gaza freedom march, cairo, dec. 31

"You came for the big party, and tomorrow is it," Mick from the Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign said last night at the organizing meeting as we planned our illegal demonstration happening in a police state, in a meeting that overflowed the restaurant of the hotel in which we were meeting and was surely infiltrated with police agents.

Having been barred entry into Gaza, we had decided to have our Freedom March right here in downtown Cairo, in Tahrir Square, the Times Square of Cairo. There were so many reasons why this plan was insane. We had been prevented from meeting in large groups. Communication could politely be described as sketchy. All our meetings had been infiltrated and they were probably listening to our cell phone conversations. The location we had picked was large, complex, and ground zero for Cairo's kamikaze traffic. The police presence had already been quite intense and groups assembling on the street had been quickly targeted.

The night before the march, we noticed police buildup around all our hotels. The de facto affinity group that had formed at our hotel decided to leave early that morning. Everyone was dressed in non-activist clothes, looking like tourists, traveling in small groups. As we headed out in the morning, we were relieved to find our hotel had not been sealed off, but as we passed the Lotus Hotel, where many of the organizers were staying, we saw it was completely barricaded and surrounded by riot cops. A crew of people ended up being trapped there for several hours.

One thing I've learned from this week is that if you're going to do something insane, you have to commit to it. Because we had already survived one confrontation with the riot cops, at the US embassy, unscathed, my two friends and I all felt confident enough to volunteer to be in the "front line" contingent of women (which only ended up being about 15 people) who were going to give the signal to start the protest and be the first to go into the street.

We had decided that the only way we could assemble was by "flash mob," where small groups of people come together quickly like swarms of mosquitos at a pre-determined point. Man, flash mobs were made for this shit. Our crew of about 15 had all tucked "flags," really just large bright pieces of cloth, into our shirts and bags. As we reached the point where the protest was going to start, the cops scoped us out and started closing in. Next thing I know, Lisa, our team leader, has her flag out and is chanting "Free, free Gaza!" and marching right into the street. Then we're all doing it, and suddenly out of nowhere we have a crowd of several hundred people behind us. The notoriously homicidal Cairo traffic parts like the Red Sea for us and we are marching in the street.

That lasted for probably about a minute. The cops had their own flash mob brewing and were on us immediately. They penned us in and stopped everyone from moving within minutes...I'd say less than five, but who knows? We sat down in the street and linked arms. I couldn't really tell how many people sat down because damned if I didn't end up in the very front line.

The cops had clearly decided that if we were going to get a dose of violence, blocking traffic was the right excuse for it. They started physically pulling us out of the street--grabbing, shoving, hitting and dragging those who peacefully resisted, and apparently shouting insults at us in Arabic, although I couldn't tell you what they were. They had observed quite accurately who the instigators were and targeted us first. The uniformed riot cops (who ironically are the scary-looking ones) we learned are mostly military conscripts who either couldn't care less about us or are actually sympathetic. They were great at blocking us in but tended not to hurt us. The plainclothes cops are the career policemen, and they were very rough with us. One of my friends was punched in the head (though luckily not too hard); a man was hit hard with a walkie-talkie under his eye and was bleeding. I was grabbed forcefully enough to leave bruises on my arm, although I'm proud to say I gave them a decent amount of trouble. I ended up being extremely grateful for the nonviolence training we had taken with Starhawk the previous day. Through some protest miracle, I managed to hang onto the keffiyah I'd bought in Gaza, and all my electronics escaped damage.

They forced us onto the sidewalk with really remarkable speed. Once on the sidewalk, they surrounded us again, but by getting everyone to sit down (I'd say this was 300-500 people now), we held the space. We were now occupying a sidewalk on one of Cairo's busiest streets. We hung banners and flags from a tree and lamp posts, waved Palestinian flags, chanted, sang songs, held a speakout with representatives from all the different country delegations that had participated, and held spokescouncil meetings right there on the sidewalk to decide what to do next and how long to stay. We set up a bathroom station when they refused to let us leave. Egyptians brought us food and water, passed through the police lines. We re-christened our space "Free Gaza Square."

We held the space for nearly seven hours. Our original plan was to stay through midnight and ring in the new year in Free Gaza Square. By late afternoon, our numbers had dwindled significantly though, to a level that some people thought was unsafe, and we decided to disperse peacefully as a unified group. While we weren't able to carry out the stay-til-midnight plan, I think the fact that we were able to organize *anything* given the conditions we were operating under is a significant accomplishment. I felt that we had achieved what we wanted to achieve, which was to show the world that we stand with Gaza, we want to see the siege broken, and we will not let the Egyptian government silence us. Even though we would have much preferred to be in Gaza, we knew that we were marching when the Palestinians were marching, and they knew it too.

Although I had been ready to stay until midnight, or longer, I can't say I wasn't grateful for a few hours back at the hotel to depressurize. We did ring in the new year with a protest, back in Tahrir Square: a lovely, really beautiful and moving candlelight vigil in a tranquil plaza. The most moving thing was the numbers of Egyptians who materialized seemingly out of nowhere to participate. Even here, the riot cops couldn't leave us alone, and plainclothes officers scared off most of the Egyptians pretty quickly. But everyone knows what we have done here. People wave to us on the street and greet us with a "You go to Gaza?" and sometimes a "Good luck!" or a victory sign.

During the vigil, Medea called Deema, one of the march organizers in Gaza, where they had just finished a concert for the folks who did make it in, about 85 all together. Medea relayed messages from Deema to the crowd, and at one point we all chanted "We love you, Gaza!" into the phone. Toward the end of the conversation, Deema said something like "we can feel your solidarity, and it gives us the strength to keep fighting for our freedom." In all the chaos and confusion and infighting and hastily made, imperfect plans, this was the most important thing of all to hear.

gaza freedom march dec. 30

This is the bullet point version since I have to get to sleep soon in preparation for tomorrow.

- Deal to let 100 people go, which seemed like a victory at first, is feeling increasingly like a strategy to divide us. Egyptians imposed all kinds of conditions and then announced to their own media that they (not us) had selected the "truly peaceful" activists and allowed only them to go. This is bullshit. We did the selection ourselves, under ridiculous time constraints, and we all signed a pledge of nonviolence when we signed up for the march. They are trying to say that purely humanitarian actions are okay but political ones are not. Given these new details, some who were selected decided not to go, others went to Gaza and will be on the march in Gaza tomorrow. Good arguments can be made for both positions. More later.

- We heard that Israelis dropped leaflets warning Gazans of impending war for the second time yesterday. Not sure if this is just a torture tactic or real evidence of an impending escalation.

- We are planning a unified march in downtown Cairo tomorrow, to protest the siege and show solidarity with the Gazans, who are still planning to march inside Gaza. French are packing up their embassy encampment and will join us. Tonight we've noticed cops beefing up security around our hotels. Their strategy has been to contain, and we don't know if they will even let us out in the morning. We have no idea how far our "march" will get, but we plan to move as far as possible and then sit down wherever we are stopped.

Intenet access may be limited if I'm, say, sitting in on the street in Cairo. I'll do my best to update via Twitter (lauradurkay, or just search for the hashtag #GFM).

report from the us embassy action in cairo

I was an eyewitness to the Egyptian police repression of Gaza Freedom Marchers at the US embassy in Cairo today, December 29, 2009.

1300 delegates from all over the world have been trying to reach Gaza to march in solidarity with the Gazan people to commemorate the one-year anniversary of the Israeli massacre called Operation Cast Lead. We bring with us tens of thousands of dollars of material aid, including medical supplies, school supplies and winter coats, and the solidarity of people in 43 countries around the world.

The Egyptian government has been blocking us from going, and we know that behind the Egyptians is the United States, which gives Egypt several billion dollars of aid every year in exchange for their collaboration with US and Israeli wishes, including enforcing the siege on Gaza, and lately, building an underground wall under the border with Gaza that will cut the tunnels that are a lifeline for the majority of the population of Gaza.

Early this morning, a small group of delegates from CODEPINK had a meeting at the US embassy to ask for their support in helping us get our humanitarian mission into Gaza. They were joined by about 30 supporters in the heavily fortified courtyard of the embassy. The supporters, who were peacefully assembled, were immediately surrounded and hemmed in very tightly by a circle of riot police and not allowed to disperse, meaning they were effectively being detained on the spot.

