An American Eye Witness In Ramallah
6 May 2002
Ramallah, Palestine

Did you ever hear the one about the guy who goes to the doctor and says after hearing the diagnosis, "But Doc, will I be able to play the piano?" The doctor says, "Sure, no problem." And the patient replies, "Funny, I never could play it before!"

Hardy har har.

But something like that kind of happened to me. My green desk lamp, the one I'd been so pleased to find, as it matches my green walls, the one I'd been so disappointed to find forever dark after just a couple of uses? Well, it works again. After a thoroughly messy invasion and ransacking of my apartment by the Israeli army in which most of my personal items, papers, tapes and everything else found its way to the floor in crumpled, broken, shattered piles, that green lamp is shining bright! 

Could it be that the most moral army of the most democratic country in the Middle East has actually also become the most generous occupier in history, including a handy-man in their looting parties to do fix-it jobs along the way, supporting the Palestinian superstructure as it foiled the terrorist infrastructure and destroyed the civil society stratosphere?

To hear the Israeli army spokespeople, you might believe it. What with everything they do to protect civilian life as they go about their terrorist rootings-out, we might expect that out of the goodness of their generous hearts, they just went ahead and did a smattering of odd jobs, seeing as how they were in the neighborhood and all.

But seeing with one's own eyes, under the accusing glare of my green lamp, the evidence of this army's mayhem, destruction, and mean, pathetic acts of disrespect and vandalism, belies the spokespeople's farcical claims. What this most moral army has done is petty crime, grand larsony, defacement of public property, arson, grand theft auto, breaking an entering (or about
4,000 enterings), resulting in much mental and emotional distress and a couple billion dollars' worth of damage. This is not to mention the assault and battery, multiple murders in the first and second degrees, kidnapping, torture, and child abuse that is happening in the prisons and gathering-pens which the thousands of detained men and boys are still undergoing.

During the past two days of cleaning, sweeping, reboxing, folding, and burning incense, I've compiled a list of how the most moral army has made its mark on me, a civilian and guest in the country, while I was away, unable to get to my apartment when Ramallah was turned into a closed
military zone. Categorized into different types of damage, my own feeble effort to impose some order on what is clearly only an ever more chaotic situation in the occupied territories, is the following catalogue of my personal experience with the army's morals:

Stolen:
One computer hard drive containing one graduate student's research, book notes, interview transcriptions, personal, anguished emails, articles, niece and nephew photos, and every other possible form of electronic life history and plans for the future. And while we all know that backing up one's work is a common sense thing to do, we all know that we are not always so vigilant in this regard as we might be. I'd always heard the graduate student horror stories, of the guy who had his dissertation printed and in his trunk the day his car got stolen; the graduate student doing research in an Israeli settlement who had her computer disappeared from her apartment. But you always think, it won't happen to me, as the cliché goes. But we all know here in Palestine, everything pretty much happens to everybody. Price: invaluable + $1600

One small automatic camera. They left the case. There were some pictures on the film. Price: $100, a couple memories.

One unopened package of Norton Anti-virus softwear. Since I never managed to get it installed in my computer to clean up all those files now forever lost to me, my only hope is that when those who stole it go to open my hard-drive their whole bloody spy system will be crawling with electronic amoebic dysentery. Price: $100, but I'd sacrifice that without complaint if they could really get cyber- diarrhea. 
A large pack of AA batteries. I thought those Merkava tanks had been rolling a bit slowly these days? Price: $10 but worth it for a good joke at their expense.

