2004_04_07-14

"Noah's Shore" - and soon "Noah's Ararat" - must be seen on the background of the present "reality".
This "reality" is nowhere more piercing my heart than in Hebron, "The City of Abraham our Father".

Usually I do not expose myself to this pain:

Until the 1967 war I had no "skin" at all.
I was mourning over every death, caused by terror or war, for days.
During those six days in June 1967 - after having sat in the shelter with my three little kids -
I reached the decision, that I couldn't afford this "luxury of emotions",
and that from now on
- whenever the pain would pierce me -
I would coerce myself to transform it into the one question:
"What can I do to create a situation, where people would be partners instead of enemies?"

Today - despite my commitment to not deny or ignore any feeling - ,
I still believe it is right, that I do not choose to expose myself to situations,
which bring up the terrible pain about human beings acting out of victimhood and against their own self-interest.
The pain is particularly unbearable, when it comes to my own people, the Israeli Jews.

Instead I use my energy, experience and skills
to work day after day, year after year
on empowering people and peoples
to become masters of their destinies.

"DEATH TO THE UNDER-RACE" --- "GAS THE ARABS" -

For Information you may want to open the website of
be-tselem, The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories
and search there for "Hebron" ,
though my motivation for "Noah's Shore Peace Project",
as all my work in the last 45 years,
has never been the observation of "Human Rights"

My Partnership Work

but the understanding of true Self-Interest, the development of Self-Esteem and the application of Self-Determination

See the entire Partnership-Hymn in Arabic, Hebrew and English

I'm inserting a map and the first page from Be-tzelem's English Brochure

["be-tzelem" means "in the image" and refers to Genesis 1, 26, according to which God made WoMan in the image of God]
[The office of the organization is in Jerusalem, Talpiot, phone 02-6749111]

The Star of David and a Muslim woman passing through a checkpoint in her own street

A participant in our AUschwitz-BirkenAU Retreat in November 2003, whom I'll call Ester L.,
came to Palestine for 3 months in the framework of one of the "Human-Watch" International Organizations.
She suggested that I visit her in Hebron, and I decided, that for once I would expose myself to the pain.
The pain of seeing my own people sliding back deeper and deeper into victimhood,
refusing to learn how to cope with our dependency on the Palestinians,
not even reaching the awareness that this IS OUR INTEREST, OUR TASK,
to turn the negative dependency into a positive dependency,
i.e. a partnership.

Aren't we a nation which once realized impossible dreams
like reviving the Hebrew language, which had been dead for 2000 years,
or like transforming a miserable crowd of oppressed city clerks in Europe
into a vibrant society of peasants and artisans in the Land of Israel?
Where are all the dreams and dreamers?
The Palestinian youth never even had this experience of being the masters of their lives.
But the Zionists Jews - long before so-called national independence - truly re-discovered their creative powers.
Now we are in the defensive again - hitting hard, killing, humiliating, creating more enemies by the hour,
as if it weren't the first law of war-making, that being in the defensive means to have lost already.
[March 31, 2014: See what 8 year old Mika understands already [on March 17: Mika and the Army]:

I haven't seen violence in Hebron, and the routine humiliations I witnessed were "mild".
But the miserable manifestation of Israel's defensiveness in Hebron was nauseating, gut-wrenching, heart-breaking.
Tears come to my eyes, that 40 years of work for strengthening my people's self-determination, did achieve nothing.
I can only bow my head in shame and pain, knowing that I too am "a guarantor of Israel",
According to the ancient Jewish proverb which gave the name to my book:
"All Israel are guarantors to each other", i.e. responsible for each and every one's action or lack of action.

The Cortuba School with the Star of David and: "the People of Israel": "we'll kill you" To the left: a Hebrew school for learning Torah under construction Watch out Fatima, we'll rape all Arab (girls? unreadable)

.

Ester L.'s task is to accompany the little girls to the Cortuba school and back - through a checkpoint. Some soldiers use their chance to exert the oppression they may have suffered, as kids for instance, on Palestinians. Like demanding from a woman, who works at the school, [left image] to lift up a dead dog and carry it through the checkpoint (she refused!) A self-determined woman: The Headmistress of the Cortuba School, which once had 250 pupils. Now only 80 are left. the Star of David and "we'll get hold of the headmistress". is smeared on several walls, even inside the courtyard. Yesterday someone reached through a latticed window, smashed the CD-player and casette recorder, which serves the teachers and pupils, grabbed a Qor'an, tore it into hundreds of pieces and scattered them all over..

What is paining Esther L. most, is that sometimes,
like on March 29 and yesterday, April 11,
the religious settler kids are waiting for the Cortuba-kids.~~~~

A religious father and his child;;;; Religious settler girls and a woman soldier

The pupils - accompanied by the Internationals - climb down the miserable steps,
the only avenue to the school, after the former steps were blocked by barbed wire.

Once the Palestinian kids come close enough, the orthodox Jewish kids throw stones,
"one as big as half a brick! it's a miracle, nobody got killed or wounded".
"It's from you, that our kids learnt this", said a settler-woman to Esther L., "and I don't stop them!
My brother was killed by you two years ago, and the only thing I want is revenge."

The fact that 400 fanatic, orthodox Jews are permitted to live inside Hebron as a continuous provocation,
and be guarded by 1200 soldiers who risk their lives and waste the money so badly needed for Israel's future generation's education,
is so blatantly hurting Israel's self-interest, that not even my thesis about Israel acting out of the trauma of victimhood, can explain this.
But then again - I must take responsibility, become "parental" to this phenomenon in my exterior life:

"Too often it is asked,
'Who is responsible for this?'
as another way of saying,
'Who is to blame for this?'

'Who will heal this?'
is the really important question,
and then only when the answer is
'me'.

Ester L.'s complaint to the commander of the check-point about the stone-throwing was considered "a provocation",
and during that week neither she nor her companions were allowed to enter the H-2 zone.
This meant, that we had to separate, and I had to make my way alone through H-2.

Continuation