I and the two friends with whom I am traveling happened to arrive late to the action. We, along with a few other people, tried to observe the situation from outside the permanent barricade around the US embassy. Egyptian riot police and plainclothes secret police kept trying to move us along and we kept ignoring them. Without warning, a group of riot police started physically pushing our group of about 8 activists very aggressively toward the "pen" they had created for the other activists. One activist who had a suitcase full of supplies had the suitcase grabbed out of her hands, ripping the handle right off. The suitcase was quartantined inside the pen and they tried to make her go too.

Out of pure luck, one of the 8 people among us was a well-known, very experienced activist and nonviolent civil disobedience trainer. When the police started shoving people, she told us to sit down, and we all sat in the street right in front of one of the main entrances to the embassy compound, on a very busy thoroughfare along the Nile. The police immediately surrounded us with arms linked in a tight cordon. They repeatedly tried to get us to go inside the pen and we repeatedly refused. When they heard a man who spoke Arabic translating some of what they were saying to us, they very roughly grabbed him, dragged him over the barricades outside the embassy and forced him into the pen with the 30 people inside the gates. They were also extremely aggressive with media, both "official" and grassroots, keeping them away from us and demanding that we not take pictures and video ourselves (we sneaked some anyway.)

Although they definitely wanted to contain us and block us from view of passing Egyptians and media, it became clear that they were not yet ready to escalate to the level of arresting us or physically dragging members of our group of all women one by one into the main protest pen, which is what they would have had to do to make us move. Eventually we were able to create some space for ourselves, enlarge our circle, and start chanting and waving victory signs at people passing on the road. We chanted in English and Arabic and got a lot of hastily flashed, but inspiring, signs of support from passing Egyptians. The cops even tasked someone to keep traffic moving, since it was starting to slow down near us.

Ali Abunimah, editor of Electronic Intifada, bless his heart, was negotiating with the police, talking to people in the embassy, and liaising with both protest groups the whole time. He did a fantastic job despite some of the secret service folks getting quite hostile and threatening with him. Not once did anyone from the US embassy intervene to protect their own citizens from being detained by a foreign police force and blocked from entereing their own embassy, which I'm sure is illegal under even Egyptian law. But then, that didn't really surprise us. We know whose side they're on.

After about three hours, we managed to negotiate a truce in which people were allowed to leave the area in small groups. Although we had been detained for several hours, no one was arrested. Despite repeated insistence that we in the sit-in group had to go inside the protest pen, we never did and they were not ready to force us to do so at this point.

One note about the Egyptian police: most of the uniformed cops are military conscripts, and many are quite sympathetic to us, but feel they can't do anything other than follow orders. I also want to be clear that the repression we faced today, while not insignificant, is MILD compared to what Egyptians themselves would have faced, or what Palestinians in the Occupied Territoruies face every day. We considered it a small victory that they were not able to completely control our movement, and we learned a lot about how to operate in situations of(nonviolent) noncompliance with this particular police force. We think they are--at least for now--reluctant to use more repressive tactics on internationals, such as mass arrest or violence on a large scale (though there have been incidents of police violence in the past two days) for fear of international embarrassment. This is great for us, since it means that we still have space to escalate our tactics if we so desire.

gaza freedom march update, dec 28-29

Under the original plan, I was supposed to be in Gaza by now, but we are still in Cairo. The Egyptian government has been blocking us at every turn, but we have been pushing back. There are delegates here from all over the world and despite the repression, amazing things are happening.

Egypt is a police state, and any political gathering of more than 6 people is technically illegal. This means not only our demonstrations but all of our organizing meetings can be broken up at the will of the police, making it difficult to coordinate between 1300 people from 43 countries. The government has made things difficult for us by revoking the permit we secured for our initial mass orientation meeting, keeping us from congregating in large spaces for organizing, and threatening Egyptians who intially promised to work with us. Buses we ordered have been canceled and cab drivers have been told they will have their cabs confiscated if they take anyone to the border, or even to the town of Al Arish, which is 25 miles from the border and the staging ground for delegations and aid into Gaza. We also heard that foreigners were not being allowed on public buses to Al Arish and that passports were being checked.

However, we also realize that, as foreigners, we have a huge amount of privilege that Egyptians who protest their own government's actions do not have. We are just not going to be subject to the same level of repression that's meted out to Egyptian activists, for whom arrest, beatings, long prison terms and torture are common features of political life. This means that we have the ability to push back against some of the Egyptian government's attempts to control us.

The day before yesterday the word from the Egyptian government was along the lines of "We've told you no, absolutely not, you are not getting in. What part of that don't you understand?"

We decided that the time for polite negotiation was over, and groups of delegates started escalating to more confrontational actions. The French delegation occupied the street in front of their embassy in the Cairo neighborhood of Giza, demanding that the French government intervene on their behalf. Although they were quickly surrounded by hundreds of riot cops and eventually pushed out of the street onto the sidewalk, they have remained strong and are calling their encampment "the Giza Strip."

Yesterday we spent most of the day protesting outside the UN offices. A few representatives met with UN officials, who basically told us they were powerless against the people that everyone knows really call the shots--the Americans and the Israelis. Meanwhile, hundreds of us gathered in the plaza downstairs, chanting, singing, waving banners and a giant Palestinian flag. Hedy Esptein, an 85-year-old Holocaust survivor on our delegation, announced she was starting a hunger strike until we get into Gaza. She now has about 25 people joining her.

Today many national delegations targeted their embassies, and you better believe we were at the US embassy. By sheer dumb luck I was one of about 8 people involved in a 3-hour sit-in surrouned by riot cops outside the gates of the embassy, but that story deserves it own post, to follow shortly. Although they detained us for several hours and got very physical at times (shoving and dragging people, but no batons yet) they did not arrest anyone, and all ~40 people (about 30 inside the gates and the 8 of us outside) were eventually released.

The MO of the Egyptian police seems to be twofold: to contain us in very controlled spaces, and above all to keep us isolated from the general Egyptian population. The government fears the revolt of their own population more than anything, and they know that their collaboration with Israel in maintaining the siege--and the internal repressive conditions they maintain--just makes that revolt more inevitable.

While they have been fairly successful on the first count, they have massively failed on the second one. Our actions were on the front page of newspapers in Cairo this morning. In the downtown neighborhood where many of us are staying, people who see our keffiyahs, t-shirts and Gaza Freedom March buttons have been stopping us to talk and show their support (and frequently try to plug the family shop located nearby, but that's just how it goes here.)

Perhaps most amazing of all was the protest we attended tonight on the steps of the journalists' syndicate building. In the middle of all this, Netanyahu has the gall to come visit Egypt. Egyptian activists called for our support at a joint protest. When we arrived there were, I think, about 500 people (but people were jammed so tightly onto the steps it was hard for me to get a good estimate.) I think the balance was probably about 2/3 Egyptian and 1/3 international--chanting together in English and Arabic behind four lines of riot cops. The chants were "Free Gaza," "Viva Palestina," and "Down with Netanyahu"...but also "Free Egypt" and "Down with Mubarak."

We know it is very dangerous for the Egyptians to be taking part in any protest at all and we felt honored and inspired to stand among them. "It is because of you [internationals] that we are being allowed to do this at all," one protester told us. "If you weren't here we would be locked up straight away."

Just a few hours ago, we heard that Egyptian first lady Suzanne Mubarak had in fact reponded to a letter delivered to her by the women's affinity group. The Egyptian government has allowed us to send 100 people on two buses into Gaza tomorrow, with as much of the aid as we can assemble given the extremely short notice.

The 100 people going were selected by proportional representation from as many different countries as we could muster. I am not among them, nor was I expecting to be. Personally, I would much rather those seats go to Palestinians who have family in Gaza (who are among us) and those who have not yet had the wonderful experience of traveling there.

However, this represents a significant victory. We have pushed them and they have gone from "what part of no don't you understand?" to allowing 100 people in. We are going to keep pushing and continue our actions over the next couple of days. If 100 can go in, why not 1000, we ask?

If there's a chance for me to get to Gaza, I will be thrilled. But if there isn't, I feel that we have already done something significant here. We've put another little crack in the wall of the siege, and every crack, no matter how small, is a step in the right direction.

wwjd? he'd be on the gaza freedom march, duh

Christmas Day here in the states, and the Gaza Freedom Marchers and Viva Palestina folks are undeterred. Viva Palestina is still being blocked from entering Egypt, but negotiations are ongoing and Galloway has said they will not be moved. "We feel very sad that Egypt has turned us away on Christmas Day, but we hope they will reconsider," Galloway said in a statement on the VP website. "This is a very determined convoy and we're not going anywhere except to Gaza."

