None so strong as the Converted-- Published in Jordan's NOX Magazine
None so strong as the converted
by Jonas Moffat

NOX Magazine, http://www.nox-mag.com/features/dec07/feature2.html


Enraged by the attacks on the World Trade Centre in 2001, Jonas Moffat was set to join the US Air Force – until 90 minutes with the PLO turned his worldview upside down




Pondering from these Prison Walls

Not far from Tel Aviv, as I lay here in my Ramla prison cell staring at the ceiling, not much is there to do besides recap the events in my life that caused me to arrive in this position. I am wearing all black, as if my future self knew before I left my cozy apartment in Ramallah, that this color would represent the mood I currently occupy. Yesterday, I spent the whole day in questioning. “Viscous” is but an understatement for the type of forceful interrogation given by Israel’s Ministry of the Interior. It started as soon as I left Ramallah for Jerusalem on a Palestinian bus. I noted a hint of anxiety. But this anxiousness was not the “normal” kind usually felt when approaching the fortress-like checkpoint of Qalandia, which separates Ramallah from other Palestinian towns and Jerusalem. There was something deeper in this anxiety as our bus waited in the long line and Israeli soldiers checked the permits of Palestinians attempting to cross Qalandia’s walls.

My best friend Katie is beside me. Both of us emanate a sense of nervousness yet skill, having done this so many times. Our fingers slightly touch, offering comfort as one Israeli soldier enters the bus, M16 dangling from his side. Two IDs checked beside us. I’m next. Soldier holds onto my passport, looks me in the eyes, then my passport. “Come with me!” he demands. A shiny pair of handcuffs is pulled from a security official’s pocket. Exiting the bus is Katie, half screaming at the soldiers. Calmly, I ask, “What have I done?” Instead of an answer I find two big security guys on either side of me dragging me to a small white trailer. “This is it,” I thought. “My stay in Palestine has come to an end.” Some ridiculous questioning ensued.

“You are a Muslim, aren’t you?” I responded that I was not a Muslim. “Admit it, we know that you are a Muslim!”

I am not a Muslim, I assured them, but what if I was, I asked.

“Why do you insist that I am a Muslim?”

“Because you have a beard!”

“Have you seen the settlers in Hebron?” I asked. “They all have beards. Are they also Muslims because they have beards?”

“Listen,” they continued, “we know that you are a Muslim and that you have a fake passport.”

Fake passport? “I guarantee you guys that my passport is legit and that I am Christian. I worship Jesus. If you take off my handcuffs I can show you my Jesus keychain.” Katie is detained and released.

“You know it’s dangerous for Israelis to be in Ramallah,” I hear someone consult her. Katie responded with two words, first one beginning with “F” and the second one was “You!” I am placed in a white tinted-window sedan. Part of my optimistic side still believes that all of this is big mistake. Pessimism takes over when I ask the driver where they are taking me and the response is “the airport.”

Our destination is close to the airport. Planes are seen flying low to the ground. “Which one of these is mine?” The next couple of hours are filled with more intense questioning.

“Why do you want a lawyer? Why are you so nervous?” sneers the Interior official with a South American accent.

I turn the questioning over to him: “Are you Chilean?” He smiles but doesn’t answer. And neither do I anymore. I am informed that I will spend the next couple of weeks in jail until my deportation unless I purchase a plane ticket tonight. First word beginning with “F,” second word, “You!” is the response he receives.

Fingerprinted, photographed, and filed alongside the rest of the “troublemakers” who have been booted by the Zionist regime for revealing to the world the horrors and atrocities of the Occupation, now behind bars for these sins of mine.

But it wasn’t always like this.

I contemplated from that uncomfortable jail bed on the chain of events that led me to this land in the first place.

A Tuesday morning in 2001

I arrive at my ambulance company a few minutes late for my 9:00am shift. A handful of Paramedics can be seen glaring at the television when I enter the employee room. No one turns to greet me. I join in on the staring. And there they are, two towers ablaze in New York. This is the moment that a countrywide shock is borne. Subsequently, the paranoia will ensue.

