Spirit in Action
BuildABridge - Peder Wiegner, Adam Beach, Megan Tahquette
A visit with Peder, Adam & Megan in Jerusalem, on site in the Middle East to shoot a film about the Israeli occupation. They hope to provide a picture of the Palestinians to humanize them and their plight in face of the very unbalanced media picture we typically see in the USA. Peder, Adam & Megan are college Juniors and Seniors with studies in Political Science, Anthropology and Film.
- Broadcast on:
- 12 Aug 2007
- Audio Format:
- other
(upbeat music) ♪ Let us sing this song for the healing of the world ♪ ♪ That we may hear that there's one ♪ ♪ With every voice, with every song ♪ ♪ We will move this world along ♪ ♪ And our lives will feel the echo of our healing ♪ - Welcome to Spirit in Action. My name is Mark Helps Me. Each week, I'll be bringing you stories of people living lives of fruitful service, of peace, community, compassion, creative action, and progressive efforts. I'll be tracing the spiritual roots that support and nourish them in their service, hoping to inspire and encourage you to sink deep roots and produce sacred food in your own life. ♪ Let us sing this song for the dreaming of the world ♪ ♪ That we may dream as one ♪ ♪ With every voice, with every song ♪ ♪ We will move this world along ♪ - Today on Spirit in Action, I want to share with you a visit I had with three inspired workers for justice in the Middle East. Peter Wiegner, Adam Beech, and Meghan Tuckett are college students who have dedicated this summer to creating a documentary work of art in hopes of lending their voice to justice and peace in face of the decades-old Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. They're spending a couple of months videotaping onsite in Israel and the occupied territories to capture vividly some truths which are unfairly downplayed in most reports from the Holy Land. They are combining their energies and expertise as students of political science, anthropology, focused on the Middle East and film to balance the news addressing, in particular, the Palestinians. Support for their work comes from many sources, including that this is a sponsored project as part of an organization called Build a Bridge. Peter, Adam, and Meghan draw deeply on their roots, which give them strength and determination to do their work in support of the humanity of all peoples in the Middle East. I spoke to them about a month into their project when they were at a hotel in Jerusalem. The phone connection was challenging, but their motivation and ideas speak clearly over the static and limitations of the technology. I started the call by speaking with Peter Wiegner, nephew to Paul Wiegner, who has been devoted in support of the work of Northern Spirit Radio and Spirit in Action. Travel with me via the phone line to a Jerusalem hotel where I found Peter, Adam, and Meghan. - Welcome Peter to Spirit in Action. - Thank you very much, Mark, it's nice to be on the show. - I believe you've got Adam and Meghan there with you and we'll get to them shortly, but I want to start by talking to you about this project that you're doing over in Palestine, the Israel area. - Adam and I kind of began this idea coming to the Middle East about a year ago in a former trip we took to Northern Ireland went to a short film there. Adam had been here before and suggested the idea there and we've built a plant since then and things have fallen into place until we got here. - Are you students, are you specifically film making students? - I know that Build a Bridge, which you're associated with, has a special arts focus. Is this your main course of study or is this a past time or is it just something that you're learning on the ground? - It's basically something we're learning on the ground, but Meghan is studying film at Hurry University. I'm studying political science and Adam is studying anthropology. But Adam's study is focusing on Middle Eastern studies and I've taken several classes in Middle East politics and so forth. But Adam is also a photographer and I do a little bit of video, a little bit of photography as well. So we're all very interested in sensitive and perceptive of art. - So what specifically is your project? What's the goal of this project that you're engaging in right now in the Middle East? - The goal of the project is to get a broad overview of the occupation in these areas. It kind of shed a light of hope on it at the end, which is we've talked to many people about that and they kind of smile when we say we want to shed a light of hope on it, but that's what we're helping to do. Kind of putting an artistic twist to it as well. - So is this going to be a murder mystery? Is it going to be a nature film? What is the content that you're actually building in that you've been filming? - The content is going to be large part interviews of specific people who work for peace and reconciliation here in Palestine. And it's