Hello all,
There is a Palistinian film festival in Portland right now and a lot of
discussion. I thought this letter from an American in Palestine on the
day sheikh yassin was assassinated was thoughtful and worth sharing.
jessie
---------- Forwarded Message ----------
Date: Friday, March 26, 2004 10:23 AM -0600
From: Brenna Bell <[email protected]>
To: [email protected]
Subject: Fwd: [starhawk] The Day of the Assassination (fwd)
yesterday i received the email below from a friend of mine who is
currently in palestine (the format is a little crazy, but its worth
reading). she wrote it the day that the israeli army assassinated
sheikh yassin. and last night i went to the film festival and watched
rana's wedding, which portrays life trying to be lived in the midst of
a military occupation.
> The Day of the Assassination
> By Starhawk
> 3/22/04
> =20
> Just as I grab my computer in bed this morning to write some
> thoughts about nonviolence, I get a call from Neta. I am in Beit
> Sahour doing a training for a small group of internationals and some
> of the core of those who will be trainers. She is in Ramallah. This
> morning, in Gaza, the Israelis assassinated Sheikh Yassin, the
> spiritual leader of Hamas. He was an old man in his nineties,
> confined to a wheelchair, coming out of the Mosque after morning
> prayers. A perfect martyr.
> =B3Everything=B9s going to go crazy,=B2 Neta says. =B3If
> Sharon w= anted to
> set off a bloodbath, he couldn=B9t have done anything better. People
> will = be
> lining up to die.=B2 She=B9s deeply upset, walking the streets of
> Ramallah with Nizar, her husband, still trying to encourage that late
> baby to get on with the process of being born into this rough world.
> I=B9ve been lying here thinking about violence and
> nonviolence and struggle. I=B9m in a small hotel in Beit
> Sahour where we do trainings. It= =B9s
> been being renovated, since last year, in some spirit of undying
> optimism that someday normality, and tourists, will return to this
> region. Bethlehem is a closed up city, dying from economic
> starvation now that the thousands of Christian tourists can no longer
> come. Last year, right before Easter, another ISM volunteer and I
> got a tour of the Church of the Nativity=8Bwe w= ere
> the only ones there, and it was eerie and quiet in the stone halls
> and the deep chamber where Jesus was presumably born. Only a few
> monks walked the halls, and up on the roof, we could still see the
> bullet holes of the assaults from the year before.
> Yesterday, as we began the training, our friends in the
> village of Kharbata were sitting in front of the bulldozers
> again. I felt terribly torn=8Bwanting to be there with them and yet
> having a commitment to be here. My focus for this trip is
> training=8Bthat seems to be the way I can make my best contribution.
> But my heart is always with the action. And its anguish to be
> getting reports=8Btwelve injured, twenty-five injured, one village wo=
> man
> shot in the eye with a rubber bullet, one ISM volunteer detained,
> possibly arrested, others shot in the leg, hurt=8Bwithout being able
> to be there and= do
> something. There=B9s the stress, and the quite irrational but real
> guilt, = and
> the less admirable but also real sense of somehow missing out on the
> excitement.=20
> Which of those women I marched with lost an eye? Was it the
> old woman with the toothless grin who limped up to us over
> the rocks, raised a stick above her head and cried out =B3Allah
> Akhbar!=B2 Was it the mother, grandmother of the sweet young girl
> who tried to teach me how to say =B3swimming=B9 and =B3oasis=B2 in
> Arabic? One young Israeli was shot betwe= en the
> eyes with a rubber bullet: I think that I met him last year at
> Mas=B9Ha pea= ce
> camp. It amused me so much to hear the Palestinians hailing him,
> =B3Levins= ky!
> Yala!! Let=B9s go!=B2
> These trainings are in the same place we were working last
> year. Tom Hurndall sat in these chairs, did the roll plays,
> the active listening exercises, and then went down to Rafah. Just a
> few days later, he was shot. We were clear in the training then, and
> we are even more clear now=8Byou can die doing this work. =B3It=B9s
> hard for any of us to imagine our own death= ,=B2 I
> tell the group as we are role playing out how to respond to tear gas,
> rubber bullets, sound bombs, and live ammunition. =B3But do think
> about it. Tell yourself that it really can be you, and ask yourself
> if you are still willing to do this.=B2
> On Saturday I went to Bir Zeit University, in a village
> outside of Ramallah, to speak to a group of students and
> show them our powerpoint slide show of actions around the world.
