Where Olive Trees Weep (2024)

[bunniefuu]

WEBVTI think it happened

on the way to school.

I got slapped at some

point by a soldier.

So that was a good slap,

because that kind of woke me up

to the reality of where I really am.

I experienced occupation

through the nostalgia,

and the emotions,

and the stories of everyone.

I had the questions,

why can't I see my grandfather?

Why are half of my family

not in the country?

There are these questions

and this feeling

that you get as a sensation,

but not as a knowing.

And the knowing came when

when I went to a protest,

I was more the type that believed

in fighting confrontation straight,

but my mother wanted to show me

the non-violent style,

so she convinced me to go

to a protest in Jerusalem.

There was a musical protest

between, a joint one,

internationals, Palestinians

and Israelis.

And she's like, 'I want you

to see how this is done.

There are other options, you know,

we can go and we can sing.'

In the beginning,

I was making fun of them.

I was telling my mother,

'You're gonna be

liberated by those

few people singing here.'

A few minutes after that,

the soldiers started storming

and they came at us

with full force.

I'm not hurting you!

I'm not hurting you!

I'm not hurting you!

So the musical team

started making a human chain

so that at least

they can't reach us,

and I thought I was a part

of that human chain,

and I was holding on.

And then I saw

the people being taken further

and further away,

and I was still the only one

that was being held

in the human chain. I was like,

'Okay, I'll keep the human chain!'

Until I realized that

something was wrong

and I was being pulled too far.

So I started pushing, kicking

the guy behind me and saying,

'Khalas, we have to go back'

until I turned and he put the

Israeli military police hat on

and I looked at him,

I was trying to run away.

Um...

And he basically took me

down to the ground

and I remember my head banging.

And I then woke up,

with I don't know how many soldiers

and police beating my knees,

and they were just going and going.

And I would wake up and look

and see the cameras flashing

and I could see that there

were other people around,

but then I would just look at them

and they would keep going.

I would faint again and wake up.

Of course, the police handcuffed me,

slammed me into a jeep.

And there was a young boy,

and they kept beating him

and beating him and beating him.

And his head was

just going next to me.

So I started beating and

starting to shout in the jeep,

so that I can get...

That's when the shock went

and the anger rose.

Another kid gets beaten up

and thrown with blood

on his face, and I just...

I froze.

It's so important for

people to understand

colonization in order to understand

what's happening in the world.

And here in Palestine,

it's, you know,

it's happening now.

The issue is the

present day, ongoing,

settler colonial project,

that by definition is meant to

take the land and

create a political system

that excludes the indigenous people.

200 years ago in the States

or New Zealand or Brazil,

it was not considered violations,

it was the norm.

Now, because Zionism

is an anachronistic

settler colonial movement,

the world understands

it's not according to the norm,

but the world accepts it.

In this Holy Land,

there's always been a lot

of violence and oppression

and injustice, going

back to ancient times.

And then... the foundation

of the State of Israel,

which could only have

been accomplished

by denying the rights

of the local population,

so in that sense, it's

just another colonial project.

In 1917, when David Balfour,

a British foreign minister,

who the hell was he to promise

a foreign land to anybody else?

when he issued that declaration,

that the British

government views with favor

the establishment of a

Jewish entity in Palestine,

there were something like

100,000 Jews here, or 75,000,

and half a million Arabs.

How are those half a million

supposed to feel

about the 75,000 declaring,

as they did,

I'm quoting Zionist history,

'That our aim,

in as short a time as possible,

is to make Palestine as Jewish,

as England is English

and America is American.'

And then the Jews came here

through the doors

opened by Zionism,

which was initially

both a settler colonial movement,

in its core,

but not a very successful one,

until n*zi Germany came to power.

Zionism was partly a

response to antisemitism.

So the Zionist narrative means

a narrative that believes

that there should be a

Jewish state in Palestine.

So that, that is like,

goes without question.

Everything I heard was...

I was so Zionist,

we were Zionists, that

we didn't know we were Zionists.

The Jewish people were

always the victims.

We've never hurt anyone.

And we were somehow morally

superior to, to everyone.

My grandmother, she would say

'A good Arab is a dead Arab.'

And she would say,

'An Arab will hug

you with one arm,

and stab you in the

back with another.'

I stayed in the jeep,

then we were taken

to the Moscobiyeh,

the Russian compound, which is a

the f-, the-

I was going to curse.

It's the dungeon of t*rture.

This is just one of the many

dungeons of t*rture

that Israel has operating

all over the land.

We always used to

say that you can...

If you walk in silence at night,

you can hear the people

screaming in these dungeons.

They interrogated me.

I was crying and crying and...

'boom'

you know, the slap came and

it was like, okay.

So the nervous system

got also that message.

I apparently signed a lot of

things without knowing.

Of course, they

don't read it to you.

You get slapped every time

you ask a question.

So the straight signal is,

if you don't want to get beaten,

you don't want to get tortured,

sign and you're out!

That was the beginning.

And for me, that was a shift

because the fear that I felt

I had never experienced before.

I said to myself,

'I never want to be back

in that place, ever.'

The trajectory of

once you experience

those feelings and emotions

is that something has to change.

