5: Feeding the Golem
By Skip Schiel

Photos: Wall at twilight, Bethlehem ; Kalandia checkpoint between Ramallah and Jerusalem , October 2004

The Golem? A monster, self created. Israelis create the monster by building the Separation Wall and installing checkpoints, the Occupation generally. Palestinians create the monster when they target civilians with rockets and suicide bombs.

I’d intended to balance the photos in this issue by showing one about Israel making the Golem and one about Palestine making the Golem. For the latter I had two candidates: kids playing video games in a refugee center in Bethlehem that featured a large automatic rifle the operator could target to kill figures looking suspiciously like Israeli soldiers. For my purposes over the web, these were too small and detailed. Not useable at this point, maybe later when printed. The second candidate shows an array of martyrs’ images on the central mosque in Ramallah, most martyrs holding large automatic weapons. I believe this shows Palestinians feeding the Golem. Regrettably, due to the computer exigencies I face daily, I can’t at this moment show you this photo.

So I offer a reminder that is expressed so well by Martin Luther King, Jr, violence begets violence, only love and compassion stop violence.

To conclude, a message from someone I respect very greatly, Dr. Nurit Peled-Elhanan , mother of Smadar who was killed at the age of 13 in a Palestinian attack in a crowded commercial center of Jerusalem .

“But in the last thirty-five years this ‘we’ [the Jewish people of Israel ] has become a Golem, a monster that is threatening to destroy whoever created it and to doom us all.

“After my daughter, Smadari, was murdered for being an Israeli girl, by a young man desperate and distorted by humiliation and hopelessness to the point of killing himself and others, I was asked by a reporter how I could accept condolences from the other side. [She strives to maintain links with bereaved Palestinians thru the Israeli-Palestinian Bereaved Families’ Forum.] My very spontaneous response was that I did not accept condolences from the other side, so when the mayor of Jerusalem came to offer his condolences I shut myself in my room. Only later did I understand that for that reporter the other side was the Palestinian people.”

Dr. Nurit Peled-Elhanan is the Winner of the 2001 Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought awarded by the European Parliament, she lectures in language and education at the Hebrew University . She wrote a column called The Dominion of Death in Yediot Achronot , Israel ’s largest-circulation daily. Her story is documented in a film The Bombing , by Simone Bitton.

Read the entire story in a pamphlet by her husband, Rami Elhanan, Peace and War, at http://rcnv.org/rcnv/IMAGES/RamiEngVer.pdf_1.pdf