The week leading up to Christmas, I got to photograph two activist art projects in Bethlehem’s Manger Square. Both were Christmas trees, one made of barbed wire, the other “Wall Tree” was designed by Palestinian artist Rana Bishara to symbolize the Israeli separation wall. Both were set up in Manger Square at one of the busiest times of the year for international tourists, with the hopes of educating some of them about the realities that Bethlehem residents face living life under the Israeli military occupation.

As the photo shows, Rana’s “Wall Tree” was garlanded with barbed wire and ornamented with spent tear gas grenades. I didn’t notice it until processing photos much later, but when checking my focus at high magnification, I recognized the letters, “CTS.” This rang a bell.

CTS, or Combined Tactical Systems, is a division of a U.S. company, Combined Systems Inc. (CSI). To be more specific, they’re based in Jamestown, Pennsylvania, my home state. As Israeli journalist Joseph Dana reported recently:

US companies like the Pennsylvania based Combined Systems Inc (CSI) are among the primary suppliers of tear gas used in the West Bank. After Jawahar Abu Rahmah died as a result of breathing CSI tear gas in Bil’in, a number of pro-Palestinian advocacy groups staged protests and launched a boycott of the company. CSI officials have remained silent on the use of their product by Israeli forces.

And it’s not just in Palestine:

One important consequence of this year’s Arab revolutions has been renewed interest in the use of US-made tear gas to control social protests across the Middle East. A number of US tear gas manufacturers have ramped up production, while profits have been soaring as governments from Bahrain to Egypt demand more and more tear gas to suppress political revolt.

The result has been deadly. In January, the 32-year-old French photographer Lucas Mebrouk Dolega was killed by a tear-gas canister fired at close range by Tunisian police. And hundreds of protesters in Egypt have claimed that tear gas canisters made by CSI were fired at them, often at close range, by security forces. According to the leading Egyptian daily Al Ahram, port officials in Suez recently protested against unloading a shipment of CSI-manufactured tear gas destined for the Supreme Council of Armed Forces in Cairo.

Amnesty International has joined the port officials’ protest, issuing a sharply worded statement singling out the use of CSI tear gas in Egypt, and calling on the US government to stop approving sales of the product to Egypt because of its misuse against protesters. Tear gas has become the main instrument by which authoritarian regimes control social protests that challenge their power in the Middle East. Used tear-gas canisters litter the streets of Cairo and Tunis. Identical canisters allow the Israeli army to crush unarmed demonstrations throughout the West Bank, without attracting widespread condemnation from the international community. What seems certain is that until tear gas is viewed as the deadly weapon it can be, authoritarian governments will continue to use it with impunity.

Well, one thing I discovered when tracking down more information about CTS/CSI and the grenades I photographed—at least they don’t claim that their products are “non-lethal”. The URL for their web site is “www.less-lethal.com”—small comfort to families of those for whom these weapons turned out to be deadly.

Why do Israeli riot police tear gas guns have precision sights?

Three months before Mustafa Tamimi of the West Bank town of Nabi Saleh died after being shot in the face with an Israeli tear gas grenade at close range, this ominous tid-bit appeared near the end of a New York Times article on preparations for the Palestinian UN statehood bid (emphasis added):

Brig. Gen. Michael Edelstein, the chief officer commanding the paratroopers and infantry responsible for preserving order this month, told reporters that the army had equipped itself with a broader range of nonlethal weaponry. It has acquired more than 20 water-cannon trucks that can spray water or a foul-smelling liquid known locally as skunk; huge loudspeakers that can also emit intolerable noise to scatter protesters; and tear-gas launchers fitted with sights to allow soldiers to aim better when firing the gas canisters.

I found this disturbing at the time because several Palestinian and international activists had already been killed or seriously injured by tear gas canisters. Can anyone explain why soldiers should be aiming tear gas canisters at all? As the Associated Press reports:

Tamimi is the 20th person to be killed over the past eight years at similar demonstrations in rural villages throughout the West Bank, said Sarit Michaeli of the Israeli rights group B’Tselem. … Others who have been struck by tear gas canisters include Palestinian Bassem Abu Rahmeh, who was killed in 2009 when one hit his chest. They also include Tristan Anderson of Oakland, Calif., who is suffering from brain damage, paralysis and seizures after he was hit in the head by a canister at a 2009 demonstration.

Go ahead and debate Mustafa Tamimi’s right to throw rocks at an armored military jeep that invaded his village. But do not for a moment debate the obvious murderous intent of shooting someone in the face at close range with a s0-called ‘nonlethal’ grenade.

