Saoirse (Freedom) and lack of it.

This post is from my sister who has just returned from Palestine. I hung out with both my sisters there last month. This sums up what I want to say better than i can. I wanted to make sure I hadn’t overcooked any of the songs I had written solo or in Clann Zú re the occupation. I had undercooked. I will post my own thoughts soon.

Saoirse and lack of it. Eveanna de Barra

I never realized was just how much freedom I had. How valuable my voice, human rights, access to laws in an equal manner to those around me was. I did not know because nobody had ever tried to take them away from me and no matter where I had travelled in the world I had seen at least a semblance of my rights reflected in the lives of those around me.

And then I arrived at Tel Aviv airport and my one month Journey to Israel and the occupied Palestinian Territories began- my journey towards gratitude began, but most importantly my journey towards inspiration was about to begin.

When I arrived at Tel Aviv airport I was anxious. I had been warned that my Irish passport and my international face may cause delays in getting into the country. Blessed as I am with the given law of comedy that surrounds any serious situation in my life my interrogation began with an innocent enough proposal from the guy at immigration for a date…he asked me where I was going. I told him Tel Aviv, he gave me a wee grin and slid his number into my passport, stamped my entry stamp and I was off. Delighted with my easy entry and pretty happy that I was still dateable despite months of eating nothing but deep fired Indian food. I went to collect my luggage and on the way out was stopped by an Israeli soldier. She called over a lady whose job it was to interrogate me.

I had to answer the same questions over and over again- did I know anyone in Israel? Where was my husband from In India? Why had I been to Malaysia? Why Had I been to Morocco? What color knickers was I wearing etc etc… all was well in the world until she flicked through my passport again and came across the number given to me by her colleague inside the airport. Who also happened to be here boyfriend…Now the interrogation changed from protecting the state of Israel to angry girlfriend who simply must know if I asked for the number or he gave it to me…I was ushered off to the bad people room and asked lots more questions. My luggage was scanned a couple of times and I was more concerned that I would have to join this chick and her roving boyfriend at a group therapy session than anything else- I would be gagged and bound and thrown into a military jeep and dragged off to a therapists office to work through it with them. Eventually I was let go and I proceeded to the exit of the airport. Shaking. Me, shaking. Weird right. You had to be there I guess. Guns and 18 year olds don’t mix. I was scared.

I was later told that I was the image of Yasser Arrafts daughter…I only wish.

I arrived in Bethlehem that night and for the first time I felt I could breathe. Here I was in the West Bank I had seen on TV. The Palestine my heart had always broken for from a distance. And surprise, surprise it was nothing like I imagined.

The truth is we are creatures that need to solidify our ideas based on imagery and information we receive to make it sit right in our heads, to own it in a sense- even when we have never had a chance to verify that information or imagery. I had done the same thing before I came to India. Although I had always prided myself of my left wing, open hearted open minded views I realized after months of nobody sexually attacking me and how my money and status put me to shame next to the smiling kid in the slum (who I had the gall to pity when I found it so hard to crack a smile with all that I had) that I was racist.

I had latched on to the horror stories about Indian men and poverty and lots of other stereotypes, I had taken them as truth when really they were just post colonial hangover thoughts that had infected me. Even the worst incidents of sexual harassment in India were nothing compared to what I would have gotten walking down the street in Dublin on a Saturday night. I struggled with the fact that because the men sexually harassing me in the west had white skin those horror stories never actually became horror stories in my head. I struggled with the fact that I had come to India armed with defences based on the color of people’s skin. I was ashamed of that and then I sorted out my karma by marrying an Indian Seriously speaking I promised myself I would never let that happen again.

Once again I came to Palestine armed with pre conceived notions and ideas. My first week in Palestine threw me off. It was so much worse than I had ever imagined. It was so much better than I had ever imagined.

The Occupation was worse. The people were Masters and teachers that the whole world could learn from.

I had seen angry Palestinians on my television running through the streets with their dead held above their heads hoping that someone would do something. I had seen the photos of suicide bombers before and after. I had expected rage and devastation. I had expected to be received in a manner that may not have been friendly. I had expected to be frightened. I had expected a Muslim society where religion came first. How wrong I was.

