Ramallah to Jerusalem - Jordan

Coming Back from Rammallah in the Palestinian Territory
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STANDING IN A CATTLEGATE:
Off the bus from Ramallah to Jerusalem. The bus drivers, Israelis grunt, they don’t speak, they grunt “No English.” An international tourist destination and the speak only Hebrew? I turn to the Palestinian woman, and ask her what is going on and she leads me through the drill. Take your bags out of the bus, take them through the checkpoint, have your bags cleared, we have to go through the checkpoint. You line up in a cattle pen about a meter wide, just about 2 meters high, and you wait in these pens. We waited on line behind prison bars for a half hour or more, nothing compared to the daily humiliation of the Palestinians. This felt like a total denial of humanity. Like cattle in a shute waiting to go into the slaughter house. Young Israeli soldiers in a guard house leave a few meters from us, they are wearing flack jackets and M 16s. Another soldiers is in there, he has an I pod, and behind bullet proof glass he is playing air guitar, while there are about 100 people on line in metal cages waiting to get through customs. He is in his bullett proof bunker playing air guitar while we wait No reason for us to wait. It is part of the daily harassment that all Palestinians go through. It simply says, We are the ones in charge, we control your life, we control everything.
Palestinian youth. Palestinian youth in Ramallah by the borders, dressed in designer jeans
angry looking like they are ready to explode, the prickliness of teenager boys living in a society that tells them there is no future.
In my installation project called: Life In Palestine: Genocide? Holocaust? Ethnic Cleansing? this will be one of the pieces that will be featured.

Jerusalem
Coming back into Jerusalem I thought, for a change of pace I would stay in the Armenian quarter, and get a different perspective. Walking in this area by Jaffa Gate, Bab Al Khaleel, flooded with orthodox Jews, brushing past and thinking they are NFL line backers. Excuse me, I am to step aside for you after you walk into me? No way, I stop and they stop, they walk around me. There is this feeling they have all these soldiers around them and they can do what they want. This has nothing to do with the Judaism I know, admire, and appreciate.
A young Palestinian teenager escorted by five, yes five armed Israeli soldiers with M-16s, they were marching in step. I wanted to give the young man my attorney’s card. But there is none, no judicial process for these kinds of young men. No civil rights. They can and are stopped, harassed, picked up by the police, detained for days or weeks at a time, their families do not know where they are, and they could be detained indefinitely. This is the word on the ground from Palestinian after Palestinian.
One Israeli Palestinian said, “Ïf you don’t say ANYTHING or ask any questions, and do exactly as they tell you to, then you might be okay. We are always part citizens of Israel, we are never full citizens. The flag is for the Jewish people not for the Christian or Muslims.”
One Israeli Man said, “We are actually more like Australia, there are lot of ostriches that are keeping their head in the sands.”
In Jerusalem, Hotel Imperial is generally the kind of funky one star hotel I like to stay at. From the l800’s an aging whore who has managed to keep enough of her self together that you can easily imagine what she was like in her prime. Old carpets, walls that are covered with photos of the city, and you can easily imagine this as one of the grand hotels. However, about 10 PM the bulldozers started to work out front from about 10 to the morning, finally I called the front desk. I tossed and turned as to what I should do. I called the front desk and the clerk put me in the furthest back room at 3 Am and I kind of dozed off till woken by church bells at 7 am.
Neve A Shalom:
Last night, Wednesday, after a difficult journey into Neva Shalom met with Howard who gave me the run down of their program at Neva Shalom. A lovely looking little village on a mountain top. Strange in the back of my head I am thinking, hmmm, settlement houses are built on tops of hills. I had a horrific time getting into Neva Shalom using public transport, also half asleep didn’t help. I found myself relying on local Palestinians since the Israelis I spoke to either spoke Russian or only Hebrew. My Russian is a thin soup and my Hebrew are the basics like “Makova – What’s going on? And my favorite “La ira Ga. Chill out!” I’ve used bus stations around the world even in countries where I am clueless of the language, and I get around fine. Someone will always hold you by the hand and get you on the bus. This is one of the many vital lessons of travel, the kindness of strangers, and their willingness to help. However, I did people some people who were quite kind and gracious, Naama, and others… but I am afraid that for too many Israelis, the native borns known as Sabras -- it is no longer a fruit that is very tough on the outside and sweet on the inside: The new Sabra is impermeable on the outside and the fruit is bitter and rotting on the inside.

