 Hello, welcome to CTN member highlights. I'm Leslie McVane and today my guests are Bob and Sally Shiebel from Main Voices for Palestinian Rights. Hi, welcome. Thank you. Now you've just returned from the West Bank. That's right. And I'd like to ask you, before we talk about what happened there, how did you come to go there and stay for as long as you did? Bob, you were there for a month. Sally, you were there for two weeks. What was your reason for going? And we'll go from there. Well, as you said, we're both in Main Voices for Palestinian Rights. I serve as the chair of that organization. This was our third trip there. And we go periodically. We intend to keep doing that so that we can stay fresh in our knowledge about what's happening on the ground. We like to let, learn from people there. And we've discovered this time that they need to learn some things from us. In other words, they don't know how much is going on here. So we realized that we were in a way ambassadors to let them know that there are a lot of organizations here, including a number of very strong Jewish organizations that are working on behalf of Palestinian justice and for a just peace for everyone there. Yes. And, you know, as Bob said, this is our third time. And for me, the intention of this particular visit was to connect with Buddhists in the region in Israel. I'm particularly interested in how to bring the Buddhist perspective, the being informed by Buddhist teachings, and how to have the Buddhist voice be part of an interfaith presence. And so my intention was to talk to Buddhists in Israel and to see how we might work together, what I might learn from them, what I might bring back here, how I might then proceed. And that's all part of the Buddhist teaching, isn't it, to listen, to talk, to teach. And to be compassionate. Right. That's lovely. I should probably add here that the more specific reason we went when we went is that last summer, a young Palestinian man in his late 30s, who was a history teacher there, he came over to Maine as part of the Seeds of Peace for Educators program. And he came a week early before the program, so Seeds of Peace sent out an email asking people to volunteer to host him. And so we were one of those who volunteered and he stayed with us for three days and we just pretty much fell in love with him and I think it was mutual. So when he went back home, he called one day and asked if we would come and visit him and stay in his home this spring. So we had, we were actually planning maybe to go next year, but we thought, well, what an opportunity. So we went over this year and stayed in an apartment of his in the little West Bank village called Al Ram. What an opportunity that most people never get. And one of the things that was really wonderful about this particular visit because we were staying as a guest of a Palestinian person, we were part of the community. When we've gone before, we've had mostly hotels that we stay in, we're with part of a group. When we went the first time, it was to see my, to see our daughter who had been there for seven months, but we still stayed in a hotel and then used that location as our home base. This time we were very much integrated into the Palestinian community. So it was a very different experience. You weren't so much outsiders looking in, you were part of the inside being there all the time. And one of the things that was so important to me, one of the things I learned was being there for weeks, staying right in Al Ram. I got a sense of what it's like to live under the occupation. And here I'm talking about just day to day life, not when a real raid is coming in on your house, not when they're shooting and all just day to day. And every day when Yasser and I were getting his car and we would take off and we'd go normal speed for about three, four minutes and then we hit the main checkpoint. And we would sit in this long checkpoint for 20 minutes, 30 minutes, 40 minutes, get through it and then drive five more minutes and be at our destination. So a trip that should have taken about seven minutes takes about 45 minutes and we'd do that when we'd go out. We would do that coming back. So I got a real sense of what kind of patience is required to live under that kind of regimen and what kind of struggle it is to deal with the air quality because you're sitting there with sometimes two or three lanes of traffic and all of that. They're just sitting there waiting on the checkpoints. And so all these fumes are going up in the air and also because there's inadequate services provided for Palestinians. In this particular area there was Calandia, Ram and one or two other towns whose names I don't remember. But among them they made up around 70,000 people. They were comprised of 70,000. Now, officially they're in what Israel calls East Jerusalem. So they pay taxes to Israel. However, Israel does not provide them with garbage pickup. Israel says we can't do that because our workers wouldn't be safe and they were asked, well, would you provide the money and we'll hire our workers to do it and Israel would not do that. They allow the Palestinian Authority to operate one garbage truck per day and to service 70,000 people. Imagine if the town of Portland had one garbage truck. So as a result, people have, they got to do something with their garbage and the garbage gets put in lots or piled up and then it begins to get rancid and stank so they will burn it. So again, you have this air quality of open burning. So it was important for me to experience that. I'd like to say something about that as well. We stayed, you know, at Yasser's apartment and it's a beautiful, there's a beautiful view from his sixth floor apartment. Twelve flights walk up. And in this apartment building, there are many children and like all children, there's the desire to play and to, you know, use your