And for me, it was like, Okay...

I'd heard the stories of the pains

of how people were

tortured in these places,

I never believed it,

until I saw.

And when I saw,

I couldn't unsee it.

So it did affect every choice

made after in my life.

So how does the world completely

turn a blind eye to the

Israeli continuous violence,

both physical military violence,

and bureaucratic

institutional violence?

And still sees

Israel as the victim?

This is the big question.

My parents were both refugees

after the Second World w*r

and the trauma of coming back

from the concentration camp

and the ghetto,

to their respective countries,

Yugoslavia and Romania,

which they never

intended to leave...

But after the w*r,

and after realizing

that many of their Jewish

friends and family

had been m*rder*d,

I think they felt such

a vacuum or a void,

that pushed them out

of their countries.

And again, they were not Zionist

and they never planned

to come to Palestine,

never before that.

in some sense, it's the

worst event in history,

where there was

a deliberate attempt

to extirpate a whole people,

by mechanical,

scientifically designed,

violence.

So in that sense,

the project that

led to the creation

of the Jewish State,

arose out of deep trauma,

unspeakable trauma.

And the world supports Israel,

because the world either feels

remorse for the Holocaust or

a kind of guilt complex,

or is happy to

get rid of the Jews

and let them stay

in another country,

and we don't care

about the Palestinians.

But the whole

settler colonial system

was created here

before the Holocaust.

Many of the methods were taken from

British colonialism,

from French colonialism,

from settler colonialism

in the States.

This is like any

other colonial project.

It's only that it's the latest one,

and it's the longest-standing

ethnic cleansing

in the history of the 20th

and 21st centuries.

So it's fed by a stream of trauma.

But after all these decades,

you can't talk

about trauma anymore.

It's simply colonialism,

pure and simple,

and it's an apartheid state.

You can only beat them down

by brutal force,

and you can only get rid of them

by brutal force.

That's what happened,

and that's what

continues to happen.

The indigenous population

was brutally treated,

forced off their lands...

This whole occupied territories

where we're speaking now,

is like a giant reservation,

literally with walls around it.

So there was mass expulsion

of the indigenous people in 1948,

and then mass expulsions

in '52, in '67...

The Jews coming here

was an invasion,

was not meant in order

to include Palestinians

in one good society,

but to exclude them.

Around the time that I hit 15, 16,

the first intifada began and

I started hearing about things

and noticing things and,

and realizing that,

there was something very wrong.

You know, I didn't

have much information,

but it was clear to me

that Palestinians

were fighting for their freedom,

and we were k*lling them.

Following the first intifada

from '87 to '92-93,

both PLO and Israel

agreed to start negotiations.

And the negotiations

brought us to a reality

planned by the Israelis.

Most of the world thought

that the Oslo Accords

were a normal or natural

corridor to a peace agreement

with Palestinians,

while a Palestinian State

would be the end of this process.

People expected Israel

to put a halt

to its colonialist drive.

Palestinians made a very severe,

very serious compromise,

agreeing to have a state

in 22% of the land.

We'll have a state,

we'll put a halt

to this occupation,

to the cruelty

that comes with occupation,

to the bloodshed.

That was the expectation.

So what Israel did with,

after, with Oslo,

it did just the opposite.

This space had Israeli spots,

Israeli pockets,

in the form of settlements.

So the general understanding

was that these spots or pockets

will be removed.

And within these 30 years

since then, almost 30 years,

instead of having

Israeli enclaves removed,

what happened is that

you have Palestinian enclaves.

That's when they

closed off the West Bank,

because there was

this idea of separation.

Palestinians here,

Israelis here,

that was the Israeli

definition of peace.

It's like basically

apartheid, separation.

So then, any Palestinian,

suddenly, from one day,

needed a permit from

the military authorities

in order to come into Israel,

and also in order to come into

occupied East Jerusalem,

which is the heart

of the West Bank.

You know, the religious heart,

the economic heart,

the cultural heart.

In one day, you needed a permit

to go there, from the military,

which is not easy to obtain.

A child born in Palestine

will face challenges

from the very beginning.

You learn that there

are no easy games

for children in Palestine,

because everything,

it's under the,

the permanent threat

of the occupation.

There are schools like Hebron H2,

that children going to school

will need to cross

several checkpoints,

will need to cross

in front of settlers,

who will be

very violent with them,

and they will receive

tear gas a lot of days.

You are welcome in Nabi Saleh,

a small village northwest of

Ramallah, 20 kilometers.

We are here since a long time,

we don't know when.

That village is named Deir Nidham,

they are our cousins.

We all own this land together

because we are the

same family, TAMIMI,

and this is Nabi Saleh.

In this dry place

they build the

settlement of Halamish.

In terms of settlements,

there are different

kinds of settlements.

The largest settlement and

the second largest settlement

are both these cities

built by the state

in the West Bank

for ultra-orthodox Jews.

The state-sanctioned settlements

will be built strategically.

So here it's like

around Jerusalem,

because they're trying

to cut Jerusalem off

from the rest of the West Bank.

And then there are

other settlements

called 'ill*gal settlements',

even though

under international law,

all settlements are ill*gal

where basically

a group of settlers

will come to land,

and it can start with a tent,

you know, it can

start with a house.