> There were about twenty students and a few teachers, including some
> of a small core group that wants to organize a Right to Education
> campaign. We had a good discussion after about strategy. Bir Zeit is
> a beautiful campus, high on a hill, with elegant stone buildings
> donated mostly by wealthy individuals and modern facilities. The
> student body, I=B9m told, are like most of the relatively privileged
> students around the world=8Bdeeply immersed in their own affairs,
> hard to mobilize. Riham Barghouti, director of Public Relations, who
> has organized the talk, told me how hard it is to motivate students
> to get active now. =B3The first intifada involved massive
> noncooperation with the occupation,=B2 she said.
> =B3Everyone was involved, from all classes of soc= iety.
> People boycotted Israeli goods. They tore up their I.D. cards. It
> was primarily nonviolent, a massive popular resistance. And everyone
> felt together. We were clear about what we were struggling for. But
> then we got Oslo, this agreement with no teeth in it. We were
> split=8Bsome for it, some against. Even so, some of those who were
> against it at first, they were beginning to come around, to think,
> =8CWell, maybe we can make something of this.=B9=B2 But then came
> more settlements, more settlers=B9 roads, more restrictions on
> movement, more land confiscations, more deaths. The second intifada
> is more grim, more focused on armed struggle. =B3People think all
> Palestinians are the same,=B2 Riham says, =B3As if we were all one
> person, one terrorist. But we=B9re not. Most people don=B9t want to
> be fighters. They want to find some way to struggle for their land,
> their rights, and they don=B9t want to use violence. But it=B9s much
> harder now,= to
> believe that a nonviolent struggle can succeed. They say, =8CWe did
> that= =B9, or
> =8COur parents did that, and look what it got us.=B9=B2
> There=B9s an ecology to repression. The closures and checkpoints and
> road blocks make movement within the West Bank extremely difficult.
> Each town is separated from the others by checkpoints. The Israelis
> have built wide, fast roads for the settlers to get to settlements,
> or for a tourist from Jerusalem to head up to the Lake of Galilee or
> down to the Dead Sea. But Palestinians cannot travel on those roads,
> at risk of being shot. =B3We used to go to Nablus or Hebron or
> Bethlehem, for a day or a visit,=B2 Riham says. =B3We could drink
> coffee, share ideas, discuss things. New id= eas
> got spread around. Issues could be debated. Now, it=B9s years since
> I=B9ve been to Nablus. I have no idea what they=B9re thinking up
> there. And the k= ids
> come from the villages or the more conservative towns, and go to
> University here. They used to go back, and bring more of the
> progressive ideas with them. Now, they don=B9t go back. They
> can=B9t find work there, and they c= an=B9t
> live in that atmosphere. So they stay in Ramallah. Ramallah is
> Occupation Lite, there=B9s more openness here. You can get to
> Jerusalem. They=B9ve allowed more money to flow into here, there=B9s
> more development. But it can=B9t absorb all those new doctors and
> engineers. And then the other plac= es
> grow more closed, more conservative, and the split between them and
> Ramallah deepens. I know with people dying every day and houses
> getting demolished, it=B9s hard to care about the stifling of
> intellectual life, but that=B9s p= art
> of it, too.=B2
> Sharon and his supporters, with their policies of repression and
> closure and isolation, are in fact creating exactly the conditions
> that foster the kind of narrow fundamentalism they profess to fear.
> At least they fear it in Islam: they pander to it in Judaism.
> In the morning it is my turn to negotiate the checkpoints. I wake up
> before 6 AM, take a taxi to Kalendia where I wait in line with the
> women and the young teenagers going to school. We are the fortunate
> ones: our line moves relatively quickly and in fifteen or twenty
> minutes I am facing a bored young soldier who directs me a second
> bored young woman soldier. She looks at my passport and waves me
> through. But the hundred or so men waiting next to me seem to move
> slowly if at all, and I wonder how long it will take them to get to
> their morning=B9s work.
> I catch a service on the other side, with a bad exhaust system that
> fills the back, where I am riding, with fumes. Halfway into
> Jerusalem, we are stopped by yet another soldier, who demands our
> passports and wants me to open my bag. He glances at the video
> camera, then lets us go. The man in front of me shakes his head.
