Lod, Protest Tactics, and a Camera Party

I could write an entire book on my day today, and it still wouldn't be enough.

Yesterday was fun - I was working with a couple groups of nine to eleven year olds on their English, and I was impressed with myself at how well I was able to communicate with them in Hebrew.  According to the English teachers, Idit and Lily, all of the students really enjoy spending time with me.  I really enjoy spending time with them too, and all of the teachers seem really surprised at that, like I'm going to rush into their room sobbing that it's too much, I can't handle it.

Today, I took the bus down to Yafo where some of the volunteers from Sadaka-Reut were going to Lod for a demonstration.  I was really excited.  I haven't ever really been to a demonstration before, not even in America.  I mean, I was at an Obama rally twice, but it's not really the same, and anything I was at before I was too young to understand the significance.

Diran drove me, Yotam, Ro'ee, and Mahmoud to Lod, which is a small Arab town outside of Tel Aviv.  When I had spoken to my father about my plan to help with the demonstration, he had told me that Lod will be interesting for me to see because it's such a poor town and a good example of the kind of conditions Arabs and Palestinians in Israel are living in.

Mahmoud is actually from Lod, so our first stop was his house, where his friends and family were making signs and posters.  From there, we went to eat at a typical hummus and pita type restaurant, and on our way back, we stopped at a bakery to get what is called Knafe.  (The k is actually pronounced.)  I asked Ro'ee what Knafe was made out of, and he said "Uh...cheese...honey...um..."


It was literally just cheese and honey, with something baked on top.  I was given an enormous piece, and as Ro'ee, Yotam, and Mahmoud practically inhaled their pieces, I was slightly more dubious and slightly slower in my consumption.  In the end, I only finished half of it, as it was far too sweet to be believed.


When we got back to Mahmoud's house, the four of us sat at a table outside, all of us with different sections of the newspaper (I had Sudoku).  I really like these tiny details, these small moments between me and the guys, because I feel like I'm getting to know them on a level that is not directly related to the conflict.  Before I felt my conversations with them were so serious all the time, but now we just hung out like humans.  I mean, they're not that much older than me.  I don't know specifics, but I think Yotam and Ro'ee are 20 and Mahmoud is 21.


Soon thereafter, the four of us walked from Mahmoud's house to Abu Eid Refugee Camp, where the demonstration was going to meet.  About four months ago, the Israeli government bulldozed eight houses in one of the neighborhoods of Lod, claiming that the Palestinians that were living there were not living there under the right documentation, and therefor did not actually own the houses.  Since then, there have been weekly marches and demonstrations starting at the site of the wreckage (now called Abu Eid Refugee Camp, as the eight families are all living in tents) and then walking to City Hall.


Today was the same kind of demonstration, except that it was a much bigger deal, because tomorrow is Yom HaAdama, or Land Day, which is very special to Palestinians, as it represents reclaiming their land.  Bus after bus after bus after bus of protesters pulled into the site, and soon the demonstration was full of hundreds of people, which was a big step up from their average of fifty.


I had two rules for myself in the demonstration: do not chant anything unless you know what it means, and do not hold up a sign unless you know what it says.  That being said, I held up a sign that Diran, one of the Sadaka Reut volunteers, had made, which said: Stop the Racial Discrimination.  I did chant a couple times with the only thing I could participate in with my lack of Arabic.  There was a chant where the man with the megaphone was shouting out different occasions where the Israeli government had displaced Palestinians, and the crowd would shout (in Arabic, which sounded so much cooler than it does in English) "WE HAVE HAD ENOUGH", except the Arabic was only two syllables.


It was incredible to be in the middle of the demonstration.  I literally was so amazed, and it never ever ever went away, that feeling of awe.  I have never seen that level of brotherhood before, that number of people - that number of YOUNG people coming together for a shared cause.  I know that there were significant protests at the State House only a little after I left, which is ironic, but I wish that rallies and marches existed like that in Columbus.  Or maybe I don't, because that might mean that our shared living situation is awful or something or we're being denied the rights to be citizens...


I stayed by Diran's side for the entire rally.  I was really impressed by how many people I saw at the march that were my age.  By the time we started marching, it was already dark, so my photos are really bad, since I had to use the flash and I don't play that game.  I did manage to take some pictures that I feel really capture the energy there.  At one point, one of the female facilitators of the rally came up to me and Diran and told us that they wanted the women to go to the front.  Diran didn't know why they wanted this, and immediately I thought of the protest tactics I had learned through Tom's Radical 60s class - in Chicago, they would put the nuns, priests, and women in the front of the protests so that even if things got hairy, the police wouldn't attack.  In the end, though, the police attacked the nuns, priests, and women anyway.  Hana also said that a possibility of why they wanted the women in the front was to make it look like it wasn't a bunch of radical Palestinian men - that it was more balanced, with a large range of people.


On the way back from the rally, I sat with Hana on the bus and we had a really good talk.  I asked her some questions that I had been thinking about, like why Sadaka-Reut didn't have more opportunities to bring Israeli kids and Palestinian kids together.  She said that the organization used to do a lot more of it, but what they found is that they were more effective when they were promoting critical thinking about all kinds of subjects with the students separately, and then when they came together once or twice a month, they were allowed to just BE together, and not have to press a dialogue on them.  She also told me that Matan, my cousin who was my mentor from La Escuelita (we're almost ready to go 'public' with the website) and his grandfather, my great Uncle, Ruvein, are like, famous in the activist community.  Ruvein's kind of like one of the Last of the Mohicans, as one of the last really faithful Marxists or something.  And Matan, his grandson, went to jail for two years for refusing army service on the grounds that the IDF is no longer a defense force, but an offensive force.  They're pretty hard core.

When I was in the rally, I felt really good.  I counted how many times the march stopped to boo something - once at a construction site where the government was building new apartments (representing the dislocation of Palestinians in order to move in more Jews), a Yeshiva - a place where religious Jews study (representing the Palestinian disdain for the religious Jews' Zionistic fervor), twice at the Police station (representing an offensive force, not a peace keeping force), and then at City Hall (representing the failed policies that are oppressing Palestinians).

I didn't boo with them, and I only chanted once.  I was more just walking around, taking pictures and probably looking very shell shocked and out of place.  My jaw was open half the time and I focused so much on listening to their rhythm Arabic chants.  I don't know why, I love that language.  It's so interesting, and even when it's just conversational, I feel like there's a secret rhythm to it.  Maybe that's my Western Civilization-instilled Orientalism, but I still want to learn it.  It's one of the most difficult languages to learn, however.

Mahmoud, Yotam, and Ro'ee's backs.  I am creepy.

A street in Lod.

What you first see when you enter Abu Eid Refugee Camp.

What you see next in Abu Eid Refugee Camp

There's a door in the rubble.

This used to be a family's house.

They now live here.

The flag of Tunisia

The flag of Palestine.

Yotam and Diran.

Blurry fervor.

Chanting.

These guys led the majority of the chants.

"Jews and Arabs refuse to be enemies."