I thought about the law of diminishing returns. The newspapers, if they had ever carried the story, would be bored with us by now, (except of course the S W Argus!) we could be of no help to the Palestinians where we were.
We are ordered to clean the room and are moved to one with three cameras in it. Breakfast was 6 yoghurt sachets, the lunchtime couscous has hairs in it, but the bread was fresh and nice.
Prison does not work. Put a few harmless ladies together in a cell for long enough and they will hatch a plan, and we did. On July 8th we were mere visitors, by July 12th we were activists. Moved by the plight of the Palestians, the greater understanding of their lives, the heartlessness of the regime and the collusion of our own governments, we were toughened up and fired with imagination. It would not be humane to let the matter rest, and we will not let it. We are a small part of a page in history, and a little spell in jail has fired us up to be more.
Suddenly Gabrielle is ordered to get her things ready. Things? The poor woman has been wearing the same clothes day and night for 5 days!
This changes the situation for me. Joyce, steady to the end is worried about the bite on her swollen leg, and will come with me, Fiona has to get back to work. D is allowed to stay and represent us at the kangeroo court which will give us no more rights, no more answers, no more justice than we already have, which is zero.
It is agreed that Angelica and D will remain together to see the last bit of the charade though.
We indicate to the guards that we will leave. Suddenly there is movement. Everything up until this moment has been later (meaning never) or in an hour (meaning never) or tomorrow (meaning never), but now we are in the moment and packing to leave; leave the place we never visited.
The final insult is left until we are on the plane at the airport. I ask the steward for our passports. The burly Israeli at the door growls that we cannot have them back until we land in the UK. We end as we began, with Israel wielding influence way beyond its borders.
Thoughts, I am plagued with thoughts.
Why does my government allow me to be held for 5 days without papers, or explanation, or charges?
Why does my country accept Israel as a sovereign state when it has no borders?
Why does the UK and EU give Israel special rights when its Human Rights position is untenable?
Why can Israel sing in the Eurovision Song Contest and take part in UEFA football champioships whilst being an apartheid state?
Why are British police ordered to act on Israeli paranoia and lies and interrogate British citizens before they go to Israel?
Why were the British the last to leave Givon prison?
Why did the British Consul allow our conversations to be recorded?
Why does the British Consul in Israel say that no visitors are allowed to visit the West Bank, when the FCO website says no such thing?
Why does the British Government collude in the inhumane and cruel treatment of the Palestinians?
How can we leave when we have never been?
SWArgus
16 comments:
O, it's the idiotic Hagai again, who thinks he knows Pippa's motives.
Pippa came to help the Palestinians. what is wrong with that?
What is all this about her thinking the Jews are bad people. Surely you mean, the Israelis? Not the same thing but you are no doubt conflating Israeli with Jew to get a knee jerk reaction and implication of anti-Semitism. If you had read Pippa's account properly you will see that she has Jewish ancestors. Or maybe you don't understand that there are Jews (like myself) outside Israel.
What law? You mean Israel has complete disregard for international law. Pippa had every right to visit Palestine and Israel had no right to stop her but then Israel likes to control everything. Not content with controlling the lives of the Palestinians, it thinks it can control internationals, including our own embassy. I can see that you have adopted this arrogant attitude.
What's all this rubbish about defending yourself? From what? Do the Palestinians have F16s, helicopter gunships, tanks and bulldozers, not to mention a nuclear arsenal? Yes, quite....What about the Palestinians? Don't you think they have the right to defend themselves from the oppressive and abusive Israeli occupation? Or are you too racist to think that they have rights?
Well, it seems that not only is there something wrong with your brain; there must be something wrong with your eye-sight. It was quite clear that she was banging the door open with her suitcase, not a security guard!
Why should she obey instructions if they are illegal? Are you one of these people who does what they are told even if it is morally wrong? That's what the Nazi (and other)
soldiers did....
What evidence do you have that she wished to stir hatred? I see that you have ignored my most important point- that she wanted to help the Palestinians. It seems as if to you, they don't exist, never mind that they have been living there for hundreds of years. Where do you suggest they go? Why should they give up land that their families have lived on for centuries? Why shouldn't they be treated like human beings?