But as soon as they build it

on private Palestinian land,

there will immediately

be military guarding them,

a road paved to them,

electricity connected,

water connected.

They'll be provided

with everything,

and the military

will protect them

from the Palestinians,

whose land they stole.

Because they have water,

you see how it's green?

You see how the settlement is green

and the village is dry?

There's a swimming pool.

They have irrigation

for their land.

We haven't had

running water since 1980.

They give the settlement

24-hour, day and night,

running water.

But we have 12 hours weekly.

We pay a big price, five times

more than the settlement.

As a Jew, I could

come to Israel right now.

I could move to

the occupied territories.

I could claim citizenship

overnight!

But not only would I be

granted citizenship,

if I moved into the settlements,

I'd be immediately granted

six times as much

water annually

as a Palestinian resident

of the occupied territories.

Because there is no water,

the farmer and the

owner of the land

stopped using their land

and they have an Ottoman Law,

since the Turkish:

if you don't use your

land for three years,

the government

can take the land.

For that, they took a lot

of land by this law,

and changed it from private

to be a public land,

and then they give it

to the settlements.

Recently, the commander

of the military said

that the settlement enterprise

and the military are one.

When the government can't

do something legally,

it will do it

through the settlers,

and then support them

to legalize it.

First of all, you can buy

an apartment for much cheaper

than you would if it

was inside Israel.

You get a quality of life

that you would not

be able to afford

inside Israel.

So the state will make it

as comfortable as possible,

in order to encourage

the takeover of the land.

Colonies, historically,

function this way.

Taking control over

land of people,

by all sorts of legal acrobatics.

They invent laws

and then they say that

they're implementing

according to the law.

But the laws are basically

laws of an occupier,

and of a colonialist entity.

And then in order

to guard the loot,

they have to create

the myth of security,

and they settle Israelis

in land not theirs,

and they have to

protect the Israelis.

And then they need more land

to protect these Israelis.

And from time to time they k*ll.

And when Palestinians resist,

there are wars or

what they call operations,

military operations.

So the security is

the explanation for any

of their actions,

or any of their thoughts.

They said, 'We build the wall

for our own security.'

The wall is ill*gal

under international

humanitarian law,

and also transferring population

to the occupied

territories is ill*gal

under international

humanitarian law.

And they say,

'We don't care about

international humanitarian law.

We only care about

our own security.'

This house was built in 1964,

and I have a demolishing order

since 2010 for this house.

And there are 14 houses

in this village, Nabi Saleh.

Any time, in the day or night,

they will come

and destroy the house.

This is a type of silent

ethnic cleansing in Area C,

that's just by demolition order.

Half of the Palestinian

people are in exile,

are not in historical Palestine.

Half of them are in

the rest of the world,

mostly in the Arab world,

Lebanon, Syria, Jordan,

since they were expelled in 1948.

And then, within the area

occupied in 1967,

so that's the West Bank and Gaza

and the Golan Heights,

there are refugees from 1948.

So, 80% of people in Gaza are

refugees from what's now Israel.

And I think that

within the West Bank,

and in a way, also Gaza,

what's really important for me

is that they are redundant,

according to the

Israeli politicians,

and greater public, Israeli public.

Gaza has disappeared

from calculations,

from, from, they are not here.

Gazans do not go out of Gaza.

But also in the West Bank,

the process is

to condense Palestinians

into the enclaves,

which I mentioned before.

Life in Gaza

is extremely challenging,

because it's the worst example

of an ongoing human

rights violation,

happening in front of

the eyes of everybody,

with two million people

completely under siege.

It's like an open-air

jail controlled by sea,

by air, by the wall.

They do not allow you to bring

certain medicines in Gaza.

And when you ask, 'Why?'

They will answer,

'Security reasons.'

But can you explain to me

how this medicine can be a threat,

and how you can ban

a medicine from entering Gaza,

under the explanation

of 'security reasons?'

And they will say,

'Secret file, security reasons.'

When we would protest

at the Gaza fence,

during the Great March of Return,

it was basically Israelis that would

come to the fence and protest;

we would coordinate

with Palestinians

on the other side.

We had big Palestinian flags

and they would see us,

so it was like supporting them.

You know, people got beaten

upon the Israeli side,

and on the Palestinian side,

people were being shot in the head,

systematically.

Over 180 protesters

were k*lled, m*rder*d.

There were children k*lled,

medics, people in wheelchairs.

The sn*pers would be behind,

there's like this artificial hill,

and they'd be hiding

behind the artificial hill.

The protesters were

right in front of them,

they could see exactly

who they were k*lling.

And they maimed,

like shot, over 6,000.

When Palestinians demonstrate,

live ammunition

is considered legitimate.

People always had

kind of this dream, like

what would happen if Gazans

would all just, en masse,

get up and just march to the fence,

you know, march home,

to their land beyond the fence.

And then we got the answer:

what happened,

when they got up and they marched,

is that they were shot in the head.

You know, they were k*lled, en masse,

and nobody... cared.

The world would see it happening,

week after week,

the UN said it was a w*r crime,

and no one did anything.

Nothing happened.