On the Gaza Freedom March front, delegates from around the world have begun arriving in Cairo, with many more on the way in the next several days. Judging from what the organizers have communicated to us, the mood is excited and defiant despite the Egyptian government's continued efforts to thwart us, the latest of which is canceling the permits we had secured for our large orientation meeting. (Under Egyptian law, any political gathering of more than 6 people is technically illegal.) The organizers have sent an open letter directly to Egyptian President Mubarak asking that we be allowed to proceed with the march, a nonviolent humanitarian action organized by global civil society.

We continue to receive messages of support from around the world, but the one that most inspired me comes from the West Bank village of Bil'in. The residents of Bil'in are perhaps the world's leading experts in creative, nonviolent resistance in the face of extremely violent repression. The fact that they are watching, supporting and encouraging us, and will be demonstrating "in solidarity with Gaza, and all those trying to enter," despite the fact that the conditions of oppression in their own village are themselves quite dire...well, that's the kind of thing that can only make one more determined, right?

We are still hoping to get into Gaza, but a variety of very exciting potential alternatives are now being planned if we do not get in. Regardless of what country I'm in, I am confident that I'll be ringing in 2010 exactly where I want to be--standing in solidarity with the Palestinians.

viva palestina stopped at aqaba

For the moment we are back on the bad news side of the spectrum. Earlier today, the word was that Viva Palestina was being allowed into Gaza. The convoy, now consisting of hundreds of vehicles packed with medical supplies, arrived at Aqaba, in Jordan, only to be told they would not be allowed onto the ferry to cross to the Egyptian port of Nuweiba. Now they are being told, "Oh yes, you can bring your aid into Gaza...but only from Al Arish."

Al Arish is on the Mediterranean. On the other side of the Sinai Peninsula. To get there from Aqaba one would have to almost completely circumnavigate the Sinai, adding almost 500 nautical miles to the trip. I don't want to speculate on what's being negotiated or considered on the convoy; I advise you check out the Reading PSC website for plenty of live updates. Things can change at any minute and probably will.

The point is that, as is common in this part of the world, one roadblock removed has rapidly turned into another roadblock erected. Elation turns to anxiety as quickly as that, all at the whim of a foreign government. And once again we're reminded that one of the most basic of freedoms, freedom of movement--something many first-worlders take for granted--is not guaranteed at all when it comes to Palestine.

Of course everyone is still going; many delegates are on their way or already in Cairo. Of course. What else can you do? The only way to face such obstacles is with a heavy dose of what Palestinians call samoud, steadfastness. But it does make one imagine. If you lived in Gaza, your whole life would be like this.

gaza freedom march: keep the pressure on!

Good news: the Viva Palestina convoy, currently in Amman on its way to Gaza, has apparently gotten word from the Egyptian government that they will be allowed into Gaza "due to the humanitarian nature of their mission." Of course, nothing is guaranteed when it comes to that border, but this is a very encouraging development, since, to my knowledge, no international solidarity delegation has ever gotten an official "green light" from the Egyptian government before going to the border. (Side note: You can follow the convoy on a cool live Google map here on the Reading, UK Palestine Solidarity Campaign's website.)

Bad news: the Gaza Freedom March has not gotten a "green light." Yet. We too are bringing desperately needed humanitarian aid valued at tens of thousands of dollars, including medical supplies, school supplies (even basics like paper and pencils are scarce in Gaza) and winter coats (winters in Gaza are cold and rainy, particularly miserable if you're one of the estimated 40,000 people whose home was damaged or destroyed.) In light of the excellent news about Viva Palestina, we have formally contacted the Egyptian government requesting the same consideration. We have not heard anything yet. But...

Good news: the organizers are reporting that Egyptian embassies around the world have been "besieged" (quite appropriately!) with calls supporting the march. Apparently the switchboard operators in the DC embassy complained that they "cannot conduct normal business," which is awesome.

As delegates from around the world start to board plans headed for Cairo, it is especially important for our supporters to keep the pressure on. Please continue to call Egyptian embassies and consulates and POLITELY but firmly insist that Egypt open the Rafah crossing for the Gaza Freedom March. You can stress the humanitarian nature of our mission and the fact that we are trying to do what a coalition of 16 prominent NGOs say the international community has failed to do in the last year: bring real relief and show solidarity with the people of Gaza.

The numbers to call are:
Egyptian Embassy in DC: 202-895-4500 (ask for Omar Youssef)
NYC: 212-759-7120, 212-759-2171
Chicago: 312-828-9162
Houston: 713-961-4915
San Francisco: 415-346-9700

You can also send an email (or many) to Egyptian government officials using the handy widget here.

gaza freedom march UPDATE!

We got word this morning, that, despite the organizers' tireless efforts to work with the Egyptian government to make the passage of our delegation of 1,360 internationals from 43 countries into Gaza as smooth as possible, Egypt has decided to ban the Gaza Freedom March. They have informed us that the border will be "closed" until some time in January due to "escalating tensions." You can read the official Code Pink press release here.

Of course, the border was technically "closed" the last time we were there, too, and isn't it nice how tensions always seem to escalate so conveniently when international solidarity delegations want to cross?

This is far from the first time Egypt has tried to intimidate a group of activists out of crossing into Gaza. A Canadian delegation was surrounded by riot cops and held at gunpoint on the road across Sinai; the July Viva Palestina convoy was physically stopped on the bridge over the Suez Canal and turned back to Cairo. Both of these delegations got into Gaza by being calm, persistent, and calling on international support.

The only way to deal with intimidation is to refuse to be intimidated. We are not backing down. We are still going. But we need your help!

If you are in the US, please call the Egyptian Embassy in DC or your nearest Egyptian consulate. Hey, call all of them while you're at it. You can (calmly) ask them to allow the Gaza Freedom March to proceed into Gaza. Let them know we are bringing medical aid and school supplies, and wish only to nonviolently express our solidarity with the besieged people of Gaza. Ask them to have the same courage we do: to stand with the people of Gaza against US and Israeli threats and pressure.

Here are the numbers:

Egyptian Embassy in DC: 202-895-4500 (ask for Omar Youssef)
NYC: 212-759-7120, 212-759-2171
Chicago: 312-828-9162
Houston: 713-961-4915
San Francisco: 415-346-9700

If you are outside the US, you can find a complete list of Egyptian diplomatic posts here.

VIVA PALESTINA! WE WILL BREAK THE SIEGE!

i had no idea

Poking around the excellent Mondoweiss today, I came across this short video that was recorded on the previous delegation to Gaza I was on in May/June, in which blog author Philip Weiss interviews longtime activist Dennis James in the lovely indoor/outdoor restaurant at Marna House, where I sat up late on my last night in Gaza listening to shelling.

Dennis said something which I have heard a lot of people who have traveled to Palestine express, including veteran activists, something which I've felt myself. Multiple times during the six-minute interview, he says, in regards to what he witnessed on the trip, "I had no idea."

One of the things I am still sorting through as I get ready for my second trip to Gaza is just how utterly unprepared I was for what I saw there. It took me a while to realize this truth. I thought I knew what to expect. I had no idea.

I was very knowledgeable about Palestine, and completely supportive of the Palestinian cause, before I traveled there. I had read and read and read. I had watched nearly every film, documentary and fiction, shot in Palestine that I could get my hands on. I had followed news of the war daily on blogs written by activists on the ground. And still. I had no idea.

I have spent a lot of time studying state-sponsored violence and organizing against it. I am pretty familiar with the darker side of humanity. I thought I had lost my capacity to be shocked. Boy was I wrong.

After just a few hours in Gaza, I realized that, far from exaggerating the level of violence that people in the Occupied Territories face, I had vastly underestimated it. Vastly. It is staggering. At times it feels like standing in front of a tidal wave.

You can read the word disproportionate but until you're walking through a neighborhood where every house has been flattened--no, where every house has been blown up with land mines individually planted by Israeli ground troops--you don't really understand what it means.

I thought I understood occupation. I didn't. Not until I was riding down Gaza's coastal road at sunset, watching the lights of Israeli gunboats glitter in the sea on one side of the bus and the red warning lights of the eastern border blink on the other, all while listening for drones overhead. Not until I was listening to shelling and trying to imagine what it would be like to sleep under that every night. To sleep in a tent under that every night.

I thought I understood repression, violence and state terror. I was not prepared. For the shattered American International School, the destroyed parliament building, for the piles of rubble that appear without warning in the middle of a block, that used to be a home or a shop or a police station. For sitting in a meeting with family members of detainees, women and small children holding pictures of their family members who are prisoners in Israeli jails, facing their pain and feeling powerless beyond description. At that meeting, I happened to be sitting next to an ISM activist who leaned over to me and said at one point: "I feel ashamed, because I was arrested in the West Bank and I only spent one day in jail." I knew exactly what he meant.