Also, somebody please tell the AP that when a Palestinian is killed by Israelis, it is lazy, irresponsible, and downright pathetic journalism to quote only Israelis (even if some are left-wing Israelis) for comments on the events of his death. The voices of Nabi Saleh’s residents deserve to be heard first hand. Haven’t they suffered enough to deserve that right?

Israeli border police soldiers stand near an Israeli public bus serving settlements in the West Bank city of Hebron.

Whenever pro-justice and anti-occupation activists draw parallels between the Israeli occupation and South African apartheid or the U.S. civil rights movement, critics are quick to point out examples of why such allusions are imperfect. Of course, all analogies from one freedom struggle to another are imperfect. But one of the biggest difference between Israeli oppression and these other examples is that Israel is careful not to codify many of its most discriminatory practices into explicit laws. (Though even this is changing.) Generally, it counts on de facto discrimination.

So for example, when Palestinian activists boarded Israeli buses as part of a “Freedom Ride” campaign, no, there is no law saying they can’t ride buses of Israeli companies like Egged pictured above that connect West Bank settlements to Jerusalem. West Bank Palestinians are just not allowed to enter most settlements—or Jerusalem–without special permission. Why? Like the answer to every question in Sunday school is “Jesus,” the answer to every question about why Israel discriminates on the basis of ethno-religious identity is “Security.”

Even the AP felt the need to inform the reader why their theme was inappropriate (emphasis added):

The Palestinian activists dubbed themselves “Freedom Riders” after 1960s American civil rights activists who worked in the U.S. South to counter racial discrimination and segregation there, though there were no security elements in the American rights struggle.

Tell that to the FBI official who wrote a memo after the March on Washington, describing Martin Luther King, Jr. as: “the most dangerous Negro of the future in this nation from the standpoint of communism, the Negro, and national security.” (emphasis added) “Democracies” have a long history of using security rationales to repress elements that resist oppression.

But just as the violence of segregated America was laid bare by the civil rights movement, that same AP article revealed a very interesting irony regarding the passengers of the Palestinian “Freedom Ride” bus:

The Palestinians paid their fares and boarded, as reporters jostled to board. Dwaik [one of the Palestinian activists] sat a row away from Haggai Segal, a 54-year-old Israeli from the settlement of Ofra once jailed for planting a car bomb that badly wounded a Palestinian mayor. The two did not interact.

That’s right—the Jewish terrorist bomber ex-con gets to ride the bus from his settlement home (built illegally according to international law) and ride into Jerusalem as he likes. The nonviolent Palestinian activists are dragged off the bus and arrested. Moreover:

Posted on the bus stop were posters praising the late Rabbi Meir Kahane, an extremist who argued that Palestinians should be expelled from Israel, the West Bank and Gaza.

So remind me—who’s the security risk here? And if you still don’t think apartheid or civil rights analogies are appropriate, check out the comments of some of the Jewish Israeli bus riders, courtesy of +972:

“I don’t think they need to be here,” Amir continued. “They can be in their villages and their houses, why are they in our area? Can we go to Ramallah? If we go into Ramallah, they’ll kill us. Can we go into their villages or their areas? We can’t enter.”

Amir added that, in her opinion, Jewish Israelis can’t trust Palestinians or believe in them. “They’ll do terror attacks,” she said.

…

A 16-year-old Jewish Israeli, who wished to remain anonymous, said that the Freedom Riders shouldn’t be able to board the bus because, “It’s an Israeli bus.”

“We live here, this is our land,” he said.

When asked about those who feel differently, the boy replied, “Those who say this is Palestinian land don’t have proof.”

He added that Palestinians enjoy a lot of freedom. “We give them identity cards and they can do whatever they want.”

+972 asked the boy, a resident of Maale Adumim who wished to remain anonymous, if Palestinians can do whatever they want, then why can’t they ride a bus to Jerusalem?

“Okay,” he said. “They can do what they need to… I don’t want them boarding the bus.”

…

A teenage girl with long, curly, blonde hair talked to a friend as she watched the activists get on the bus. “What are they doing? They have their own [buses]?” she said. She moved the phone away from her mouth and yelled at the male activists, “You sons of bitches!”

“You whore,” she said shouted at Arraf, the only female Freedom Rider.