imagination and to be children. Dear children. But their play area is, as Bob described, there's dusty roads that aren't paved because, again, of the lack of funding. There, as you're walking into the apartment area, there's a bin that is filled with trash and overfilled. There is an area behind that where the trash has been blown. There are feral cats that are prolific, that are in and around there. As Bob said, there was one day in particular when it was particularly foul, the smell. There was some refuse out there like chicken that was gone bad. And you've got children playing out here. And that is the norm. This is the norm for these children. You know, there's another interesting story we encountered. One day we went to Bethlehem and the, a man named Mazen, who's the executive director of the Bethlehem Development Foundation, a very sharp man, arranged for us to have a tour. And so we went up to Batir, which is a small Palestinian village. The people of Batir use aqueducts built from the Roman era. They still use them. They have springs there. They use the water from those springs and that aqueduct to water their various family plots. There are eight Palestinian families that have lived there for generations. And Sally asked this tour woman there, have the families gotten into disputes sometimes over who gets enough water or we need more water? And she said, for my entire lifetime of being here, I've never had seen a dispute. So one of the problems that they're dealing with though is what do they do with their refuse? So they did an elaborate study and they came up with plans for building, getting a landfill and for money to get the truck to take their refuse to this landfill. They had all the, they had to go through licensing permits with Israel to get that. So they did it and they were ready to go. And they had some international funding. They had some international funding and then they learned from the state of Israel, oh, there's one more license that you have to get or permit you have to get. They were ready to go. They said, this is a permit which you will get if you agree to pick up the refuse of the settlers who live down in that part of the country. So if you go pick up their trash too and put it in your landfill, well, they hadn't designed their landfill to handle that. And so they had to just scrap it, had to scrap it. So that's one of the the frustrations that Palestinians are dealing with. The man who was an engineer who was showing us a road that was being built around some of the terraces. These terraces go back to three to 3500 years. And he showed where the town, an area where the town had saved up its money and had black topped about two kilometers of that. That was going to help them when they harvested their crops for market to deliver them. And Israel sent a bulldozer in and just tore up two kilometers of black top. It's hard to imagine how that's improving the security of Israel. But I mentioned these things again to say here is some of the frustration that Palestinians living under the occupation are dealing with. And by being there you felt this. I want to go back a little bit to the checkpoint that they have there. When you went through with your host and you have to show your passport, were you questioned a little bit more than you would have thought? Not at the check points. At the check points they looked at my passport, looked in, looked at me and then said okay. Now when we were coming into Israel though at the airport we presented our passports to the woman sitting behind in the little booth. And she asked us as they always ask people why are you here? And I think she at some point asked who are you staying with? So we told her that we were staying with Yasser Abadiah. And well that name I guess if you if you mention a Palestinian name some red flags go up. So she kept us standing at that booth for what 15 or 20 minutes and then some people or two people came over or one person and she handed our passports to him and said follow him. So we went to a little room where we sat for close to an hour and then a man came and called me out and I went to a separate room and he asked me a series of questions like why are you here and who are you staying with and I gave the same answers I gave before. And so he had some questions about Yasser and this kind of thing and then said okay you can go back now. And the whole time we were talking he was on his computer so I do not know what he was looking at what he was finding. But I went back to the room and then maybe a half hour later the same man came to the door and motioned us out and gave us our passports and said you can go. And there was no explanation as to why. I had heard that in general it is difficult that that you are either searched or questioned a lot longer than you would think. I'd like to go back to that point about the checkpoint because there were two incidents though that I found distressing. One time I was visiting with a new friend there, a woman named Lama who has four children and she wanted to know if I wanted to go with her to pick her children up at school. And I went along with her. The way back through the checkpoint so the way out we had no that we weren't stopped at all but the way back we had to show our pass. I had to show my passport and Lama has a Palestinian ID that she needed to show. And Lama is searching in her pocket book. She's searching and searching. She cannot find it. She takes everything out and I'm watching her. She's not saying anything but I'm very aware of body language. I'm a psychotherapist and I'm also and I'm so I'm very tuned into those kinds of things and I'm watching this anxiety and at one point she looks at me and she said I changed my bags earlier and my ID was split in half. You know the cover of it was separated and she said I took the wrong one. So she they had her pull over