The Juan Show: Friday Protest III

Today was a mess.

All the photos here belong to my travel buddy Jeremy "Yirmeyahu" Kroeker, all rights reserved. I have similar photos, but his are just... better. There's a couple of videos, too. Watch them.

I think I need to buy a real camera.

Internationals. Japanese tourists, anarchists, activists from the International Solidarity Movement, a Jew or two from www.activestills.org, and a Korean photographer named John-John who works for National Geographic and recently sold one of his photographs for $20,000. Despite this, John-John has holes in his shoes and is constantly glueing his patchwork camera back together.

Aw.

It's Friiii-day.

The razor wire usually stops the protesters 70-100m from the Israelis. This delays them long enough for the soldiers to lob off a little tear gas, pre-empting a physical confrontation. Alternately, it forces the protesters to wait for a few minutes and "calm down" until the razor wire can be cut down and dragged away. Today, those silly Jews didn't set it up properly. There was a huge gap in the wire on one side, and the whole mob surged through it as though the wire wasn't even there. Tempers were still a little hot when the two sides met, and that boded poorly for later.

The scrum began without much ado. The Israeli commander- the kid with the bullhorn- seemed a little taken aback. The lines swiftly degenerated into the usual mosh of shouting Semites and camera-clicking Japanese.

Halt, in the name of the Lord.

Let's call this guy "Shrek". He was a fucking juggernaut. I first encountered him when he smashed through the line like a battering ram, swatted me (and three others) backwards like a fly, and bellowed wordlessly at the wide-eyed Palestinians, all of whom scattered like pigeons. He had a voice that was a combination between a Howitzer going off and Thor's hammer collapsing a mountain.

He reminded me of this guy. I cannot even tell you how similar this scene was to my encounter with that Goliath. The expressions on their faces were exactly the same- as were those on mine and Sam Gamgee's.

Ruaidhri, one of my hostel-mates, took one look at this roaring minotaur of a Jew and scurried backward. "That bloke should not have a gun," he muttered incredulously. The Israelis used him as a prison guard for all the arrested Palestinians. He would stand there, gargantuan and imperious, watching over two or three suddenly-meek protesters.

The Leader has NOT been shot. Nor is he sleeping on the job. He's leading the protesters in a sit-down.

Chaos.

More chaos.

At this point, it starts to get scrappy. There's a lot of tussling and swearing. The Israelis were beginning to lose their tempers, and the neat lines had completely broken down. It was starting to look as if the Israeli commander had lost control of the situation; Palestinians were getting in his face and screaming, and protesters and press had free rein in front, behind, and between his boys.

And this is where I got a lesson in riot control. The Israelis must have written the book on it. It all took about five seconds. The soldiers reformed the line, pulled the pins on three or four stun grenades, and threw them into the midst of the crowd.

Those things are deafening. They do nothing but make a piercing *BANG*, and in retrospect were little more than firecrackers on steroids. But if you're standing next to one when it explodes- particularly if you've never heard one before- it sounds like the world just folded in upon itself.

Then they started with the tear gas grenades- which they can fire from gun-mounted launchers or throw by hand. This was the latter. The crowd scattered with fumes licking at their heels. Half were Japanese tourists who had no idea that they'd signed up for this. The Israelis were literally throwing those things at our heels.

Leon and Beardo, a couple of Asians from the ISM. Beardo, the Japanese guy with his hands raised, had a ten-inch beard and balls the size of grapefruits. He works with Arab kids in Hebron, and at one point, was the last person standing in front of the Israelis, with every Arab in Bil'in at least 20m away. At one point, he picked up a spent stun grenade, held it up to an Israeli's face, and asked: "How much?"

This might be a stun grenade, or a tear gas grenade. Who cares which? Both kinds make a loud noise and make you run away.

Recognize the guy with the green trim on a black jacket? In all my travels, there have been only three things that I've ever disliked: ouzo, Arabic music, and tear gas.

You can see the old Israeli hippie. You can just barely make out my hero, Muhammad Xavier, who's confined to a wheelchair after getting shot in the spine by the army at the beginning of the Second Intifada.

Ok, you win.

Jeremy was most proud of this shot. It's a stun grenade going off. The guy on the left with his ears covered, Leon, is with the ISM. He had one or two go off against his leg- I saw it. He admitted it hurt, but not badly, and indeed, the explosion hadn't left a mark on his jeans.

Things like this make me angry. The villagers hang out and watch foreigners get shot on their behalf. Admittedly, the risk to them is greater- the Israelis won't get in trouble for capping dune coons. But still. One Japanese was shot in the eye socket today. If he's lucky, he'll regain his sight in three weeks. I don't care if he was in Bil'in as a tourist. He might have lost an eye, and they sit there and have a picnic?

I've seen ISM kids get knee-dropped and shit-kicked and cough up lungs for Palestine. I don't care how biased or elementary this rant is... if I have to dodge rubber bullets so that my friends can learn about the Occupation from my photos, you can damn sure take the same risk.

Get. In. The. Fucking. Line.

I suppose I should mention, just for shits, that another Jap was injured when a rock thrown by a Palestinian clunked him in the head. One Palestinian was shot in the torso (rubber bullet), and was evacuated by ambulance. I think three Palestinians were arrested, including the Leader.

A stone thrower. This was after we had all retreated, and the protest leaders had called it off for the day. But here's part of the routine. Once "our side" has cleared out of the way, the kids start to sling rocks at the faraway Israelis...

...who respond by lobbing tear gas at us.

A couple of kids watch the fog unfold.

The Palestinians and Israelis exchanged stones and tear gas for so long that the commander ordered a general advance. Squads of soldiers came charging up the roads. They would then halt in a line and fire off a few rubber rounds at the whooping, retreating crowds of kids. Interspersed among them were the activists and Japanese tourists- and from a distance, they all look the same. Either that or the Israelis didn't care and were relishing the excuse to "accidentally" shoot a few of those pesky foreigners who shoved cameras in their faces every week.

This is a big "Oh, shit" moment. The shot was taken long afterwards, but I'm holding a rubber bullet that was fired at me and me alone. How do I know this?

(1) I was the only person in a twenty meter radius, between a retreating crowd of Palestinians behind me and a clump of press to my right. I was wearing an Arab scarf, so they must have thought I was a local.

(2) I heard the whistle of bullets whizzing by, and when I turned around, the gravel at my heels were spurting up in small impact explosions- pffft, pffft, pffft. So, they really do aim at your legs.

So I ran over to where the press had gathered, with their unmistakable cameras and canary-yellow jackets. Ah, press immunity. It was like a Halo shield bubble. I was suddenly, as far as Israelis were concerned, invisible and off limits.