I thought I understood resistance. Blessedly, I had no idea. I had no idea how extraordinary the human capacity to stand up to violence is, what fearsome weapons political will and solidarity can be, how amazingly powerful small acts of resistance can become. A flag planted on a pile of rubble, the Islamic University student who talked about her brother, a volunteer medic killed during the war, and said "they killed my brother but they can't kill our dreams," even something as simple as a cup of tea, offered by someone standing beside the ruins of their home.

In Palestine you will see how cruel people can be, but also how strong--how brave and sweet and loving and resourceful and creative and resilient and defiant and human. You will understand exactly how much violence oppressors can deliver--and exactly how much power the oppressed have to defeat it. You'll realize that human beings can do anything.

done. ish.

Grand total for the semester:

3 features (2 first drafts, 1 serious rewrite)
326 pages of script (net)
21 page research paper
2 class presentations
3 talks on Gaza
1 departmental assistantship with plenty of its own charms that aren't appropriate to go into on this blog

It was insane, and at times I became convinced it was physically impossible, but I did it.

Of course, it doesn't really feel like anything's over, since at my last formal commitment of the semester, a rewrite class on Wednesday, I got loads of notes on Gaza Sunrise, many helpful, others eminently frustrating. And I am leaving in four days, to spend four days in Baltimore and then a week in Gaza on the Gaza Freedom March, after which it's back to LA with less than a week before classes start again.

On the one hand, I can't imagine that next semester could possibly be harder than this. On the other hand, next semester I'll be graduating, a thought that conjures up a giant ball of stress and uncertainty that I imagine looking something like the giant ball of evil in The Fifth Element.

I keep waiting for the sense of triumph that you'd think would be due to me for conquering the semester from hell. It hasn't arrived yet.

But on the bright side, I finally got around to watching some Battlestar Galactica, and damn is it awesome.

occupation, apartheid and ethnic cleansing: what's in a name?

Around the time I was in Gaza, the Israeli military patrols along the Strip's eastern border had discovered a new pastime. They were setting Gazan farmers' fields on fire. They would wait until the grain was crackling dry, almost ready to be harvested, after the farmers had spent months tending their fields under constant threat of being shot at by these very same patrols. Then they'd roll along and firebomb the fields.

There are many, many things that Israel attempts to justify under the guise of "security." The wall, the checkpoints, the constant surveillance and control of Palestinian movement, buffer zones, air strikes, demolishing homes and destroying olive groves, house raids, arrests and torture. You may argue--correctly--that none of these things actually make Israeli civilians any safer, to say nothing of the Palestinians who are the victims of such abuses. But if you buy into the idea that Israel needs to defend itself from the resistance it itself has created...well, you can sort of see the logic.

But then there are things like this. There is just no possible military justification for setting somebody's crops on fire. That's not to say that if there were a military justification, specious or otherwise, it would all be okay. But I do think it's reasonable to assume that most Israeli soldiers believe their actions to be rational and justified in the name of Israel's security. Which makes me really wonder what was going through these particular soldiers' heads as they lobbed incendiary bombs onto the scant agricultural land of a starving, imprisoned population.

All occupations and colonial situations involve immense levels of violence, racism, and dehumanization of the oppressed. But I think many people familiar with Palestine will admit that Israeli colonialism brings with it a particular viciousness that demands a particular explanation. How are we to understand this action, or any of the countless other Israeli policies--from destroying Palestinian wells and rain-water cisterns to denying imports of chocolate to Gaza--that seem to exist out of nothing more than sheer, deliberate, calculated cruelty?

There are two possible explanations. One is racist: that Israelis are just inherently mean people. But saying all Israelis are sadistic bastards (while that may certainly appear to be true if you live in the Occupied Territories) is really no better than saying all Palestinians are fanatical terrorists, right?

The other explanation is that there is an intentional program of ethnic cleansing going on in Palestine--that the utterly ruthless way in which Israel attacks every possible facet of Palestinian society and daily life is part of a conscious plan to make life so unbearable for the Palestinians that they leave. The staggering level of brutality, and its thoroughly deliberate and calculated nature, can only be understood as actions carried out by people who see their claim to the land as superior to all others and refuse to acknowledge Palestinians as equal human beings.

Many comparisons have been made between Israel and apartheid South Africa. Those comparisons are absolutely valid--particularly the comparison between South Africa's Bantustans and all currently proposed models for a Palestinian state. The Palestine solidarity movement should absolutely continue to make those comparisons, because apartheid is a system that was de-legitimized by an international solidarity movement working in coordination with a national liberation struggle inside South Africa. Apartheid is now internationally not cool, thanks to the work of those movements. Zionism has yet to be de-legitimized in the same way, although it needs to be if any just solution is to be implemented in Palestine.

But the reality is that Israel has developed its own unique and particularly virulent strain of settler colonialism, one that goes much farther than South Africa's white supremacists ever dreamed. From its inception in the false idea of Palestine as "a land without people for a people without a land," Zionism has always had a genocidal edge that seeks to deny the existence of the Palestinians as a people--and, if necessary, create that reality on the ground. It is these aggressive, expansionist, exclusionary and exterminatory tendencies in Zionism--tendencies that slide straight into fascism at their most extreme--that make Israeli colonialism so particularly vicious, unstable and dangerous a system.

I recently had a debate with a fellow traveler about whether using terms like "ethnic cleansing" and "genocide" was useful in discussions about Palestine with folks who may just be beginning to understand that the Palestinians are the oppressed group in the situation, even if we-who-know-the-score agree that what's going on in Palestine IS ethnic cleansing and genocide. I think it is not only correct, but vitally important.

I think the most basic job of the left is to tell the truth, which those in power often have an interest in obscuring. By not calling something what it is, we are doing a disservice to ourselves, by muddying our own understanding of the situation; to those we are trying to persuade, by not giving them a full and accurate picture of the massive crimes taking place; and to those we stand in solidarity with, by assuming that the reality they live every day needs to be watered down for an outside audience. In the case of this particular issue, we are also giving in to the mainstream narrative that seeks to normalize Israel as a democratic state responding to terrorist threats, instead of an ethnocentric colonial entity that was built on the dispossession and expulsion of the indigenous population, a process that continues to this day.

As usual, Israelis themselves are more clear-eyed about this issue than the American left. A majority of Israelis not only believe that what's going on in the Occupied Territories is ethnic cleansing--they support it. A new poll recently revealed that 53% of Israelis surveyed support "transfer"--the forcible mass expulsion of the Palestinian population of the Occupied Territories (and, many fear, of the Palestinian minority inside Israel as well.) In fact, transfer--that is, finishing the job of ethnic cleansing that was started in 1948--is now the most popular "solution" to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict among Israelis. This is a significant, and frightening, hardening of Israeli racism that is essential for Americans to understand.

After visiting Gaza, two things are absolutely, inescapably clear to me. One: what Israel is doing is a calculated, conscious and systematic program of ethnic cleansing. Two: the Palestinians will never give up. This means that the situation is fundamentally unstable and can only be permanently resolved in one of two ways--equality or genocide. A resolution on the side of equality--the dismantling of Israel as an exclusionist state and the creation of a home for all people, regardless of race or religion, in all of historic Palestine--is far from impossible, but it is also far from guaranteed.

It is crucial that Americans and other internationals in solidarity with Palestine understand exactly what it is we are fighting against, and exactly how high the stakes are. Palestinians, I have no doubt, are already quite aware. Unless we are able to look Israel's true nature in the face, unless we truly understand what it is we are facing, how can we expect to comprehend what it will take to win?

score one for the resistance

Something kind of awesome is happening in my rewrite class, where I'm working on Gaza Sunrise. I can't tell you exactly when the transformation occurred, or precisely why. Perhaps it is the pictures and videos I have been sending out to accompany each new set of pages, of things like the Apartheid Wall and the Kalandia checkpoint between Jerusalem and Ramallah. I sometimes forget that most people have no idea what the Occupied Territories really look like, and the images can be quite powerful. Perhaps it is the fact that after actually traveling there, I am able to be more clear and articulate and unapologetic and uncompromising (yes, it is possible!) about the fact that what's going on in Palestine is resistance to colonial oppression.

But for whatever reason, at some point, people stopped questioning the political positions of the script (or at least accepted that I wasn't going to change them to match their own views of Israel/Palestine), and started actually talking about how the characters operate within the landscape of this world that is very different from the modern United States. And all of a sudden we are talking about the Palestinian struggle like exactly what it is--a national liberation movement against an oppressive, occupying, colonial force--and the political and moral and personal choices one faces in being part of such a struggle. Which is of course what the script is actually about.