and a young woman you know usually the the soldiers who are standing at the checkbook points are between the ages I would say of 18 and 21. Let's say for example a young woman comes and she looks at she looks inside and Lama says I don't have it and she said and she explained why and luckily the woman the Israeli soldier was fine was smiled and said that's okay have a good day but what Lama said to me after was it would have depended on who came up to the window as to what would have happened and then one other experience was when we were with Yasser and it was one it was a very busy day that it was a very congested period of time at the checkpoint and we're going through there's there is a lot you can feel the tension in the air because people are waiting and waiting and waiting and at one point Yasser is doing what everybody else is doing moving wherever there's a space and this car comes up to the side and out jump two men one is in his soldier attire and the other is pulling out a bulletproof vest from the back of the car and it comes up they come up to Yasser and they say give me your ID and Yasser's saying what did I do what did I do and the driver says you cut me off you cut me off and we're thinking he did what you know because we're watching everybody doing the same thing right so I don't know what that all was about but it was very troubling because the man the soldier said took a picture of his of his cell phone he said I'll see you in court um and when Yasser was inquiring as to why he said you keep it up and there'll be another there'll be another charge against you and it will make it even more difficult for you it was harassment yeah I mean and I just it was it was very painful to see this happening and this is something that they're living under that anxiety of having happened any time and now that he's been targeted in a way he'll probably have even more anxiety yeah exactly I mean so you think about a whole community of people living with that and you know how you you are when you're under anxiety it just depletes you in all ways yes and you're you're everything falls apart and to have a whole community living like that every day you know I in the states here I'm traditionally been the kind of person that speaks his mind and if I feel that I'm being treated unjustly or somebody close to me is being treated unjustly I speak up rather forcefully and I realized when I was there for this month and not going through with a tour group but just there is a person with an ordinary person there that when I came to a checkpoint or any other place where there were Israeli police or soldiers around I realized that I couldn't I couldn't exert my rights and demand my rights in the way I can here could not do it and it could be some 18 19 year old kid who's being rude and this time I didn't have anybody treating me that way but I know at times they do treat people that way and I realized though even when we were waiting in line for 45 minutes if I'd been back here I think I would have wanted when I get up here to say would you please play to me why this is happening is this really necessary but I really I could not do that I had well you didn't feel the freedom I didn't feel the freedom to do that I realized if I protest they can yank me out of that car put me in jail or just deport me in an instant and that's kind of a transition into what happened while you were there it's when the three boys went missing do you want to address that a bit it's it's a big concern for everyone it's it's it's world news nobody knows what has happened but you were actually there Sally I think maybe you had come back I had come back so I was following it you were following it from here and Bob was falling from there and were you in touch with each other about the various ways news is is projected when something like that happens yes tell us Bob when you first heard of it well I heard about it from my fan Yasser because he was reading the news every day in Arabic and he told me that it happened and my first reaction was oh no no no please don't tell me this has happened because the Palestinians don't need this my hope and it has not proven to be true but my hope was that okay if some Palestinians did kidnap these three boys I hope what they do is keep them for 24 hours and then call a press conference release them and say we had no intention of harming these kids we simply wanted to get the world's attention to the fact that our children are being kidnapped every day every day and the world is not making a clamor about it I think that would have been such a great statement for the Palestinians made unfortunately they're not seeking my advice on how to do things and they have their own timetables and their own rationale now so far it's just alleged that they're kidnapped my own guess is that they have been but there's a what stresses me is that in our media there is no context provided for this and context is extremely important three Israeli settler youth were let's say kidnapped we'll just assume that for the moment okay that's that's awful that's bad it should not have happened but once we've said that we've not said all that needs to be said in order to have a fuller understanding of what has of the dynamics here for one thing people need to know and I've I read this information when I was over there this is the Haritz let me open this up so people can see it's the Haritz or Haritz Haritz newspaper it's the most some would say it's the most prestigious newspaper and some people in Israel some have called it the the New York Times of Israel it's a progressive newspaper and so I was following what was going on in this paper because they put it out in English as well as in the Jews Jerusalem Post and one of the things that was written about in Haritz is that Israeli settler youth like to hitchhike in the West Bank as an ideological