I met David fire an Israeli artist/ performance artist who was half drunk. He was on a retreat at the Latourne Monastery and old Christian monastery that has been here since the middle ages. I couldn’t quite figure out his relationship to the monastic experience since he was swigging back shots of something like Uzzo while I had dinner and kept focusing on his need to meet a woman. What was that line from the Fellini movie? Give me a woman? A month at a monastery even for the most secular of folks probably could push you over the top. After dinner, exhausted from traveling in from Remli, and not sleeping the night before I was ready to sleep well. David came by with a bottle of fine wine from the monastery and we had a splendid evening. We took out the guitar, played songs, made up poems, talked of the madness of Israeli society,
David said, ”I’m a Jew, I’m an Israeli, these people are fucking racists. These religious people are killing us. I hate them!” He spoke with such conviction and clarity, and the wine seemed to soften the edge of his anger. Hanging out with peace activists and singing “Salam/ Shalom,” or hanging with David? David was a blessing, an Israeli screaming at the madness and feeling lost. Loving the land, but detesting what his people had become.
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At midnight there was a group of 200 highschool teenagers were screaming, climbing on roof tops, and other neighbors asked them to be quiet. There were three teachers and the teenagers were totally out of control, singing, laughing, and having a grand time. But it was hell. I couldn’t sleep.
When I saw some of the kids at breakfast, I spoke to a few, and said I was awake. One said, sheepishly, it was there last night there. No apology, no remorse, he just turned his head away. These young men and women will be in the army in a year or two. In addition, I am sure that there are some who are of good heart and spirit, at least I hope, but there is this profound sense of arrogance amongst these kids that I have seen also in my journey in Israeli. It is the oddest thing. I've known Israelis around the world and had some good friendships, but hadn't seen this kind of in your face "fuck you kind of pervasive arrogance."
In the evening, a young man walks into the dining room with a semi automatic rifle. I asked the folks at Neve A Shalom and they said, Its normal.” Call me naïve but if you have a place of peace, how can you allow folks with guns? A settler also with an M-16 accosted David my Israeli artist friend.
I wanted to have a warm and fuzzy feeling about Neve a Shalom, and I am sure they are doing wonderful work. The director was very sincere, but I felt like I was in a Jewish town, with an Israeli perspective on peace, and the same sense of the feeling of being in Israel. Neve A Shalom. Staffed by Palestinians and a mix of volunteers. My time was too brief to get a full grasp, but I salute them and all who work for peace, no matter what side of the fence they are on.
One of my insights is that I do need to get back to my meditation and yoga practice. I need to deepen my own grounding in the peace processes. Not just in the actions of a peace maker, but in all the dimensions of peace, and most essentially the spiritual journey. My life is a secular and a spiritual journey. Perhaps that is the divide, wanting to have a life as an artist that is successful, a life as a Peace activist, and a rich spiritual life. I view the journey as spiritual, fused with the perspective that all life is god, all life is precious, the land and water is alive, and we are caretakers for this paradise.

This has been a very difficult journey in Israel. Culturally, in part, I am a Jew, we left this land two thousand years ago. But it gives us NO right at all to call it ours. We left. Whoever came after and who farmed and lived here, this belongs to them. If they want to sell me land, then I am grateful. But there is no exclusive right to land you left thousands of years ago.

My spirit is crying for the children of Israel and Palestine. You can feel the oppression when you are in the West Bank and there is a miasm of this Shettle Jew who never escaped from the Shettle. It is like a poor boy that grew up to be rich, but he is still poor in his heart and the way he behaves. The Israelis never escaped the Shettle, she/ he built a new one, with the Wall of Shame, the Separation Wall as a reminder. Nevertheless, most times for Israelis it is out of sight and out of mind. For the folks in Tel Aviv or further, it is there, but a very distant reality.
What is this Holocaust ghetto mentality? Why is this suffering foisted upon the world sixty years later? Shouldn’t the conversations also include all the other holocausts around the world? One more holocaust museum and I am going to stand out naked wearing a kuffeyah and a Palestinian flag. Does the world need one more Jewish museum? One more Holocaust of Jews? What about one for the 35 million killed by Stalin. Or the 90% of American Indians killed by the genocide of settlers? Or a museum to the 10,000 children who die from hunger?
This is a personal performance project I would like to do, a loincloth, with a kuffeyah and a Palestinian flag wrapped in barbed wire. A large sign, "As you remember the Jewish Holocaust, please remember the Palestinian holocaust that is now conducted by the Israel Government with the blessing of the US government." I can’t think of a better way to show this feeling of disgust and moral outrage.

Walking through the old Muslim quarter, Palestinians, prisoner in their own land, those without Israeli passports, they are selling menorahs, yarmulkes, and other items and this sense of hanging on. Shuffling and playing with the “man” trying to make a living, not making waves, and hoping to hell the Israelis disappear.
"Museum of Extinct Species"
There is a museum in East Jerusalem that is off the beaten path, “The Museum of An Extinct Species,” it represents the Palestinians, or actually as they say in Israel "The Arabs," and like the Nazi museum of Extinct Races, this new one will house the remnants of the Palestinian culture. An article I am now writing.
Spoke with a Hasidim at the bus station – He asked me in English how I was. I asked him, do you really want to know or should I give you a polite answer? I told him that the situation with the Palestinians with their brutal treatment by the Israeli government was very sad and unnecessary. He walked away and shook his head without saying anything.

