General

Our Tax Dollars at Work: Military Harassment in Tu’qua


by Issam Sahouri, 04 november 2015. Comment by Milena Rampoldi, ProMosaik e.V.: Another important article about Tu’qua where the Palestinian teacher Issam Sahouri works. We have already presented his project for traumatised children and theater therapy. Now we would like to show you the reality of school children in Tu’qua, a village next to Bethlehem in the Occupied West Bank, from the point of view of an American activist, friend of Issam. And all the violence you will read about here, is financed by the military aid to Israel, so it is the result of the tax dollars which permits this illegal occupation to continue …. Tu’qua is home for 12,000 people living beside a
settlement, Tekoa. EAPPI teams have been going to the secondary boy’s school
for protective presence for the past few years. The Israeli Defense Force (IDF)
routinely provokes the older children. A year ago 8 teenage boys were arrested
by the IDF in nighttime raids. Many of them are still being held in prison and
awaiting trial.
Imagine you are a student on your way to school, your
backpack full of books, writing utensils, and last night’s homework. Imagine
you are walking out the door to walk to school when suddenly you see down the
road an army tank and some soldiers with their guns pointed at you. 
Imagine you go to a school where someone has written these words on your
school.
Imagine you are a parent, kissing your child good-bye,
checking to make sure they have their lunch and that homework. Imagine you are
a parent trying to decide whether or not its safe for your child to go to
school or not, whether they should stay home or risk being shot at by some
angry settlers or soldiers.

Imagine you are a schoolteacher who can’t stop these
violent provocations or attacks and who also can’t stop your students from
wanting to fight back, throw some stones, light some tires. Imagine that you
have no way to protect them only your strong words and your insistence that education
will free them.

This is the everyday reality of the children of Tu’qua.
Tu’qua is the place that the prophet Amos comes from, the place where justice
is supposed to roll down like a mighty stream. This is another place where a
hilltop Palestinian village and its entire people are under daily surveillance
and attack from both the nearby settlers and the ever-present army. It is a
place where farmers still plow with mules and sheep and goats pass by in small
herds looking for green pastures. 

Our Bethlehem
team was called to this idyllic village three times this week for possible
violence from the military. Our EAPPI logs and literature indicate this is an
old story, however things had been quiet for a while in the village. A few
years back, one teacher told me, the settlers shot seven kids from a place from
the fenced in water tower for the settlement up the road (water taken from
Palestinians). Violence has erupted here before—kids throwing stones at
settlers or soldiers, settlers throwing stones and shooting at kids and the
army in the middle “protecting the settlers.” Like some updated Orwellian scene
“security” and “protection” have become code words for the license to threaten
and/or kill.
Day One, we were called
to come quickly to the school because soldiers were in front of the boys and
girls schools. I was not here so two of my teammates rushed out to the village.
It was calm and the soldiers gone by the time they arrived.
Day two, we were called
again. Same thing but this time we decided to stay and wait to accompany the
children across the busy street and at the intersection where the well is. We
waited all day in the hot sun talking to shepherds and passerbys. At around
12:30 the children came and we escorted them across the roads. No soldiers were
in sight. I practiced my few words of Arabic and they practiced their few words
of English. We greeted each other with pleasure and smiles and under my breath
I prayed for their safe travel home.
We assessed that it would be good to come early to the
school the next day just in case. Since two people had to be on checkpoint duty
and one was on vacation, only one would be sent. I went to checkpoint duty at
3:45 and returned home around 7:30 to a call to come quickly, “the soldiers are
shooting at the children.”
Bleary eyed from the early morning checkpoint
craziness, my teammate and I gobbled down some bread and bananas and took a
quick taxi ride out to the village. We got there in time to see the silhouettes
of children running across the top of the hill with soldiers running after
them. The children were both screaming and chanting. Tanks were moving up the
steep hill past the school.
We marched up the steep hill. Earlier my teammate had
been told that EAPPI was not allowed here. She answered, “Neither are you.”
They let her pass.
As I stood there facing the soldiers who weren’t quite
sure if they should aim at us, I had this wrenching feeling in my gut and a
strong desire to do something. I tried to practice mindfulness and see what my
body was telling me, what my heart was feeling, what my mind was thinking. It
was something like this: “How dare you point your made in America, paid
by my taxes gun at me or these children?” How can I stop this
 madness? Standing by and taking pictures of a tragedy about to happen
does not feel right. I want to rip the guns out of their hands. I feel
sick to my stomach. Not only has my  country vetoed the cessation of
settlement development and is debating whether or not to continue to support
Palestinian refugees, we are supporting this military occupation through our
considerable financial support, over three billion dollars, and maybe more. We
are, I am, responsible for this violence and possible killings and I am
helpless to stop it and I feel violence welling up in me. I want to fight
back too and a rock is not big enough to match these rising dark feelings of
anger.  I tried to breathe through these tangled emotions of pain and
anger.
My teammates returned and we decided to split up. I
volunteered to go back to the school and check in with the teacher and the
students while my other teammates decided to stay close to the soldiers. When I
returned to the school, I could see and sense that the teachers had been here
many times before but they were also agitated. They had only half of the
students. They couldn’t do their lessons for the day. I offered to be of
service in any way I could. One of the teachers asked me then to come and visit
the classrooms and talk to the children.
So for the next hour or so, I went from class to class
talking about who I was, where I lived in America. I talked about my faith as
a Christian and nonviolent resistance and my own experience that morning about
wanting to strike back. I taught them the Spanish expressions, “Mea Culpa” and
“Hasta la Victoria” I cannot recall
what I said in these 20 minutes dialogues verbatim but I do remember how
attentive they were. I also remembered from my work as a chaplain to never
pretend that I know what someone else is experiencing so I admitted that I had
no idea what it was like to live under this unbearable oppression every day.
I recall now two questions that stood out: “Has America ever known occupation?” and “ Will America let me
come study at its universities?” Both were hard to answer and required
thoughtful wording. To the first I said, if I were a Native American, I would
answer yes and then gave a snap shot summary of colonization and land taking. I
said if I were African American I might answer yes, and then talked about
discrimination and the civil rights movement. I talked about Luis and El Salvador and
US foreign policy that often supports repressive governments when it supports
our interests. I didn’t want to be discouraging to the student asking about
studying in the US
but I knew it would be very difficult for that student to get a student visa as
a Palestinian.
Most of these dialogues ended with the teacher
insisting on telling the students that they need an education to get ahead and
me saying something like, “ After Egypt and Tunisia, I have faith in your
generation to lead us through a nonviolent revolution.  I have come here
to stand along side you and learn from you, to be of some help in ending this
occupation.” This is when I added “Hasta la Victoria.”
Until victory.
When, Prince of Peace will it come, your victory? How
long must these children suffer these humiliations, this violence? How many
more deaths will it take before my government withdraws its support for this
illegal occupation?