O, and I see that you quote the old propaganda lie about Barak's 'generous' off when he in fact offered the Palestinians isolated bantustans (so not 98% at all), although what they have now is worse, thanks to Israel's settlement expansion policy. In 1948, the Arabs were offered the smaller section of land. Why should they agree when there was far more of them?
But I'm wasting my time arguing with a racist nationalist fanatic.
Your vile language reflects your profound ignorance as to who Israel is and whom the Israelis are.I would recommend you watching this link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rpo6JAHQQDM
I sincerely hope you will refrain from using sordid language in order to further
hatred.I also suggest we shall not
take this space from Ms.Bartolotti with whom I absolutely and firmly disagree and rather have a constructive dialogue via e-mail,or postal pigeons.
I dunno. Looking at it from this side of the world I see a tiny liberal democratic decent industrious little country thriving on a sliver of land not much bigger than a good sized sheep run and only a portion of what these people were originally promised. I see an adjacent slab of land now occupied by a regime that uses firing squads, threw its opponents out of windows and murdered their children as a political tactic, and does what looks like a pretty good nazi thugs routine all round.
That's before you get to their policy of killing as many Jews as possible and destroying their state. Shell their towns. Re-arm. And the terrorism. And the killing of other Arabs and war ...
I see a nasty dark ages mindset that among gays, atheists, free women and many others and will not tolerate Jews anywhere between the river and the sea and will most certainly not tolerate a Jewish state and say so again and again and why.
And your on their side? You must be. You couldn't possibly be on the side of the Palestinians. Anybody who cared about them would be appalled by Hamas.
And I see something else too which I won't go into because it's a bit disgusting.
So you deny Israel is a sovereign state because the borders haven't been settled? Hello? Have you even thought of asking the Palestinians where they think the borders should be? Let alone demand?
Thank you Geoff I couldn't have phrased it better,only when it comes from a mouth of a proud Israeli does he all of a sudden become a fanatic nationalist.
Hypocracy serves those who are wolves in a sheep clothing.
My pleasure Hagai.Y.
Know that Israel has many friends.
We understand that ultimately this is all about extremists who simply refuse to accept Jews and a Jewish state for no other reason than they are Jews. Sure they want their own state but more than that they want the Jews to be dispossessed of their state.
This has been the situation from the very start and it continues to this day. Also from the start there has been huge encouragement from the outside for the destruction of the Jewish state. As we can see here that too continues to this day.
There is something especially vile about the sight of Brits and Europeans attacking Israel in particular. It's hard to read whiny little complaints about who got allocated what sized portion of dusty land over 60 years ago as a justification for unrelenting war without feeling sick. These people need to look into their souls.
Why do they do it? It's obviously not for the Palestinian people. If they cared about them they would be hollering for their liberation from Hamas. They obviously don't care about the human rights of other Arabs either given what's happening for instance in Syria right now. Not a word about what those people are going through from these people.
No, this is not about Palestinians or human rights. For these people it is about something else entirely. Pretty obvious really.
Thank you again Geoff!
No country is immune from making mistakes and criticism is an essential part of any discussion,Israel may be criticised
just like any other country,but not vilified and delegitimised over and over again for this is not criticism anymore but simply slander.
Had the Palestinians wanted peace they could have made it in the year 2000 under Clinton's plan which Israel utterly accepted.
In 1948 the 600,000 Jews of Palestine(under the hostile British mandate) accpeted the partion plan of the land the response was a dreadful war launched by 6 Arabs states that resulted in their defeat.So was in 1967 when the infamous leader of Egypt started a war gainst us in order to exterminate our young state.
I profoundly believe the foundation of Israel was not a coincidence.The existence of Israel is not a coincidence
and so is its future.
As the prophet Isaiah said:
“Comfort ye, comfort ye my people saith your God. Speak ye comfortably to Jerusalem, and cry unto
her, that her warfare is accomplished, that her iniquity is pardoned: for she hath received of the LORD’S hand
double for all her sins.” Mature believers need to be the voice crying, “In the wilderness, prepare ye the way of the
LORD, ...”
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