Ya Mamma, Inshallah Yirbah Obama

So my sister got my mother this shirt from Urban Outfitters. She wasn't sure my mom would be into it, but figured it was worth a try. Buying presents for my mom is tough. She's not the sort of lady that has many things or many desires, and most often she'll open a present and kindly say thanks, but you know she would be just as happy without, perhaps even more happy since she deplores the accumulation of stuff. Occasionally, however, one strikes gold and fills the sweet lady with glee, just as my father did a few years ago with a Japanese knife set (my suggestion--ahem!) and just as my sister did with this shirt. I'm not sure what it really means. Maybe that Obama would be the best presidential choice for the likes of someone's mother? I know, I'm not always down with the slang, but I'm really at a loss. My mother wore this shirt to an Arab American Institute's BBQ that we attended at a park here in Northern Virginia last weekend, and one Arab-speaker we spoke to said she liked that it reminded her of the phrase "Ya Mama," which literally means "Oh, mother," and is also used as a common exclamation, such as "Bajeezus" or "Oh, meatballs" or whatever.

Speaking of Arabs and Obama, I was intrigued to hear a story on NPR the other day discussing Arab opinion of the senator. Some were interviewed about their certainty that even if Obama is elected, nothing will change in terms of American coddling of "fortress Israel" and then some were interviewed who were delighted that a "Muslim brother" may be elected president and how dramatic a change this would be for the world. Obviously then, ignorance is universal, though of course the sort of misconception that results in blind love is far better than that which yields irrational hate. And then I keep flashing in my mind to a woman I must have seen on television during my vacation saying (regretfully) she voted for Bush because he seemed like the kind of guy she could drink a Budweiser with. Where does this leave Obama? I see him sipping cocktails on a bright, manicured lawn somewhere. I wonder if he likes Lebanese food because I'm on the falafel hunt tonight.

in between asleep and awake...

In the past couple of weeks, I have started to remember my dreams. This is somewhat complicated by the fact that a couple of weeks ago I went through the box T. left in my closet nearly a year ago now, and I found that he had left in it his old, paint-splattered clock radio. For a while, I have been using my cell phone as an alarm clock. It's pretty convenient after all, but when I found the clock radio, I thought it might be cool to wake up to the news. So that's what I've been doing lately--remembering my dreams and waking up to the news, on npr, of course. As opposed to my previous muddy morning consciousness interrupted by a cell phone ring tone, I now have a splintered morning consciousness of my own dreamscapes spliced in with whatever npr is broadcasting at 6:30 or 7:30 or whenever I set the alarm for. It's kind of neat. I can't remember what was on the news this morning, but my dreams involved flying on some spaceship-like plane to Australia for a funeral and Argentina with my family, and then acting in a movie on the plane, and being filmed in a sex scene and then criticized for my performance, and a strange resort in Argentina and shopping with my mom at a Trader Joe's (in what was supposedly Buenos Aires but doesn't seem like it in remembering it) where she stocked up our shopping cart like we were staying for weeks when in fact it was simply an overnight layover, and the plane tickets were around $9,000, and that was supposed to be a deal. What is up with dreams? There is a scene I wrote forever ago now but I am using it in a new story, about a character waking up in a semi-dark room, and I'm stuck on the following passage:

"The dogs howl and bark before the sun, their desperate chorus tugging at the sheet of night shrouding the city. The sound invades her dreams, the thrum of animals creeping into the neverland that she will only know wakefully in pieces. Pieces of people she’s known and hasn’t known and still knows. Pieces recurring in nonexistent places: a war-torn pier in Brooklyn, a school in a skyscraper on the Mall in D.C., a swirling ship docked in a coastal city that she has seen from the sky, that she has always lived in and will always live in. Dream-pieces that the dogs tear into smaller pieces and tear and tear again until they are the dust that settles finally here in the room where they fell asleep."