My professor (who I think is turning out to be one of my favorite professors at USC so far) said something amazing today about Moira, my protagonist. He called her a coward. For running away. For leaving Palestine after her militant father was assassinated in an attack that very nearly killed her as well, instead of following in his footsteps and continuing to fight. Which, if you think about it, implies some recognition of the idea that to stay and fight--despite the titanic risks involved--is the right choice in this situation, the choice that is not only honorable and brave but necessary for this character's growth and transformation. Which is exactly what Moira herself realizes over the course of the story.

Ha! I thought when he said that. I've got you thinking like the resistance now! But really, this is quite remarkable if you stop and think about it. At least within the confines of this rewrite class, I've won. I've succeeded in portraying these characters, who are involved in armed resistance against Israel, as not terrorists or religious fanatics or some fetishized Other, but as human beings who operate in an emotional landscape that is recognizable and understandable to people who've never been to Palestine and maybe don't even know that much about the conflict. If at the end of this script, I can get you to empathize with Palestinians who choose to stay and fight for their homeland, their rights and their loved ones against Israeli aggression...well, I've done my job, haven't I?

If anything, this semester has just reinforced my belief that the Palestinian cause is actually quite morally clear and easy to sympathize with when you know the reality of what's going on on the ground. Because the environment in the previous class in which I worked on this script was kind of hostile...or maybe un-empathetic is a better word...I think I spent a lot of time in the first draft trying to "complicate" the picture of Palestine I was presenting. When really, as Moira says near the beginning of the script, it's not that complicated at all. Oppressor. Oppressed. Which side are you on?

back to gaza! and other updates

If you have noticed a precipitous decline in my rate of posting since, oh, the start of the semester, it's only because my non-blog-writing workload has been epic as of late. But, as I've learned that my brain is too fried from eight consecutive hours of class on Wednesdays to handle anything creative, it's time for some updates.

1. As you may have surmised from my sidebar, I'm going back to Gaza during winter break for the Gaza Freedom March. The march will be a direct, nonviolent challenge to the Israeli blockade and the total closure of the border crossings controlled by Israel. Along with the upcoming Viva Palestina joint US-UK convoy, it will be quite possibly the largest mobilization of internationals to Palestine in history. Already, 500 people from 32 countries have signed up to participate in the march, including Alice Walker, Walden Bello, and current and former government officials from several nations. We expect to be joined on the march by some tens of thousands of Palestinians--the exact number remains unclear, but the list of endorsers from Palestinian civil society is impressive.

My first trip to Palestine was more amazing than I could have ever possibly imagined--horrible, yes, but incredible, too. I started from a position of solidarity with the Palestinians and what I would consider to be an above-average knowledge of the region and its politics (at least for an American), and I was still completely transformed by the experience of actually going there. Those six days shaped my understanding of the world in ways I'm still just beginning to understand. I can't wait to go back and I feel so lucky to have the chance to participate in what I think will be a historic action. I cannot think of a better way to greet 2010 than with some nonviolent direct action in solidarity with the Palestinian people.

If you would like to participate in the Gaza Freedom March, I think it will pretty much rock your world. Register on the website by November 30.

2. For anyone in the Los Angeles area, I will be speaking on Palestine at the Southern California Socialist Conference, happening November 21-22 at USC. Despite what the website says, my session will in fact be from 1:30-3 on Saturday. Check out a single session or the whole conference; there will be some awesome speakers, including a keynote by Mike Davis.

3. Also for those in Los Angeles: after my session at the conference, you can head right down the street to a citywide organizing meeting for the movement for boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) against Israel. Activists will be strategizing about ways to protest the LA Department of Water & Power's cooperation with the Israeli national water company.

hunger games post #2: katniss, race and casting

So, not surprisingly, The Hunger Games is gonna be a movie. And since THG has already developed a substantial (and, judging by writing style, I'd guess mostly teenage) online fandom, that means that the fantasy casting mill is already grinding away, despite the film deal being still in its infant stages.

As I've been poking around for interesting Hunger Games-related stuff on the interwebs, I've noticed a disturbing trend. In the majority of fantasy-casting and fan art that I've found, Katniss Everdeen, the protagonist of The Hunger Games, has mysteriously become white.

The whole question of how race operates in the world of The Hunger Games is pretty interesting in itself. The books take place several hundred years into the future, after who knows what has happened to the population of North America. And also people can dye their bodies green and stuff. So there's no reason to assume people in Panem think about race in remotely the same way we do today. Many of the geographic and ethnic labels we currently use to identify race probably have no meaning in this world, since countries and even continents may no longer have the same names.

But given the general overall trend toward increased migration to and from increasingly diverse parts of the world, and a general relaxing of taboos against interracial marriage (unless of course you live in Louisiana), it seems a reasonable assumption that a future North America would contain more people of mixed race and fewer people who could be clearly identified as white.

Katniss and her best-friend-maybe-boyfriend Gale, who both grew up in the Seam, the poorest part of District 12, are described in the book as having "straight black hair, olive skin, [and] gray eyes." (On a side note, I'm pretty sure black hair + olive skin + gray eyes is a fairly statistically improbable phenotype, since gray eyes are produced by the same gene as blue eyes and tend to be more common in light-skinned, light-haired people.)

I've always pictured Katniss looking sort of Native American, maybe like a teenage version of Tonantzin Carmelo:

If you pictured her as looking sort of Latina you're probably not that far off either. The point is that Katniss, Gale, and most of the people of the Seam seem clearly (to me at least) not white.

The world of Panem, as I noted in an earlier post, has many features in common with the world of European colonialism (and slavery--we'll get to that.)* One of these is that there is a pigmentocracy in District 12. The people of the "merchant class," to which Katniss's mother, and Katniss's other potential love interest Peeta, belong, are described as having blond hair and blue eyes, while the poorer coal mining families of the Seam are dark-haired and dark-skinned.

And yet in the vast majority of fan art and fan casting, Katniss is depicted as having brown hair and light skin (and often looking about 30, but that's another issue). And while the casting suggestions have ranged from intriguing (Ellen Page--did you see her in Hard Candy?) to atrocious (Megan Fox. Um...WTF?) they have been 99% white. (Although I have to say the suggestion of Hugh Laurie as Haymitch made me laugh out loud.)

Even more disturbing is what's happening to the characters from District 11. District 11 is a plantation. If you didn't pick up on the not-too-subtle hints toward this in The Hunger Games, it's made explicit when Katniss and Peeta go there in Catching Fire. All the characters we get to know from District 11 are Black. Rue, the little girl with whom Katniss makes a heartbreakingly brief alliance in The Hunger Games, is described as having "dark brown skin and eyes." And yet somehow white Rue has popped up a few times too.

I'm pretty sure the British cover of The Hunger Games, which is otherwise very cool, is to blame for some of the whitewashing.

(By the way, this all reminds me very much of the controversy over the US cover of Liar, by Australian YA author Justine Larbalestier, which you can read about here and here. As a matter of fact, read her whole blog. She is a damn smart lady who has a lot of great things to say about race, gender and representation in YA literature.**)

But I'm also not entirely convinced that all the fans out there have seen the British cover. I kind of think they're doing this whitewashing on their own.

To me, the most disturbing thing is when fans say something like "That's how I always imagined that character looking!", when it's very clearly not how they are described in the book. If it were just Hollywood doing the whitewashing, I wouldn't be surprised. That's par for the course. Hollywood has spent most of its existence whitewashing the moving image, and it goes far beyond the really obvious stuff like blackface. (Alec Guinness is an Arab! Charlton Heston is Mexican! To name just two examples I can think of off the top of my head.) But the idea that fans themselves--who have actually read the book, which may not be the case for a Hollywood exec--are imagining all the characters as white, when they are very clearly not described that way, is something I find kind of frightening.

And yet, in a certain sense, I realize it is Hollywood doing the whitewashing, by constantly and overwhelmingly presenting images of whiteness, assuming white is neutral, and therefore implicitly (or explicitly) short-circuiting the careers of talented non-white actors. Is it really that surprising, in today's media world, that when asked to name half a dozen actors who can play a tough sixteen-year-old girl, almost all the choices are white? Life ain't easy for actors of color, and it's even harder for actors who don't fit into an easily-identifiable racial box. I don't have to go on about the obstacles for non-white actors in Hollywood--which are of course related to the obstacles faced by writers, directors and producers of color as well--and are as ubiquitous as the fact that if you don't specify a character's race in a script, they are universally assumed to be white. (I do, however, recommend this excellent article from Racialicious, which deals with the matter far more eloquently that I have done so far.)

