I was impressed that the frost lasted all day.  But I didn’t want to take any chances at 10 in the morning, so I went out and got these shots.  I was also impressed that it snowed a full blanket, especially when the news stations were completely astonished that they were receiving reports of snow!  Too bad it’s raining and will be gone by the morning…oh, well.

Tags: Fern, Flower, Flowers, Frost, leaves, Macro, Patterns, Petals, Rose, Winter

Sorry to all those who have been waiting FOREVER for some more photos of the one and only EP.  Hopefully these can make up for the late arrival!

Espen and his good friend Indie (above)

There were several more faces of this nature which I might post later…(above)

Rockin’ out to Adam Sweeney at the Coffee Cottage! Below, mesmerized by the art of sifting flour.

Above, surveying his handy work.  Below, enjoying the snow storm of 2009.

Tags: Boy, Child, Christmas, Christmas Tree, Concert, Cookies, Flour, Hand Print, Holidays, Lamps, Lights, Music, Smile, Smiling, Snow

For those who haven’t been aware of the current situation in Gaza, here is a time line and a few stats:

Timeline: How the bombardment unfolded

*Saturday 27 December

Israeli air strikes on Gaza in response to Hamas rocket attacks and cross-border raids by militants, kill 225 people.

*Sunday 28 December

Israeli aircraft target a laboratory at the Islamic University and 40 smuggling tunnels connecting Gaza to Egypt.

*Monday 29 December

Israel intensifies its attacks, bombing the Hamas-run interior ministry as Hamas fires rockets deeper into southern Israel. The defence minister, Ehud Barak, warns that Israel will fight “to the bitter end”.

*Tuesday 30 December

A Hamas spokesman urges Palestinian militants to respond to Israeli attacks with “all available means”.

*Wednesday 31 December

The UN Security Council fails to agree an emergency resolution calling for a ceasefire. Israel attacks the office of the Hamas Prime Minister, Ismail Haniyeh.

*Thursday 1 January

An Israeli strike kills a Hamas leader, Nizar Rayyan, at home in Gaza. Thirty Hamas rockets are fired into Israel.

*Friday 2 January

Israel bombs a mosque it claims is used by Hamas to store weapons.

Seven days of bloodshed

424 Palestinians dead, including 100 civilians

1700+ Palestinians wounded

4 Israeli civilians dead

0 Israeli military personnel dead

44 Israelis wounded

100 Tons of Israeli bombs dropped in single day

1 Senior Hamas leader killed

470 Palestinian rockets fired into Israel in seven days

8 Hours of electricity per day in Gaza

$34million Needed by UN to meet Gazan needs

Tags: Arab, Attack, Bloodshed, Bomb, Bombing, Conflict, CPT, Gaza, Gaza Strip, Hama, Israel, Jew, Jewish, Occupation, Palestine, Palestinian, Peace, Rocket, Rockets, Terror, War

Hey friends, you might check out the Princeton Seminary website.  They are currently featuring a photo I took before leaving for the holidays of some of the winter scene.  You can check it out here.

Tags: 2008, Macro, Princeton Seminary, Winter

Our fifth day began very early in the morning.  One of the main things CPT does in Tuwani is monitor children on their way to school.  CPT does not try and solve the problems of the situations they are asked to come to, but join in with what the people are already doing, and what they ask CPT to help with.  This is one of the things CPT is asked to do.  It began by CPT escorting the children (very young children) on their way to school.  They were asked to do this because Jewish settlers from the settlement literally above Tuwani on the hill would come down and attack the children with stones and other things on their way to school.  At first CPT’s presence subdued this, but after a while the settlers got confident and even began attacking CPT members.  As a result the military is to provide an escort for the children so that they don’t have to walk the 2-3 hour route around the settlement.  However, the military doesn’t always show up on time, or at all.  So, CPT watch to make sure the children are safe and being escorted, bringing video and still digital cameras to document any thing that happens.  Below we are waiting to see the children walk over the first hill in the distance.

