nolympics writes:

I was a human shield

By Billie Moskona-Lerman

I visited hell and I came back in one piece. It happened on the night
between Thursday and Friday last week [March 20-21] when I
accompanied Joe and Laura,two 20-year old human rights activists, in
acting as a human shield facing the IDF. When they asked me do I
join in and I answered "yes", I did not fully realize what I was
getting myself into. It was my first experience under fire:so close
to death, so anonymous, my life so easily abandoned in somebody else's
hands. Never did I feel so weak, so defenceless. I did say "I am
coming" and we set out. It was 7.30 PM. we walked through the main
street of Rafah, a town which is in fact just a big refugee camp. We
walked in darkness, through ruins, pot-holes and puddles, torn bits
of nylon and plastic, barbed wire and piles of rubbish. Here and
there some stores were open. Groups of young boys were walking around
us, shouting "Sa'lam Aleikum, Sa'lam Aleikum".

Suddenly, one of them picked up a stone and threw it at us. It flew
through the air and fell near us. Joe and Laura were not very
disturbed. "We represent for them the American culture which they
hate" said Laura.

I vaguely knew that we were walking towards Rafah's border with
Egypt. We walked towards the last house in the last row of Rafah
houses. The home of Muhammad Jamil Kushta. At a certain stage, after
ten minutes of fast walking in empty alleys, we went aside into a
long and narrow alley at whose end I could see a big pillar. When we
came near I could see it was a tall guard tower.

When we came near the tower, Joe and Laura raised their hands high
and signalled to me to do the same. I did as they asked and walked
towards the IDF guard tower with my hands high above my head, walking
quickly - but not too quickly - through the empty alley. Our clothing
was fluorescent orange, with silver strips to make it even more
conspicuous in the night. Joe held a big megaphone in one hand and a
big phosphorescent sheet in the other. 20 metres from the tower we
could see, even in the utter darkness, that we were facing a major
fortification - an Israeli strong point at the exact border between
Rafah and Egypt.

A few steps before the tower Laura abruptly pushed me into a small,
dark entrance and whispered "Quick, it's here". I went over the
doorstep, feeling the way with my foot, with the eyes gradually
getting used to the sight of of high, dark corridor. Five steps, and
my brow hit strongly against a concrete block. Passing under it, I
went up ten wining stairs at whose end was a door.

A short ring and the door opened to reveal the smiling face of
Muhammad Kushta. Standing in the door, smiling back, I felt relieved
that the damned walking was over and that we got to somewhere looking
like a hospitable house. I did not realize what kind of night was
waiting for me. I had not the slightest idea.

Muhammad Jamil Kushta, whose house we have come to defend, opened the
door to see two young human rights activists who had been spending
the nights in his home for the past few weeks, plus a woman
introducing herself as a french journalist. The French journalist was
me, at that moment nobody knew I was actually an Israeli from Tel
Aviv. "Tfatdal, Tfatdal" he said as he opened the door, the greeting
joined by his young wife Nora holding little Nancy in her hands. It
was already a quarter past eight when we all sat down on the floor by
the little heater when suddenly it started. A noise which to my ear
sounded very very close, a rolling noise, an ear-shattering noise, a
noise which sounded like hell. It was the first time that night that
the house came under fire, and the first time for me to be under
fire. I started shaking. My entire body was shaking. The noise was
rolling by my ears like a series of giant fireballs. Shooting,
shooting, shooting. I understood this is how an encounter with death
looks like. With the first burst Jamil moved his tea glass slightly.

Up and down, up and down. Nora held Nancy tightly. Joe and Laura went
to the baby Ibasan who slept in the corner and her brother the young
jamil and crouched over them. It lasted half an hour, and for an hour
and half afterwards my body was till shaking. But I did not yet
realize it was just the beginning.

I watched Jamil without words and he said: "I goes on like this every
night. For two and a half years". "What are they shooting at?" I
asked. "In the air" he shrugged. "Why?" "Out of fear" he said
simply. "They are also afraid, alone there in the dark. They are very
young". "Why aren't you taking your children elsewhere, away from
here?" I asked after getting my voice under control. "I have no
money" he answered. "

A Dangerous Game

It is not by chance that over the past few weeks, Laura and Joe are
spending their nights in Jamil's house. It is the last house in the
row of houses fronting the Egyptian border. Some twenty metres from
this house, perhaps less, the IDF built a high fortification,
destroyed all houses to the right and left and stationed guns, tanks
and mortars targetting the city.