No one can deny that some Palestinians have carried out acts of violence over the years. But the naked racism expressed here that attributes such acts to all members of a particular group is astonishing. Moreover, while instances of Palestinian violence have dropped significantly in the last few years, acts of violence and terror by Jewish Israeli extremists is increasing dramatically. Thankfully, as evidenced by the Israeli sites I’ve linked to in this post like Haaretz and +972, the debate within Israeli society about such issues is alive and well—if a bit stunted by the general rightward shift of Israeli society.

Let’s hope these debates go beyond the bounds expressed by some of this bus’s passengers:

On board, the Palestinians’ presence sparked an argument between two young Jewish Israelis girls, aged 13 and 17.

“They’re animals,” the younger said.

“No, not everyone,” the older answered.

Palestinian buses wait in line at the Qalandia checkpoint between Ramallah and Jerusalem.

On the last Friday of weekly demonstrations in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of East Jerusalem, activists confront Israeli settlers who have taken over part of a Palestinian home.

With all of the excitement about the J14 movement’s “March of the Million” (give or take a few 100K) in Tel Aviv and other Israeli cities this weekend, a minor historic moment passed with little fanfare among activist media in the region. The Sheikh Jarrah Solidarity movement, which has organized weekly demonstrations against the takeover of Palestinian homes by Israeli settlers in East Jerusalem for the past two years, announced that it will no longer hold the regular Friday rallies after this week. From their announcement:

…the goals of our struggle — the removal of the settlers from Sheikh Jarrah, the return of the families to their homes, and above all, the liberation of the residents of East Jerusalem from repression – are still far from being realized.

Therefore we, the activists of Solidarity and the residents of Sheikh Jarrah have decided to move on to the next phase of the struggle. [See update below.]

In the coming months, a series of activities in Sheikh Jarrah will replace the weekly demonstrations. We will conduct to tours of the neighborhood for the Israeli public, hold large-scale political and cultural events, and begin the construction of a permanent information center run by the neighborhood’s residents. We call on you all to take part in the next stage of the struggle in Sheikh Jarrah.

I’ve attended this event on a sporadic basis over the last year—it’s only a 20 minute walk from my house—and so it was with a certain amount of nostalgia that I attended this last regular demonstration on Friday. But as organizer Sarah Benninga was quick to remind me, this is not the end, it’s the beginning of a new phase in the movement. So here are my best shots from this week’s rally, which marched up to the doorstep of the Al-Kurd home, the front of which is occupied by Israeli settlers while the Palestinian residents still live in the rear of their house.

UPDATE: According to a recent email from Sheikh Jarrah Solidarity—apparently the residents of Sheikh Jarrah are now organizing their own weekly protests, and invite the solidarity community to join them:

The residents of Sheikh Jarrah are continuing their protest vigils in the neigbourhood on Fridays, protesting the violent evictions from their homes, the taking over of the neigborhood by the settlers, and the Judaization of East Jerusalem. They call upon each and every person who supports their struggle to join them.

There was a major solidarity demonstration of Israelis and Palestinians in support of Palestinians statehood this week. Here are a few of my best images from the event, followed by a news and commentary link round-up. Note that in this case, the Jerusalem Post article is far superior to Haaretz, so I’m not even listing the latter. The exact political goals were somewhat ambiguous (two-state or one-state? liberal Zionist or anti-Zionist?) but it was inspiring to see so many Israelis marching in support of Palestinian rights, often led in their chants by Palestinian marchers. Read the articles to get more of a read on the finer nuances of the event.

Victory for Palestinian-Israeli Solidarity: more than 3,000 participated in the March of Independence

A Palestinian East Jerusalemite’s view of the joint march

4,500 march in Jerusalem for Palestinian state

Israelis, Palestinians in ‘joint Jerusalem rally’

3000 March Through Jerusalem for Palestine

Palestinians and Israelis march together

A Jerusalem rally in solidarity with Egypt. The sign reads: “Long live Palestinian-Egyptian cooperation against the occupation and American policy.”

I haven’t been inspired to write any commentary on recent events in Egypt and the rest of the Middle East beyond the occasional Facebook post. Maybe I will eventually. Pastor Alex Awad at East Jerusalem Baptist Church has had great sermons touching on these issues the last two weeks, and I hope to post them online soon. But heeding his challenge today to engage the news on these various events and not “change the channel” (I put this in quotes because our satellite TV can’t access any news channels right now anway), I read a few articles about Libya today and came across this in the NY Times:

A group of fifty prominent Libyan Muslim religious leaders issued an appeal to Muslims in the security forces to stop participating in the violence against protesters.

