Here is one of the taxi waiting areas at the infamous Khalandia checkpoint, which was pretty mellow that day. This is the place you see in the news, where people are sometimes waiting for hours. They are bulding a new hi-tech crossing to replace the manual checking system they have now. Check this place out-- it looks just like the border crossing in El Salvador / Guatemala.
This kid was manning the grill at the best chicken joint in the Middle East, in Bethlehem. For five bucks a person, we chowed on grilled chicken, hummus, salads, babaganoush and pita. Hot stuff.
Here is the Aida camp (for more info see this link and the comments on this post- remember, almost all info on this conflict, from every side, is BIASED). We got right up next to the security barrier / wall and met with some guys who do youth work with kids in the refugee camp. It's so different to walk around these places on a calm summer day. On the news all you see is kids throwing rocks or getting shot at. But on this day, they were just hanging out, playing with water pistols, or sitting around looking at the murals on the wall. This mural was on the wall of a building, not the security barrier.
The wall is covered with grafitti and murals. See the anti USA motif in this sick Statue of (not) Liberty. And check out the death pigs.... Three days after Israel erected the observation tower, it was covered with splattered paint.
Tomorrow I will post some shots of the "Way of the Sulha," a peace gathering I attended today in the middle of Israel. And sometime soon I am heading out to my little West Bank settlement- Bat Ayin- to learn with my rabbis and dip in the mikvaot (ritual baths) in the gorgeous Judean hills.
Across the Universe, from extreme to extreme. And somewhere in the middle is the unkosher, open-on-Shabbat coffee shop on Emek Refaim (Jerusalem's Park Slope or West Village, maybe) in which I now sit, WiFi-ing what I've got of me, straight through the WonkaWaves to you, my friends.
Please comment. I am spending far too much time tweaking the HTML to make this pretty for y'all, and your comments make the whole endeavor seem more
.......... of substance.
5 comments:
Nice pictures.
Is this why you went back? :-)
So the big answered question of today's post is how did you meet Ibrahim? I am guessing you just struck up a conversation in your own inimitable (sp?), endearing yet sometimes infuriating way, and this time it paid off.
Interesting about the graffiti...Daniel Gordis had a great column a while back about graffiti you won't find on it. Such as: "Please stop suicide bombing once and for all so that they take this thing down."
Great point also about Kalandia checkpoint and how not every single minute of every single day is a raging riot -- particularly not, I'll bet, when there are no TV cameras.
I visited my fellow hospital chaplain Salih Yucel (a Turkish Muslim)'s mosque in Revere, MA last Friday to hear his sermon. It was a great experience, but they put us behind what I would call a "mechitzah" -- which was frustrating to me. I wasn't able to feel I was fully in the experience. And now I think I understand for the first time why so many Jewish women will not stand for being behind the partition. I'm hoping I can go back, though...maybe even to deliver an interfaith sermon on what American Jews and Muslims might do to promote peace.
Got our plane tix today! We'll be joining you in the Holy Land on 8/28.
Anonymous above is me, Justin.
This wall is between the Aida refugee camp on one side, and the Gilo settlement and Rachel's Tomb on the other side. The "camp" is north of Beit Lechem. Honestly, they really shouldn't be called "camps." That evokes images of tents and mud, when really it's more like cement alleyways, rubble and grafitti. They should be called "Refugee Slums." And the "settlements" should be called "Country Jew Towns." Except for the Yeshiva part of Bat Ayin, which should be called "Refugee Camp."
i got to see you on that picture.keep doing well. i will check you out tomorrow
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