This issue has been of particular concern to me of late since I'm writing a script, Gaza Sunrise, with a biracial protagonist, Moira Shaheed, who's the child of an Irish mother and a Palestinian father. In the script, Moira is described as being able to pass for white. In my mind, that is not the same as being white.

I picture Moira looking quite a lot like Lubna Azabal looks in Paradise Now.

She's fairly light-skinned, and probably has naturally curly hair like most Arabs, but straightens it and maybe highlights it a little to make herself look whiter. If you saw her on the street in Marseilles, where she lives at the beginning of the script, you might assume she was Italian or Spanish.

Okay, so technically Moira is half white. But the life experience that defines her is not that of a white European, but of a Palestinian refugee. And I know I would be goddam pissed if a white actor ever got cast in that role. (I'm hoping to circumvent this with the fact that the script is 90% in Arabic...unless someone decides to make it in English...don't get me started on that.) But do you know how many casting suggestions involving white actors I've gotten? Including Natalie Portman, who was BORN IN ISRAEL.

As for who will play Katniss, I have to say I think the chances of her being whitewashed are pretty high. I will probably be happy if they don't cast someone who looks 30. Which brings me back to Ellen Page, one of the few young actresses out there who I think could actually rock Katniss's non-feminine gender expression. Which is the subject of my next post.

But if Rue turns out to be played by Abigail Breslin, I'm boycotting.

*Actually, if you think of Panem as the product of a society that's collapsed, and is now re-forming itself by going through a process of primitive accumulation, the presence of social structures that resemble slavery and colonialism kind of makes sense.
**She also has footnotes on her blog! I want to learn to do this! Because I'm a giant nerd.

oppression and resistance in the hunger games

Do you remember, my fellow degenerates, how I mentioned The Hunger Games, Suzanne Collins's delightfully grim and violent post-apocalyptic dystopia, as the book I had to hide in my closet because I was afraid that once I started reading it I could not put it down?

Well, I caved. I started reading it, and I was right. I couldn't stop. I was totally hooked. And despite the million tons of work I had to do that did not involve reading young-adult fiction, I devoured the combined 800 pages of The Hunger Games and its sequel, Catching Fire, in a matter of days.

I think there is an enormous amount to be said about The Hunger Games, and I've been able to find far less serious and insightful commentary on these books as I would have expected. I plan to make up for that with several blog posts, starting now.

What makes The Hunger Games so awesome? I think it's really not very different than what makes Harry Potter awesome, which is that underneath the fantastical and/or futuristic trappings is a really great resistance story that feels utterly and totally authentic.

The Hunger Games trilogy (the third book is due out next fall) is set several hundred years in the future, when the present-day nations of North America have collapsed, to be replaced with Panem, a brutal dictatorship controlled by the rich and technologically advanced Capitol. (I totally thought Colorado Springs, too!) The Capitol rules over twelve impoverished Districts in what is basically an old-school colonial relationship, complete with single-industry extraction economies, but maintained with all the terrifying technology of modern warfare. (Sound familiar?) Some seventy-five years before the start of our story, the Districts rebelled against this state of affairs. The rebellion was crushed. One District, 13, was wiped completely off the map. As punishment and an ongoing reminder of the Capitol's power, the remaining twelve Districts are forced once a year to send two of their children, one boy and one girl, to compete in a bloody fight to the death broadcast to the whole nation on live TV.

The selection of competitors, or "tributes," is supposed to be random, but in reality, there's a poverty draft--you can put your name in the lottery extra times in exchange for meager food rations for you and your family. If you are between the ages of twelve and eighteen, you can also volunteer to take the place of someone else who is chosen--which is exactly what Katniss Everdeen, the book's 16-year-old protagonist, does when her 12-year-old sister Prim is selected for the Games.

The first book follows Katniss, a hard-bitten and refreshingly ungirly heroine, as she competes in, and survives, the seventy-fourth Hunger Games. The Hunger Games are supposed to be a display of the Capitol's unlimited power, and by refusing to play by their rules, Katniss (mostly unwittingly) provides a spark that sets off what could very well be the beginning of a revolution in Panem. Catching Fire explores the consequences of Katniss's actions as the rebellion she never intended to start spreads and the Capitol's response threatens pretty much everyone and everything she loves.

So many things about this formula could so easily be cliched. It's Battle Royale, The Running Man, a gladiator game, a critique of reality TV, and the myth of Theseus and the Minotaur all thrown into a big pot. And yet somehow, Collins makes it work, and creates something brutal and scary and real and utterly compelling.

I have a writing teacher who is fond of telling us to exercise our inner sadist--meaning, figure out what will really hurt your characters, what their worst fears are, and then make them confront that. Well, let's just say that Suzanne Collins's inner sadist is ready for a marathon. (This is extra hilarious since she looks like a Girl Scout leader.) I'm someone who reads about torture in my spare time--it takes a lot to make me shudder when reading a book. In Catching Fire, Collins managed it three times.* She has a masterful understanding of the dynamics of oppression and resistance, and has created a chilling dystopia on par with the worlds of 1984 and The Handmaid's Tale. She gives her characters true horrors to face, and face them they do, and it's riveting.

Much of The Hunger Games deals with what it's like to grow up in a world that is unrelentingly violent--not just the obvious violence of the Capitol's heavily-armed police force (in a wonderful irony, they're called Peacekeepers), but the more insidious violence of generations of poverty, starvation, hard labor, restriction of movement and severely limited opportunities.

Katniss is a survivor, and Collins really reckons with what that means in a world like Panem. Since her father was killed in a mining accident when she was twelve, Katniss has kept herself, her mother and little sister Prim from literally starving to death by hunting illegally in the woods outside her home in District 12. She has grown up driven by a single-minded mission to keep her family alive, and has ruthlessly suppressed any emotion, dream or desire inside herself that does not aid that mission--to the point that she is hardly even capable of understanding her own feelings when they don't concern the immediate survival of those she loves.

The Hunger Games explores, with remarkable insight, how and why people resist oppression in conditions where the price of doing so is staggeringly high. The power of the Capitol is fearsome; its use of violence and state terror is calculated, deliberate, overwhelming and unforgiving. As I read The Hunger Games, a phrase from the Goldstone report, documenting Israeli war crimes in Gaza, kept running through my head: "deliberately disproportionate." Everything the Capitol does is deliberately disproportionate, and the Hunger Games themselves are the perfect example. They are a massive, public, indefinite form of collective punishment. The message couldn't be clearer: resist once, and we will punish all of you, forever, in the cruelest way we can imagine.

And yet the people of Panem do resist, in a thousand different ways, many of which are symbolic and almost all of which are, by necessity, nonviolent. My friend Madeline has written a splendid post about The Hunger Games as an exploration of what nonviolent resistance means in a violent world, and what she has to say is right on, so I don't feel the need to repeat it here. But suffice to say that in a world where the Capitol claims to have absolute control, even purely symbolic acts of resistance can take on enormous power. A salute, a song, flowers, a painting, a loaf of bread, a dress, the act of holding hands with someone you've been told is supposed to be your enemy--all these seemingly mundane things become potent weapons against the Capitol.

One of the things that Collins really nails is the way in which unbearable conditions drive people to resist despite the risks of doing so. The opening chapters of Catching Fire, in particular, beautifully capture the "damned if you do, damned if you don't" logic of oppression. Even if someone in the Districts "behaves" and slaves away uncomplainingly for her entire life, she'll still be oppressed from the day she is born until the day she dies. If the choice is between doing nothing and being oppressed and resisting and being oppressed, on balance, sometimes resistance just feels better. At least it gives you a chance to feel like you're doing something other than passively accepting your own subjugation.

At the beginning of Catching Fire, Katniss is jumping through hoops set up by super creepy President Snow (who has been "president," we learn, for at least 25 years), trying to control the rebellion she has unintentionally unleashed and avoid violent reprisal against her loved ones. At a key point in the book, she realizes that nothing she can do will ever satisfy the Capitol. She can't win by playing by their rules, because the game is fixed in their favor. The realization is terrifying, but also oddly liberating--it means, Katniss reflects, that "I am free to act as desperately as I wish."

Once Katniss decides she's down with the rebellion (although she still doesn't understand quite what that means), she must face the reality that not just she herself, but everyone around her may be punished for her defiance. She decides that she is capable of facing arrest, torture, and death at the hand of the Capitol--after all, she's already had to face these possibilities in the Games. But the idea of her family, particularly her younger sister Prim, being hurt because of her actions paralyzes her with terror.

