[Peace-discuss] more from ISM

[Peter Rohloff]

05/05/03

greetings. so once again, after saying i was settled for the
duration of my stay, i have moved. so from now on, i will refrain
from thinking i know what my schedule will be. day by day we will go.
i am now in a village called beit sahour, in the bethleham area. i
am for the time being taking over the media office for the
international solidarity movement. the man i am replacing was here
throughout the incidences with rachel corrie, brian avery and thomas
hundell. he is very near the end of his wits and so needs to move
on. the media office has become quite a hectic place over the past
few months. and now, israeli (as also it seems international) media
has become frenzied with attempting to slander the ism. suddenly we
are being painted as an organization that is aiding and abetting
suicide bombers. it is amazing how things have taken off and what an
intense campaign is being waged against us. i am finding it
difficult to convey the situation here that the media is creating.
we are getting at least two or three death threat phone calls a day
here in the media office. israeli older sounding men mostly telling
me they are going to rip me apart physically, and that i better pack
my bags and flee before i get hurt. it is interesting to me, it
sounds very familiar to stories i have always been told about when
the zionists first came to this land and created much violence,
massacres and threats specifically with the intention of scaring the
palestinian population into packing their bags and fleeing. the
media and the israeli government itself are expending so much energy
in order to connect us with terrorists. actually making loads of
crap up, not just bending the facts as is normal to them, but
actually creating completely new situations that have no footing in
reality whatsoever. at the moment, the word against us is that we
have been caught stashing weapons, hiding a senior islamic jihad
terrorist, and meeting and working with the man who blew himself up
in telaviv.
and all of this for only being non-violent peace activists. of
course, it doesn't surprise me. i have been around enough to know
that this is what happens to movements time and time again, but this
is the first time that i am actually experiencing it so intensly
from the inside.
at this point, no one is being scared off by this attempt to
frighten us. it has though created a need for us to greatly
reconfigure our work here. it is becoming more and more difficult to
do our work without getting caught. today there was an international
in the west bank who was riding with an ambulance. at the checkpoint
near town, the ambulance was let through, but the international was
forced to get out and was detained by the soldiers. eventually he
was released, but the soldiers would not return his passport to him.
so now he is in the west bank without a passport.
as always though reading this on a comupter screen seems to me to
lack the intensity of the situation.
i apologize for this seems a bit fragmented and brief. i am working
on some articles to combat this current media blitz and will forward
them to you. perhaps they can be posted around in the u.s. also.
my love to you--flo