> =B3They are bad people,=B2 he says. =B3You s= ee!=B2
> I abandon the service a little too early and walk a few blocks on the
> outskirts of the Old City, back to the Faisal where I meet the group
> that will go through the training together. We take another service
> to the outskirts of Bethlehem, to the roadblock that has no real
> checkpoint but a guard tower with soldiers who generally don=B9t
> appear. We walk up the hil= l,
> and get into taxis that have been ordered on the other side, which
> take us to Beit Sahour.
> The first day of training goes well, it=B9s a small group, about seven
> trainees, three from Britain, one from the US, and three Swedes.
> Four of the longterm ISM activists who are learning to be trainers
> also come, to observe and support. By the end of the day, I am
> tired, and after dinner I drop into bed and sleep deeply until
> Neta=B9s call wakes me. It=B9s a struggle to concentrate. Everyone is
> upset about Sheikh Yassin. T= he
> assassination is seen as an assault on the entire community and on
> Islam itself. And those who think in terms of policy see it as a
> calculated move on Sharon=B9s part=8Bto provoke more suicide
> bombings, to open the door for major incursions again, to forestall
> any pressure toward a peace process. The young boy who lives in the
> hotel, about eleven years old, looks at me with shocked eyes. =B3He
> was ninety-two years old,=B2 he says to me, shaki= ng
> his head. And then, =B3Have you seen =B3The Passion of Christ?=B2 I
> tell = him I
> haven=B9t. He says it is very good, he has seen it twice, on DVD.
> =B3But = why
> do they want to kill such an old man,=B2 he asks. =B3Soon he=B9ll be
> dead a= nyway.=B2
> We=B9re getting reports, of demonstrations in Ramallah, Nablus, even
> right here in Bethlehem, of more killings and more martyrs. Rumors
> of death. At our morning check-in, everyone is restless.
> =B3it=B9s part of the quality of being here that you always feel you
> should= be
> somewhere else, that the real action is happening elsewhere. But
> we=B9re here, and we=B9re doing something that will make our work
> more effective in the long run, So let=B9s just be present here and
> focus.=B2 I=B9m really s= aying
> it to myself, of course.
> But we do, in spite of the ongoing doubt about whether or not we can
> get out of Beit Sahour and back to Jerusalem or Ramallah. Neta calls
> and says she has been to the doctor and they are considering whether
> they need to induce labor that afternoon. Hisahm tells me he has not
> ordered cars yet, that there are soldiers at the back way out and the
> checkpoint is closed, and fighting at kalendia. Ramallah is closed.
> I work a bit harder to stay focused,=20
> We are careful to end early enough that we can begin our travel back
> before dark. And, in the way things can change here, suddenly the
> cars are here and the soldiers are gone and we are picking our way up
> the hill and out of Bethlehem. Back to Jerusalem, where I say
> goodbye to the others and head around the corner to grab a bus to
> Kalendia, which seems to be leaving just as usual. Back to Kalendia,
> where soldiers walk above the checkpoint but no one stops us from
> entering. Back to neta=B9s house, to spend a quiet eveni= ng
> and a quiet day today, working on the training manual while Neta
> makes a hundred phone calls trying to decide whether to reschedule
> our coordinator= =B9s
> trainings, as the roads are closed from Nablus and Jenin. No one can
> get in or out. We don=B9t know if they will reopen by the weekend,
> or, if we postpone until next week, if something else won=B9t happen
> that will close them again. Today everyone is on strike, the shops
> are closed, the streets eerily quiet. This is the Palestine I=B9m
> familiar with, the shuttered doo= rs
> and windows, the silence. Everyone seems sad today, and tired, the
> very streets steeped in sorrow. It=B9s a strike, today, however, not
> a curfew=8Bthere is no fear of soldiers rounding a corner with guns
> ready to fire, no tanks. Yet. The fear is deeper, more endemic.
> Somewhere someone is planning revenge. Someone is alive today who
> will soon be dead, because of this assassination. And after the
> revenge will come the retaliation, the tanks, the demolitions, the
> closures. It feels like the calm before the storm.
