The other side

Israel no love

Adjami, Jaffa - candlelit vigil for Gaza 

At Jamilah's house Al Jazeera is on the TV. Al Jazeera shows what bombs do. Limbs come off. Eyes melt shut. Dead children have white faces from the dust. Jamilah's mother puts her head in her hands and cries.

Jamilah reports that a colleague at work (they're all Jewish except her) demanded to know today, are you for or against Hamas? 

'Why should I tell you that?' she says to her colleague. But he won't let up, so she tells him, 'look, it's not like you see on TV - you know only half the story. We see the whole picture.'

'We have to do it,' the guy says. 'We don't kill children on purpose.'

'Did I ever ask to talk politics with you?' she says.

'You're a traitor,' he replies.

The manager calls Jamilah in and Jamilah's shouting, she can't stop shouting: 'Look what he's doing to me!'

'It's not the case,' the manager says. 'You provoked him. That's what he told me.'

Jamilah's big-boned brother is lying on the sofa. He turns to me and says: 'Israel - no good, no bad ... Israel - no love.'

The lives lost

Women hold candles in remembrance of the lives lost in Gaza, street protest, Jaffa

A boy and a girl make the sign for peace

A mother and her children

We refuse to be enemies

Jews and Arabs refuse to be enemies, the placard reads. 

An anti-war march, Saturday, through the streets of Tel Aviv. Pro-war shouters collect like flies along the side of the route - the Magav keeps them surrounded, but sometimes they're a nose-distance away, fist-thrashing and enraged. We move from Rabin Square along Ibn Gvirol to the Cinemateque, Arab and Jewish Israelis, side-by-side. Stop the killing. We want a different future for our peoples - a future of peace, we chant.

Sometimes an Arab teenager has to be restrained by friends as the mob on the sidelines provokes, with a Death to the Arabs! or Your mother is a whore! Hadash party stewards stand between the groups, trying to keep them apart.

By the Cinemateque square, crowds of pro-war demonstrators are baying to be let in. But the Magav won't allow them near us. They're not even letting the residents through - 'I have to go, I live there,' argues a woman in a black winter coat.

Two teenage girls who've been sitting on the Cinemateque steps suddenly burst into a chant: It's our country! It's our country! Somehow, they managed to slip through. Within seconds, a group of Arab boys confronts them, only feet away. Police hustle the girls, modesty protected by skirts over trousers, out of the square.

It's dark. It's getting late. People are standing around, and a crowd wrapped in Israeli flags has gathered at the top of the street. It feels ugly but the police hold them at bay.

'What's going to happen now?' I ask Uri. 'Oh probably a few beatings and then everyone will go home,' he says.

We walk through the side streets, away from the march. Men are running towards it, shouting, leaping and waving Israeli flags. Uri zips up his jacket, covering the Hadash logo on his vest. A bald-headed guy in a white T-shirt comes at us, punching the air. 'We have only one country!' he shouts. 

* Watch the march here - as filmed by Lisa

Protest in Tel Aviv

Enough! War Crimes, reads the placard. Arab and Jewish Israelis protest the Gaza bombings, Saturday, outside the Ministry of Defence, Tel Aviv. Right, veteran Jewish activist, Yakov Manor.

Palestinian Israelis protest.

Yasam, police special patrol unit, and demonstrators.

Capitalist government will not bring security: Trotskyite group Ma'avak Sotzialisti – ‘Socialist Struggle’

Lift the siege on Gaza, reads the placard, centre. Right, in Hebrew: The Israeli government is guilty of war crimes. Arabic, foreground: Stop the bloodshed. Gaza won't bow down.

Enough of the massacre on Gaza (placard, right): members of Marxist party Da’am. The sign in the background says: Solidarity with the families of Sderot, Ashkelon and Gaza.

Free speech

This image is by Jamilah Siksik, one of the Palestinian participants in the Jaffa Photography Project. She has called it Free speech.

Yael and I went to a demonstration outside the Etzel Museum, where a celebration was taking place for the 60th anniversary of the 'liberation of Jaffa', and we took Jamilah. It was the first time she ever did anything like this. We took her with the camera, and she photographed the demonstration - she's only 14 years old.

The photograph shows a man who has just been arrested by the police, because he ran to the crowd and shouted 'why should the Palestinians pay for the Holocaust?'. Police immediately dragged him away. Jamilah said this: 'I think that everyone has the right to oppose and say what he thinks especially if it's a demonstration. This man only said what he thought and the police took him.'

Crossed out

I am in Jaffa, working with the girls on their photography project, towards an exhibition at the end of the month. This image is by Jamileh Siksik. Taken for our 'Home' workshop, it shows graffiti on Yefet St, which runs through Jaffa's heart - graffiti one sees everywhere in Tel Aviv, but less here. It says Am Yisrael chai - People of Israel, live.

'I took this picture because the words have been crossed out,' Jamileh said. 'This used to be the home of the Arabs, but the Jews came and took it from us. I am upset when I see this graffiti.'

A new language for Israel

Graffitti in Yefet St, Jaffa, by art group Parhessia (Aramaic for 'public space'). The text reads: tiredness, freedom, justice, sealed - in Arabic, with transliteration and translation into Hebrew beneath

'Parhessia ... is raising something of a stir in Israel. It was founded two years ago by Israeli writers, artists and teachers with the objective of establishing a new language for the Israeli public sector, throwing a critical light on the ethnic, religious and social complexity of the country's society.'

Silent

It is Shabbat. Jaffa is raining and empty. I go out for a walk and see this:

Then I remember this: 'When will people see Handala's face? When Arab dignity is no longer threatened, and when the Arab individual regains his freedom and humanity.'

Portrait in a bomb shelter

It’s been a long time since I posted – but all the time wanting to. I’m back in Jaffa working for a month on a special photography project with a group of Palestinian and Jewish girls from Jaffa, Lud and Bat Yam. We’re having our first show, Portrait of Jaffa, tomorrow – in the bomb shelter that serves as a centre for Sadaka Reut, the youth group I’m working with here (for more on them, see posts below).

Soon, if the local council has its way, Sadaka Reut will no longer be able to use the bomb shelter – because the group is opposing the Jaffa house demolitions (long story, but basically, poor Arab residents are being evicted in favour of housing for Jews). So we’re having a big protest party and putting this exhibit up – the theme is ‘home’, and  I’m very proud to say that it's all the work of girls from the Jaffa photography project.

The party is tomorrow night – anyone in the area who wants to come is welcome – email me for details. Here are some of the pictures:

‘There is a house here, but no people inside’ - Jamileh

Construction: ‘This will be for Jewish people, but Arabs lived here before’ - Jamileh

‘A poor home is just as much a home’ - Mor

Family - Jiana

Demolition - Mor

Birthday party - Walaa

School is my home - Nastia

‘There is trash everywhere in Jaffa. Drugs and violence. It's not new to me’ - Rimi

My grandmother’s house - Jiana

‘I feel at home everywhere but my home’ - Rimi

The generosity of Delme Rosser has made this work possible

'The joint non-violent struggle is our victory'

Palestinians and Israelis celebrate together after the Israeli Supreme Court rules that the separation fence should be moved, recovering 100 hectares of land for the villagers of Bilin.