To the south we could see hills stretching all the way to Jordan (below).

Above the children can be seen first appearing in the distance (I am using a 200mm lens, which is multiplied to 360mm by the cropped sensor of the Canon 40D, thus showing that they were quite a ways off).  Below is the barn they walk to, then head to the end where they can see if the military escort has arrived.  If it hasn’t they wait, and if it doesn’t they have to walk all the way home.

Above the barn is one of the settlers’ homes from where we could see the family watching for the children.  They did this both mornings (above).  The below image is not my own, but another delegate’s photo.  It shows the military escorts bookending the children on the road to the settlement.

Our next stop that day was to another settlement in the area, called Susya.  We met with two Jewish settlers that told us straight out that they did not want a democracy, but a theocracy.  The also told us that if Israel lowers its weapons it will be destroyed, but if its enemies lowers their weapons there will be peace.  This was among many similar statements to these.  We talked with them in the safe confines of a very nice house, which had an amazing ceiling of wood (which is almost impossible to come by over there).

The above and below pictures are of the settlement, but the bottom image is another delegate’s and not my own.  The settlement looked like many places I’ve been in many US suburbs.

We then visited the village which had originally been there, and has now been demolished on the next hill over where they can look back at their stolen land (below).  Many of the settlements are named after the Palestinian villages they are trying to take over.

The above kid liked my sunglasses.  Below you can see the tents they are now forced to live in, although the military could come and demolish them whenever they wanted.  Why?  No building permit.  This is the same case for all Palestinians.  The Israeli government has made it so that any Palestinian needs a permit to either build or keep their house upon their land.  The application for the permit costs the equivalent of around $1500, takes months to be “processed” and then most Palestinians are denied the permit (unless they get a Jewish lawyer, as did Ata - see my earlier post).  For this reason places like At Tuwani have a standing demolition order on the whole village, and the military could come demolish the whole area if they choose.

Energy is gathered through the above solar panel.

We later returned to Tuwani for a tour of the area, which was fairly short as it is a small village.

We ended the day with another amazing home cooked meal, including the below pita which was still warm!

Tags: Arab, At Tuwani, Barn, Children, Christian Peace Makers, Clothes, Clothing, CPT, Demolished, Displaced, Escort, Food, Hang Dry, Hebron, Hills, Humus, Israel, Israeli, Jewish, Jews, Jordan, Kids, Military, Muslim, Non-violence, Palestine, Palestinian, Peace, People, Pita, Ridge, Settlement, settlers, Solar Power, Stones, Tent, Tents, Tuwani, Village

Tags: 2008, Clouds, Fields, Hills, Newberg, Oregon, Sky, Snow, Sunset, Trees, Winter, Yamhill

This has not occurred in Oregon since 1968…

Tags: Nature, Oregon, Snow, Storm, Winter

I apologize for the long delay, I really have no good excuse, so here we go again…

One of the groups we met with the next day in Hebron before leaving for At Tuwani was the Women’s Center for Legal Aid and Counseling, which is the first and only organization in Hebron to address issues around women’s rights, domestic abuse, education to raise awareness around these issues, and creating safe houses for women who might be running from “honor deaths” (which is the culture’s form of making a family clean if a woman has been raped, been in adultery, or has had sex outside of marriage by killing the woman).  It has caught on among some people, but as the traditions are very ingrained in the culture, it has been met with opposition for the most part, and they receive no funding from within Hebron and are forced to seek funds from international groups.  The second photo is of a group of university students going through the organization’s training program, who will then go out to train others in schools and various places.

From Hebron we travelled to At Tuwani, a small outlying village SW from Hebron where CPT has their full-time operation.  At this location CPT is an international presence, documenting (through photo and video footage) the injuries caused to Palestinians by the Jewish settlers while they accompany shepards grazing their flocks, and monitor children walking to school who are often attacked and stoned by settlers (we’re talking little kids, not high schoolers).  Sometimes this helps, sometimes CPT folks are attacked as well.