> =20
> www.starhawk.org <http://www.starhawk.org/>
> Starhawk is an activist, organizer, and author of Webs of
> Power: Notes from the Global Uprising and eight other
> books on feminism, politics and earth-based spirituality. She
> teaches Earth Activist Trainings that combine permaculture design and
> activist skills, and works with the RANT trainer=B9s collective,
> www.rantcollective.org
> <http://www.rantcollective.org/> that offers training and support for
> mobilizations around global justice and peace issues.
> These updates will be posted on her website, www.starhawk.org
> <http://www.starhawk.org/> , and on the Utne Reader website,
> www.Utne.com <http://www.Utne.com/> .
> =20
> To get Starhawk=B9s periodic posts of her writings, email
> Starhawk-subscribe-3hfIC0tI0F+k/[email protected]
> <mailto:Starhawk-subscribe-3hfIC0tI0F+k/[email protected]> and put =8Csubscribe=B9
> in the subject heading. If you=B9re on that list and don=B9t want any
> more of these writings, email Starhawk-unsubscribe-3hfIC0tI0F+k/[email protected]
> <mailto:Starhawk-unsubscribe-3hfIC0tI0F+k/[email protected]> and put
> =8Cunsubscribe=B9 i= n the
> subject heading.
> =20
> *** NOTICE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this
> material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a
> prior interest in receiving the included information for research and
> educational purposes.***
>
>
> --B_3162888527_20294
> Content-type: text/html; charset="ISO-8859-1"
> Content-transfer-encoding: quoted-printable
>
> <HTML>
> <HEAD>
> <TITLE>The Day of the Assassination</TITLE>
> </HEAD>
> <BODY>
> <FONT FACE=3D"New York"><SPAN STYLE=3D'font-size:12.0px'>The Day of
> the Ass= assination<BR>
> By Starhawk<BR>
> 3/22/04<BR>
> <BR>
> Just as I grab
> my com= puter in bed this morning to write some thoughts about
> nonviolence, I get a= call from Neta. I am in Beit Sahour doing
> a training for a small gro= up of internationals and some of the
> core of those who will be trainers. Sh= e is in Ramallah. This
> morning, in Gaza, the Israelis assassinated &n= bsp;Sheikh Yassin,
> the spiritual leader of Hamas. He was an old man i= n his
> nineties, confined to a wheelchair, coming out of the Mosque after mo=
> rning prayers. A perfect martyr. <BR>
> “Everythi
> ngR= 17;s going to go crazy,” Neta says. “If
> Sharon wanted to = set off a bloodbath, he couldn’t have done
> anything better. Peo= ple will be lining up to die.”
> She’s deeply upset, = walking the streets of
> Ramallah with Nizar, her husband, still trying to en= courage that
> late baby to get on with the process of being born into this r= ough
> world.<BR>
> I’ve been
> lying= here thinking about violence and nonviolence and struggle.
> I’m= in a small hotel in Beit Sahour where we do
> trainings. It’s be= en being renovated, since last year,
> in some spirit of undying optimism tha= t someday normality, and
> tourists, will return to this region. Bethle= hem is a closed
> up city, dying from economic starvation now that the thousa= nds of
> Christian tourists can no longer come. Last year, right before=
> Easter, another ISM volunteer and I got a tour of the Church of the
> Nativi= ty—we were the only ones there, and it was eerie and
> quiet in the sto= ne halls and the deep chamber where Jesus was
> presumably born. Only a few m= onks walked the halls, and up on the
> roof, we could still see the bullet ho= les of the assaults from the
> year before.<BR>
> Yesterday, as
> we bega= n the training, our friends in the village of Kharbata were
> sitting in fron= t of the bulldozers again. I felt terribly
> torn—wanting to be t= here with them and yet having a
> commitment to be here. My focus for t= his trip is
> training—that seems to be the way I can make my best cont=
> ribution. But my heart is always with the action. And its
> angui= sh to be getting reports—twelve injured, twenty-five
> injured, one vil= lage woman shot in the eye with a rubber bullet,
> one ISM volunteer detained= , possibly arrested, others shot in the
> leg, hurt—without being able = to be there and do something.
> There’s the stress, and the quite= irrational but real
> guilt, and the less admirable but also real sense of s= omehow
> missing out on the excitement. <BR>
> Which of those
> women = I marched with lost an eye? Was it the old woman with
> the toothless g= rin who limped up to us over the rocks, raised a
> stick above her head and c= ried out “Allah Akhbar!”