I've gotten the comment from a few readers that they don't understand the part about Brooklyn and D.C. and the coastal city. And I'm curious as to whether other people besides myself have dreams that take place in settings that don't exist in the non-dream world but that are amalgamations of places that do exist in the non-dream world, and are places they dream about again and again. Anyway, that's what happens with me, and I haven't yet figured out the best way to explain it I guess.

In other news, our funny/sexy/sad reading went really awesomely well on Thursday night. Click here to read what Lizzy had to say.

And I found a decent article about Obama's shifting consciousness regarding Palestine and Israel. It is disheartening but also I guess we'd have a better chance of Obama changing his tune once he got in office than Hillary. But there will never, not ever, be a guarantee for that, and that's the problem I'm having today. The American presidential machine sure does make me feel nauseous.

Jonas Update

Yet more unfortunate events for my friend Jonas Moffat, whose recent expulsion from Israel I posted on July 8:

[following by Jonas]

Hello my dear friends. I know my last dispatch was entitled "Final Dispatch." But this is the Epilogue. And it is an unbelievable epilogue for sure. The severity and unbelievability of it is still setting in.In my "Final Dispatch," I informed you of how I was on my way to Jerusalemwith Katie to do story on the Pride Parade In Jerusalem. (See Katie'saccount here: http://moomin13.livejournal.com/71737.html). But I wasp icked up at the Qalandia checkpoint, thrown in jail for a week, and then deported to Egypt, only after much work from friends and lawyers convincing the Israeli Ministry of Interior not to send me back to the US.And like that, my life in Palestine was over. I was forced to leave my work and my friends. My apartment and rooms were left as if I was just going out for a stroll. But I was not to come back. I was prohibited from bringing most of my belongings with me, including my laptop. That was the "Get Out" part of the story. So now I sit in Egypt. I took the time since my deportation to be with friends and to heal after a pretty traumatizing experience. My wonderful friends from San Francisco helped to fund my way to Indonesia to be with them and clear my mind from the worst week of my life and re-energize and re-focus. And this I did. Then I boarded a flight back to Egypt to get back to work, to work remotely from Palestine for the ISM. But first, I needed the rest of my belongings that were stuck in Palestine. Katie boarded a bus from Jerusalem around the same time my friend Ahmed and I boarded a bus from Cairo. Destination: Sinai Peninsula. Number One: to see Katie whom I hadn't seen since the Israeli authorities kicked me out of Palestine. And Number Two: to retrieve my things, especially my laptop, so I could get back to working for the non-violent resistance. Through text messages, Katie and I corresponded. Her from Israel, and me from Egypt."On bus, see you in 7 hours." "Okay, see you soon, insha'allah. I miss you." Etc. Etc. Time passed. Eventually I received a text message from Katie: "I am detained at the border." This was expected of course. More time passed. "Still detained," read another text. An hour later, I receive this text: "I can't believe what they just did. I don't know how to tell you." This brings us to the "and Stay Out" part of the story…

(written by Katie)

"Friday morning I left Ramallah for Egypt to see Jonas in Sinai and to give him some of his stuff. I road a bus from Jerusalem to Eilat and was going to cross the border from Eilat, Israel into Taba, Egypt. I gave Jonas a ballpark time of when I would be there, because you never can tell what will happen at these border crossings. The first time I ever crossed the border from Israel to Jordan, I was delayed there for 3 hours because of a bomb scare. That was back in 2001, my first Israeli "security"experience. I was simultaneously scared and intrigued at the same time. "What kind of god-forsaken place is this?" my 25 year-old-self wondered. So there I was at the Eilat border crossing, wondering how long I would be detained this time. The border policewoman punched my passport number into the computer and I watched her face turn from almost-pleasant to suspicious and hostile. She made phone calls and I waited for the stone-faced security to arrive and tell me "Please come with us."

"Please come with us," they told me.

