Can you imagine– scores of armed men, who do whatever their leaders tell them to do, could kidnap or kill whoever they wanted if they came in through those tunnels? Can you imagine– tens of […]
Tag: IDF & Refusal to Serve
Plastic Forks and Unusual Rhythms
Here are some observations directly from Mori. As is his wont, the sentences get short and become fragmented when the ideas get more spiritual. I think that is probably appropriate. There are some things we […]
What Am I Trying To Do
Mori is still sitting in prison and I am still filling in on this blogalog. They are having him stomp around while wearing an army hat and, as far as I understand, sit around for […]
Why Not Not Refuse To Serve in The IDF: Contact Info, Haaretz Articles, and Responses
Information trickles in. Mori is enjoying the idyllic vistas of Northern Israel in a twenty person tent, where he is, more than anything else, waiting around. He is expected to be released next Thursday and […]
Update: 10 days, and an interview in Hyper Vocal
We found out recently that Moriel is up North in a military prison, where he will be detained for the next ten days. After that they will presumably release him in order to allow him […]
Updates from across the sea
When I was five years old Mori punched me in the face after we watched “The Sound of Music.” I had not understood that raising my right arm in salute signified support for Nazism. I […]
Draft Orders to Join the IDF; Refusal
Dear friends, On October 21st, 2012, I am expected to become a soldier in the IDF. I was born in Israel, am Jewish, am male and am under 26 years old and thus received a […]
How to Get Detained by the IDF without Being Aggressive, Provocative or even Loud
This morning, I ventured out to the village of al-Mufaqara in the South Hebron Hills. I went with four members of Ta’ayush, an Israeli organization that challenges the Occupation by helping Palestinian farmers access and work their land (they usually go out on Saturdays, so I don’t go with them, but am a big fan of their work and was excited to have this opportunity to go on a non-Shabbat). Our intent was to help the folks in al-Mufaqara fix a dirt road for a few hours, and then to go meet up with a tour in Susiya, right near by, led by the Solidarity Movement. We did both, but were “delayed” for a bit, between steps one and two… (Explanation forthcoming. Below is a picture of a few of the 20 soldiers who came. Backup!!! That is to say: Boredom).
Also with us in al-Mufaqara were a few lovely and friendly Italian volunteers from Operation Dove, a group that does peace and nonviolence work in various locales throughout the world, and in Palestine is based in al-Twane. These activists in particular, and their group in general, struck/strike me as the exact opposite of the sort of international activists I wrote critically of last week, humble, loving, nonviolent, dedicated (one of the volunteers, who told me she plans to stay for two and a half years, inshallah, spoke excellent Arabic). Together with these two, and a maybe twenty young boys from the village, ages 5 through 20something, and a few older men from the village, we began shoveling dirt into buckets and loading the buckets onto a truck. My little writer’s hands started cracking immediately, and I could only laugh at the fact that the seven year-old Palestinians were shoveling much more efficiently than I was. We were there, of course, primarily in solidarity and as a sort of “protection” (if Israelis and internationals are present, chances of violence from settlers or the army are decreased).
Work goes great, as far as work goes, and then, as we are heading to a different part of the village, the kids see soliders, and start chanting:
1, 2, 3, 4
Ockibush No More!
Huh? Laughing, I clap along. And then I get it:
1, 2, 3, 4, Occupation No More had blended, in their minds, with 1, 2, 3, 4 HaKibush (Hebrew for Occupation) No More.
Brilliant. Tamar, another one of the activists there, made a supersharp lingual observation that may translate only mediocre to English: The two words have the same root in Arabic.
The Leftern Wall 