Nothing happened,

week after week, people m*rder*d.

So, it's hard to

it's impossible to argue

for nonviolent resistance.

Which is tragic, because of course,

if people could take that route,

they would.

So, I decided to study journalism

because I was

filmed while I was beaten up,

and nobody raised a hand

from the camera crew,

from the journalists.

And for me it was like,

I want to be that journalist

that gives you a hand

in the middle of the beating

so I can take you out.

There have been clashes in

the old city of Jerusalem.

There's been clashes here

where we are now, Ras Al-Amoud.

I was working

in the old city of Jerusalem.

Yeah, you k*ll people in a w*r.

That's what happens, everywhere.

Look around the world.

Yeah, people get k*lled.

And that's why?

That's why! That's a w*r.

But you're k*lling

Palestinians today.

We're not, we're not

k*lling them for nothing.

So nothing is happening?

Are we just k*lling them for nothing?

Maybe if they hear my narrative,

and they see the similarity,

and they see the closeness,

and what the Palestinians are,

then they can stop, you know.

And then you can open the hearts

of people inside Israel.

Because words

are everything, right?

So the use of the word

'resistance fighter'

versus the use of 't*rror1st,'

makes a very big difference

on our nervous system.

and how we accept it,

and the level of rage that we,

we experience when

we hear those words.

We're so dehumanized

by this instrument and machine,

to the point where they can come

and they can exterminate you,

because to them,

you're nothing but a rat.

You're nothing but

something that can be k*lled,

you're not a human.

And that's what

creates a Holocaust.

You dehumanize first,

and that is a learned lesson.

You dehumanize them so that

you get people to the point

where they act in a group

against a minority group.

And they,

the Israelis couldn't see us.

They can't see us.

The image that was given to them

was that we're sitting there,

with the g*ns, in our schools,

waiting for the Israelis to come.

No, Habibi.

We're sitting in our homes

waiting for the g*ns to come

and attack us while

we're in school.

But if we had the chance,

we'd be in theaters,

we'd be playing,

we'd be doing these things,

and we would be living

like a normal life.

But they couldn't see us.

The military intelligence

echelon knows

that if the Israelis

in Tel Aviv hear my voice,

and hear the songs

of Gazan children

singing in the streets,

it might make an Israeli

in Tel Aviv think twice

before pulling the trigger

in the face of that child,

when they come to the point

where they need them.

And I was arrested

for my journalism work.

I was arrested for

doing investigative stories,

and collecting the stories

of the last freedom fighters,

who were fighting

the end of the intifada.

And immediately I was

at gunpoint, stripped,

stripped in front of them.

It was my worst fear

materializing in front of me.

It was the demons

that I was so scared of

when I was 15

and I saw that dark evil,

EVIL place, that I went back to.

This is why you boycott Israel,

because they're criminals,

because they're t*rrorists.

There is a procedure called

'Administrative Detention',

which means that

someone is arrested,

and they are considered

a security risk.

It's not because

they did something,

it's because there's fear

that they will do something.

So it's all based

on secret evidence

and they're like,

'We have to hold this person'

for reasons that cannot

be disclosed to them,

or to their lawyers,

with no time limit.

You get an administrative

detention order

for up to six months,

and then when that

time is finished,

it's either renewed

or the person is released.

And even when the person

is finally released,

when you are in

administrative detention once,

if anything happens

in your village or your city,

it's very, very likely

you'll be taken again

and again and again.

t*rture in Israel is,

like in Israeli laws,

it's only legal

in certain circumstances,

but because those circumstances

are not clearly defined,

you know, who's going to question?

Nobody questions the Secret Service.

The Secret Service runs the life

of Palestinians and Israeli judges

would not dare to question.

If they decide this

person should be tortured,

this person should be tortured.

You know, as Israelis,

we have rights, we have a trial,

they have to prove

that we're guilty.

Any Palestinian would be

taken to a military court.

First of all,

you're kind of assumed guilty.

A Palestinian is dangerous

because he's a Palestinian,

he's the enemy of the court.

The conviction rate is like 99%.

I was put in the dungeon.

So, you just basically get,

you know, they close your eyes and

you're driven into the underworld.

And it was terrifying,

it was one of the

most terrifying things

I ever experienced, and I wish

that nobody in their life

would ever experience it.

It's a closed room,

and the walls are gray and piercing,

so if you try to sleep on the wall,

it's like pointy.

Then you only have the hole,

which is for ventilation,

through which the people

who walk the earth

will be able to hear you,

if you shout.

And my way of therapy,

and my way of calming

myself down, is singing.

And I made a party

in that prison cell.

The dehumanization process

also does the racial

profiling. So for them,

even the soldiers that were

grabbing me were saying, like,

'This is the first time

we get one of those.

Why is this one here?'

Because I was dressed differently.

They go with the profile

that they expect

the Palestinian to look like.

You can't be a Palestinian

and dressed like this.

Because it's, it's a lot

about perception.

They can't see me as a human.

The more human I look,

the weirder it gets

for them to t*rture me.

I had my period when I

got into the interrogation.

And of course,

they use that against you,

so they let you bleed.

It's that humiliation of

keeping you in a seat

while you're bleeding

in front of this man,

and he asks you questions.