I followed them to the metal detector where they ran both my bags through the x-ray machine and made me walk through the metal detector twice. On the other side of the x-ray machine they began opening one of my bags. My sketchbook with my cartoons and drawings was in this bag. I had debated taking this with me or not, knowing it might cause a problem. But hey, Israel is a country of freedom of speech, right? I should be able to draw as I please without being a threat to security, right? So I took it, and now I was watching a bunch of pissed off border police flip through and ask me why do I draw like this? After they thoroughly searched one bag, they asked me if all of the stuff with me was mine. "Some of it is my friend's stuff that I am taking to him in Egypt." The border police looked at each other with raised eyebrows. "But don't worry; it's all been with me, at my house, for the last 3 months. I know what all of it is and I can show it to you. He stayed with me, left some of his stuff and now I am taking it to him."

At that point they took me away from my possessions and put me in the strip search room. I was thoroughly strip-searched and when I was allowed back out, I began to realize something was very wrong. All at once, after being alerted to something, about 8 of the security people all freaked out and ran off somewhere, quite an unsettling thing to see. I asked one who was still me what was going on. He told me not to worry and that everything was ok. "How can you tell me not to worry when 8 of your people just freaked out like that?" I asked. No answer. I waited for a while and then I was given one of my backpacks and my passport. At this point, if I had wanted to, I could have just left the terminal and gone to Egypt. Nothing and nobody was preventing me. But they had the other bag and I wanted to wait for it, of course.

I was made to wait inside the entrance to the Israeli side of theterminal. There were about 8 border police blocking the door. They would not let anyone in or out. I asked one of them about my other bag, he said the police had to come and check it but I could have it back after they checked it.

I waited.

Other people crossing from Egypt to Israel were lining up to leave inside. The border police would not let them leave. I saw a police van outside. At first there were maybe 15 people waiting inside. Then 30,then 100. There was a public announcement in Hebrew and English saying there was suspicious package that the police were checking out and that this was the cause of the delay. I heard an explosion. I began to feel uneasy. Then I heard another one.

Neta called me. I told her "Neta, the police have one of my bags. They aren't letting anyone leave the terminal, there's a police van parked outside and I just heard two explosions, I'm afraid they exploded my bag.

"Don't worry," she reassured me, "if they really thought you had a bomb, they would have arrested you by now." She's right, I thought… I have my passport; I could just leave if I wanted to. No one spoke to me; no one asked me a single question about where I was going or what was in my bag.

After about an hour, a police officer informed me they had exploded my bag.

"YOU WHAT ? YOU DIDN'T ASK ME ANYTHING, I WOULD HAVE OPENED THE BAG ANDSHOWED YOU EVERYTHING INSIDE IT, ALL YOU HAD TO DO WAS ASK. INSTEAD YOU WASTED THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS OF AMERICAN TAXPAYER MONEY TO EXPLODE MYGODDAMED BAG WITHOUT EVEN ASKING ME WHAT WAS IN IT. YOU RAN IT THROUGH THE X-RAY MACHINE YOU CAN SEE EXACTLY WHAT WAS IN IT"

I was crying at this point. Some of the female border police began laughing at me. The officer told me I would be reimbursed for the cost of the stuff that had been exploded.

"How do you know how much it was worth??? You EXPLODED It BEFORE YOU EVEN HAD A CHANCE TO LOOK"

"Don't worry," he told me, "Just go to the Eilat police station and they will give you a report and you can get money back."

Well there was nothing I could do at that point. There was some of mineand some of Jonas's stuff in that bag. Some of my original artwork too that I was giving him as a gift.