> Was it the mother, grandmother o= f the sweet young girl who
> tried to teach me how to say “swimmingR= 17; and
> “oasis” in Arabic? One young Israeli was shot bet=
> ween the eyes with a rubber bullet: I think that I met him last year
> at Mas= ’Ha peace camp. It amused me so much to hear the
> Palestinians h= ailing him, “Levinsky! Yala!! Let’s
> go!”<BR>
> These trainings
> are i= n the same place we were working last year. Tom Hurndall
> sat in these= chairs, did the roll plays, the active listening
> exercises, and then went = down to Rafah. Just a few days
> later, he was shot. We were clea= r in the training then, and
> we are even more clear now—you can die do= ing this work.
> “It’s hard for any of us to imagine our ow= n
> death,” I tell the group as we are role playing out how to
> respond = to tear gas, rubber bullets, sound bombs, and live
> ammunition. “= ;But do think about it. Tell yourself
> that it really can be you, and = ask yourself if you are still
> willing to do this.”<BR>
> On Saturday I
> went to= Bir Zeit University, in a village outside of Ramallah, to
> speak to a group= of students and show them our powerpoint slide
> show of actions around the = world. There were about twenty
> students and a few teachers, including= some of a small core group
> that wants to organize a Right to Education cam= paign. We had a
> good discussion after about strategy. Bir Zeit is a b= eautiful
> campus, high on a hill, with elegant stone buildings donated mostl= y
> by wealthy individuals and modern facilities. The student body,
> I&#= 8217;m told, are like most of the relatively privileged students
> around the= world—deeply immersed in their own affairs, hard to
> mobilize. = Riham Barghouti, director of Public Relations, who
> has organized the talk, = told me how hard it is to motivate students
> to get active now.<BR>
> “The
> first inti= fada involved massive noncooperation with the
> occupation,” she said. = “Everyone was involved,
> from all classes of society. Peop= le boycotted Israeli goods.
> They tore up their I.D. cards. It w= as primarily
> nonviolent, a massive popular resistance. And everyone f= elt
> together. We were clear about what we were struggling for.
> = But then we got Oslo, this agreement with no teeth in it.
> We were spl= it—some for it, some against. Even so, some
> of those who were against= it at first, they were beginning to come
> around, to think, ‘Well, ma= ybe we can make something of
> this.’” But then came more s= ettlements, more
> settlers’ roads, more restrictions on movement, more= land
> confiscations, more deaths. <BR>
> The second intifada is more grim, more focused on armed struggle.
> = 220;People think all Palestinians are the same,”
> Riham says, “A= s if we were all one person, one terrorist.
> But we’re not. &nbs= p;Most people don’t want to be
> fighters. They want to find some= way to struggle for their
> land, their rights, and they don’t want to= use violence.
> But it’s much harder now, to believe that a nonv= iolent
> struggle can succeed. They say, ‘We did that’, or =
> ‘Our parents did that, and look what it got
> us.’”<BR> There’s an ecology to repression.
> The closures and checkpoints = and road blocks make movement
> within the West Bank extremely difficult. &nb= sp;Each town is
> separated from the others by checkpoints. The Israelis have= built
> wide, fast roads for the settlers to get to settlements, or for a to=
> urist from Jerusalem to head up to the Lake of Galilee or down to the
> Dead = Sea. But Palestinians cannot travel on those roads, at
> risk of being = shot.<BR>
> “We used to go to Nablus or Hebron or Bethlehem, for a day or a
> visit= ,” Riham says. “We could drink coffee, share
> ideas, discu= ss things. New ideas got spread around.
> Issues could be debated= . Now, it’s years since
> I’ve been to Nablus. I have= no idea what they’re
> thinking up there. And the kids come from the v= illages or the more
> conservative towns, and go to University here. Th= ey used to
> go back, and bring more of the progressive ideas with them. &nbs=
> p;Now, they don’t go back. They can’t find work
> there, an= d they can’t live in that atmosphere. So they
> stay in Ramallah.= Ramallah is Occupation Lite, there’s
> more openness here.  = ;You can get to Jerusalem.
