July 7th 2011 - journey to Tel Aviv

The email from Joyce seemed such a good idea. It was an invitation to visit the West Bank of Palestine for a week at the invitation of 14 Palestinian civil society groups. Theatre groups, arts societies, refugee centres and the like. It was an opportunity to see just how these disenfranchised people coped with life under occupation, and partcularly to discover how the young people were helped to endure oppression and to resist in a passive way. This sort of thing is the backbone to sanity and I was very interested in understanding more. In 24 hours I had contacted the organisers, done some research and booked my ticket.

The night time journey to Luton Airport was painful. Three changes on the train and an assortment of taxis and busses brought me to the meeting point, and Joyce, who had arrived a little earlier, spotted me quickly. She introduced me to Mick and D. I grabbed an uncomfortable hour of sleep on the solid floor of the departure terminal and at the due time made for the boarding gate unmolested. I mention this because the others were stopped and interviewed by what was assumed to be British special forces. Joyce, an attractive lady of some 70 years was accused of being a liar when she told them why she was going to Tel Aviv and was told our plane would be left on the tarmac in sweltering heat at Ben Gurion Airport. The intimidation had started and it was our first inkling of how Israeli juristiction spread beyond its own flimsy borders. Who ordered the British security forces to interrogate people in this way?

We did know that people were joining us from all over the world. 2 American ladies joined us at Luton, which brough the party up to 10, and we understood that there were participants from France, Belgium and Germany. Numbers were wildly exaggerated. By the day I left, we were an international army complete with weapons and no doubt well versed in guerilla warfare. I should have taken this more seriously, but it all seemed very silly at the time.

Netanyahu had whipped up a media storm calling us hooligans and provocateurs. The man is mad of course. The media went berserk labelling us the 'flightilla'. Disinformation piled onto disinformation and before long we were rabid demonstrators representing an existential threat to Israel itself. Truth gets a bad press these days.

Fortunately our local rag - the SW Argus was inclined to print our own story, but we did not know this until we got back.