I made a list of everything:
Laptop
Ipod
Original art
Rainbow kuffiya
Watch
3 books
Tea
Fire poi
Bike light
3 shirts
Cds
Lens cap for camera
Sandals

I'm sure they feel like they thwarted a terrorist plot. All they did was waste a lot of people's time and money. Maybe it was because they didn't like my cartoons? I don't know. "

(end Katie's story)

So, as if it couldn't get any worse, now I am without about 1200 dollars worth of my belongings. My plan was to get back right away to Egypt and sit down at the computer and do some of the tasks I was doing in Palestine but from Cairo: sending e-mails, updating the website, compiling digests, editing reports, uploading photos and video… anything I could do to help. But it all went up in smoke, with the Israeli border authorities giving new meaning to: Your Hard Drive is Fried.

So I will try and start again. Subdue my frustration. Breathe deep. Like a kidney stone, just Let it pass.

**If anyone out there would like to help me get a new laptop to continueworking, please let me know.I am accepting PayPal donations at this email: joeskillet@riseup.net. Or contact me for other donation methods.**

Thanks to everyone out there who has been so supportive thus far! This is just another twist in the road. But I have anti-lock breaks and I know how to use them!

From Egypt with Love,
Jonas

Palestine Story

In the miasma of all the stories coming out of the middle east, particularly lately, I have a hard time paying attention. It's hard to know who to listen to, sometimes, and what to think. A good adviser on such matters is a previous roommate and dear friend, Jonas. Jonas was living in Palestine, working with the ISM, up until two weeks ago, when he was taken off a bus at a border-crossing for having a "fake" passport. He had recently changed his name and the passport bore his new name, which he obtained since his old name was on a list of people the Israeli government did not want in their country. Jonas was jailed, tried, and deported. Being Jonas, he somehow managed to make it Cairo, instead of back to the States. And now he is on a tropical getaway far, far away from America and the Middle East.

Below, I'm posting his most recent dispatch from his blog, followed by an entry from his "partner-in-crime" Katie about the day he was arrested. Of course Jonas is a million times more fortunate than the thousands of Palestinians who are confined to the borders Jonas was expelled from, but I think Jonas's story is an important one to pay attention to since it shows, not only how unjustly the Israeli authority treats the citizens of Palestine, but, on top of that, how the Israeli authority thwarts outside attempts to help those citizens.

What Jonas wrote:

"Battling Billions, Final Dispatch (for now)"

Well, they did it again. Another refugee to add to the ante. Of course, I
have a 'home' to return to in the States. I can go back if I choose and
continue to contribute to the fascist continuation of Occupation by paying
those tax dollars--watch them manifest themselves into a panel of the
Apartheid Wall, maybe morph into one of those atrocious watchtowers or
into a rubber-coated steel bullet to be shot at the non-violent
demonstrators in Bil'in. Sure, I have that dreadful home to return to.

But my home is in Palestine. My life is there. Those who favor and work
for human rights, however, have no place in an Apartheid State, and the
Israeli government does everything in their "God-given" power to eliminate
this problem, through intimidation or by placing them on a plane and
exporting them.

That scene of a field of apricot trees being ripped from the Earth by an
Israeli bulldozer has been on replay ever since I lay in the Israeli
prison bed. Israeli soliders and police throwing men and women to the
ground as they pray to Allah for this moment in time to cease. Sons are
handcuffed. Activists are seen like rag dolls being tossed from here to
there. Hundreds of years of livelihood dismantled by the Middle East's
only democracy. And soon I find myself forced onto a plane by Israeli
security because I bared witness, video-taped and photographed all that
this democracy had to offer. I saw this democracy bare its teeth with its
unpleasant smile, seeping through a stench of death, a 60 year old rotting
lie of innocense.

And I am sent elsewhere. "Go back to your own country--aren't there enough
problems with your own government," sneers the judge. God, if she only
knew. Those problems with my government brought me here in the first
place.

I wonder if when Oprah makes her solidarity visit for those "terrorized
Israelis" she will see what's happening across the "border," listening to
my or the thousands of other e-mails pleading that America's #1 talk show
host experience the Palestinian plight, to see what terrorism means at 2am
when an entourage of soldiers invades your village and practices a war
games scenario, wreaking havoc on the inhabitants. Somehow I doubt it.