Today, there just so happens to be a supposedly hijacked plane hovering over the skies of Pittsburgh. The fear, admits a superior, is that one of the next “targets” will be one of the many hospitals scattered throughout Pittsburgh. We are dispatched to these facilities.
Shockingly, I am feeling overly patriotic. Maybe it’s the radio? I hear Lee Greenwood’s, “I’m Proud to be an American,” playing almost simultaneously on different stations.

A sense of panic has taken over the streets as my ambulance lights and sirens engulf my perception. My EMT partner is convinced the plane is coming down on the building where his mother works so he makes an unscheduled stop to her department store, loads her into the wagon, and catapults her to the safety of her home. TV and radio stations are already blaming “Arab terrorists” and “freedom-hating Muslims.” And here I am, 21 years old and still impressionable, consuming this information, eating up every piece of it.

I find the nearest shop selling American flag pins and buy a few, pinning one to my chest immediately. “Ooh, look over there, car flags!” (the kind with magnets that stick to the hood of my army-style Jeep Wrangler!) It won’t be long, especially with the help of the mainstream media, before I make up my mind: I will join the US Air Force, to serve as a flight medic, and protect my country! This is the legacy of my family, after all. My parents met via the US Marines. My grandfather served. My great grandfather was on the first ship in Tokyo Bay after Japan surrendered. Now it’s my turn!

The Air Force recruiter is pleased with my decision and schedules me to take the aptitude test next week. I return for the test at the federal building. Once I take this test, I become property of the US military machine. My name, however, is not on the list. The man at the desk apologizes but I “cannot take the test unless your name is on the list.” Luckily, there is another testing in two weeks. He signs me up. Maybe it was a divine intervention, because a week after almost signing away my soul, I will meet a woman who will forever change my course on this planet.

Often, I take a stroll through the Carnegie Mellon University campus. On today’s stroll, I spot a flyer reading, “In pursuit of peace in the Middle East: Diana Buttu, PLO peace negotiation advisor, arrives from Occupied Ramallah to warn of regional disaster as US pursues Iraq war.” Interesting, this presentation starts in an hour. And in one week I join the Air Force, potentially being sent “over there,” so I decide to hear this Diana Buttu. For an hour and a half I listen her. I try and digest what she is relaying to me here in Doherty Hall. The role of the Israeli lobby in the US and their push for war in Iraq, what this all means for US foreign policy in the region, what it means for the Palestinians. Connections never before imagined are made for me here. I imagine myself training with the Air Force and I feel sick.

I follow the crowd to the reception area. There, I meet Diana and the Pittsburgh Palestine Solidarity Committee who organized the event. I am introduced to Kate Daher, the chair of the PSC. Although my head is experiencing a whirlwind, I relay my dilemma to Kate: “I am to join the Air Force in a week to go get the bad guys. After today’s presentation, I am beginning to think we are the ones wearing the horns. I am so confused!” Kate passes me some literature. I go home and devour the handouts. I feel shocked yet exhilarated.

Needless to say, I don’t join the Air Force, though the recruiters didn’t stop calling me for months. Instead, I join the International Solidarity Movement, a Palestinian-led movement committed to resisting the Israeli occupation of Palestinian land using nonviolent, direct-action methods and principles. And it is with the ISM that I will devote the next five years of my life.

I Don’t Want Your Handouts!

I am the only white guy in this wing of the prison. I assume that I am the only one in the whole complex. My cellmates are Sudanese, Ethiopian, Eritrean, and Nigerian. All have been arrested for overstaying their visas in Israel or for being caught sneaking into the country. Many have not given their names. “Three meals a day and drinking water is good enough for me,” says the Eritrean. “And why are you here?” I ponder this question as four guards enter. They hover over my bed. It is day three and I have not eaten their food or drank their water. I have evoked the principles of Gandhi and I do not accept their handouts—their “charity.”