I need only to think of Prim and all my resolve disintegrates. It's my job to protect her.... I can't let the Capitol hurt Prim.

And then it hits me. They already have. They have killed her father in those wretched mines. They have sat by as she almost starved to death. They have chosen her as a tribute, then made her watch her sister fight to the death in the Games. She has been hurt far worse that I had at the age of twelve.

Prim...Rue...aren't they the very reason I have to try to fight? Because what has been done to them is so wrong, so beyond justification, so evil that there is no choice? Because no one has the right to treat them as they have been treated?

Yes. This is the thing to remember when fear threatens to swallow me up. What I am about to do, whatever any of us are forced to endure, it is for them.

Couldn't have said it better myself.

I realize I've already written quite a lot, and haven't even scratched the surface of some of the many other interesting elements of these books. There is so much to say about Katniss as a heroine and a narrator, and about the Games themselves as social commentary, that I feel at least one more blog post is in order here. And goddam, I haven't even mentioned what I think about Team Gale vs. Team Peeta. (Short answer: silly marketing gimmick engineered by Scholastic.)

There is so much fantastic stuff in these books about the dynamics of how and why people fight back, how the daily insults and humiliations and degradations of oppression build up inside people until they explode, how acts of violent repression are just as likely to propel people forward into struggle as backward into fear, how people move from the instinctive resistance necessary for survival to the organized resistance of revolutions, and the often bitter and brutal choices they must make along the way. Collins has set herself a very high bar for the third book, and I have to admit I'm just a tiny bit nervous about whether she will be able to live up to the truly radical conclusions of her own story. But I certainly know I'm dying to find out.

*In case you've read the books and were wondering, the three shudder-inducing moments for me were: pretty much everything in District 11, Gale's encounter with the new Head Peacekeeper, and that bit with the jabberjays, which is just about the most horrible thing I can imagine.

the rock-throwing instinct

The quintessential image of Palestinian resistance is a kid facing down an Israeli tank with nothing but a rock in his hand.

This is, of course, a symbolic act. No one thinks a rock is going to damage a tank. But rock-throwing, usually by children, has become a ritualized form of resistance in the Occupied Territories.

In class, I tried to explain why parents might allow, or even encourage, their children to throw rocks at soldiers who can, and often do, respond with lethal force. "Don't they realize they can get shot?" someone asked.

The answer is yes, of course. But the fact is that you can get shot doing almost anything in the Occupied Territories: crossing a checkpoint, going to school or work, participating in a nonviolent protest, riding in an ambulance, even attending a funeral. And if you spent your life dealing with the fact that you could get shot while just minding your own business, well, you might feel like you don't have that much to lose from throwing a few rocks.

When fighting a militarily superior force, part of what you are really fighting is your own fear. It takes guts to stand up against someone who seems much stronger than you. Occupiers everywhere are aware that they rule not just by violence, but by terror. Fear is a very effective means of social control, often more efficient than brute force. You don't have to kill or maim if you can terrify a population into submission.

It seems to me that rock-throwing is not really about the rock, or the tank (or the soldier, APC, Humvee, checkpoint, bulldozer, whatever). It's about learning to control fear.

Note that learning to control fear is not the same as not having fear. The Israeli military machine is fucking scary. Shit, anyone who's been to a big demonstration knows that American riot cops can be pretty scary, even when you're reasonably certain they won't shoot at you with live ammunition. But learning not to be intimidated by superior force is an essential part of resistance.

In the Occupied Territories, it's also a basic life skill. Just going about your daily business involves having to interact with armed, hostile soldiers. In order not to be completely paralyzed, you need to be capable of managing your own fear. This is what children are learning when they go out to throw rocks.

Of course, the fact that fear management is a skill Palestinian kids need to develop at ten or twelve is pretty grim when you stop and think about it. But I think there's more to rock-throwing than that. When kids throw rocks, they're not just learning survival skills; they're learning resistance.

There is something about rock-throwing that seems to encapsulate a very deep-seated human impulse. It's an expression of the reflexive desire not to be ground down, to resist oppression on principle, to fight back even when it seems nothing can be gained. It's a way of being able to stand up to power and say, "No, fuck you, I won't submit. I won't grovel just because you're stronger, and if the only thing that gets me is my dignity, then so be it."

As always, there is a price to be paid for resistance. Rock-throwing is, to this day, an arrestable offense in the Occupied Territories. (And, let's be clear, if you're Palestinian, arrest means torture.) During the First Intifada in the late '80s, it was common practice for Israeli soldiers to break the fingers of children caught throwing rocks. And of course, soldiers frequently respond to rocks with tear gas, rubber bullets, and live ammunition. For a symbolic act of resistance, the price is high.

But the price of doing anything in the Occupied Territories is high. And everyone who ever won anything started out by fighting back "on principle," at a time when actual victory seemed impossible. It's the rock-throwing instinct that compelled four Black college students to sit down at a Woolworth's lunch counter, that drove drag queens to kick the NYPD out of the Stonewall Inn, and that sent hundreds of thousands of young Iranians into the streets earlier this summer.

Is this a good thing to teach your children--to stand up and fight back, to claim your dignity even when people are trying to crush you? Well, I wouldn't tell you how to raise your kids, but I certainly think so.

an image of resistance

I recently discovered this picture on a Facebook friend's profile, and instantly fell in love with it, because it seems to me to encapsulate so many things about the Palestinian struggle, and about asymmetric warfare in general. On one side, you have overwhelming military force; on the other, nothing but solidarity and defiance: a face-off between two kinds of power, staged at that ubiquitous symbol of occupation, the checkpoint.

The photograph is by Ryuichi Hirokawa, a Japanese photojournalist who has been photographing war zones for over four decades, and was one of the first journalists to get into Sabra and Shatila after the massacre whose anniversary was commemorated this week. Hirokawa has been interested in Palestine ever since 1967, when he went to work on a kibbutz in Israel as a young student, only to discover that it had been built on the ruins of a destroyed Palestinian village.

Although the black and white printing gives this photo a timeless quality, it was in fact taken in 2002, at Al Ram checkpoint in the West Bank. Hirokawa writes about the circumstances under which it was taken here, in yet another awesome feature I've discovered on The Guardian's website.

so that is a sonic boom.

Sometimes you don't quite understand things until you experience them for yourself, and thus internalize them. Here is a small example.

I was in the middle of writing a post about 9/11 when what sounded like some kind of explosion rattled all the doors and windows of my apartment building, which is about as soundproof as a cardboard box. It sounded like something HUGE being dropped on the roof, and perhaps simultaneously in the first floor hallway below me. I knew it was too abrupt to be an earthquake. The interwebs quickly informed me it was a sonic boom from the space shuttle Discovery reentering Earth's atmosphere on its way to land at Edwards AFB.

Of course all my SoCal friends were soon Facebooking and Twittering about it. Most people's first thought was "earthquake." But at least one friend, who is from Lebanon, had a different first thought: "Israelis."

I immediately thought of the notes my Gaza blogrades had written about the weeks after the war, when Israeli planes would fly over Gaza, deliberately breaking the sound barrier over populated areas. This happened in Lebanon after the 2006 war as well. I've heard this practice called "simulated bombing" or "phantom air raids." It's not bombing, but it sounds like it. (And, you might add, feels like it, because the blast wave is forceful enough to be felt in your chest cavity, like being close to fireworks or the amp at a rock concert.)

Of course the only imaginable purpose of this practice is to terrorize people. It's intentional triggering of whatever fresh post-traumatic stress these very same planes have recently created. Imagine if you'd very recently spent weeks living in terror of those sounds: the incoming roar of a low-flying plane, the deep boom of explosions that are felt as much as heard. To you those become the sounds of death, of grief, of helpless, mortal fear. Yeah, a sonic boom would have scared the crap out of me in such a situation.

Like so many things the IOF does, which seem to have no possible rationale other than deliberate torture, I have to wonder: Who thinks up this shit?

knowledge shock

So, classes have started, which means I am back to discussing Gaza Sunrise, the feature I wrote last semester, with a large number of people who may know and believe very many different things about Palestine. And it's weird. It was weird last semester, but after having actually been to Palestine, it's now extra weird.

I've been so immersed in this world for so long that I sometimes forget that many Americans (usually through no fault of their own) do not know a single accurate thing about Palestine. They may not even know that Israel was founded by expelling three-quarters of a million people to create a European-Jewish majority state in an Arab-Muslim majority land. I think this is a pretty important piece of information for understanding the current situation. In fact, one might say it is actually the WHOLE ROOT OF THE PROBLEM. And yet it's history that many--perhaps even most--Americans don't know, and that Israel is consciously trying to suppress.