Israel wouldn't deport a high-profile Amercian woman like Oprah because
she reported on Israeli settlers attacking an 8-year old Palestinian boy
in Hebron, would they?

You know, I wouldn't put anything past the Middle East's only democracy.

So, I am taking six weeks to redirect this anger, sadness, emptiness, and
frustration, and hoping to manifest these emotions into something
beautiful. A regime of ugliness has no defense against this kind of
beauty.

But can this beauty battle billions of American tax dollars?

One can only hope.

Signing off until further notice...

Salamaat,
Jonas

What Katie wrote:

Thursday Jonas and I were on our way from Ramallah to Jerusalem. It
was the evening of the gay pride parade. Jonas was composing the
opening sentence of his future report outloud.. it was something
along the lines of "what brings Jews, Muslims and Christians together
in Jerusalem like nothing else..." except it was more clever than
that and I'm feeling more depressed than clever at the moment so I
can't recall the exact line. As some of you know, the only thing that
unified all faiths was their violent opposition to the gay pride
parade this past week. The previous week the Haredi Jews had a
counter demonstration. The police were going to be out in full force
because last year there were some serious injuries.

Jonas's visa was expired but he had an appointment slip from the
ministry of the interior to renew his visa on July 2nd. This means it
is still legal for him to be in the country. We approached Qalandia
checkpoint in a service. The driver stopped and a soldier boarded the
bus to check our passports. I showed mine and Jonas showed his and
the appointment slip. The soldier took his passport and exited the
bus. He returned and told Jonas to get off the bus and come with him.
I followed to see what was going on. In less than 4 minutes, they'd
handcuffed Jonas and started taking him over to the police terminal
at Qalandia, accusing him of having a fake passport. Not sure whether
it was better to try to get away myself and start calling the lawyer,
or go with him, I wavered for a few minutes, initially refusing to go
with the police officers who insisted I come as well. In the end I
decided it would be better to be with him and quickly sent off some
text messages saying what was happening. They took us into a police
trailer and told us Jonas's passport was fake and that he was under
arrest and they wanted to ask me some questions. I ignored their
questions and continued text messaging the peeps telling them what
was happening and what Jonas needed. The cop told me to give him my
phone. I refused because I know that that police have no authority to
take my possessions unless they arrest me. He tried to grab my phone
out of my hand, I jerked my hand away. He threatened to use force, I
told him if he wanted any of my possessions, he'd have to arrest me.
I tried to resume text messaging and he grabbed the phone. I twisted
it out of his hand. (Thanks for that, Sifu Phil) He said if I didn't
give him the phone, he'd arrest me. "Fuck you," I replied. Then he
called a female cop in who put me in handcuffs and they took my phone
away. But it's all good cuz by then all of our peeps knew and could
get the ball rolling on getting us out of there and I'd be with
Jonas, at least for the time being.

Jonas and I waited in that room for about an hour while the cops went
through our stuff and filled out my arrest paperwork.

I've always been afraid that when I was interrogated or arrested, I
would end up talking and saying something I shouldn't because of the
way they pressure you in an interrogation. Somehow though I was able
to just withdraw into my head and I didn't say a single word to the
the whole time except to tell Jonas I loved him.

After an hour they took both of us out of the trailer, they put me in
the back of a police vehicle and that was the last I saw of Jonas
that day. I was taken to the police station at the Giv'at Ze'ev
settlement and told by a bitchy policewoman that I had been arrested
for resisting a police officer. She wanted to hear my side of the
story but I refused to answer any questions until I could talk to my
lawyer. (television is good for something, right ?) When I was
finally able to call Yael, she said that Gaby Lasky was working on
Jonas's situation and that I should just tell the police officer what
happened, say I was sorry, and that I should be released and the
charges against me would be dropped. I'm not very good at ass-kissing
because I feel it is undignified, but I was able to do a sufficient
enough job to get un-arrested.