That is why Laura and Joe are sleeping over in Jamil's home. This is
the next house in line to be demolished. There is no way for Jamil
and the human rights activists to know in advance when the army
would come at this house with tanks or D-9 bulldozers - and it will
be the job of Laura and Joe to try preventing the IDF from
approaching the house. Laura and Joe are members of ISM, International
Solidarity Movement, a group of human rights activists who oppose the
Israeli occupation through direct non-violent action. They are young,
politically motivated university graduates - very extreme and
determined pacifists.

Their purpose is to prevent the army from harming civilians. Every
night, with the beginning of the curfew, they are spreading in
Palestinian homes on the first row, which are exposed to shooting
from the military positions . They wear phosphorescent clothing and
megaphones. In the midst of firing, or in the face of IDF bulldozers,
they emerge to call out in English the text of international
conventions and block the soldiers when they come in, shoot, bomb or
demolish homes. Until a week ago it worked. They were calling out,
warning, shouting, blocked the bulldozers with their bodies - and the
army turned back. On Sunday, March 17, all bets were off. What
happened found its way to the media of the entire world, caused a
storm. A young woman, human rights activist, was killed by an IDF
bulldozer which ran over her. Her name was Rachel Corrie, she was 23
years old, and Joe Smith recorded her last moments.

He saw her facing the bulldozer, as was her habit, trying to establish
contact with the soldier driving it. A second later she was not
visible any more. A cat and mouse game is how members of the human
rights group call the dangerous game they are playing with the IDF D-
9 bulldozers. When a bulldozer approaches a house marked for
destruction, they sit down in their phosphorescent clothing on the
mound of earth carried on the giant bulldozer extended front,
addressing by megaphone the soldier behind the windows of opaque,
reinforced glass. Standing on the front of the bulldozer requires
maintaining a very delicate balance, and there comes a moment when
you can overturn and fall off. Until the day Rachel was killed, the
soldiers did not push things to far.

They would always stop and turn back one minute before this could
happen. But on that Sunday, the soldier driving the bulldozer did not
stop at the critical moment, and Rachel was killed. Joe Smith's
photos document, stage by stage, Rachel's folding into death. Like a
big strong bird which flies in the sky, gets a blow, squeezes itself and slowly falls down to become a small crumpled heap on the ground.
Here is a photo of Rachel standing determined in front of the
bulldozer, here she stands on the mound of earth. And here she
disappears, she lies on the ground, her mouth open as if trying to
say something, Alice crouches over her (later, Alice would quote what
she said with her last strength: "My back is broken"), she draws in
her two legs, the body lies like a lifeless sack. Rachel is dead.

After her death Rachel became a Shaheed (martyr). From all over the
world, media was called upon to interview the group of young people,
which had numbered eight and is now reduced to seven. So it was that
I also arrived there. A short phone call from my editor, a contact
person at the Erez Checkpoint, a taxi, a Palestinian photographer
from Gaza, and an emphatic instruction from the contact
person: "Nobody must know that you are an Israeli. From now on, you
are a French journalist - period".

A bad death

I lived with the group for 24 hours. Crazy hours, very frightening,
hours of fear and apprehension in which I felt at my nerve endings, a
wildly beating heart and wet underwear. I understood what it means to
live with death for 24 hours a day. A bad death. With guns, tanks and
bulldozers targetting your home, your bedroom, your kitchen, your
balcony, your living room. No way of defending yourself, nowhere to
run to. At midnight in Jamil's home, facing the shooting tanks and
feeling that these may really be my last moments, I decided to open my
cards. I threw aside the instructions not to expose myself because of
Hamas and Tanzim and all the others who may murder me at a moment's
notice. With a feeling of profound finality I suddenly said: "Ladies
and Gentlemen, I must tell you the truth. I am an Israeli journalist
from Tel Aviv. There was a moment's silence, then Jamil smiled and
started speaking in fluent Hebrew:

"Welcome, Welcome, Ahalan Ve'sahalan [Arab greeting which became,
part of colloquial Hebrew]. I lived for four years on Sokolov Street
in Herzlia, I was the shawarma cutter in the Mifgash Ha'Sharon
Restaurant. I have also worked on Abba Eban Street in Netanya and at
the Hod Hotel in Herzlia Pituach. What I liked most was to eat cherry
ice-cream at the Little Tel-Aviv Restaurant. Is it still open?" Rains
of ammunition bullets came down on us on that one single night. A
single night, for me. The shooting went on continuously from 1.30 to
4.15, near the first light.

