Eyewitnesses Shocked at Brutality of Israeli Occupation

By Pat McDonnell Twair

When Dr. Steve Gilliland left with his family in January 1990 for a teaching assignment at Brigham Young University's Jerusalem Center, he anticipated observing the Zionist experiment at first hand.

Eight months later, he told his wife, "I have to go home. I can't watch humans being mistreated this way."

Dr. Gilliland stresses that BYU walks a fine line and does not take sides in the Israeli Palestinian conflict. "I'm speaking strictly from my personal convictions over the assault on human rights, the incessant harassment, and the humiliation and violence the Palestinians suffer at the hands of the Israeli government," he said.

At the time he, his wife Judy, and six of their eight children arrived in Jerusalem, Gilliland said, he was aware of the historical circumstances of the conflict as presented by the American media, and he leaned more toward the Zionist version of events.

"I simply had no concept of the degree of mistreatment the Palestinians suffer as a people, " says Gilliland, who taught the Old and New Testaments at the BYU Center on Mount Scopus. The 160 BYU students there spend one semester studying such courses as history of the ancient and modern Middle East, archaeology, scripture, Arabic, Hebrew, and Palestinian and Jewish family life.

Soon after the Gillilands' arrival, while they were dinner guests in a Palestinian home, the host was called from the table to receive a telephone message. He returned to say that his nephew had been beaten to death by an Israeli mob.

"The nephew had been driving from his job in Jerusalem to Bethlehem," Gilliland recalls. "He approached a crowd of rock throwing Jews—no one reports that Jews throw rocks at cars too— and when he swerved to avoid the people, his car was overturned. The Jews dragged him from the vehicle and beat him to death."

Gilliland met another Palestinian who had owned a successful men's clothing store in East Jerusalem. One day in the late spring, Israeli authorities confiscated his summer stock on the grounds he hadn't paid taxes. The store owner showed them his tax receipts and they replied: "Too bad, the computer says you haven't paid your taxes."

Four months later, they told the Palestinian to come get his summer stock, but first he must pay storage and the salaries of the men who had taken the goods. By that time his business was destroyed and he now is unemployed.

Gilliland says his wife had her own encounters with Israeli bigotry. Her initial introduction was in the emergency room of an Israeli hospital where she had taken a student for first aid. A Palestinian man was moaning uncontrollably from pain. As she watched others being treated while the suffering Palestinian was ignored, Judy Gilliland pleaded with a nurse to check him before the American student. The response from the nurse was: "Don't worry, he's just a Palestinian."

"We became acutely aware of this depersonalization of Palestinians simply by reading the Jerusalem Post, " Gilliland continued. "If a Jew was injured, his photograph was prominently displayed along with a biography, and his assailant was always described as a Palestinian. Whereas on page 16 among the advertisements, you might see one paragraph mentioning that three Arabs were killed."

Gilliland says he's also felt the brunt of Palestinian frustrations. "I've had stones thrown at my car, and one time I was spat upon." When he protested, one Palestinian said to him: "Don't take it personally, look what your American government is doing to our people."

Since returning to the US, Gilliland, who is Southern California Regional Coordinator of the Church of Latter Day Saints Education System, has described his experiences to many audiences.

"Many Americans ask why the Palestinians supported Saddam Hussain. I try to quote an Arab proverb that a drowning man will even grab for a snake, and that's pretty much what the Palestinians did in their frustration over American disinterest over their brutal military occupation."

Becoming Numb to Violence

Covering one of these talks, the writer encountered other Americans who, although they offer similar eyewitness accounts, cannot be named because they plan to return to the Israeli occupied territories. One, whom we'll call Marty, was taking a brief respite in Southern California before returning to the West Bank.

"One witnesses so much violence, you must become numb to it or your adrenaline would be running all the time, " Marty noted. One of his first experiences in the West Bank was to observe two girls about 14 years of age approaching him on a street. A lorry stopped and soldiers grabbed the girls and threw them into the vehicle. "As it drove away, I could see a burly soldier beating one girl on the head with his fist he was twice her size," Marty said.

He recalled that in August 1990 the Israelis turned their clocks back one hour, but Palestinians waited for their unified leadership to tell them whether or not to observe the daylight savings time change. Israeli foot patrols and jeeps began stopping Palestinians to see if their watches were on Palestinian or Israeli time.

"I can't watch humans being mistreated this way."

"I watched an Israeli soldier smash a teenager's watch, and then he broke the teenager's arm."

Then there was the afternoon Marty was seated on a balcony with another foreigner when they saw two Palestinians running. An armed Israeli settler then appeared in pursuit.

"You can always spot a settler, " Marty explained. "They wear jeans and a yarmulka, and they carry guns."

Coming from the opposite direction was a pudgy Palestinian about 10 years of age. When he caught sight of the agitated settler, he jumped over a fence into the yard of Marty's host. The settler hurdled the fence and began beating the boy.