“We are concerned for you,” says one of the guards. “You need to eat.” I stare at them blankly. If they only knew all that Israel has already “provided” me over the past years. And now they are concerned? And what about the Palestinians—all that has been placed on their tables? Don’t Bite the Hand that Feeds You, some may say. I say, don’t eat from the hands that poison you, arrest you, beat you, shoot you, and deport you. If these guards could transcend themselves into my thoughts this is what they would find:

I find myself on Shuhadda Street in the Tel Rumeida neighborhood of Hebron. A Palestinian child is walking home alone. Katie and I are posted on the street to observe Israeli settlers, the most extreme settlers in all of the West Bank. Four 20-something year old settlers are walking this way. The Palestinian boy asks us to walk with him. As I reach the boy’s front door, I see a swift motion behind me. I am karate-chopped by the biggest settler. I fall to the ground. They continue to kick me on the ground until Katie comes over screaming for the soldier to intervene. The boys make a quick getaway. I am left shaken, with several bruises.

Fast-forward a month. Here I am at the sink in my kitchen, pouring water for tea. I see a tiny organism exit the facet and enter the teapot. I ask my Palestinian coworker if this is normal. No, was his concerned response. We make our way to the roof where our water tanks reside. Our roof, you see, is a “closed military zone,” however. The IDF is using it as an observation tower. They are also using our water tanks as garbage bins. Inside we find their trash, everything from bullets to army netting to food containers. Immediately, I assume they have used our tanks as toilets and get nauseas. The organism that dove from my faucet was nothing compared to the thousands that were paddling around in our drinking tanks. Eventually, we will hear from our friend in LA, who stayed in our apartment, that she contracted tapeworm. In my book, this amounts to poisoning.

The following year I am in Bil’in, a Palestinian village that is losing 60% of her farmland to Israel’s Apartheid Wall. At a weekly non-violent demonstration against this monstrosity, I am on the medic team because of my experience as an EMT. When I receive word that an Israeli activist has been shot in the head, I go to the rescue. Meters away from reaching Lymor Goldstein, I hear a soldier yell from behind me. From just feet away, he takes aim with his M16. I start to run. My blue jeans turn red on the left leg. The rubber-coated steel bullet pierces my skin, enters my body, bounces off of my bone, and exits. Lymor isn’t so lucky. The bullet penetrates his skull and enters his brain. According to Israeli military law, shooting rubber bullets from a distance under 40 meters is considered deadly. Miraculously, Lymor survives.

Next year I find myself in the Palestinian village of Artas near Bethlehem. Farmers have been warned that Israeli bulldozers will soon arrive to uproot their apricot trees to pave the way for a sewage system for the settlement atop the adjacent hill, currently under construction. For a week we have camped out under the trees to be ready for the arrival of the Israeli Occupation Forces, eating and drinking tea under the stars, bonding with Palestinian, Israeli, and international activists. This is this morning the bulldozers arrive.

Some activists have chained themselves to the trees. Others are making a human wall affront the soldiers. Soon, men, women, and children are seen being launched over a wall, falling to the ground, screaming in various languages for the soldiers to stop. One soldier tries to take my camera and break it but I am too quick. Instead, I am launched over the wall, protecting my camera in my arms, caught by the activists on the other side like stage diving. When the IOF has secured us far enough away from the scene, the sound of the bulldozer can be heard. In a matter of minutes, a whole field of apricot tress is obliterated, along with a whole family’s livelihood. I cannot hold back my tears as a stony-faced Palestinian farmer hugs me tightly.

I would love to relay these stories, and a mountain of others, to the guards standing over my bed urging me to eat their food. Something tells they wouldn’t care. Something tells me that, in their eyes, I am the bad guy. I could spend the next few days telling them why I am not going to eat their food, with images of Palestinians being carried away on stretchers from non-violent demonstrations, women passed out on the ground due to extreme tear gas inhalation, blood stains on walls in Balata refugee camp, miles of concrete separating Palestinians form their schools and families.

But I don’t have a few days. Soon I will be deported for my crime of witnessing and documenting Israel’s human rights violations, for sharing the truth from Occupied Palestine. The Ministry of the Interior judge tells me that I have enough problems in my own country. She tells me that I am outlawed from her country for the next 10 years, “plenty of time to cause trouble in the States.” We shall see. From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.



Jonas Moffat has been active with the International Solidarity Movement since 2003. He is the co-founder of the Tel Rumeida Circus for Detained Palestinians. Jonas is currently working as a freelance writer in Cairo. He maintains a blog at: http://joeskillet.livejournal.com









A full version of this article appears in NOX issue 17
(or email me for full version of article)

http://www.nox-mag.com

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