Only then it calmed down. My teeth did not stop chattering. "Its'
verrry near" was the only thing I managed to say for four consecutive
hours. Jamil and Nora,with their three babies, tried to calm me. "The
soldiers know us, they know we're clear. You hear it so close,
because they are shooting at the wall near us". "So they never hit
your house itself?" I ask him with an enormous burst of hope. "Oh,
sometimes they do. Look at the bullet holes". I raise my head and
look to the sides. The ceiling is fool of holes, the side walls are
cut up. So is the kitchen wall near the tap, near the table, in the
toilet, one centimetre from the children's beds. Some of the holes
have been filled up. Every night, once the shooting ends, Jamil
closes the bullet holes with white cement. The walls are patchwork,
and if you dare approach the window you can see that Jamil and Nora's
home is surrounded by ruins on all sides.

Everybody escaped, only he remained because of having no money to
take his family away from here. The bullets are whistling and Jamil
makes for his family salad and omelettes and bakes pita bread on a
traditional tabun oven. The bullets whistle and we are eating. With a
good appetite. We bend down whenever the shooting seems to come
closer. It is incredible what human beings can get used to, I think.
A week ago, Jamil took up a big black marking pen and wrote on a
piece of cardboard: "Soldiers, don't shoot please. There are sleeping
children here". He wrote in big Hebrew letters, and Rachel Corrie had
climbed on the building's outer wall to hang it. Now Rachel's face
appears on a Palestinian martyr's poster which hangs on the living
room window. Jamil smiles sadly and tells me and my chattering teeth
and my clenched hands and my widely beating heart: "What can we do?
When Allah decides our time has come to die, we die. It is all in
Allah's hands". It does not reassure me.

A stranger among us

24 hours I had lived in the ruined and beleaguered city of Rafah.
"Rafah Camp", as both inhabitants and internationals call it. Most of
the time, the people who I met did not know I was Israeli. It is
important to note this, because the words I heard and the
conversations I conducted were not part of an Israeli-Palestinian
pingpong. Nobody tried to accuse me, to convince me or to make me
understand something which I did not understand before. As far as
they were concerned, I was a European journalist. During these 24
hours I did things which could be described as taking a terrible,
irresponsible risk, unfitting for a person my age. Still, I am glad
I did it. I feel now that I am not the same person which I was before
entering Rafah. A person can grow considerably older in just 24
hours. Now I also understand better the fascination war has for many
men. No other human experience, however ecstatic, can make so much
adrenalin flow through your veins. But I was mostly concerned trying
to understand how it is to live there for more than one day. My trek
had began in Tel-Aviv at 8.30 AM, with the nice friendly taxi driver
Yehuda Gubali offering me water and a chewing gum as I got in. He was
curious to know what I was looking for at the godforsaken Erez
Checkpoint, on such a nice morning. I told him the truth: I was
on my way to meet the ISM people. "Oh, I read in the paper about that
girl who was killed, what's her name, and let me tell you the truth,
I was glad she was killed. Who is that little busybody from America
to come and interfere in our affairs? Standing on the bulldozer,
really! no wonder she was run over. Let these people learn a lesson.
Is this their country? "

The sky was grey when I crossed alone the border crossing at Erez,
after signing the Army Spokesman's document stating that I take full
responsibility for my decision to cross and absolving the army from
any responsibility for what may happen to me on the other side. I
crossed past the last bunker, waved back to the soldiers, and stood
near the rolls of barbed wire to wait for my Palestinian escort,
Talal Abu Rahma.

Abu Rahma has taken the photo which symbolizes the current intifada
more than any other: the death of the child Muhammad Al-Dura in the
arms of his father, during the exchange of fire between Israeli
soldiers and armed Palestinians.

Nowadays, Abu Rahma is a very busy man who lives in Gaza and works
for foreign networks. He is my official guide, and the first thing he
says is: "From this moment, not a single Hebrew word. Even the
photographer must not know that you are Israeli. From this moment you
are a French journalist". With these words in mind I get into a car
heading for Rafah Camp, an hour and half drive from Gaza. We race
along the broken Gaza coastal road, in the direction of Khan Yuneis
and Rafah.

