A couple stills from a project we’ve started on a group of Palestinian and Israeli midwives who believe the best way to move towards peace is by doing what they love best: helping women give birth in the most natural way, often without a doctor in the room. Stay posted for more material on this project.

Once in awhile we’ll post videos we have made about other peace activists. Rabbi Menachem Froman does not avoid paradoxes – he lives in the West Bank settlement of Tekoa, but he has spent many hours meeting with influential Palestinians, including Yassar Arafat and Sheikh Ahmed Yassin (the spiritual head of Hamas, assassinated by an Israeli missile in 2004).

When I asked Rabbi Froman if he were willing to live under a Palestinian government after a 2-state solution is reached, he smiled and said, “I am a citizen of the state of God”. Full of humor and hope, he said, with another big grin, that “Allahu Akbar” – “God is great” in Arabic – is translated into English as “Yes, we can.”

We made this video for the VJMovement in Holland. Please consider subscribing to this great site – we will be making more videos for them in the future. For more info and writings by Rabbi Froman, see here.

Mother of Akal Srur

Several days ago (Friday June 5) another Palestinian man, Akal Srur, was killed by Israeli soldiers in the weekly demonstrations in Niilin (we were not there that day). Israeli media is just as manipulative as U.S. media, note the headline of this article, “IDF: Man killed in Naalin was Hamas operative”: 

Of course, he may have been a “member” of Hamas, but that’s just like saying he was a Democrat or Republican in the U.S. – the two main political parties are Hamas and Fatah. And to call him an “operative” of course makes it sound like he was following orders from high up, was on a mission, maybe was armed. He wasn’t on a mission, he just lives in Niilin and joins the demonstrations almost every Friday. He was one of 5 Palestinians killed in Niilin in the last year and a half. 

We were in Niilin last week for a memorial service for him, will post from that footage soon.

Yesterday, the same Israeli paper ran TWO articles on Niilin, the village where Khaled and I have been shooting for the past several months (and where some of its citizens decided to open their own holocaust museum, see posts below…) On the one hand, two Palestinians were injured there yesterday in the demonstrations.

And on the other hand, the Israeli army states that in Niilin and Biilin (a neighboring village, where we have also shot, and where a villager was killed soldiers a month ago), “Gaza was easier.” The saga, and the bloodshed goes on. Of course, the “Gaza was easier” article didn’t mention once WHY the villagers in both places demonstrate weekly (because the Separation Fence cuts them off from a large percent of their olive trees and thus their income).

So how to sum up this mess? That the villagers AND the soldiers (not to mention all the citizens in Palestine and Israel) are victims of government policies that avoid peacemaking?

The venerable “The Forward”, which was first published as a daily Yiddish newspaper, in 1897, published an article quoting Khaled last week – in their English edition. Definitely an evil publication, they came out early in favor of trade unions and democratic socialism – so it figures they would feature Khaled’s work at some point. 

The November 1, 1936 cover is at the top.

Went today on an exploratory trip to Dheisheh Refugee Camp, which is on the edge of Bethlehem (birthplace of Jesus) and only 10 kilometers from Jerusalem, where I live. Short trip into the West Bank, but worlds apart. The usual downer through the checkpoint, in this case a whole warehouse, but almost no human authorities visible, all hiding behind one way glass or peering thru security cameras.

Hung across the main entrance to the camp, the usual proud banners, but look closely at the one they had up today. Anniversary of the death of the hero on the right, humiliation of the villain on the upper left.

Later, coming back thru the checkpoint, passed crowds of Palestinian day workers coming back to Bethlehem, being grilled by the guards behind glass. Me, I just had to flash my U.S. passport, didn’t even ask me to open it, and I strolled through …God Bless America.