Dismissal from Israel, Outlawed from Ramallah
Well, they did it again. Another refugee to add to the ante. Of course, I have a 'home' to return to in the States. I can go back if I choose and continue to contribute to the fascist continuation of Occupation by paying those tax dollars--watch them manifest themselves into a panel of the Apartheid Wall, maybe morph into one of those atrocious watchtowers or into a rubber-coated steel bullet to be shot at the non-violent demonstrators in Bil'in. Sure, I have that dreadful home to return to.

But my home is in Palestine. My life is there. Those who favor and work for human rights, however, have no place in an Apartheid State, and the Israeli government does everything in their "God-given" power to eliminate this problem, through intimidation or by placing them on a plane and exporting them.

That scene of a field of apricot trees being ripped from the Earth by an Israeli bulldozer has been on replay ever since I lay in the Israeli prison bed. Israeli soldiers and police throwing men and women to the ground as they pray to Allah for this moment in time to cease. Sons are handcuffed. Activists are seen like rag dolls being tossed from here to there. Hundreds of years of livelihood dismantled by the Middle East's only democracy. And soon I find myself forced onto a plane by Israeli security because I bared witness, video-taped and photographed all that this democracy had to offer. I saw this democracy bare its teeth with its unpleasant smile, seeping through a stench of death, a 60 year old rotting lie of innocense.

And I am sent elsewhere. "Go back to your own country--aren't there enough problems with your own government," sneers the judge. God, if she only knew. Those problems with my government brought me here in the first place.

I wonder if when Oprah makes her solidarity visit for those "terrorized Israelis" she will see what's happening across the "border," listening to my or the thousands of other e-mails pleading that America's #1 talk show host experience the Palestinian plight, to see what terrorism means at 2am when an entourage of soldiers invades your village and practices a war games scenario, wreaking havoc on the inhabitants. Somehow I doubt it.

Israel wouldn't deport a high-profile American woman like Oprah because she reported on Israeli settlers attacking an 8-year old Palestinian boy in Hebron, would they?

You know, I wouldn't put anything past the Middle East's only democracy.

So, I am taking six weeks to redirect this anger, sadness, emptiness, and frustration, and hoping to manifest these emotions into something beautiful. A regime of ugliness has no defense against this kind of beauty.

But can this beauty battle billions of American tax dollars?

One can only hope.

Signing off until further notice...

Salamaat,
Jonas