"We shouted at him to stop punching the kid and he looked up, pointed his Uzi at us and said in a Brooklyn accent: "Get back in the house or I'll shoot you."

Marty and his companion watched the settler march the boy to the Israeli police station and they followed. Soon women were wailing in front of the jail and an armed Palestinian collaborator listened to the two foreigners explain that the boy was innocent. Minutes later, the collaborator had the youngster released.

In response to this reporter's surprise that collaborators are readily identifiable, Marty explained that they are armed and do not pretend to be police. "They carry grenades and guns and they usually live in compounds that are referred to as collaborators' houses."

The relentless 24 hour curfew throughout the Gulf war from January 16 to February 19 was essentially boring, Marty said. On the fourth day of the war, he stepped outside his house to get some sunshine. Two Palestinian women in a neighboring house also stood outside against a wall. An Israeli jeep screeched to a halt and two soldiers told the women they would beat them if they left their home again. Looking meaningfully at Marty, they said: "Next time, we'll kill you."

He believed them and did not leave his house in daylight again. He did, however, sometimes break the curfew by leaving in the early morning darkness to go to his workplace, and returning 12 hours later in the darkness.

"If I ever was apprehended, I'd tell the soldiers I was on my way to military headquarters to get a gas mask. It worked."

As for gas masks, Marty said that before the war the Israelis issued them to Palestinians directly employed by the Israelis, but not to their dependents.

"When the war started, they said they'd distribute gas masks, but the curfew was on and, anyway, they claimed they had no masks for anyone under 16 years of age, Marty said.

He reported that Israeli officials also confiscated all atropine (an antidote to some ingredients in poison gas) from Palestinian hospitals and pharmacies. But perhaps the most odious disregard for Palestinians was the Israeli policy of not sounding sirens in Palestinian towns and harrilets when Scud attacks occurred.

"We would hear sirens from Jewish settlements and know something was underway, "he said. This clearly is a breach of the fourth Geneva Convention calling for an occupying force to protect the civilian population.

Israelis also practice the Nazi tactic of terrorizing the Palestinians with postmidnight house calls, Marty avers. "They simply take people even little boys away."

"You never know when cars with loudspeakers will give orders for all males between the ages of 15 and 45 to report to the bus station, " he continued. "Then the foot patrol pounds on doors and arrests any men they find. As for the men who show up at the bus station, I made it to the station one night and, peeking from a vantage point outside, I observed squatting Palestinians being beaten with fists and rifle butts.

"Another favorite tactic of the Israelis is to awaken Palestinian families after midnight and order them to remove Arabic graffiti from their house walls. If the Palestinians say they have no paint, the Israelis tell them to waken their neighbors and get some paint."

With remittances from the Gulf cut off and Palestinians finding their jobs taken over by Soviet Jewish emigres, real hunger for lack of cash has set in. Marty says malnutrition and even starvation are realities in the Jalazon and AlAmari refugee camps.

"The Evangelical Church of Ramallah is trying to feed mothers and children who come to it," Marty reports. "But how can the Israeli authorities get away with allowing famine in land they are occupying?"

"Thelma and Louise" Writer is Arab-American

Sharp-eyed filmgoers reading the credits for "Thelma and Louise" may have noted that the screenwriter/coproducer of the hit film is named Callie Khouri. The writer met her at a reception for creators of this summer's top films by Town Hall of California (whose president is Arab-American Adrienne Medawar).

Khouri, whose paternal grandparents emigrated to the US from Lebanon, was born in San Antonio, TX, and grew up in rural Kentucky, where she says that among her peers she "was the only person with an Arab last name. " She admits she is hugely enjoying having the first script she ever wrote accepted by a major film studio, and then watching it become a hit with critics and viewers alike.

The former music video producer says the idea for the film "hit her in the head like a two-by-four.

"I got the idea while sitting in my car one night, " said Khouri. "What could possibly happen in the lives of two women, two best friends, that would force them to choose between what they had and what they might be able to have? What one event, what mistake perhaps, would make them journey into the unknown? From there, the story just started rolling."

Clearly the favorite of the audience, Khouri was asked question after question about the motivations of the characters she created. It soon became clear that she has personally known several rape victims and she wanted to relate their pain to people who are insensitive to the crime.

Khouri says she has been astounded by the double standard in criticism of her film. "I didn't try to portray these women as flawless role models their actions aren't a lesson on how to behave. I simply wanted to put women on the screen doing something that hasn't been shown before. What about the film "Goodfellas"? I didn't hear critics voicing fears that sons would copy the mob and stab their best friend 42 times, but people are complaining their daughters might want to emulate Thelma and Louise."

Khouri said her next film is with Warner Brothers and will be the saga of a Southern family and how it deals with love, respect, infidelity and, of all things, food.

Pat McDonnell Twair is a freelance writer based in Los Angeles.