> They’ve allowed more money to flow i= nto here,
> there’s more development. But it can’t absorb a= ll
> those new doctors and engineers. And then the other places grow more
> clo= sed, more conservative, and the split between them and Ramallah
> deepens. I = know with people dying every day and houses getting
> demolished, it’s = hard to care about the stifling of
> intellectual life, but that’s part= of it, too.”<BR>
> Sharon and his supporters, with their policies of repression and
> closure an= d isolation, are in fact creating exactly the conditions
> that foster the ki= nd of narrow fundamentalism they profess to fear.
> At least they fear = it in Islam: they pander to it in
> Judaism.<BR>
> In the morning it is my turn to negotiate the checkpoints. I
> wake up = before 6 AM, take a taxi to Kalendia where I wait in line
> with the women an= d the young teenagers going to school. We
> are the fortunate ones: &nb= sp;our line moves relatively quickly and
> in fifteen or twenty minutes I am = facing a bored young soldier who
> directs me a second bored young woman sold= ier. She looks at
> my passport and waves me through. But the hun= dred or so men
> waiting next to me seem to move slowly if at all, and I wond= er how
> long it will take them to get to their morning’s work.<BR> I
> catch a service on the other side, with a bad exhaust system that
> fills t= he back, where I am riding, with fumes. Halfway into
> Jerusalem, we are stop= ped by yet another soldier, who demands our
> passports and wants me to open = my bag. He glances at the
> video camera, then lets us go. The ma= n in front of me shakes
> his head. “They are bad people,” = he says.
> “You see!”<BR>
> I abandon the <I>service</I> a little too early and walk a few blocks
> on th= e outskirts of the Old City, back to the Faisal where I meet
> the group that= will go through the training together. We take
> another service to th= e outskirts of Bethlehem, to the roadblock
> that has no real checkpoint but = a guard tower with soldiers who
> generally don’t appear. We walk= up the hill, and get
> into taxis that have been ordered on the other side, = which take us
> to Beit Sahour.<BR>
> The first day of training goes well, it’s a small group, about
> seven = trainees, three from Britain, one from the US, and three
> Swedes. Four= of the longterm ISM activists who are learning to
> be trainers also come, t= o observe and support. By the end of
> the day, I am tired, and after d= inner I drop into bed and sleep
> deeply until Neta’s call wakes me.<BR> It’s a struggle to
> concentrate. Everyone is upset about Sheikh Yassin= . The
> assassination is seen as an assault on the entire community and= on
> Islam itself. And those who think in terms of policy see it as
> a = calculated move on Sharon’s part—to provoke more
> suicide bombin= gs, to open the door for major incursions again, to
> forestall any pressure = toward a peace process. <BR>
> The young boy who lives in the hotel, about eleven years old, looks
> at me w= ith shocked eyes. “He was ninety-two years
> old,” he says = to me, shaking his head. And then,
> “Have you seen “The Pa= ssion of Christ?” I
> tell him I haven’t. He says it = is very good, he has
> seen it twice, on DVD. “But why do they wa= nt to kill
> such an old man,” he asks. “Soon he’ll be dead=
> anyway.”<BR>
> We’re getting reports, of demonstrations in Ramallah, Nablus,
> even ri= ght here in Bethlehem, of more killings and more martyrs.
> Rumors of d= eath. At our morning check-in, everyone is
> restless.<BR>
> “it’s part of the quality of being here that you always
> feel yo= u should be somewhere else, that the real action is
> happening elsewhere. &n= bsp;But we’re here, and we’re
> doing something that will make ou= r work more effective in the long
> run, So let’s just be present here = and focus.”
> I’m really saying it to myself, of course.<BR> But we do,
> in spite of the ongoing doubt about whether or not we can get ou= t
> of Beit Sahour and back to Jerusalem or Ramallah. Neta calls
> and sa= ys she has been to the doctor and they are considering
> whether they need to= induce labor that afternoon. Hisahm tells
> me he has not ordered cars= yet, that there are soldiers at the back
> way out and the checkpoint is clo= sed, and fighting at kalendia.
> Ramallah is closed. I work a bit= harder to stay focused,
> <BR>
> We are careful to end early enough that we can begin our travel back
> before= dark. And, in the way things can change here, suddenly
> the cars are = here and the soldiers are gone and we are picking our
> way up the hill and o= ut of Bethlehem. Back to Jerusalem,
> where I say goodbye to the others= and head around the corner to grab
> a bus to Kalendia, which seems to be le= aving just as usual.