And I was like, 'Okay, you

can keep me in my blood.

I'm completely fine with it,

but I need to take a shower.

And if I don't take a shower,

I'm just going to zap out of

answering any of your questions.'

So I thought I was negotiating

my well, myself into a shower.

I get taken to the shower.

It's a very small room,

so it only fits your body.

You can't escape the water

that comes from the top.

And I didn't understand it

when I got in,

I could hear the guys say,

'We heard a woman,

we heard a woman.'

And I was like, 'Okay.'

And I was saying,

'Yes, I'm a woman.'

And they started immediately,

all of them shouting,

'It's okay!'

because they were all so scared

that they brought

their mother or sister

to be tortured in front

of them, which Israel uses.

So they all immediately

were in a panic state

that I might be one

of their mothers and sisters.

And they were shouting,

'Stay strong. Stay strong.'

And I was like,

'I'm in the shower, this is wh...'

And then the burning

water comes down.

And then I understood

was going on.

So, it was first

burning hot water,

and then it goes

to cold water and it's like...

I was just trying to get out

and I'm in a wall.

You can't get...

It's like a grave.

And you're trying to get out

and all I could hear was like,

'Just be strong!

Don't let them break you.

Just be strong,

keep going! We're with you.'

And I could hear them

and that was it.

There was nothing in the

universe that I wanted more

than to get out of that.

Because the way that they do it

is they strain us physically.

So, it is three nights,

but we don't sleep.

So it lasts forever.

They arrested me

nine times in my life.

The worst one in 1993,

when they arrested me

and took me to

the interrogation center

for around a month,

they...

start torturing me by shaking.

They make your head

all the time moving,

by using their hands,

by using their [fists]

I went into coma for ten days,

I woke up paralyzed,

and they continued

the interrogation.

They moved me to

Al-Moscobiyeh prison.

Then they isolated me

in an Israeli criminal cell

for around a month.

And then they released me

in this bad situation.

And the same day,

they k*lled my sister.

She went to see my nephew,

he had a trial in the

Israeli military court in Ramallah

with her little son, 12 years old.

They detained the son, the child.

She asked, 'What you are doing?

Where are you taking him?'

She was in the front,

in the entrance

of the court and

the hall of the court.

One of the employees

of the court, a female,

started beating her, pushing her.

A group of settlers

started beating her,

they pushed her down the stairs.

She fell on her head,

and they k*lled her

in front of her little child,

12 years old.

This is part of our suffering.

We don't like to appear,

to show ourselves as victims,

to victimize our issue also.

Because we believe it's part of

our duty and responsibility,

to resist.

 

the word 'trauma,'

in the way that we use it,

and I use it

in my therapeutic work,

is just not adequate

to encompass what's going on here.

When we try to talk about PTSD

in this kind of context,

it does not apply to

this situation, because PTSD is

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

This is not 'Post,'

this is not a 'Disorder,'

it is a traumatic,

ongoing situation,

that breaks

the soul of the people!

For me, personally,

I accompany sometimes

cases of children,

that have been terribly

mistreated by the army,

going to visit them

in the hospitals and seeing

how they're

physically hurt and harmed.

And they will ask me,

'But why? I was just

going out of the school.'

They started throwing tear gas,

they started sh**ting.

Some of them have

been shot in the legs.

You know how many

children and teenagers

got completely disabled

because they are sh**ting them?

- Let him go! Let him go!

It's, it's a boy.

It's just a boy!

After I got released,

my post as a journalist was changed

from covering the West Bank

to covering Israeli stories.

So I would go to Sderot,

and be with the settlers

who are getting bombed,

and I would have to

report their story.

For me, from my childhood,

I was very much influenced

and I was obsessed

with the Holocaust,

with Apartheid South Africa,

African-American Native struggle,

and for me it was

the curiosity of,

how could someone

get to that point?

So I wanted to experience

things through their eyes.

I don't know how it can be, like

how you can

ease the pain of this one

and ease the pain of that one

and stop the instrument,

the big destructive

machine, which is

causing all this pain to both.

And when you

understand the Holocaust,

it gets so much even worse.

It gets so aggravating

in your cells,

to understand that

somebody could go through

what they've gone through,

and come back and

perpetrate it again.

You know, it's infuriating,

because I do understand trauma.

I understand that it's a cycle,

and that it starts there.

But, I can't understand

the mentality of those

who created the regime

in the way that it is created,

because it is exactly

the same operation,

it's exactly the same beliefs,

it's exactly the same

notion and the same evil,

that created the Holocaust

and allowed it to happen.

And now it's happening again.

It's people that

perpetrate the same cycle

of hate and violence

over and over.

Whether it be incarnated

in this body as Israelis,

or be incarnated it as Hitler

at his time and the Nazis.

You just need

the power that's evil,

that's able to control,

and that's supported by

the US and the Europeans

and the White people,

who also want the domination

and want the colonization

and can't smell

the breath of the earth

and the Native

coming back to life.

People see the

Palestinian violence,

they don't see

the Israeli violence.

They don't see

that the Israeli violence

is the root cause.

So Palestinians live

in permanent discrimination,

institutional discrimination,

which is also violence.

