Words never shocked, pictures no longer do; now we use videos - soon we'll have to be physically dragged to a place to make it matter
This probably no longer qualifies as a travel blog. But anyway, i'm still sitting on my ass at the office doing a lot of nothing, so i have plenty of time to still have half my mind in Palestine.
Many of you were probably on my list a few months ago when I was working with B’tselem and forwarded a video clip of a settler in Hebron harassing and shouting obscenities at Raja' Abu Eisha, a 17 year old Palestinian, who was standing outside her home. B'tselem had given the Abu Eisha's a video camera so that they can document the regular (daily) harassment at the hands of the settlers [the “cage” you see was the Abu Eisha’s attempt at protecting themselves from settler intrusions, stones and garbage].
They finally managed to get Israeli TV to air it about a week ago, and it’s caused a minor scandal and has been all over the news since (Look! Even the Jerusalem Post wrote something, leaving their wording outrageously ambiguous.... a "feud"??)
I just got an e-mail from my colleague who was responsible for the whole thing and he told me that he just came back from the Abu Eisheh’s in Hebron, he had to wait in line behind CNN, BBC and ABC crews before he could check in on them.
While on the one hand it’s great that the ugly face of settlements and occupation is being revealed and some probes are being launched - on the other hand, this whole business makes me furious.
The attention, of course, is short lived. This stuff has been going on for years and organizations like B’tselem and other internationals that are posted on Tel Rumeida have been releasing reports every week about settler abuse and beatings, cases far worse than this one. Furthermore, it is not “random” or sporadic, nor is it an unusual bunch of fanatics. It is part of a policy of evacuating the old city of Hebron through the combined effort of the settlers and the IDF who are sent there to protect them and who – as the video shows – stand idly by and watch. Economic strangulation and personal harassment, and the mere proximity to approximately 500 armed extremists who believe they are doing God’s work when they beat 10 year old boys up or force rocks into their mouths, has resulted in a successful campaign of ethnic cleansing of the old city of Hebron as thousands of Palestinians have left the area listing settler harassment as their primary cause.
And so it makes me mad that this is what it took for anyone to pay attention to this issue -The fact that Raja’ happened to catch this on video, and that it’s particularly shocking because of it’s sexy factor - the settler woman is telling Raja’ to “go back in her cage” and calling her a “whore”, taking on strange voices as she repeats the word over and over like some crazed fanatic.
When I was in Palestine working on the video archive I was filing dozens of these clips a day and would witness this stuff regularly in Hebron. Contacting the media was hopeless, Hebron was “old news”.
This basically confirms that I should sell out to Hollywood, or work for an ad-agency.
Many of you were probably on my list a few months ago when I was working with B’tselem and forwarded a video clip of a settler in Hebron harassing and shouting obscenities at Raja' Abu Eisha, a 17 year old Palestinian, who was standing outside her home. B'tselem had given the Abu Eisha's a video camera so that they can document the regular (daily) harassment at the hands of the settlers [the “cage” you see was the Abu Eisha’s attempt at protecting themselves from settler intrusions, stones and garbage].
They finally managed to get Israeli TV to air it about a week ago, and it’s caused a minor scandal and has been all over the news since (Look! Even the Jerusalem Post wrote something, leaving their wording outrageously ambiguous.... a "feud"??)
I just got an e-mail from my colleague who was responsible for the whole thing and he told me that he just came back from the Abu Eisheh’s in Hebron, he had to wait in line behind CNN, BBC and ABC crews before he could check in on them.
While on the one hand it’s great that the ugly face of settlements and occupation is being revealed and some probes are being launched - on the other hand, this whole business makes me furious.
The attention, of course, is short lived. This stuff has been going on for years and organizations like B’tselem and other internationals that are posted on Tel Rumeida have been releasing reports every week about settler abuse and beatings, cases far worse than this one. Furthermore, it is not “random” or sporadic, nor is it an unusual bunch of fanatics. It is part of a policy of evacuating the old city of Hebron through the combined effort of the settlers and the IDF who are sent there to protect them and who – as the video shows – stand idly by and watch. Economic strangulation and personal harassment, and the mere proximity to approximately 500 armed extremists who believe they are doing God’s work when they beat 10 year old boys up or force rocks into their mouths, has resulted in a successful campaign of ethnic cleansing of the old city of Hebron as thousands of Palestinians have left the area listing settler harassment as their primary cause.
And so it makes me mad that this is what it took for anyone to pay attention to this issue -The fact that Raja’ happened to catch this on video, and that it’s particularly shocking because of it’s sexy factor - the settler woman is telling Raja’ to “go back in her cage” and calling her a “whore”, taking on strange voices as she repeats the word over and over like some crazed fanatic.
When I was in Palestine working on the video archive I was filing dozens of these clips a day and would witness this stuff regularly in Hebron. Contacting the media was hopeless, Hebron was “old news”.
This basically confirms that I should sell out to Hollywood, or work for an ad-agency.
posted by Diala at 4:00 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home