Coming into Jerusalem in the morning, I hitchhiked from Neva Shalom and was picked up by a beautiful art gallery owner Natalie, I could have hitched a ride with her to Tel Aviv, she owned a contemporary art gallery, and our conversation never once touched on politics, but on another form of art – politics. Picked up by a beautiful woman in the morning talking of art and Islamic art what a great way to start the day. Every hobos dream.
JORDAN:
At the Border crossing.Hate borders. I never do well with them. The noise the militarism, the suspicions, the uncertainly, and all

The Major and the Sinuses: One guard said, you have to go back to Jerusalem, get an entrance visa from the Jordanian Embassy, then go north to Sheik Al Hussein. Though I am a big boy, I could have cried on hearing this. I told him that I do NOT want to go to Israel, it is engaged in horrible behavior to Palestinians. Finally, I was making no progress with that eloquent plea, so wound up at the directors office. He had a wicked sinus headache. He was in no mood to talk to me. However, oddly, I realized that they thought I was sick because I was carrying 50 homeopathic remedies and might let me through.
So the Major spoke fairly good English and I said, “Sir, you look quite ill can I help you with your sinus headache?” There I am in a grubby transit office, with a dyspeptic military officer, and his eyes looked like a beaten puppy dog, “Yes, please, what can you do?” I showed him acupressure points for the eyes and the face. Then gave him a dose of Kali Bich 30 C. Told him about salt water rinses, ginger tea with cinnamon, and about his allergies. A good fifteen minute wholistic homeopathic workup at the border. His assistant tried to argue with him that he was not permitted to let me into Jordan and like the great Pasha, he raised his left hand up a bit, and there was silence. He took out the transit paper that gave me residence in Amman for thirty day. We shook hands and he said “Thank you.” I said, “Shukran, ya saaid. (Than you, sir.) I felt a sense of peace and ease. My only other task was to figure out if I could get into Syria by nightfall.
I walk through the taxi drivers who all want to take me by private taxi to Abbaddi station in Amman, prices from 20 to 40 Dinars about 50 pounds. No, no no. I appreciate it all. Where do the Arabs get the bus? The security guard pointed to a door in the back of transit and said, “This is where the Arab buses are.” I felt like Harry Potter going through the magic platform and arriving in the Wizards Land, though this was grubbier and people poor, but as soon as I walked in and I asked about the transit to Jordan several people came over, big smiles and laughed, and made me so relaxed to be back in an Arabic country. With a big “Ählan Wa Sahhalan” Welcome," pleased that a westerner is chatting with them in Arabic, and then an autobus with about fifteen people are loaded up to Amman. Mothers in headscarves, the Palestinian and Jordanian style, with traditional robes. Babies sleeping in mothers arms, the bus is madly spinning around corners and I am the only one who seems concerned that we might wind up at Allah's gate, but this sense of fatalism and it is in "god's hands"really does give a sense of peace and hope in a world that often denies it.
Then into Jordan where I grab a "serveeece taxi" 4 persons to Damascus for about 14 Dinars. I am not sure I can get into Syria, even though I have been meticulous about emptying everying with Hebrew out of my posssession. Dr. Amjed is an orthopedic surgeon who trained in the US, he is the leading Syrian Kneee surgeon. It is marvelous to have this perspective of life in Syria and on the ground, both from this prominent doctor and my other traveling companions, a traditional couple, an older man in traditional robes and his wife in full black dress.
Yes, to the border, and I am prepared to have to turn around, and face the long journey back to Amman, but I get into Syria. Hey, they let the guitar playing hobo poet into Syria! Amazing! Long journey int. Bleak as hell. The great time worn poverty of outer Damascus, not even the darkness can hide the decrepitude, it is Third World housing, crowded together, cement make shift blocks. Dr. A says, "But there are no homeless. Families look out for each other." Finally, to the Hajazz Rail station that I know from the early readings of Lawrence of Arabia who with his Arabic warriors loved to blow up these trains. Now partying with Dr. A I step into downtown Damascus with no hotel reservations, but I find myself a cafe, a bathroom break, a glass of water, a hot meal, and the staff helps me place a call to a local cheap hotel. Thirty dollars and breakfast. Suddenly life is looking wonderful. I find the hotel and scoot down to the Damascus gate, as exhausted as I am from a day of traveling, I am as enchanted as if I had been on a long caravan ride through the desert, and encountered this fabled city. I loved walking through the old suqs of the city late at night, without a gram of fear, no police in sight, but I was at home. At last back in Damascus after so many years away.
More notes on Damascus to come
Slowly sifting and drifting back to Arabic.