So let's not exceptionalize Israel.

We see a system, a world system,

where violations

perpetrated by Western countries

are tolerated.

That is why

the Israeli right wing

always aspires

to w*r, to have wars.

Because a little w*r in the area,

we'll be able to do something

that we cannot do in 'normal times,'

we can do it during wars.

And instead, the world watches

how Israel's completely

taking the space of Palestinians.

The remaining space of Palestinians,

and does nothing.

Why? Because Israel sells weapons.

Because Israel is such

a high-tech nation,

develops weapons, develops

surveillance techniques,

and because Israel has such a

security pact with America,

that they are so such allies.

All these reasons!

And when they want,

they use the pretext

of the Holocaust.

But it's a pretext.

Because if they

really cared for us,

really, because of the Holocaust,

they would have done anything

to bring sanity

back to this place.

But it's insane

because it won't be...

I don't know

how long it can continue.

There's a biblical

phrase, which says,

'Don't covet the possession

of your neighbor.

The land will vomit you out.'

That's what the

Jewish prophet said.

This is not sustainable.

But it's going to

do a lot of damage,

a lot more suffering,

before it's over.

I'm not pro-Palestinian,

but I'm pro-truth.

And the truth is,

the Palestinians

have been oppressed

and suppressed

and m*rder*d and controlled

and dispossessed for decades.

That's just the truth.

And I don't like it,

as a human being.

In terms of antisemitism

that's just one of the biggest,

most pernicious

concoctions of modern ideology.

Not anti-semitism,

there's genuine anti-semitism.

I've experienced it as an infant,

I experienced it as a child,

I've seen it.

It's got nothing to do

with supporting

Palestinian rights, nothing.

The charge of antisemitism

is simply an attempt to intimidate

well-meaning non-Jews,

who might be really uneasy

about what they perceive

is happening here,

and it's an inducement

to shut them up.

Who wants to be accused

of being associated

with one of the worst

crimes in human history?

And I just invite anybody

who wants to find out,

visit!

Look at that ugly wall,

look at the settlements

on the hilltops,

look at the attacks

that the settlers make

with impunity

on Palestinian lands,

how they burn down

Palestinian olive groves,

how they desecrate

Palestinian wells,

daily!

Come and visit!

See for yourself!

I left journalism

and I joined human rights work,

because I thought

that I could expose more.

We started going to protests

in the village of Nabi Saleh.

We would walk together, march,

and we would be tear-gassed,

we would be shot

live ammunition, rubber b*ll*ts.

But the special thing that

happened in Nabi Saleh is,

the confrontation

moved from the distance

to the face.

Free, free Palestine!

I would see it

and still get surprised

every single time:

How could this

soldier just sh**t me?

How could they be this aggressive?

And then when the

exposure was closer,

for me, it was confrontation

with the soldiers with my words:

I could speak Hebrew,

and I understand where

these soldiers came from.

So I used that to try

to speak to the soldiers,

and the commanders

were far more

aggressive towards that,

because they could see

that the soldiers could listen.

They were confronted

by a line of women...

Of course, as I told you,

profiling and faces and colors.

Nabi Saleh people's

skin is lighter.

For the cameras, the reason why

they got all the

publicity from the world,

that village,

is because they're White!

And White people were able

to see themselves in them.

And there were girls

with their hair out,

it wasn't the conservative

look that you imagine.

So for Israel, this image that

they had bought and created,

was getting destroyed

by this bunch of young children,

women, who are going

out to these protests.

You guys, a whole army occupying

civilian people who are armed

only with their voices,

their flags, and their conviction!

The only thing I would do

in the protest is chant.

From the beginning 'til the end.

Because I am the chanter

and the one in front,

they started targeting my legs.

So I was shot in the legs

with the tear gas canisters

over and over and over

when they can get me,

and I would still keep going

because I always believed

that my body was,

you know, titanium...

Ironic.

I had a scarf on me.

One soldier pulled

the scarf from one side,

the other soldier hit my legs,

and I was lynched, basically,

I was hanging from the scarf.

I heard the,

but I didn't know

what was happening.

And this commander and I

were very much at lock.

I had my camera and I was like,

'I want to film you,

and show your face

to the world, as you do this.'

He was like,

'You want to show my face?!'

His eyes got red,

and he was hitting

all over my body

and I didn't move or flinch.

I was just holding the phone

and I was like,

'Okay, keep hitting,

keep hitting, keep hitting,

keep hitting. Does this

make you feel better?

Does hitting me

give you that peace?

Keep hitting. Do you

feel better now?'

And he couldn't,

and he just kept hitting.

Eventually, someone

came from the soldiers

and pepper-sprayed me

straight in the eyes,

and that's when I broke.

And then I was taken to

the Palestinian hospital

in Jerusalem, Al-Mutala,

and immediately, I saw one doctor,

I looked into his eyes and I said,

that I can feel something

happening with my fingers,

that I get this weird sensations

that started dropping on me.

And he immediately

asked for an MRI,

and they were saying...

The doctor said that

it's the end, you know,

that 70% of my spine is gone,

and it's just a matter of

the last living cells to die.