“We appeal to every Muslim, within the regime or assisting it in any way, to recognize that the killing of innocent human beings is forbidden by our Creator and by His beloved Prophet of Compassion (peace be upon him), ” the statement declared, according to Reuters. “Do NOT kill your brothers and sisters. STOP the massacre NOW! ”

This gave me chills because it so clearly echoes the words of Archbishop Oscar Romero of El Salvador the day before he was assassinated by US-sponsored thugs in 1980:

“Brothers, you came from our own people. You are killing your own brothers. Any human order to kill must be subordinate to the law of God, which says, ‘Thou shalt not kill’. No soldier is obliged to obey an order contrary to the law of God. No one has to obey an immoral law. It is high time you obeyed your consciences rather than sinful orders. The church cannot remain silent before such an abomination. …In the name of God, in the name of this suffering people whose cry rises to heaven more loudly each day, I implore you, I beg you, I order you: stop the repression!”

While the recent US veto of a UN Security Council resolution condemning Israeli settlement construction was unsurprising yet still deeply disappointing, I hope and pray that my country finds its way to the right side of history in the midst of these converging freedom movements in the Middle East—not just with words, but with actions and truth!

A building demolition in East Jerusalem has provoked international condemnation including statements by Secretary of State Clinton, and leaders of the UN, EU, and UK, due to plans to build a new Jewish settlement in the Palestinian neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah. The settlement will become one more link in a chain of Jewish enclaves encircling the Old City of Jerusalem, effectively cutting it off from the rest of Palestinian East Jerusalem and the West Bank. A few key facts in this particular case:

The hotel was declared “absentee property” by Israel after it captured and annexed East Jerusalem. The title was transferred to an Israeli firm, which sold it in 1985 to Irving Moskowitz, a Florida bingo king and patron of Jewish settlers. (Haaretz)

The vast majority of land on which Jerusalem is built, including the settlements in the city’s occupied eastern sector, is state land, and the property built on it can be purchased by anyone who is an Israeli citizen, or who is Jewish. Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem, very few of whom have Israeli citizenship, must first obtain a special permit to purchase land or property there, with rights groups saying such permission is virtually unheard of. (Ma’an)

Nearly 500,000 Jews live in more than 100 settlements built since Israel’s 1967 occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem. The settlements are considered illegal under international law, although Israel disputes this. (BBC)

This was the first building demolition that I was able to witness and photograph. Here are some key shots of the demolition and protests by Palestinians, Israelis, and international activists:

It’s not fun reading multiple news sources from the Middle East on a daily basis. But one key lesson of media analysis from the likes I.F. Stone and Noam Chomsky is that even by reading enough mainstream media the “truth” can slip out. I’m no Beautiful Mind schizophrenic looking for secret messages in the newspaper. But it is discouraging to read over and over again the prevailing media narratives of Israelis-only-as-victims and Palestinians-only-as-terrorists—and therefore mildly satisfying when a mainstream source like The Jerusalem Post slightly more accurately reflects the reality on the ground.

Today’s headline reads, “Border Police set to bolster IDF presence in West Bank,” and references police drills in which  ”One of the scenarios included a large Jewish demonstration during which Palestinians carry out a terrorist attack.”  So, far, so typical. (More recent drills have included setting up detention camps for Arabs in Israel!) But the following section of the story is honest enough to cite official sources on what kind of violence is currently the most severe:

While the IDF Central Command has noted a lull in terrorism in recent years, there has been an increase in civil disturbances in the West Bank, particularly surrounding the recent olive harvest, described by the defense establishment as possibly the most violent in Israeli history.

Since the beginning of October, the United Nations has recorded a weekly average of eight harvest incidents resulting in injuries and severe damage to property, including the uprooting and burning of thousands of trees.

Strangely, it doesn’t explicitly mention who is creating the current civil disturbances or who is responsible for “possibly the most violent” olive harvest in Israeli history. It doesn’t say who is committing the eight incidents per week of injuries and property damage, or, with the especially obnoxious use of the passive voice, “the uprooting and burning of thousands of trees.” Perhaps they uprooted and burned themselves. Only the final sentence of the article mentions “a spate of anti-Palestinian attacks, including one by settlers…”

Why is The Jerusalem Post so shy about directly naming the perpetrators of the current violence in the West Bank? Why are the very people responsible for the recent violence—Jewish Israeli settlers—not even mentioned until the final sentence of this article? Is it because deeply ingrained media narratives die hard?