The only place I ever felt scared was in the airport in Israel and at the checkpoints. The only people I saw in rage toting guns and being unfriendly towards me were in Israel.

Upon creation of the state the world’s longest running refugee crisis began when Israel backed by Britain displaced Palestinian families from all over what is now known as Israel to create a Jewish state.

The Palestinian families who live in refugee camps still have the keys to their houses around their necks. People believed they would be allowed to go home. Some still do. Many will be born and die in those camps and many will see the Israeli terror forces roll in in their tanks at night to massacre their neighbours and families.

Palestine showed me that diversity actually works. There are Palestinian Christians and Muslims. Nobody ever really talked about their religion. People talked about Palestine. People talked about occupation. A Muslim friend was describing how his kids loved Christmas because they got to visit all the Christian friends on that day. A Christian friend expressed the same love of the Eid feast. I had never seen this anywhere in the world. The BBC, my brain and CNN had tricked me again. I had gotten it all backwards again.

At night in Bethlehem the bells of The Church of The Nativity where Jesus was born rang out into the sky where the Call to Prayer from the Mosques shared the same space. It opened my heart and gave me faith.

To leave Bethlehem to go to Jerusalem which is divided into two sections, Israeli and Palestinian (although the entire area is actually controlled by Israel) I had to get a bus. This bus had to go through an Israeli checkpoint. The bus pulls into a checkpoint and everyone has to get off and line up in a cattle grid style contraption. Being desert land it is hot to say the least. There is no shade. The IDF (Israeli Defence force) soldiers stand under a shaded area usually smoking and eating with their pants down around their waists.

When they feel like it the call the people lining up forward and the Palestinians show their ID cards. They are allowed back on the bus when the 18 year old soldier decides so. People over a certain age are allowed to stay on the bus and the IDF soldiers get on the bus to check their ID’s (how nice!) we were waiting in the line in the searing heat when my first experience of abuse of the elderly occurred. A woman who was 80 if she was a day was pulled off the bus. She was a typical terrorist…hip operation candidate, bent over with a hunched back and a walking stick. She was not allowed to go to Jerusalem. She was older than the state of Israel but she was not allowed to go to Jerusalem. I couldn’t understand. We were on a highway! It was a big highway- where would she go? She would dehydrate. How would she get back to Bethlehem? Who would call someone to pick her up?

Simple. She would be left to sit on the side of the road. Because she was Palestinian. The bus driver walked her across the road and there she sat. In the heat in the middle of the day. The checkpoint is patrolled by teenagers with guns. I was a teenager once- I’m very glad I didn’t have a gun back then. This was not good. What was I to do? Had I have been anywhere else in the world I would have shouted and screamed and demanded that the lady be taken care of. I would have gone Irish on their asses. Instead I got back on the bus. I started to cry. I was in disbelief. I was ashamed. The bus pulled off and the lady still sat on the side of the highway. I was told it happens all the time. The bus drove off. I was informed that this was the “nice” checkpoint. The soldiers had sneered at the people presenting their ID’s made them line up like cattle, made them do it every day. When the bus drove off the awful realization that this was “nothing” compared to the abuse Palestinian people suffer daily dawned on me.

I tried to go through the checkpoints a few more times. Each time my rage increased and I realized I was a liability to people who had to get to work and worst of all had to face this humiliation daily. I had the luxury of being a smart ass in the cattle grid, I had the luxury of poking my tongue out at a soldier when I got back on the bus because I’m 5. I had the luxury of screeching “this is NOT normal!” when we got back on the bus, I had the luxury of saying thank you in Arabic as I snatched my passport back from the soldiers hand. I had started to believe that my rights were a luxury.

By force, the apartheid wall, discrimination, abuse of power, murder and day to day humiliation Israel has created a situation where human rights for Palestinian people living within Israel and in Palestine are a luxury.