"You see these hotels and restaurants? Once they were all merry, full
of life. Now everything is neglected, broken, abandoned". At he "Abu
Huly" checkpoint, near the Gush Katif Israeli settlements, we stop.
We wait for the soldiers' permission to proceed. Abu Rahame is an
intensive person, i.e. nervous. He lights one cigarette with another.
This IDF checkpoint must not be crossed by a car with less than
three persons in. On both sides there are children waiting at the
roadside. They take one shekel from drivers who take them in their
car to fill up the required number, then on the other side they get
another shekel from another driver to go the other way.

This is their way of of surviving this collapsed economy. We
wait. "Sometimes you have to wait here for three days. Depends on
the situation". But this time, we get the permission after half an
hour. We go through a beautiful, neglected road, lined by ancient
eucalyptus trees. And then we are at Rafah Camp. A big, ruined place.
You can hardly call this place, with 140,000 people, a city.
Palestinians are unanimous that it is "the poorest, most miserable,
most damaged place of all: 250 inhabitants killed in the Intifada,
more than 400 houses destroyed. Half of those killed were children."
When I enter the apartment used by "The Internationals" I start
feeling that here, especially, I should not identify myself as
Israeli. Israeliness, for these young people, represents the worst
evil they know: demolition of homes, brutal killings, bulldozers,
shooting, tanks, humiliations, hunger and poverty. The young people
in the room are not quick to communicate with the French journalist
which they think they are meeting. They are tired of the media, they
have not yet completely come to terms with the death of their friend,
they are not eager to answer questions and they don't particularly
care that I have only two hours. I watch the nervously tapping foot
of my escort. "Come back for me tomorrow" I suddenly ask him. After a
short debate, in which I promise to take very much care of myself, he
bids me goodbye with a disapproving look on his face. Joe Smith, the
only member of the groups really willing to talk to me, offers to go
together to the internet cafe a few steps away, and on the way he
tells me how he had come to join the ISM.

Seeping fear

Smith is a 21-year old guy from Kansas City. While in high school he
read a book about peace activists and became enthusiastic with the
idea. In a political science course he met with Prof. Steve Naber,
read Marx and realized his status as a white male, with privileges at
the top of the pyramid.

He went to Slovakia, joined anti-globalisation groups and decided
that what he most wants to do with his life is to devote it to the
weak, to those who don't have the privileges he has. Especially he
wants to challenge the dictatorship of the strong which is enforced
by his own government, which is how he got to the Rafah group. While
talking we get to the internet cafe in the city center, where I meet
Muhammad who does not want to tell the French journalist his full
name "because there is very much trouble around here", but who
insists that I sit by him and read from the screen his online diary
and look at the photos he had placed at www.rafah.vze.com. Muhammad
is 18, he has a delicate face and studies English in the university.
I decide to gamble and suggest to him to be my interpreter and
escort in Rafah.I leave Joe behind the computer and walk with
Muhammad through Salah A-Dn Street, Rafah's main street. I notice a
bit of discomfort in Muhammad's look and ask him what is the
matter. "You better buy a keffiya and cover your hair. That way, you
will be less conspicuous, and people will feel that you identify with
their suffering. I immediately take his advice. We stop at the first
stall, buy a keffiya, stop a taxi, haggle a bit and agree upon 50
shekels for half an hour and start going around the city. Already on
the first moment he asks if I am the foreign journalist who had come
to visit the internationals. Rumors spread swiftly here. The driver
tells me that it was him who had taken Rachel Corrie to her death
on that fateful morning.

The first site Muhammad chooses to show me is at Block G on the
northern edge of the city, where 400 houses had been destroyed. As we
come near, inhabitants living in tents warn us not to come close to
the tanks with their guns directed at us. "When they see something
moving they shoot", a woman on a donkey warns Muhammad. The rest of
the way we do half crawling among the ruins, through the narrow
away, their guns at the ready. It is important to Muhammad to show me
the site of the mass house demolition. He had photographed house
after house and entered the houses into his internet site, which is

Row after row of destroyed houses, with personal belongings scattered
and strewn around. Dolls, furniture, bicyles, books. We crawl through
the alleys to avoid the threatening guns of tanks. "They can shoot at
any moment, just at any suspicious movement" he says and leads
further in. The fear comes crawling up my feet and legs. Finally,
when we come closer and closer to the tanks and the ruins become
deeper and deeper, I raise my voice: "Enough!". Muhammad yields to
the French journalist, and we get into the taxi and move on.