Below we are taking off on a hour and a half walk to a demolished village, which ended up being just a walk since we found out (late in the game) that we had been walking the wrong direction.

The following images are what we saw from the road we were travelling on, which happened to be an Israeli road (which they call “clean roads” since they don’t allow Palestinians to travel on them).

Olive groves were everywhere, but many of the Palestinians can’t harvest them due to the military claiming the land as a “closed military zone” (without any reason why, and often around the time of harvest), or the settlers attack and or destory the groves.

Above you can see Palestinians actually plowing the fields.  Many times they have to do this quickly becuase settlers and military will come in and stop them if they realize what they are doing.  A field on the backside of the hill in Tuwani had just been plowed in around two or so hours so as to avoid this.  They brought in many tractors and made one continuous sweep through the valley really quickly, then high tailed it out of there.  It looked like a very impressive job for being done so quickly, although it is rather sad to realize they were forced to work in such a manner.

Above is a man riding into the nearby village on his donkey, and below is a young shepard with his flock.

The above image is of jet clouds produced by the below fighter planes that littered the sky like seagulls at the coast.  They would create a circle like so that would be a marker for tanks on the ground to travel to, at which point some military order was carried out, such as demolishing a home or village.  Often we would hear the sub-sonic boom of the planes when they passed the speed of sound.

A nearby village (above).  Upon returning to Tuwani after our long walk we turned around to see the night closing in (below).

That night we were fed at the house that many of the delegates slept at.  They rolled out butcher paper as a table cloth on the floor, and then brought in home made humus, pita bread, vegetables, olives, and it was amazing!  We heard a story of one of the full time CPT folks accidentally thinking they were supposed to be for her feet, but she was quickly corrected by the women she was with and has never used it as such since.

That night I slept outside over at the CPT apartment with a few of the full timers, and a couple of the delegates.  But before turning in I took this 30 second exposure, including Orion and a few other familiar constellations.

Tags: Arab, At Tuwani, Christian Peace Makers, CPT, Delegation, Direct Action, Hebron, Israel, Non-violence, Pacifist, Palestine, Palestinian, Peace, Stars

The above quote was from a journalist we met with in Dura.  He was the first person we came in contact with who saw and named parallels between the occupation and the Holocaust.  In many ways the quote encapsulates much of my experience.  It was a very different experience of what reality is for people in different parts of the world, especially ones that proclaim to be democratic (although it should be noted that Israel has no constitution).  I had a conversation with a good friend on the phone the other day, and as I started to relay some of what I saw, heard, and experienced, all he could say was “that’s unbelievable”.  I couldn’t agree more, for this is how I felt a lot of the time, but the reality of the people sharing there experiences and then my seeing the truth with my own eyes would not let me escape the fact: the occupation is very real and transcending any concept I’ve ever had of reality. How is it that a 25 foot wall brings Israeli’s “security” when it cuts directly through the middle of Palestinian towns.  Now as a result of this “security” wall people have to walk for miles to get to a “security” check point so that they can get to the home that used to be right across the street from there house.  We heard a story of one person who used to make a meal for an aging person and take it to her everynight across the street, because she had no one else to take care of her.  Now, as a result of the wall, this person has to walk around 45 minutes to take the food, and it is now cold by the time it reaches its destination.

How this is bringing “security” is puzzling, especially when looking at a map one sees that the wall is built not in a direct line as one would expect, but a zig-zag course that encloses all the major water sources into Israeli land.  On top of that we learned that it is completely illegal for any Palestinian to have a water catch of any sort, enforced by the Israeli military.  The reason is that Palestinians are required to purchase water from Israel, which, coincidentally, is gathered on all the Palestinians’ land.  So, the wall is creating “security” by taking all the water from the stolen Palestinian land and then being sold back to the Palestinians…

…it was things like this that ring true with the journalist’s quote.  Although there was a definite negative edge to the majority of what he had to share, if I had to live in an occupied country since 1948 (60 years) I think I might empathize a little.