The most interesting part of my conversation with this police officer
was the lecture I got about being in Ramallah.

"Why were you in Ramallah ?" she asked me.

For those of you reading who haven't been to Palestine I will explain
some of the political/geographic situation. Ramallah is a part of the
West Bank that is classified as Area A. This means it is under
control of the Palestinian Authority and Israeli civilians are
prohibited from entering. "For their own safety" is the standard
line. The Israeli army can, and does still invade. I tried to picture
the look on the cop's face if I told her that actually, I live there.

"I was picking up something from a friend," I said.

"Where were you ?" she asked.

"Al Manara square."

"Did you know it is illegal for you, as an Israeli citizen, to be in
Ramallah ?"

"Yes."

She began the lecture, "I know you are new here so I need to explain
some things to you. It is very VERY dangerous for you to be in
Ramallah. Those people will kill and mutilate you if they find out
you are Jewish. They kill each other all the time. I hope for your
own good that you never go back there. If they see you have this
Israeli ID on you, they will kill you."

At this point I was picturing my nice apartment on the edge of the
wadi and my nice friends who live in Ramallah and know I have an
Israeli ID. I don't hide it, if someone asks how I am able to stay in
the West Bank for so long, I tell them. When I open my wallet to buy
something, anyone can see my ID. I feel very safe in Ramallah. My
Israeli friend Neta walks down the street in Ramallah speaking Hebrew
on the phone. I tried to imagine what would happen if I told the cop
these things, if I said to her, "Listen, either you're wrong or I'm
crazy. Take your pick."

But that's a conversation for another time and another place. I just
wanted to get the hell out of there and see what was going on with
Jonas.

I called him immediately and found out the bad news that he was
already at Ben Gurion airport and was likely to be deported. Jonas is
my partner in (non-violent) crime. We've been beaten by settlers
together, gotten sick from poisoned water (courtesy of the Israeli
army) together, given 11 speeches together, done the fire circus
together, lived together, worked together, been arrested together,
discussed the benefits and drawbacks of doing a fire circus at
Huwarra checkpoint at night (we both decided we'd probably get killed
so we shelved that plan), and been subjected to all kinds of threats
and intimidation from police, soldiers, settlers, and Hillel students
etc.. Jonas is my home boy. We even used to live on the same street
in San Francisco before we knew each other back when I was a blue-
haired art student and he was the bitchy waiter who served me and my
goth krew at Sparky's Diner in San Francisco. Yeah I remember Jonas
back then, I thought he was a prick because it took him an hour to
bring me my veggie burger at 2am and I'm sure he thought I was some
stuck-up goth bitch. We were both right.

Turns out "They" had found out that Jonas had been here last year
under a different name and passport. Which is not illegal, but it
means he got back in the country without "Them" knowing and that's a
bruise to the ego of the security-conscious, paranoid Israeli
intelligence.

I decided to try to go to the airport and at least see him, not
really sure if it would help. Unfortunately getting there turned out
being pretty difficult because of the parade. Jerusalem was more or
less locked down and few busses were running. I managed to convince
an Israeli girl to let me follow her to the central bus station by
foot. She said we couldn't get a bus there and she was on her way to
the area anyway. It took us 45 minutes to reach the bus station on
foot. There were police EVERYWHERE. She pointed out some special
police on motorcycles and told me they carry huge clubs and their
only job is to beat people with them. We walked through some Haredi
neighborhoods and found the that the residents had already begun to
wind themselves up for the parade. In a show of displeasure, they'd
overturned dumpsters in the middle of the street and set the trash on
fire. I asked the girl if the parade was going through this
neighborhood. She said no. In a different situation I probably would
have enjoyed the walk through Jerusalem, you can learn lot about
human nature if pay attention to the way people behave when they're
gearing up for some violent confrontation, but I spent the entire
time on the phone trying to figure out what was going on with Jonas.