A stack of Arabic-language political magazines from my bookshelf. The magazines contain mostly rhetoric-filled political commentary, intifada reportage, photos of rallies and martyrs, overly complicated and slightly pretentious Arabic sentences in the PFLP magazine, "Al-Hadaf," lots of red flags in the communists' weekly. These were the same kinds of magazines the insecurity people in the airport had given me such a hard time about when I carried a stack out the last time I left this country. They were objecting to the slanted coverage of the intifada in these magazines. They only show Palestinian suffering, the guard woman complained. I had told them-- with all the equanimity I could muster at 3:00 in the morning after being made to give my telephone numbers, watch a photocopy of my passport pass through strangers' hands, watch every single tiny item in all my traveling bags and purse get fondled and inspected and x-rayed by white-gloved teenagers, explain my dissertation's thesis and why I chose this topic several times to a woman who was clearly not academic enough to understand my Chicago-trained arcane thoughts, and stand for an hour as the supervisor who had been called to inspect this subversive material stood 3 meters from me waiting until my plane was about to take off before moseying over to flip through one of the magazines with snorts of disparaging amusement escaping his facial orifices and sending me on my way-- that I would certainly take their views into account as I write my dissertation.
Indeed, I will report, analyze, record, philosophize and postulate with all the loving objectivity which their treatment of me, my stuff, my friends, and this whole population deserves. 
Maybe the soldiers were afraid these magazines were going to incite me. 
Price: $15

My 500 caliber bullet casing. My souvenir from Bethlehem the first time the Israeli army invaded and shot the place to hell was gone from the top of my TV where all my other toys are displayed. I had taken the casing from a nice, elderly nun who had shown me her collection of army detritus on a tray, like a grandmother with a plate of cookies, during my tour of her community's destroyed guest house, shattered orphanage, and other sites which have since blended in my mind with all the other destruction tours I've been on over the past year. I, being a spoiled youngest child, from amongst the 250 caliber cases, the little pellets that spurt out of other kinds of bullets, fragments from larger shelling, had cajoled her out of
the shiny yellow 500 caliber casing, as thick as a large man's thumb. And now the army took it back. I realize the Israeli economy is in the dumps, but I didn't know you could reuse those things.


Broken and Destroyed:
One toy helicopter. Right next to that 500 caliber bullet on top of my TV was a little plastic helicopter I bought for 50 cents from a kid on the street a few months ago. The cartoon-land multiculturalism of the white and Asian figures drawn in the pilot's window with their complacent little smiles and black circle Orphan Annie eyes roused a sardonic laugh from me every time I saw it, especially as the real things circled overhead and sprayed civilian neighborhoods with bullets and missiles. Now the propeller is askew and the landing gear (which really rolled) has been amputated and stomped upon. Could this have been one soldier acting out his disaffection with their war? Or his resentment at being on the ground as he wreaked his duty upon the civilian population, instead of safely insulated up in the air inflicting collateral damage with clean hands.

A ceramic animal, box, and bowl, souvenirs from friend's travels.
Shattered and on the ground. No doubt the soldiers' efforts to help me on the road to a more minimalist life free of dust-gathering clutter.

Front door, gate lock, and doorbell. One pane of glass in the door was broken, the lock jarred open, now unworkable. My clever landlady had the foresight to keep the inner doors to the apartment open in anticipation of the raiding party, thus alleviating the soldiers of the obligation of blowing open the heavy metal doors with explosives, also lightening the P.A./ E.U./ World Bank's burden of replacing yet another set of destroyed doors. Surely the E.U. will take the matter of my door up with the occupiers before agreeing to throw more money into the reconstruction of the occupied's infrastructure.

Vandalized and Damaged:
Five deep, angry gouges into the top of my blue wooden desk.
Broken cover of portable CD player.
Doodles in black and green on my table cloth. What would one expect a child to do when confronted with colored pens, a black and white checkered surface and no adult supervision? Ducks, squiggles, and some solid filling in. I wouldn't give up my day job if I was this aspiring artist soldier boy.
Newspapers, posters, photographs, papers of all sorts, credit card receipts, business cards, jewelry boxes, clothes, sheets, shoes, toiletries, diskettes, CDs, and cassette tapes crumpled, broken, and strewn all over the floors of my living room, veranda, and bedroom.
Kitchen trash was spread across the floor, attracting legions of flies in that room.
Four black and white postcards of Daheisha refugee camp. They were taped to my entry-way wall, torn down and scattered on the floor with tens of photos of martyr cemeteries, martyr families, children relatives of martyrs. I guess we know where those soldiers stand on the right of
return issue: right on top of it with their thick-soled muddy boots.
One poster produced by the Alternative Tourism Group. The caption, "More places to visit in Palestine" was written atop a montage of photos of shelled buildings, a crane hanging over the Gilo settlement, bullet-ridden churches and mosques, awe-struck children peering through gaping jagged holes in windows and walls. The soldiers pulled this from my veranda wall.
Why do I think that the additional visits those soldiers make in Palestine will not be of the sort the ATG had in mind. I noticed that they didn't take the "Justice" poster from another wall.