statement and I found this in a paper a gentleman by the name of Nitzan Nuriat who's a former director of the counter-terrorism bureau of the Israeli prime minister's office and he told Israeli television that these settlers for them hitchhiking was also an ideology a statement about who owns the West Bank territory which Palestinians and most of the world considered occupied so there it's a kind of thumb in your face to say we will we can hitchhike and if if something happens to us our army will come in so it's a challenge right and that's and and we want to clarify too that we're making an assumption that these kids were doing that we don't know that we don't know what these three teenagers were doing there or do we right no we don't we don't know about there these particularly one right we just know that this charge was not made by a a Palestinian it was made by an Israeli who say these things do go on and and as you say there's a much bigger picture that we're only seeing a little part of and we make assumptions on that little part we see but we also have to realize too that Palestinians are not all the same Americans are not all the same we all have different ways of doing things and different ways of dealing with things and we don't know who took these children right who they are what their motives are whether I know that there's there's disagreement in Palestine with the with the government of Palestine and their cooperation with the Israeli government on trying to find these young people so it's we've got a lot of things happening here I'd like to say just one thing about this is again if like as you said earlier this has is taking world the world is is is paying attention to this but how often do we know about the children that the Palestinian children that are being taken from their homes two three o'clock at night 12 to 16 years old on a regular basis almost daily just breaking down just taking taking them or the the the the the killing of Palestinian innocent Palestinian people there's a kind of collective punishment that's happening right now as we speak and the and the news we get as you say does not let us know that so maybe this this occurrence that is not a good thing that has happened but it might bring about more dialogue as you two are are speaking about now about what is happening there I would like to hope so although this kind of thing has happened before and you know so yes we need more we need to have we need to have all of the story right we need to understand that violence and oppression only leads to more violence and oppression it does not end in in a healthy way you know we can yes there can be peace there but it would be an oppressed peace if there needs to be full human rights for all people of the region and and and there there's not right everybody everybody wants to live in peace and to be happy and they should have a right to do that but it so this is the kind of occurrence that happens that is very tragic and as bob was saying we need to hear all of the story we need to open our hearts it's true for all people to try to understand why this kind of thing happens and to look at our own hard edges when we hear the word Palestinian what happens inside of us right you know for many people there's automatic association with they're bad yeah but that's where we need to and that goes along with our support of israel yeah you know in our in this country in the the lobby yes to support Israel on at any cost really and we need to rethink that we need to think about what are we doing as long as we don't have our troops in there we don't really worry that much about it um I know we don't have much time so I want to kind of transition into why you were there because this to me being with the buddhist group plays into this this bigger hole of peace and love and giving and and understanding could you say a little bit about that yes I met with two people one in particular that I'll mention his name is Steven folder up in Khalil up in the northern part of Israel he was the founder really of the buddhist community as it began many many years ago I asked him you know for his advice for his perspective that sort of thing and and he he said a couple things one is that in his experience Jews and Israel are quite ignorant of what happens in the West Bank that there is some willful ignorance which is a turning the head and not wanting to see there is deep fear because of you know what Jews have experienced historically and that there is great denial and guilt that is down the guilt is is very deep inside and he's he's quite concerned about that I think we might have to wrap this up and so if you want to end that I yeah yeah so yeah right I mean so my intention is that this this dialogue with the buddhist community community in Israel is continuing I think it's wonderful and maybe you'll come back and talk about that I would like to mention my blog buddhist travels in the holy land which are reflections of my of my trip through the lens of buddhist teachings so my hope is that that that will be an ongoing dialogue as well I think that's great you have a minute we have really like not even a minute okay I just want to emphasize the importance and I wish I had more time to give the context the number of Palestinian children who are killed who are kidnapped and we don't hear about those so we hear about this this happened recently and then the public is inclined to say how awful those Palestinians are look at them once again they're causing trouble you think that way when you're not getting the full story I agree okay well thank you both thank you and I know that people can go to your webpage yeah and your blog and they can go to main voices for Palestinian rights website I would like to invite you both back to continue this conversation we love it and soon thank you thank you very much bye bye