That said, below is what we awoke to at Atta’s home long before meeting our new journalist friend.

Above, Atta’s house is the larger one lit up in the foreground to the left, and the settlement can be seen sprawled out across the distant ridge.

Above, children walked through the thawing hills to school.

Atta’s family has a lot of produce and garden area, and the landscapers out there would be interested to know that there seemed to be a very nice watering system installed that was not only working but nourishing the flowers and food very sufficiently.

Above, we passed some local boys on the way to our van.

One of our stops was a kindergarten program run by Zleekha, who prepared our welcome meal at the Hebron CPT apartment.  She has an apartment in the same complex.  She is very passionate about creating a space where Palestinians parents feel safe bringing their children to play and learn, as the spaces are becoming fewer and fewer.  She is very determined and not easily moved.  She stood up to some Israeli military who would not let us walk 200 feet down a road to some stores where we wanted to purchase some local goods.  They did not let us go through in the end, but she did take us to a secret way of sorts through someone’s house which brought us around the other side of the road.  That was very exciting, especially realizing that an 8 year old boy was the one watching over the house we passed through.  I don’t think many Americans would consider letting a child of this age hold such responsibility, but here it was more than common place.

While we met with her we noted that the children were very quite, and later found out that they were waiting for us to finish talking with her (and being very good at that!), so she cut them loose after the meeting and the transformation from the above image to those below explain the bottled energy these kids were storing.

Above, they sang us a song they had learned, and we sang songs for them, too.  Below we took a photo with them.  The photo credit goes to Melanie Southworth, who wanted me to be in at least one photo - thanks Mel!

We then proceeded with Zleekha to the checkpoint where we were denied passage, so we went up to the Mosque instead.  Below is one of the outer areas where she was at for prayers when the shooting I talked about where 29 Palestinians were killed occurred.

Before entering the main area the women had to put on these robes so that they would be “suitable”.

The above two images are detail shots of the below photo.  I don’t remember what exactly this is from as I was running around taking pictures like mad because the gaurds told us we had 5 MINUTES! until prayer, so I was doing what I could.  As a result I missed exactly what this is, but I remember it being one of two things that have been around since either the temple was originally destroyed, or something of similar significance.  The detail in the piece is amazing!

We then visited a soup kitchen that has been active for around 400 years.  It was quite amazing to see these people so dedicated and carrying on such a long tradition of helping the poor and hungry.

The below man in particular loved having his picture taken, so the other workers told me in English, so I snapped off quite a few shots for both of our enjoyment.  Those are some HUGE soup bowls!

After making our way through the “secret” passage to the street of shops we weren’t allowed to visit earlier, we found mugs that our leader, Sally, had had prepared for us with our names painted on.  Above is one of the workers at the shop where they were made.

Ah, kids.  I can’t remember where I was for the above shot that day, but the following image was of a kid who jumped on our van when we were lost in Dura trying to find the journalist’s home.  He held onto the open area while the sliding-door was left open, and many seat belts were thrust on in haste due to the driver’s choice to not slow down despite the child hanging on and the open door with no arm rests to catch folks.  It was quite a ride!

And below is the journalist, Khaled, who graciously had us into his home and offered us tea and good insight from his perspective as a journalist.

That concluded the day, after which we returned to Hebron for the night.  At this point I was beginning to get a feeling that the situation might be a little bit more complex than I had expected, as well dealing with physical fatigue.  Well, more to come later…and I’ll be looking forward to seeing folks in Oregon when I get in this coming weekend!

Tags: Arab, Christian, Christian Peacemaker Teams, Conflict, CPT, Dura, Hebron, IMF, Israel, Journalist, Military, Mosque, Mugs, Muslim, Occupation, Palestine, Peace, Peacemaker, Police, Pottery, West Bank