This isn’t about politics. This isn’t about religious ethics. This is about human lives. This is about my olive harvest trip to Palestine in October 2009. This is about how the Nazi holocaust has been fashioned into an ideological weapon to immunise Israel from legitimate criticism.

My trip certainly opened my eyes to what is actually going on behind those blurry censored mass media cameras, the news corporations don’t want us to see for some still unclear, foggy reason.

Just getting into Palestine via Israel is a slight struggle. The reason for this Israeli interrogation – beginning at Heathrow – and interest to my onward journey following my arrival at Ben Gurion Tel Aviv International Airport became all too clear towards the end of my trip. They are scared to death that the truth will be unveiled about what brutal tragedies are being inflicted in the ‘occupied territories’ = Palestine. The same interrogation process on my return journey to Britain for similar reasons wasn’t to enquire if my time spent in Israel was pleasant enough, I believe it to be more of the case that they don’t want me bringing any evidence of what I saw in the West Bank back with me. This slight intimidation may stop photo’s or video’s travelling through the airport but it can’t stop the images and voices I both saw and heard stored very securely inside my head. It all seems to be part of the wonderfully hugely controlled public relations machine Israel makes doubly sure turns in the direction which favours them most. It seems very reminiscent of how one imagines the old soviet regimes to have operated, with one difference. The old soviet regimes and propaganda machines had to counter an equally effective western propaganda machine. In this case however, the Palestinians seem to be barely audible once you leave the Arab world, drowned by a very politically correct Israeli biased media, which always feels that it has to report an equally balanced story where often the fact is quite simply that the story is so dreadful that a balanced story is just not possible. If a wall is black, it is very difficult to say it is a different colour; however an argument that perhaps it isn’t black appears to be what the mass international media are trying to broadcast every evening.

Having spoken to a number of families during my trip to the West Bank I was often confronted with awful inhuman stories that to me just simply didn’t make sense and after returning to Britain still make just as little sense now as then. Why would a regular youth be assassinated by the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) for no apparent reason? Hearing this same story again and again from different families in similar looking living rooms, – adorned by photos of their murdered children – this whole world began to really go grey and fuzzy in front of me. Again and again hearing the same stories I actually began to be accustomed to seeing the photos of the children superimposed onto a photo of the Al-Aqsa mosque (where they incidentally wouldn’t be able to visit due to the ‘security wall’ restricting their movements). If this conditioning – where I felt less shock each time I heard a similar story – began to become apparent to me during my two week trip, what affect would this have on the young children that don’t know anything else?

So onto the actual harvest, the Internationals purpose for being there. Being surrounded by Israeli settlements on the illegally conquered hill tops of our village – Madama it was evident where the risk would be coming from. During my third day, accompanying a family from the neighbouring village of Burin while we harvested their olive groves relatively close to an Israeli settlement where we were warned it’s best to start picking the trees further down first and we would see how we progress in terms of if we should pick the trees closest to the settlement. Having witnessed burnt trees and tree stumps left from a previous attack by the settlers it was understandable the farmers agitation to start lower down first.

See this link for more information about settler attacks in Burin:

http://palsolidarity.org/2009/09/8436

Later that afternoon when I spotted some settler’s moving down the hill directly in front of us but still a safe distance away I mention to our farmer, Jemal, what I had seen as I thought it was best if we would bring our morning’s harvest lower down the hill, just in case. Seeing the fear in his eyes and his plea for us to accompany him to get the mornings harvest which we had left slightly up the hill was heart breaking. This is when it became clear to me how sickening the situation is. Later Jemal pointed out where his land lies which he is no longer able to harvest and thus must let the trees which have been in his family for hundreds of years just overgrow and go to waste for fear of his life if he were to approach them. We offered to go to the trees with him but again that look in his eyes gave us a very clear signal that this was not advised. Perhaps we wouldn’t whiteness any attacks on this day but there could well be retribution once we – the internationals – are no longer there to whiteness these savage acts of terror that occur.

Late this day once we where all packed up and ready to go, instead of taking the tunnel that the Israeli’s had constructed for the local community to underpass the immaculately constructed ‘Jewish/military only’ road we decided to chance it and accompany our family across the road avoiding about a 2km de-tour. As we were tired from the days picking and joking around and deep in conversation with the family about food, games and family we crossed the road not paying attention to a military jeep which was approaching us. As the jeep pulled up alongside us and Jemal’s wife, Ilham, Ilham started violently shaking and began to pray. Only at this point did we realise the potential problem we had walked into. I suspect due to the fact that Internationals were in presence the Israeli soldiers didn’t leave their armoured jeep, favouring a much favoured tactic of theirs, humiliation and intimidation. Once we were back on the other side of the road back in the village the tension which was almost tangible began to subside due to the completely awful acting on Jemals behalf that there was no problem to calm his wife, but again that look in his eye told me otherwise.