Wanton Waste.
One day's worth of electricity. It bothered my thrifty landlord greatly that the soldiers had turned on every single light in my apartment and left them on when they strolled out an hour later. My neighbors were under curfew and couldn't come to my house and turn things off for a few days, as the kilowatt meter sped forward.

One tank of gas. My second day back in the apartment I went to heat some milk for my coffee. I turned one of the knobs on the stove and no gas. Then I noticed that all the knobs had been turned on and left on. This was perhaps one of the most insidious, spiteful, and dangerous acts in evidence. Had I returned home and slept in the house, I might have died of gas poisoning from a full tank of gas in the air. Had I returned home and lit a cigarette, I could have been blown up. Price: 35NIS. I joked with the gas man that I was going to put this on the
tab of the occupation. You're lucky it's only this, he said correctly.
(Surely there is a Kantian or even higher order moral imperative behind this gassing, what with them being the most moral, professional, and disciplined army like they say.)

Moving On 
Everything is back on its shelves, I needed to do a little spring cleaning anyway, now that summer is here, and compared to what has happened in many other houses, to many other people, I got off relatively light. Unlike what happened to other foreigners and Palestinians whose houses were invaded, in my apartment there was no human excrement and urine to clean up, no wine bottles pissed in, most of my electronic appliances had not been stolen, my food stuffs seem untouched, some of my clothes were left on their hangers, no nasty Hebrew graffiti decorates my walls. I was not here to be held hostage, threatened, and terrified. No pet cat was taunted with execution, no children roused with shouts and guns from their midnight
sleep, no bits of candy half-eaten and then ground into the carpet. I had no car to be squashed by tanks, I was not arrested, and I've not been beaten up or tortured.

I am still troubled, of course, by the remaining questions as to why, if they were really on a diligent search for arms, explosives, and terrorists, the soldiers who spent an hour in my small, five- room apartment did not bother to look in my kitchen cabinets or bathroom shelves. And if they really need to enhance their understanding of what makes the suicide bombers tick, so to speak, they could have taken all my tapes of interviews and disks with interview transcriptions already nicely done up. And why would a moral army pillage, loot and doodle? But I won't lose sleep over these questions, because the answers are clear. The goals of this war are not those of a calmly calculating and strategic government attempting to return the situation to one ripe for political negotiations and eventual peace. The goals are baser, and easier to achieve: revenge, humiliation, and exhaustion to halt the occupied population's steps? granted, they have been faltering and sometimes two back for every one forward, but steps they were-- towards the creation of a responsible civil society and democratic government. Sharon and his mass-murdering immoral army (what is 1,500 Palestinians killed in 18 months if not the result of mass murder) have succeeded in doing nothing more than intensifying the growing extremism of a group of people who have been pushed to the limits. My guess is that this government is trying to demoralize and brutalize the Palestinians to such a degree that more intense acts of Palestinian resistance, possibly carried out against Israeli supporters abroad, will allow him an even freer hand with even greater acts of destruction, murder, and perhaps more intense forms of ethnic cleansing.

In the end, it has only taken me a day to clean up, I have the money to replace my computer, and as a graduate student all I have is time to recollect the information that was lost. Unfortunately, it is not so simple for people whose lives were lost (hundreds over just the past few weeks,42 children since 29 March), whose homes were lost, business people with a life's work in merchandise lost, brutalized children who never believed in a future to lose in the first place.

Total Losses: Lori ~$1,839.50; Palestine: any chance at peace any time soon
Lori

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