> Back to Kalendia, where soldiers walk above the = checkpoint
> but no one stops us from entering. Back to neta’s ho=
> use, to spend a quiet evening and a quiet day today, working on the
> trainin= g manual while Neta makes a hundred phone calls trying to
> decide whether to= reschedule our coordinator’s trainings, as
> the roads are closed from= Nablus and Jenin. No one can get in
> or out. We don’t kno= w if they will reopen by the
> weekend, or, if we postpone until next week, i= f something else
> won’t happen that will close them again. Today= everyone
> is on strike, the shops are closed, the streets eerily quiet. &nb=
> sp;This is the Palestine I’m familiar with, the shuttered doors
> and w= indows, the silence. Everyone seems sad today, and
> tired, the very st= reets steeped in sorrow. It’s a
> strike, today, however, not a c= urfew—there is no fear of
> soldiers rounding a corner with guns ready = to fire, no tanks. Yet.
> The fear is deeper, more endemic. Somew= here someone is
> planning revenge. Someone is alive today who will soo= n be
> dead, because of this assassination. And after the revenge will
> = come the retaliation, the tanks, the demolitions, the closures.
> It fe= els like the calm before the storm.<BR>
> <BR>
> </SPAN></FONT><FONT SIZE=3D"4"><FONT FACE=3D"Geneva"><SPAN
> STYLE=3D'font-si= ze:14.0px'>www.starhawk.org <a
> href=3D"http://www.starhawk.org/"><http:/=
> /www.starhawk.org/></a> <BR>
> &nb
> sp;Sta= rhawk is an activist, organizer, and author of <I>Webs of
> Power: Notes from= the Global Uprising</I> and eight other books on
> feminism, politics and ea= rth-based spirituality. She teaches
> Earth Activist Trainings that com= bine permaculture design and
> activist skills, and works with the RANT train= er’s
> collective, www.rantcollective.org <a href=3D"http://www.rantcol=
> lective.org/"><http://www.rantcollective.org/></a> that offers
> traini= ng and support for mobilizations around global justice and
> peace issues. &n= bsp;<BR>
> These updates will be posted on her website, www.starhawk.org <a
> href=3D"ht=
> tp://www.starhawk.org/"><http://www.starhawk.org/></a> , and on
> the U= tne Reader website, www.Utne.com <a
> href=3D"http://www.Utne.com/"><http:= //www.Utne.com/></a> .<BR>
> <BR>
> To get Starhawk’s periodic posts of her writings, email
> </SPAN></FONT=
>> </FONT><FONT SIZE=3D"5"><FONT FACE=3D"Times"><SPAN
>> STYLE=3D'font-size:18.0=
> px'>Starhawk-subscribe-3hfIC0tI0F+k/[email protected]</SPAN></FONT></FONT><FONT
> FACE=3D"T= imes"><FONT SIZE=3D"4"><SPAN STYLE=3D'font-size:14.0px'>
> <a href=3D"mailto:=
> Starhawk-subscribe-3hfIC0tI0F+k/[email protected]"><mailto:Starhawk-subscribe@li
> sts.ri= seup.net></a> and put ‘subscribe’ in the
> subject headi= ng. If you’re on that list and don’t want
> any more of these wri= tings, email </SPAN></FONT><FONT
> SIZE=3D"5"><SPAN STYLE=3D'font-size:18.0px=
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> SIZE=3D"4"><SPAN= STYLE=3D'font-size:14.0px'> <a
> href=3D"mailto:[email protected]=
> iseup.net"><mailto:Starhawk-unsubscribe-3hfIC0tI0F+k/[email protected]></a>
> a= nd put ‘unsubscribe’ in the subject heading.<BR>
> </SPAN></FONT></FONT><FONT SIZE=3D"4"><SPAN
> STYLE=3D'font-size:14.0px'><FON= T FACE=3D"Geneva"> <BR>
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> STYLE=3D'font-size:12.0px'=
>> *** NOTICE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this
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> --B_3162888527_20294--
--
Brenna Bell, Staff Attorney
Klamath-Siskiyou Wildlands Center
917 SW Oak St., Ste 414
Portland, OR 97205
(503) 796-7811
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