So I started going

to look for a doctor

that comes in

the same energy sphere,

and I found Barzily.

So I was like,

'I came to you because I know

that you have some research.

You think into robotics,

you can think outside of the box.'

And he's like,'Okay,

so what do you want?'

I was like,

'I want you to do the surgery.

I want you to fix this.'

And he's like,

'But there's nothing to fix,

you know, it's like the spine.'

And then he told me

'What we can do is

what we do for other

people, which is

put a titanium box

that holds your spine

so that your neck doesn't crash,

but the spine itself,

nobody can fix what was cut.

I was so angry that they would

get me to the point of being

broken and paralyzed.

It was like, khalas.

The anger was...

every time I would meditate,

the anger stops it,

the fear stops it,

every time. It's so automatic.

and very natural,

the way our brains work. It's like

this fuse comes up,

the nervous system gets activated,

and you shut down

the healing abilities.

I got to that point where

my left side

was completely gone.

I was just on

the walker-wheelchair,

and I was like, 'Okay.'

I called him and I was like,

'Hi, today's the day

I'm coming for the surgery.'

It was exactly

as I had visualized.

After six hours, I opened...

When I woke up,

the first thing was

to open the thing

they put closing my mouth,

'cause they didn't

want me to speak

for three days,

and I just wanted to make sure

that my voice was still there.

And I started singing

in the hospital,

and they would come a

nd they would close my mouth,

and I would like open it 'Aaaaah!'

Three days I was walking.

And I did my walk of power.

And I told them,

'Khalas, I'm off the hook.'

Working on trauma in this context

is extremely challenging,

because as we were saying,

you are not in a situation

where the traumatic

situation has happened

and now people have a safe space

where you can work on that.

So you need to understand,

that working on trauma will be,

in a context of ongoing

traumatic situation.

You cannot make a normal life,

if you are all the time

in touch with the pain,

and the sorrow and the grief.

And especially with...

a lot of these

processes are completely frozen,

because it's impossible

to deal with them.

They tell the mothers not to cry,

and I would always feel that

there's something wrong with it,

but I also couldn't cry,

because I didn't want them

to ever see us as weak.

I didn't understand that

vulnerability is courage,

it takes time until

you understand that.

That itself is traumatization.

It is survival.

They have to do it.

You know, they can't

show any vulnerability.

They'll get eaten alive.

But that suppression of emotion

comes at a cost.

The occupation is created...

Colonization in a way,

it's created in order to keep

you in a state of fear.

If they release the state of fear,

then they release

their control over you.

Because if we don't feel

the fear, we break through.

And the Palestinians,

we got to the point of

breaking that fear barrier.

You have the people

who are ready to go,

because there's this feeling that

there's nothing

we can lose anymore.

You know, if

there's nothing to lose,

then you're ready

to sacrifice everything,

and you let go of the fear.

It was always that

I had my true line,

I didn't have a problem to stand

in front of an Israeli,

or a White international person,

and explain to them

why a Palestinian

would go and do a

a suicide attack.

It's very simple!

You push people to that point!

There's nothing more to it!

If you get a person

to want to k*ll themselves,

there's a reason why this person

wants to k*ll themselves,

in the most

atrocious, painful way.

There's a reason behind it.

You must have k*lled, maimed,

pained them, their families,

to get them to get to that point.

So don't ask me why

they want to get to that point,

where they would use

so much hate and anger

and release it in that way.

Ask me where the pain came from,

and I'll tell you why people act.

Don't ask the person

who's in the cage,

why they're hitting the cage

and breaking their arms,

trying to be free.

Ask the person who

put them in the cage,

why they're there?

I don't imagine my presence here

will do very much.

I hope to help train

some people in trauma work,

to help support their people.

It makes a difference to people,

when others

hear them and see them.

It does not change

their situation,

but at least one can be what the

Jewish psychotherapist

Alice Miller called

'an empathetic witness',

who can validate,

and say to people

'You are not alone.

We can't do much

to change your situation,

but we see it, we get it,

and our hearts are with you.'

So I hope that'll

make some difference,

some small difference,

I should say.

I begin by thanking Ashira

for inviting me here.

This is my third time here and,

I was first here

during the first intifada,

and I cried every

day for two weeks.

And I'd like to explain

a little bit about

why it's important

for me personally to be here.

I was born in 1944, in January.

So my grandparents were k*lled,

sent to Auschwitz

concentration camp,

and they died there.

And my mother and

I came this close,

to the same thing

happening to us.

When we're under threat,

there are three

natural responses.

The first one is to ask for help.

If there's no help available,

then there are

two other responses.

One is to fight,

or the other is to run away,

and to hide.

But what if there's no help?

And what if you're

too small to fight back?

And what if you can't run away?

Then your body, not you,

nobody does this deliberately,

but your body goes into

what's called 'freeze'.

When you freeze, you go numb,

and that's the way of the body

protecting you from the pain.

The reason you didn't run away

is because you couldn't,

the reason you didn't fight back

is you couldn't,

and your organism

had the wisdom to freeze you,

as the only way to protect you,

and if it can't

protect you from the situation,

at least it can

protect you from the pain.