also going to show a lot of the stories, specific stories of families who are directly affected by the occupation, whether it's because their farms have been divided by the security wall, the wall that Israel has built around Palestine and the struggles of dealing with that, or families that have lost one of the family members in Tafada or in this struggle. - Have you been filming exclusively in the Palestinian side, if you will, rather than in Israel? Because I have a feeling, somehow there's people across the wall who have their own set of dramas and thoughts and fears and hopes that are going on. Have you been able to interview on that side too? - Certainly, and actually we're in Jerusalem right now and we've begun our first part of the interviews with the Israeli side. And we'll be spending another two weeks or so here doing a lot of interviews, getting to know Israelis. So I mean, both parts are included, obviously. - Have you had a chance to speak firsthand to any of the Israeli soldiers? There's universal conscription in Israel and so all young people, men and women, they go and they spend this year or two, or whatever it is in the military? Have you been able to interview some of those? I saw some of them in the photo that you have posted out on YouTube or Google or somewhere of demonstration. And they looked to me to have themself fairly under control. It's a little scary when you have a lot of group of people yelling around you. Have you had impressions of those people who are kind of in the middle of two nations and they're holding guns? - We've had a number of different kinds of interactions with them. We've not actually interviewed the soldiers and I guess that has to be with the fact that they would probably confiscate our cameras or film in doing so. But we've had a lot of interactions with them, whether it's demonstrations or checkpoints. I think one of the closest interactions we had was less than a week ago, we were filming and taking pictures at a checkpoint. Two homeless came up and the soldiers came out and said, "You know, turn your cameras off." And they said, "You can't film here, it goes above." And we said, "Well, you know, under Israeli law, "it's not illegal to film at a checkpoint." So they took our passports and they checked us up and they said, "You know, maybe we'll have to confiscate, "you know, your film." And so they left and they came back and in that whole time we were talking to the other soldiers and making small talk. Questions like, you know, "Are you hot?" And you didn't even flow up and stuff. But you're in, you know, kind of the laughing and getting, you know, the humanity side of it. So that's kind of the interactions we've had. - What had been your impressions of the people that you've met, Palestinians, Israelis, whatever? What is your overall impression? - We've been invited a number of times over for tea, for coffee and even for meals. In fact, one of our taxi drivers in Bethlehem or our main team ended up being our main taxi driver. He invited us over to eat food at his house for a big meal a couple of times and we had tea and coffee with him all the time. So my perception is that hospitality is an incredibly important part of the culture here. Comparing it to culture in the state, but I think, normally, you don't see a stranger on the street and invite them in for coffee and tea. And essentially, I think one of the main things that they're interested in is finding out what people think outside of Palestine or, like, why are there three Americans doing a film on the occupation in Palestine? So it's a good form of dialogue with the local people. - So this film that you're creating, how will it be shared with the world? How will it get out? Another question I have about it is, you have some kind of an arts focus with it, but is it, I guess, if I was gonna put it bluntly, is one side gonna see it as a propaganda film and the other side see it as just a statement of truth? What's your sense of what will be included in this film? - Well, parents, for the first part, and I'll say that we're entering it in several film festivals. Then the second part of the question is, is it likely to be seen as a propaganda film totally pro-Palestinian? - Well, I think it's quite clear that there's a huge imbalance of power between Israelis and Palestinians. And largely, I think it's appropriate to kind of counterbalance that in the film. It's certainly not a propaganda film, by any means. We're showing the Palestinian side, I guess, that is not shown in a large part of the US media, the Western media, the European media. And I think that is something that needs to be heard because I think major attention and focus and support is kind of blindly on the Israeli side, the Israeli government side. And little focus and little attention is given to the Palestinian side. And for example, the Palestinian guys who are several Palestinians die and their