By the time I actually got to the central bus station to get a bus to
the airport, I learned from Kobi, one of the Israeli anarchists who
was trying help Jonas, that going to the airport would be useless
because they had transferred him to the immigration prison in Lod. I
sat down in the bus station and had a tearful conversation with Jonas
on the phone. There's something about being in Israeli bus stations
that really magnifies one's despair. Maybe it's the fact that every
other person in the bus station is carrying a gun, or maybe it's just
the bitchy lady at the entrance to the bathroom who won't let you
relieve yourself unless you give her a shekel.

Since there was nothing I could do but wait until his hearing before
a judge on Sunday, I decided to go back to Jerusalem and stay the
night at the Faisal. I left the bus station and flagged down a cab. I
asked the driver how much would it be to go to Damascus Gate. He told
me 40 shekels. He drove me to Jaffa Gate and said "here we are, this
is Jaffa Gate." Jaffa Gate is in Jewish West Jerusalem and is about a
20 minute walk from Damascus Gate in Arab East Jerusalem, the place I
had asked him to bring me.

"I told you to take me to Damascus Gate," I reminded him.

"I can't take you there, you can get out here and walk."

"Why can't you take me there ?" I asked. (This is a rhetorical
question because I know what he's going to say)

"Because of the Arabs," he answered. (I was right !!!)

"Are you afraid of the Arabs ?" (What about the Haredim on the other
side of town who have practically declared war on the gay population
of Israel ?) "Look," I told him, "I asked you how much it was to
Damascus Gate, you said it was 40 shekels, you agreed to take me
there and I'm not getting out of this taxi until you take me there."

"It'll be 50 shekels if you want me to take you to Damascus Gate."

"No, you are going to take me to Damascus Gate and I am going to pay
you 40 shekels."

He took me there and let me off. I paid him 40 shekels.

Walking back to the Faisal I realized that the Holy Land is pretty
close to Hell on Earth. Everyone here hates everyone else. Everyone
is trying their best to make everyone else's lives miserable. What
differentiates it from the US, is that all of these different people,
Palestinians, gays, Haredis, Fatah, settler hilltop youth,
anarchists, international solidarity workers, Sudanees refugees,
Hamas, secular Jews, Zionists, Islamic Jihad, Kahanists, the JDL,
communists, Ethiopians, non-Jewish Russian immigrants, Bedouins,
Druze, Armenians, Christian Palestinians, and loud-mouthed new
immigrants from New York City staking claim to their G*d-given
territory in the middle of the old city of Hebron have to live
together in an area 1/19th the size of California and all of us,
depending on our religion or ethnicity, have some form of travel
restrictions placed upon us. West Bankers and Gazan's of course can't
enter "Israel," Israelis can't be in Area A, refugees are restricted
to their moshavs, Israeli anarchists are forbidden (just like
Palestinians) from going anywhere near the settlements, Jerusalem
Palestinians can't be in Area A. It's enough to make your head spin
and democracy it ain't.

In the US, the neo-Nazis can happily snort meth in their isolated
bunkers in Idaho and no one really has to think about them very much.

Jonas was given a deportation order on Sunday. He wanted to go to
Egypt to stay with a friend and figure out what he would do from
there. He's also supposed to go to Bali next month and leave from
Amman Jordan. But "They" had other plans for him and were threatening
to fly him back to the United States. This would have been a
disaster. Luckily Kobi was able to handle the bitchy immigration
police and arrange for him to be sent to Cairo. While talking to
Jonas the phone, he told me "They" "accused" him of being Muslim
because of his beard. When he pointed out that Jews have beards too
and told them he prays to Jesus, they laughed in his face.

We brought his things to the airport and were only able to see him
for about two minutes, long enough to give him his stuff and some
food because he hadn't eaten since his arrest on Thursday, and
understandably so.

I miss Jonas. I can't wait to see him again. I don't know what is
going to happen now. There are so many things here I cannot imagine
doing without him.