winter of 2008-2009.  British television, Channel 4 News, ran a part of the documentary on a recent broadcast.

I hope that some of the soldiers in this film who are obviously suffering from acute trauma and PTSD are able to get some help.  I hope the film gets picked up by Israeli television (it doesn't have a broadcaster at this point) and convinces some young men and women to refuse to put themselves in a position where they might be asked to kill another human being.

New Yorkers protest American company with connections to Israeli tear gas

The U.S. government gives somewhere around $9 million of military aid to Israel each day.  So it's no surprise that there are U.S. companies with close ties to the Israeli military. Due the rising number of deaths and injuries caused by the Israeli military's misuse and overuse of tear gas, activists are targeting the suppliers of the tear gas, which happen to be US companies. 

My latest post on Waging Nonviolence (and by latest I mean Jan 14th, which goes to show that I have been quite busy since arriving in Palestine, and haven't had much time for this blog) covers a recent NY protest against one of the companies providing Israeli with tear gas canisters, Combined Systems INC.

Go read the entire thing, and sign the petitions too if you want to express your distaste with how your tax dollars are being spent.