Just two weeks before

you guys arrived,

I had inflammation in my,

in my finger here, and my foot,

and then I went and

I did blood tests

and they said that there

was rheumatoid arthritis.

Oh! So in my experience,

these inflammations

have to do with

the body saying 'No'

somewhere where you didn't,

so the body protests

in the form of inflammation.

Anger is an inflamed emotion.

When it's not expressed,

it'll show up in the body.

There's something

that keeps arising

Yeah.

And you keep

choking it down, yeah?

Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah, I see that

I didn't cry for

about 20 years or something.

Under conditions of occupation

and resistance,

there's this natural tendency

to believe that

I have to be strong,

that I can't have any problems,

that to

feel shame or to feel helpless,

is a sign of weakness.

And I mustn't be weak,

in the face of the

oppression.

I healed only when the knife

was away from my throat.

I wasn't able to heal

when it was here because,

your body doesn't let you do it.

And I just want

to try to bring that

to some of the

people that I encounter

and the lives that I touch here.

Palestinians here

are super creative.

From this love,

from this resistance,

from this hope that

they keep on having,

and you really don't know

where it comes from.

Because we can't go into Gaza,

it was my dream to be able to

work with the children

there, because

Gaza is the biggest

ghetto on Earth.

That is the strongest cycle.

These are the children being

born into prison

without any options.

And they're the most creative

beings on Earth

to be able to survive!

If you want to learn

resilience, it's there.

So when I came to approach to work

with children in Gaza,

what am I gonna, like,

teach them?

They can teach the Universe

how to be resilient.

So what I do is active meditation,

where the children just

release somatically

what is going on,

and we build resilience.

I went into the room

with the kids,

and the first thing was that

they were shouting in a way

that I could not control.

And I was like, 'Okay,

let's shout together, you know.

We need to shout

our anger and rage and pain

and get it out!'

So why not? That is the healing.

And I saw what happened

after the shouting

and the calming down

and they were like,

'Please, Miss, we don't

want to shout anymore.'

I was like, 'Okay, so

what do you want to do?'

'We wanted to do Dahiya.'

What the Bedouins do is a dance,

and they stand

in a circle, everyone,

and they just clap

together in unison.

And they do a sound,

'Ha-hi-hi, ha-hi-hi,

ha-hi-hi,

ha-hi-hi, ha-hi

I was like, 'Ah, voila!'

You know, like

yogis around the world,

breathing exercises,

and we're sitting here

native to the land,

from prior to any occupation,

doing 'ha-hi-hi'

and coming together

as a circle in celebration.

So that's us!

And the chants and the singing

and this culture, the people

they've come to occupy.

Our families in

Jerusalem brought the...

brought Jewish immigrants

into their houses,

to keep them safe

and protect them,

not because

it's your promised land,

but because

we will take care of you

and put you in our houses.

Because we're that!

And that, in our sayings,

we're so naive,

that's how we got occupied.

We let them in.

And we welcomed them.

And still we welcome them.

But stop...the k*lling.

And I can understand the psyche

that they need to be safe too,

they have a homeland.

Yeah, I mean, it's understandable,

everybody wants a homeland.

Something has to change,

here.

Something has to change here.

And I hope I can just

be part of that.

So what we're seeing here is that

indomitability of the human spirit.

Not easy,

and it's punished,

but it persists.

I remember when I just

started going to Gaza,

I was always surprised to see

people laughing.

It has become such a norm,

Israeli injustice and Israeli...

the pain that Israel

inflicts on people,

that you know how

to separate, you know,

like people live

in compartments, you know,

ok, so there is a compartment

of trauma and of injustice.

But at the same time,

people know how to go to the,

to the weddings

and to laugh and to dance.

So people who lost

20, 25 members of their families,

I cannot say

they were not traumatized,

but I see the health in them,

I see the strength in them.

We don't ask for people...

you know, we've

finished this chapter

of the Palestinians pleading

for the world to

come and rescue us.

We can rescue ourselves,

if you at least stop supporting

the machine, you know.

If the machine is ostracized,

then we can keep going,

because nothing in the world

is going to stop

the people in Jerusalem.

Nothing in the Universe

will stop them.

But we need...

you.

We need you,

if you can't be our voice,

just to, at least,

not put a penny,

that goes to the b*llet,

that shoots...

our children.

For how long are people

going to be able

to sit in their homes

and watch this documentary,

and watch the people

and the children suffer?

Palestinian and Israeli,

because you don't want

your children to go into

the military and hold the g*n

at a nine-year-old.

Either way you look at it,

you can't accept it,

you can't accept that it's this.

Your brother and your

sister being in chains

will not make this experience

on Earth acceptable.

Your chains, will be still

held by my chains,

and unless I am free,

you won't be free!

If I must die,

You must live

To tell my story

To sell my things

To buy a piece of cloth

And some strings,

Make it white

With a long tail

So that a child,

Somewhere in Gaza,

While looking heaven

In the eye,

Awaiting his dad

Who left in a blaze

And bid no one farewell,

Not even to his flesh,

Not even to himself,

Sees the kite,

My kite you made,

Flying up above

And thinks for a moment

An angel is there

Bringing back love.

If I must die,

Let it bring hope,

Let it be a tale.