The problem with an article like this that ostensibly reports the facts with “balance” and “objectivity” is that those not intimately familiar with the contours of the conflict could miss the main substance of the article—and rely instead on the prevailing narrative to fill in the cracks. On my lazier days, I just scan headlines, and skimming this headline, it would be reasonable to assume that the Israeli Border Police are increasing their presence to clamp down on Palestinians. Even skimming the article itself would only give you a vague sense of “a possible escalation in Israeli and Palestinian violence” with little indication of who the perpetrators of violence are in this case.

This kind of journalism reminds me of standard reports from demonstrations—from just about anywhere in the world—which often include the maddeningly ambiguous phrase “protests turned violent…” without having the courage to investigate or report on who actually began the violence in a given incident. This often leaves the assumption by implication that it was the protesters who became violent—when in fact, as any activist will tell you, it is often the police who land the first blows. Contacts among activists in Palestine routinely report that Israeli police and soldiers often fire tear gas or rubber-coated steel bullets even when a demonstration is completely nonviolent.

An earlier Jerusalem Post article included this nugget:

According to this officer involved with the project, the level of violence at the demonstrations has decreased dramatically in recent months. In the past, the Friday protests near the fence resulted in a number of wounded protesters, and occasionally, IDF soldiers as well. Lately, there have been about 60 demonstrators on a weekly basis, more than half, left-wing Israeli and foreign activists.

The IDF has recently arrested some of the key activists who organize the demonstrations. One of them, Abdullah Abu Rahma, was sentenced last week to a year in jail.

An additional factor which led to the drop in violence was a decision by the IDF Central Command to remove the Border Police units deployed every Friday to protect the fence from vandalism. While effective in protecting the fence, Border Policemen are sometimes said to be more aggressive in riot control operations.

So, while the JPost implies that jailing protest organizers was a factor in reducing violence at the demonstrations (huh?), it at least admits that “an additional factor” in reduced violence was the removal of aggressive Border Police units. (It fails to mention that several activists have been killed by the Border Police, including Bassem Abu Rahma, a relative of Abdullah Abu Rahma. Bassem’s brother was shot at point-blank range with a rubber bullet while bound and held by IDF soldiers.)

Again, it would take a very informed reader to glean what is actually taking place on the ground: The presence of a large number of Israeli and international activists—whom the IDF is less likely to shoot at—combined with the removal of especially aggressive Border Police units, has resulted in a dramatic decrease in the level of violence at protests. I got to experience this firsthand at a recent demonstration against the separation barrier in Al-Walaja—as our organizer friends had assured us, a large nonviolent crowd, including a good number of international and Israeli activists, and the soldiers held their fire.

Of course sometimes protesters do cast the first stone, and sometimes Palestinian commit violence—even terrorist violence. But only a careful reader of either article mentioned above would even realize that historically, consistantly, statistically, quantitatively, and qualitatively: Palestinians are more often the victims of Israeli violence than the other way around. This is not to minimize the massive violence perpetrated against the Jewish people throughout history, culminating in the Holocaust—but merely to state honestly the indisputable fact that the State of Israel consistently exerts overwhelming military violence to perpetuate the occupation. The casualty counts—civilian or otherwise—of their recent conflicts make this abundantly clear.

So with those important acknowledgements, here’s my main point: Now that Palestinian resistance to the occupation has turned largely to nonviolence and political negotiation, old narratives and assumptions need to change because they are based on a distorted picture of reality. Hopefully these cracks in the prevailing narratives will widen to the point that the Israeli, U.S., and international publics have a clearer understanding of the conflict, and can therefore more honestly advocate for a just resolution.

… Or maybe I just don’t go to the same kinds of protests anymore. When I decided to embark on the massive project of building a complete online archive of my work more than a year ago, these were some of the very photos I anticipated unearthing. These photos of an anti-sweatshop protest at the Georgetown Gap stores are the kinds of pictures I took because I wanted to cover the event, but had no real prospects for publishing at the time. Now they’re finally seeing the light after being buried in negative binders for the last decade or so, and will hopefully find some use at least in the microstock world.

Since returning from my sabbatical in the Middle East in June, I’ve been following events in Iran with great interest. The elections took place there about a week before the end of my trip, and though I didn’t have any direct connection to Iran while in the region–other than conversations with a friend who had recently visited Tehran and relayed the anti-Ahmadinejad sentiment that he heard on the streets there–I’ve mostly just been moved in inspired by the courage of ordinary citizens to take on such a repressive regime. So I’ve tried to do my part by showing up to local events here in DC, and blogging about it for Sojourners.

Here’s a link to the gallery, which I plan to update with more photos soon.