Add to this a whole slew of other misinformation or lack of information about history and current events, consciously or unconsciously held prejudices against Arabs, Muslims and Palestinians, confusion about who is the oppressor and who is the oppressed or just lack of admission that there is an oppressor and oppressed in the situation, incorrect or zero information about the various political actors and forces involved, and...well, you can see where I'm headed with this.

It leads to conversational difficulties. I'll admit I haven't quite got a good strategy worked out for dealing with this problem yet. It's rather like trying to have a conversation about how to best sautee a fish when your conversation partner thinks the fish is an orange.

The result is that I'm experiencing a repeat of the same feeling I had immediately after leaving Gaza. It wasn't culture shock, exactly (although seeing a European tourist with her ass literally hanging out of her short-shorts at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo was culture shock.) I'll call it knowledge shock.

I am trying to do as much patient explaining as humanly possible, since I do not think it's most people's fault that they are uninformed or misinformed, and after all that is a large part of why I went to Gaza--to be able to patiently explain and show and convince with greater authority because I can say "I have seen it." But it's not as easy as you might think.

The problem is that the patient explaining gets all complicated by the fact that I've developed a staggering, really almost frighteningly powerful, degree of emotional identification with the Palestinians and such an intrinsic, reflexive, visceral hatred of Zionism and the Israeli state that it's very hard not to get angry and want to scream "DON'T YOU SEE? DON'T YOU SEE WHAT'S HAPPENING?!" in the process of the patient explaining. Because whenever I start talking, all the atrocities and cruelties and injustices start rushing to the surface, and there are so, so many of them, and I feel them all so intensely, that it gets overwhelming and I become inarticulate.

I realize this is something I'll have to get over, because I don't think I'll stop talking about Palestine any time soon. I must figure out ways to bridge the knowledge chasm, because my knowledge is useless if it stays in my head.

I also realize that all this is bound up with the other reason I went to Gaza, the reason I couldn't quite articulate, which was to be somewhere where I did not feel like this. I struggled for months after returning from Gaza to explain this to people who didn't instinctively get it, to explain why being in Gaza brought with it such an enormous sense of relief, why Gaza felt more like home than possibly any place I've ever been in my life. Then I read Alice Walker's piece for Electronic Intifada, which was titled, perfectly, "The best place one could be on Earth." It opens with these words:

Coming "home" to Gaza

Rolling into Gaza I had a feeling of homecoming. There is a flavor to the ghetto. To the Bantustan. To the "rez." To the "colored section." In some ways it is surprisingly comforting. Because consciousness is comforting. Everyone you see has an awareness of struggle, of resistance, just as you do. The man driving the donkey cart. The woman selling vegetables. The young person arranging rugs on the sidewalk or flowers in a vase....

As I read her article, I started crying, not just because it was beautifully written and moving, but because she was saying everything I had been trying to say and been unable to. Well, I guess that's why she has a Pulitzer Prize and I do not.

I also realize one other thing, which is that this feeling of extreme dissociation, of knowledge shock, must be exactly what Palestinians living in diaspora feel every day of their lives. Which makes me entirely understand why people might want to stick to their own communities, or not be engaged in politics, or go back and live in their homelands, because in certain ways it's just easier. I think I would explode with frustration if I had to live every day like this.

fiyaaa!

If you have checked the news in the past week or so you probably know that a large portion of Los Angeles County is on fire.

The fires are about 20 miles away from where I live, and, as far as I know, not expected to threaten urban Los Angeles. But they did produce this weird cloud with a pure-white broccoli top directly over downtown Los Angeles this afternoon, which I have learned is called a pyrocumulus cloud. Wikipedia tells me that it is produced by the same atmospheric mechanism as a mushroom cloud. Disasters are so fascinating from a safe distance!

On Vimeo, a filmmaker named Eric Spiegelman has created two time-lapse videos of the fires. They are kind of weirdly beautiful if you forget, you know, that that shit can kill you and destroy everything you own and such.

Yet another reason I'm never living in the Los Angeles County exurbs!

Time Lapse Test: The Station Fire from Eric Spiegelman on Vimeo.

Time Lapse Test: Station Fire from Eric Spiegelman on Vimeo.

the revenge of plot

I recently discovered that tons of writerly people are on Twitter. One of the more interesting to "follow" has been Lev Grossman, the senior book critic for Time magazine and a self-described huge fantasy nerd.

I'm sure I read his (spoiler-free) review of Deathly Hallows when it came out, but I recently rediscovered it and took note of it because he pretty much nailed, in a single sentence, everything I think is so awesome and profound and worthy-of-contemplation-by-adults about Rowling's universe: "The essential problem in Rowling's books is how to love in the face of death, and her characters must arrive at the solution all on their own, hand-to-hand, at street level, with bleeding knuckles and gritted teeth, and then sweep up the rubble afterwards." Willingness to engage with a book about wizards on an existential level? You've got my attention.

In any case, Lev recently wrote a great piece for, of all things, the Wall Street Journal's Life & Style section, calling for the return of plot to the literary novel, and, in a broader sense, for the breaking down of distinctions between "literary" and "popular" or "genre" fiction. It caught my attention because it was making, not an identical, but a sort of parallel argument to this article by Independent journalist Johann Hari, in which he called on young novelists to stop "ever more exquisitely describing their own navels" and go out and write about real shit happening in the real world. (Perhaps not coincidentally, Hari also recently wrote these excellent pieces.) When I read Hari's commentary, I immediately thought "That's me! That's what I'm trying to do!"

Lev makes an interesting point about why he thinks so many adults have been "cheating on" literary fiction with young-adult novels, the territory of the "unblushing embrace of storytelling," which offer the return of things like "suspense and humor and pacing"--and, I would add, of stakes.

What is it that makes YA books so appealing? Without having done an extensive literature review of the contemporary YA market, I will venture a completely unscientific guess. YA books that are going to make it big--which means they will have to successfully compete for tweens' and teenagers' attention with a myriad of distractions, not the least of which are movies and video games--are more likely to be what we'd call in the film industry "high concept." That is, they tell a high-stakes story set in a unique, original and memorable world. I would suspect that they frequently involve a life-or-death struggle of some sort--because, let's face it, when you're a teenager everything seems like a life-or-death struggle, so that's just a basic requirement to hold the reader's attention. You may notice that these are also frequently the attributes of fantasy tales; I don't think it's a coincidence that there is a large overlap in genres.

Of course, any of my professors would quickly tell you that these are also the elements of a good movie. We want to see characters fighting for something, something they desperately need or want and are having trouble getting, something that matters to us and them. Because conflict is not seen as an optional element in drama, but the bedrock on which everything else is built, paying attention to things like tension and suspense and pacing and mystery, to characters' actions and objectives, is a basic structural necessity and not a stylistic choice. I would wager that if you examined the top-selling YA novels, you'd find they were constructed a lot more like movies than most "respectable" literary fiction, and I'd argue that that is generally a good thing.

If you think about it, it should not really be that surprising that stories with people who do things and want things and fight for things that matter, and that take us to a world we don't already know, are damn compelling. And just because these elements tend more frequently to be found in "popular" literature doesn't mean they can't also be a part of great literature...or that popular literature itself can't be great literature--whoa!

So, in conclusion: pop culture win. Read wizard books. And I'm looking forward to being part of the future of fiction.

P.S. Funny Lev Grossman should mention Suzanne Collins's The Hunger Games, a 374-page post-apocalyptic thriller in which teenagers are forced to fight to the death on live TV in something like a macabre cross between Survivor and Battle Royale. It seems I am coming a bit late to the phenomenon (a sequel is due out this week), but I recently read the first chapter of The Hunger Games online on Scholastic's website. I was immediately sucked in by the swift and simple prose and the book's hard-bitten, not-remotely-girly teenage heroine. Something about the blunt, matter-of-fact way in which she described her brutal world struck a chord of authenticity with me, and by the end of the first chapter, I was hooked. I ordered the book, and when it arrived I immediately read the second chapter, at which point I had to slam the book shut and hide it in the closet, because I knew if I read any more I was just going to have to read the whole damn thing. It's currently burning a hole through the closet door, along with Lev Grossman's own book, The Magicians, which this article pretty much single-handedly convinced me to buy.

P.P.S. Lev also recently wrote this, which really has nothing to do with anything, but which I laughed at for a slightly embarrassingly long time.