numbers. So let's say five Palestinians die today in Gaza. Well, if Israeli dies, then you get an incredible amount of coverage on their story, dehumanizing them incredibly, which is good, except it's not done on the other side. It's not humanizing the other side 'cause the other side is just naming numbers. - Peter, what has led you to go there? I think there's a whole lot of people who are very eager to avoid the Middle East right now because their perception is, it's nothing but death and destruction and horror. What leads you to leave your nice, safe, orange alert, United States and go over to the Middle East where the colors closer to red? - I think one of the main reasons I came here was, one because I've never been here before. And another reason probably more important is that although the media paints this picture that it's all death and destruction, when you arrive and you're on the ground here, you can see a completely different picture that's painted, picture of hospitality, friendship, and joy even amidst the occupation and daily suffering. That does occur. - Tell me a little bit about your background. I believe that you're part of the American Baptist Church or at least race that way. What part does your faith hold for you in motivating you to be there at all? - I think meeting people who work toward peace and reconciliation in the many beautiful shapes and forms that this comes in I think is very important. Not so much just for me to learn but also for me to encourage the people who do work for that. Also I think participating alongside these people who struggle in non-violent ways is also essential to my faith. My background has been in the American Baptist Church as well as the Minimite Church. I associate a lot of kind of my stance on working for peace I guess. In the Minimite camps they're kind of more known for the peace work throughout the world. - Do the three of you, you Peter, Adam, and Meghan, are you all part of the same school or how did the three of you get together as a group and how did you get associated with Buildabridge? - I go to Eastern University right outside of Philadelphia and so does Adam and Meghan goes to Fort Lewis College in Colorado. Meghan and Adam went to high school together so they've known each other for a while and the way I got connected with Buildabridge is I met Dr. Corbett who's the president, CEO and co-founder of Buildabridge. - I met him first in 1999 in Costa Rica. He brought a music group down in order to create a music institute and Costa Rica. And that's the first time I met him and I've had a contact with him ever since my parents are good friends with him. And I mentioned his idea of him when I was in the Republic of Georgia just past semester. Things kind of developed after that. - I take it that Peter, you've seen the security wow that you've been in front of it. What's been your reaction to this wall and maybe also to the checkpoints that I think you've had to travel through? - Well, security wall areas in size from different areas. In large parts of Bethlehem, most of the areas surrounding Bethlehem, the wall is made of concrete and it goes, I don't know, maybe 20, 30 feet high. And it's completely blocks your view from the other side like you can't see the other side at all unless you get up on like a three or four story house. So it's very pronounced. I mean, it certainly hides in this. And along these concrete checkpoints are also towers where soldiers would potentially be kind of monitoring the wall. I got up on the third or fourth floor of a building in one of the refugee camps around Bethlehem because I wanted to see what was on the other side of the wall. And when I saw it was a huge field of olive trees, I asked the people that, "Why is there a wall here "and not closer to the settlement?" You can't even see what a settlement is. It's just olive trees. And they said, "Well, these used to be our olive trees, "the ones we would pick and harvest and take care of, "but now we can't because there's a wall." So the wall has done all sorts of things. It's taken lands from Palestinians. It's taken control of a lot of the water resources in the area. And it's created a very stark divide between the Israeli side and the Palestinian side. And in terms of the checkpoints, I think it's kind of natural, well, anyone coming gets up to the checkpoint. It's a field perhaps a little nervous or even a little angry at the fact that there's soldiers that are prohibiting you from traveling freely. And a lot of the checkpoints, or most of the checkpoint sessions, they are between different Palestinian cities. Even the same cities and villages, and there's a lot of fly-in checkpoints as well, they can be like a Humber with several soldiers inside the side to stop at a certain place and set up a checkpoint, which isn't really setting up anything. It's just kind of blocking and telling cars to stop and checking the car if you want