The last time I left Bethlehem and got that bus a young Palestinian man told me of soldiers at checkpoints who make Palestinian teenagers with valid ID’s who don’t know each other kiss each other on the lips if they want to get back on the bus. But I was reassured by reading the Israeli Defence Ministers response to the genocide that took place in Gaza last year that Israel respects human rights…

I couldn’t do it. I had only done it three times! I could not get on the 21 bus. I wasn’t strong enough.

I was happy to be in Bethlehem. Palestine suited me. Good food, people, hearts and minds. I was happy there. It became a running joke that I would end up with a key to the city. Oh I wish. Palestinians laughed at me when I told them about my bus rage. Many of them did not have the precious blue Israeli issued permit to visit their beautiful Jerusalem and would have traded places with me any day so they could pray in their mosques or sit in their churches.

Jerusalem was 20 minutes away and a lifetime away. These people were living in a prison. One man had not been to Jerusalem in 15 years.

The thing that struck me most about these people living under occupation and terrorized daily was how well they did that living. It amazed me that life could go on. People woke up and went to work and fed their children, straightened their hair, did the laundry, wrote their poetry, watched the one they loved pulled out of their homes in the middle of the night, loved, cried, laughed, danced, argued, and made damn good falafel and hummous- and they did it well. They rose above what I could not bear to even witness. They were living under occupation in a fashion that I tried to live in and couldn’t manage in total freedom.

One man walked up to me in a restaurant in Bethlehem and asked me if I was a journalist. I told him I wasn’t. He asked me if I would just tell someone, somewhere his daughter’s story anyway.

She had scratches and bruises all over here face. She was four. She was walking to school and was attacked by Israeli settlers because she was Palestinian. “Nobody does nothing” he said in broken English. He was a father, holding the hand of his baby who had been traumatized physically and emotionally by violence perpetrated in the name of God. In the Holiest of Lands…. I didn’t know what to say. I had nothing to say. I smiled at her and wanted to say “someone will do something” but I knew it not to be true. For her story was just one of a million.

People who were born into the occupation asked me what the sea was like. The sea their people had swam in before the occupation. The sea they would never get to lay eyes on. People imagined this sea; they had even imagined their visit to the sea right down to what was in their picnic basket. I imagined it with them. I tasted the food with them, I smelt the sea with them and I felt lucky. Easy for me because I had picnicked at the beach so often. Of course I imagined it in real colours with real tastes. I felt lucky to know that I could go anywhere in the world and touch the sand, feel the sun on my back despite what my race was.

Bethlehem has been cut off by the giant apartheid wall that snakes through the West Bank cutting people off from their lives, families, spouses, jobs and land. It was built by Israel to “keep the terrorists out”. It has in fact decimated the lives of everyone living behind that wall. I stood near that wall many times and I never felt small despite the fact that it towered over me because of the people I had met. Walls are built by men and they are knocked down and overcome by human spirit.

There is the human spirit. I don’t really know if I ever truly knew what that was until I had been to Palestine. I had read about it in my own History books, I had seen the Pictures and heard the stories of Ireland’s heroes but I had never seen it like this. I am glad I saw it in my lifetime.

Human spirit is not about shouting and screaming on a bus- nor is it about violence. Human spirit is what Palestinians embody. They have a natural grace that lifts them above the abuse they face, they have a kindness and goodness that does not dim in the terror that is their existence. I could never explain why I thought they were so much more powerful than the occupier. I could not explain why even though they didn’t have the guns or the rights or the voice or the US aid like Israel did that they were the powerful ones. I guess you cannot explain human spirit. It is something you feel as you witness it.

There are plenty of Websites on line with information on Palestine created by Palestinian and Israeli organizations dedicated to protecting human rights. Please talk about Palestine, write about Palestine and demand that your politicians hold Israel accountable for the human rights abuses that take place daily at their hands. Please boycott Israel by not buying products from there.

Most of all please visit Palestine for yourself. It is one of the most beautiful places I have been with a wealth of culture and sites unique in the world. They are in desperate need of tourism that has been heavily affected due to the wall, lack of access (you can only enter through Israel and they wont let you in if you say you are going there), I promise none of the horror stories are true…in fact it’s quiet the opposite.