The next destination is the al-Ubur Airfield which had been destroyed
by F-16 airplanes, then the ruined house beside which Rachel Corrie
was killed, then a small hospital whose two ambulances are running
around constantly. Most things we watch from a distance of no less
than 100 metres "since shooting can start at any moment". After two
hours I insist on calling a halt. We enter a small restaurant and
order large pita bread with humous, tehina and coca cola, all for
four and a half shekels [About one dollar, less than half the Tel-
Aviv price].

"Where do you live?" I ask. "I moved with my parents to a different
house. Two months ago they destroyed our home. I came from the
university and found everything ruined. The computer, the books, the
notebooks, my study materials. Nothing was left. They came and
destroyed everything at a moment's notice, did not give any chance of
taking things out. We were just thrown into the street. Me, my
father, my mother, my three brothers, my grandfather. And believe
me" he says to the French journalist "they had no reason. We are just
an ordinary family, not involved in anything. They just destroyed our
life in one hour". I look at Muhammad talking. Only now, after I saw
the 400 destroyed houses, do I really understand his grief.

Muhammad leads me back to the internationals' flat just as they are
about to go pay a coalescence visit to the familes of people killed
on the same day as Rachel. To my surprise, they don't object to my
joining them. The seven of us squeeze ourselves into a single taxi,
and we go the water tower at the edge of the city. One of the group's
duties is to guard the water and electricity workers who repair the
water pipes or electricity wires damaged in the shooting.

While they do their work Joe, Laura, Alice and Gordon form a circle
around them, to defend them from the soldiers' shots.

A faceless enemy

In the bereaved families' houses, where I sat with the others on the
floor, drank bitter coffee and ate dates, I hardly ever heard the
word "Israelis". Even the word "soldiers" was only rarely used. What
the Palestinians usually say is simply "they". This is not by chance.
During the 30 hours that I lived there I never saw a flesh-and-blood
Israeli soldier. From the Palestinian point of view the enemy
has no face, no body, no human form. The enemy is hidden behind giant
D-9 bulldozers, monsters as big as a house themselves, at whose top
there are squares of opaque reinforced glass. The enemy is hidden
behind bunkers, guard towers, metal tanks. The enemy has no face, no
expressions which could be interpreted. The enemy is hidden behind
tons of khaki-coloured steel. Massive steel, frightening,
belching fire without warning. For the man in the street the enemy is
virtual, sophisticated, unhuman, inaccesible. And facing this enemy are the Palestinians I see waliking in the dirty streets.

Many with torn cloths, some barefooted, neglected, manifestly poor.
You can see the traces of sorrow, apprehension., suffering,
inadequate food. At 45 they look old. They walk from one side of the
city to the other, seeking some kind of a job. Man walk in groups,
hither and fro. They have no jobs and nowhere to go. They live
squeezed - men, women and children - in narrow houses and small
pieces of land. On the way back from the condolences visit, we
encounter a massive group of marching men. At the front a car with
enormous louspeakers, blaring music and ten masked young men holding
swords and calling out slogans against the Iraq War. "A
demonstration, a demonstration" the internationals call out, stopping
the taxi and joining right in among the fiery men. Willy-nilly, the
French journalist also walks with the march, keeping constant eye-
contact with the three women of the group - Laura, Alice and Carol.

There are no Palestinian women to be seen. It is one of these
demonstrations which look very frightening on TV. Guys with
black rags covering their eyes, blaring loudspeakers, swords and
knives between teeth. The direct human contact, at close range,
diminishes the drama.

I look at the fiery men and toy with imagining how they would have
reacted if they knew that there is an Israeli identity card right
there in my pocket. In their sweating faces I can see how young and
desperate they are, looking for action. Alice, Laura and Carol join
the heated chanting of slogans against the Americans and Israelis,
taking out a large colour poster, with the face of Rachel in her role
as a martyr.

Alice, a 26-year old Londoner, takes up the megaphone and delivers a
fiery speech on what Rachel had done for the Palestinians and how she
was killed. Alice speaks in English and the Palestinian men listen in
admiration. I feel that Alice is the stongest woman in the group. She
is young, charismatic and determined.

