Two Recent Eyewitness Reports from the Occupied Territories Via NY Transfer News * All the News That Doesn't Fit source - Bill Koehnlein by Beth Daoud from a field hospital in Nablus April 9, 2002, 3:00pm (Palestine Time) Yesterday Israelis took an elderly man hostage and used him as a shield when they attacked a mosque. The Mosque was being used as a temporary hospital. The soldiers put a gun to his neck and marched them in front while they stormed the building. In another incident, ambulances were stopped and people forced to get out. The soldiers then wrote "dog" on a man's head. In the last hour, they took forty hostages between ages 14 and 40, taking them to a prison. The Israelis have said any foreigners in ambulances will be shot. There is total devastation in Nablus. Homes, buildings, shops and cars are destroyed. Ambulance drivers say the dead and wounded are laying in the streets. One body is being eaten by a dog. I just took an ambulance from the main hospital to a temporary hospital, which has been set up since it's so difficult to move people. We all got in the back of the ambulance and you could just feel it: "this could be it." Every street you look down has tanks, they're like huge insects. Tanks drove by here moments ago. Every area has injured people,but you can't go out. I hate to tell my husband, he grew up here. Everything that means something to the Palestinians is being destroyed--Mosques, ancient sites, etc. It is so sad for these people that you can't be more sad. I saw a woman walking down the deserted streets when we came in, and I know what that means: I'm Palestinian, this is my land, I don't care if I die. While we were in the main hospital a family arrived from Balata camp who's home had just been blown up--they are in various degrees of injury. I think we are doing three things here--being human shields, trying to pick up the injured, and being witnesses. Ambulance drivers, they are heroes, they have to shut off their fear. The ambulance driver we rode with has 10 family members and he doesn't know where they are: he was driving in tears...the dignity and courage here is beyond anything I could imagine. Now internationals are getting into an ambulance to go pick up a little girl. When I get back home...the Americans will be so bland. These people are fighting for their rights, their culture, their land. Israel is being so incredibly malicious, so profoundly malicious. Beth Daoud is part of a delegation from the Colorado Campaign for Middle East Peace, working with the International Solidarity Movement. Earlier in the day on April 9th, Daoud was one of just six internationals that arrived on foot to witness the devastation in Nablus caused by the Israeli invasion. ***** by Nancy Stohlman in East Jerusalem April 9, 2002 I received a call from Beth Daoud as I was attempting to make my way through the noisy streets of Jerusalem. We ducked into a storefront as she told me of the horrors of Nablus: On the streets of the most recently beseiged city, the IDF drove down the streets with loudspeakers announcing "We are stronger than you. You are weak. You are all alone. No one will come and help you." In addition to the apparent standard of blocking ambulances and leaving the dying in the streets, Beth reported that two mosques and the ancient turkish baths have been or are being destroyed. "It sounds like they are trying to erase all roots of Palestinian civilization," Beth yells in my ear over the obnoxious honking on the street behind me. Our now somber group continued towards the media center in Jerusalem, and I remember surviving Bethlehem, and how it felt to be on the other end of those desperate calls. It makes me angry, and I want to shout at all the taxi drivers and cigarette venders. "Do you know what's happening to your brothers and sisters now?" Of course they all know--it is the only topic of conversation. This knowledge marks deep lines into every face, worried forehead creases and patches of gray hair from the shock. A twenty year old man looks thirty-five in Palestine. A thirty-five year old man has probably been in jail more than once. A sixteen year old boy probably has at least one family martyr. A fifty year old man might remember leaving his home village, and a seventy year old man might still hope to return there. Leaving Bethlehem yesterday, I realized that I had been living under seige for over a week. We gathered our belongings and carefully hurried down the deserted street. After a moment of sanctuary inside the gates of the hospital, we jumped in a van which sped us to Beit Jala until the roadblock. Boulders and piles of dirt did not stop determined Palestinians from rapidly passing vegetables into occupied area from the back of a truck. Before I knew it, I was in Jerusalem for the first time, weeping behind my sunglasses at what I had left behind. Weeping for the people without "international status" or a navy blue passport. I realize that I can exit Beit Jala with relative certainty of my life, unlike even the staff of the Bethlehem Star Hotel who fear sniper fire every time the internationals leave the lobby. The constant fear of death, which I only partially tasted for 10 days, paints permanent bags under their eyes. How many emails do I have to send, or how many articles, or press releases, or books, before the desperate situation here will be truthfully told? It sickened me to walk by front page newspaper headlines that reported "Three soldiers killed in Jenin," knowing that the public would not hear of the genocide of hundreds of Palestinians in the same city, by those same soldiers! Though the media must be held accountable, this is not just the responsibility of the media. When Americans see newspaper pictures of IDF soldiers "rescuing nuns" from the Church of the Nativity, they have to question the propaganda, question whether those same soldiers provided the pictures! The destruction of the Palestinian people and their way of life is the responsibility of everyone. Rhetoric of a "global community" ultimately means that whatever happens to our neighbor happens to us. Even science has proven that we are a part of, and affected by, global situations on "the other side of the world," from nuclear meltdowns to ocean dumping, to volcanoes erupting in distant lands. The apartheid of the Middle East is everyone's problem. Yesterday I saw a commercial that implored people to help save the endangered tigers of Asia. All I could think of was which celebrity spokesperson was going to stand up for the Palestinian people? Will it be you? Nancy Stohlman is one of five members of the Colorado Campaign for Middle East Peace that have joined other internationals with the International Solidarity Movement in witnessing and standing against the Israeli invasion and occupation of Palestine. ********************************************************************* "The first duty of a revolutionary is to be educated." --José Martí ********************************************************************* The Theater of the Oppressed Laboratory http://www.toplab.org ********************************************************************* ================================================================= NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us 339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012 http://www.blythe.org e-mail: nyt@blythe.org ================================================================= nytmid-04.13.02-10:50:41-29845