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REFLECTION Hebron: A Different News
REFLECTION

Hebron: A Different News
By Michael Fay
CPT Delegation
January 15, 2007

It`s funny how the way we receive information can impact our response. As a person who reads the newspaper everyday, I am used to getting information about tragedies, injustice, and the many terrible and varied ways that human beings can inflict harms upon each other. But somehow having someone tell their story to me directly can ramp up the intensity of my response one hundred fold.

Yesterday, I learned about Ali* who broke curfew when he was 14. He went to join his mother, who was visiting his aunt who lived close by, and he was caught out in the streets of a refugee camp during one of the many curfews. For this crime, if he ever leaves the West Bank he will not be allowed to return. Ali told our group this story from the top of his family home overlooking the refugee camp of Duheisha outside of Bethlehem. The reality of his travel restrictions hit me more fully than it would have otherwise, because I got that information after having walked through the refugee camp, and maybe just because I could look into his eyes and read his stance as he said it

On Sunday, I met a soldier who shot a man who was entering into a forbidden zone surrounding an Israeli settlement in Gaza. That is old news. You will not read it in the newspaper now because it happened years ago. But, sitting in front of Yitzhak* telling the story, affected me like no news story. His orders were to shoot anyone coming into an area cleared in front of the settlement. There had been problems with Palestinians attacking the settlements. On the day of the shooting, a man wandered into the forbidden area. Yitzhak gave the order to stop. The man kept walking. Yitzhak gave the order to stop again as he aimed his gun at the man`s legs. The man kept walking. Yitzhak shot. They had to leave the man there for hours as they tried to determine if there was a bomb attached to his body. When they finally reached the man, they found that he was no threat at all. Yitzhak couldn`t remember if he was mentally retarded or deaf or both, but he certainly did not forget the i! ncident. After that Yitzhak refused to serve in the Occupied Territories, defending settlements that he was no longer sure were worth defending. He told our group this story after an intensive briefing on the details of the locations of settlements. Those location details I could have read in the newspaper, but hearing his story from his own mouth was different.

It`s more than news to me now.

*Not real names.

__________________

Christian Peacemaker Teams is an ecumenical initiative to support violence reduction efforts around the world. To learn more about CPT`s peacemaking work, please visit our website at: http://www.cpt.org.



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