I had to watch my chance for ten hours before she consented to peel
off her tough exterior, soften a bit her Jeanne d'Arc image and
exchange some words with me. Alice, who prefers not to mention her
family name, grew up in London. After highschool she studied computer
programming, had a nice job and rented a good appartment."I lived a
bourgois life and I found that it leads nowhere. Going to an
expensive restaurant with a new boyfriend, and on the way passing
homeless people sleeping on the pavement. I started to be interested
in how the strong exploit the weak, and for a time I went to work in
a factory. Afterwards I became more and more political. I started to
give an account to myself for everything I did, what did I eat, what
entertainment did I enjoy, what does it mean to live in a capitalist
society. I went to demonstrate in Prague and got arrested. I put my
courage to the test, until I finally trained myself to come here.

Here it is the most difficult. What is most interesting to me is to
analyse the tactics of force used by the strong against the weak.
Only here, when I help the Palestinians to face the Israelis, do I
feel that my life has a meaning. We walked for 20 minutes with the
stormy march, then we moved aside and started shopping for the
evening: preserved meat, noodles, rice, sugar, cookies and tea.
The group is financed by contributions and lives as a commune. Every
spent Shekel is carefully noted down

Nowhere to escape

At Six PM, a last team meeting ahead of the night. The small commune
is conducted by strict rules. Every morning at 8.30 they meet at the
appartment after having spent the night at threatened Palestinians
homes. They discuss the experiences of the past night, hear from
Palestinian friends on developments on the ground, and divide tasks
for the coming day. They stand as human shields at electricity
installations and water wells, collect testimonies, and take footage
on small video cameras. They face the hostile lumps of steel with
their megaphones and try to establish dialogue with the soldiers
inside.

These seven people are taking up an enormous load in this chaos. But
who is to take care of these young people themselves, who sleep two
hours per night and had not yet time to come to terms with having
intimately witnessed Rachel's death?

They spare themselves nothing. They had insisted on wiping the blood
from Rachel's face, touching her broken back, taking the body to the
morgue with their own hands, wrap it with shrouds, and accomapny it
in the ambulance to Tel-Aiv, sharply debating with the soldiers who
stopped them for hot hours at the checkpoint despite the fumes which
started to arise from the body.

The mother role is played by Carol Moskovitz, who joined the group
with her husband Gordon a week ago. Carol is 61 and Gordon seems a
bit younger. They are artists, they live in Canada, and have been
travelling the world for the past three months. When they heard of
what happened to Rachel they decided to cut their trip short and come
to offer their help. Since Sunday, they act like parents to the
younger members of the group: preparing tea, asking questions, trying
to address the shock and disbelief which Rachel left behind.

Carol and Gordon have three daughters in Canada. An hour ago Carol
got a phone call from her eldest, 30 years old, with warm greetings
for Mother's Day. Carol and Gordon conceal from their daughters the
fact that they are in Rafah Camp. They don't want to make their
children and grandchildren worry.

It was at 7.30 that I went with Laura and Joe to stay the night in
the house of Muhammad Jamil Kushta, the first house fronting the IDF
position on the Egyptian border, an ill-fated house. There, in
Jamil's house under the ceaseless shooting, guns, missilies, rockets
and only the devil knows what else, for four consecutive hours, truly
feeling that these might be my last moments, I gambled and revealed
my identtity as an Israeli from Tel_Aviv. Then I said that my own
sons might be among the soldiers shooting at us, not knowing that I
was there in the house they were shooting at, or it might be one of
my sons' friends who had visited my home.

And that was the moment we started to look at each other and laugh.
Three babies, two Americans, a Palestinian couple and an Israeli
woman all sitting around a big bowl of salad, with bullets whistling
through the air, we started to laugh. A laughter of despair, of
apprehension, of relief at the human closeness which we suddenly
found. I knew that with some luck I would get through the night and
run for my life, but Jamil and Nora had no escape, that they were
doomed to raise their three babies under live fire. And then Laura
opened her mouth to reveal that she was Jewish too, and rather an
observant Jewess too. And it turned out that the fiery Alice, the
group's "Jeanne d'Arc", the Israel-hater, was Jewish too. "And
the soldiers" said Jamil "they too are just 20-year old children who
have to stand out there, alone in the dark, shaking, within the cold
steel".

We all agreed: life is short and human beings are silly creatures."