or not letting a car pass if you do if you want. - How do the Palestinians seem to react? They seem very irritated, antagonistic. I mean, to be standing in sometimes for hours in these lines as you go from your home to your work, I imagine is pretty impressive. Do they seem beat down? What's been your impression of the people you've traveled next to? - From the stories that I've heard and the people I've spoken to, of course, they feel very angry. They feel like their rights are being violated. By not letting them travel freely in their own country. I've also heard more extreme stories up in the north in the Janine area of a man and a wife who are trying to cross a checkpoint into the Janine city in order to get to the hospital because the wife was pregnant and she was having some sort of difficulties and you needed to see what the problem was. At the hospital and the soldiers didn't let them pass the checkpoint. They were there for several hours and so they just went home. And after several days, they were able to get through the mountains into the Janine, into the hospital. When they got there, the doctor said, "Your baby is dead." Obviously this, I mean, that's a very sad story. I mean, it could have been those two days previous to that the baby could have been saved. And there's even other stories of Palestinian women giving birth at the checkpoints because the soldiers won't let them through. And then there's also such a problem that arise there. - What's your objective in life? Are you going to leave the university next year? Your political science major? Are you gonna be teaching? Are you gonna be doing political action? What do you see for your path in life? - Well, what I'm hoping to do after I graduate is hopefully go to grad school. I haven't decided where yet, but I'm looking at a few mini-next schools. I'd really like to go to Eastern Minimite University in Harrisonburg, Virginia and do their program on justice, peace and conflicts studies. I've heard a lot of good things. - I think you've been maintaining a blog. If people want to find you, find your blog, or, and if they want to find out about this film that you're producing, how can they track you down? - The blog is the best way to get ahold of us. You go to yellow, yellow, yellow.blogspot.com. It's Y-A-L-L-A-H, Y-A-L-L-A-H, Y-A-L-L-A-H, dot B-L-O-G-S-P-O-T, dot com. - And of course, like any good radio interviewer, I'm gonna maintain a link to your blog spot on my site. So if people go to northernspiritradio.org, they'll be able to see the information about you, and that's where this program will be posted in addition to the places it gets broadcast. Have you participated in other Build-A-Bridge projects and a little bit unclear exactly what Build-A-Bridge does? - Build-A-Bridge does a lot of work with art therapy. One of the things that they're hoping to do here in Palestine is open at art therapy school. So they do a lot of work with dance, with music, and drama and theater. A lot of what I think they're starting to do is use art in order to help children get out of different types of trauma. So I imagine they'll be working with a lot of refugee camps here in Palestine. - Well, maybe it's time I transition over to Adam. I just wanna thank you, Peter, for being in touch. - Well, great, thanks so much for talking with us. And I'll pass you over to Adam here. - Thanks a lot, Peter. - Hello, this is Adam, this is Mark. It is Adam, how are you doing over there? How long you been over in the area in the Middle East now? - We've been here a little over a month now, I believe. - This is not the first time you've been to the Middle East. Something must have drawn you back. What would you say it is that drew you back to be part of this film-taking project? - I traveled here in 2005 since the time of Israel. Proper as well as the West Bank. And as far as what drew me back, whatever one is exposed to suffering like the Palestinians, people experienced on a daily basis in the West Bank or Gaza, especially coming from a Christian standpoint when these notions of justice and mercy are very important, that's what drew me back, is the intense suffering that I saw. I felt compelled to do something about it. - You also spent time over in Israel, so you're seeing things over there. Is it night and day is when the uptown, when's the downtown, one part is the slums, and one part is the palaces? - It really is. The level of contrast economically is just absolutely stark. You go into Palestinian portions of the West Bank and the impoverishment of those areas is very clearly apparent very quickly. Their cities are much sturdier. The buildings are much more decrepit. They're still building from the encephalada that have ever destroyed bombs that are filling massive piles on the streets. And of course, that contrast, not even getting into Israel, just above the Palestinian towns, can look like vacation resorts. They look very nice, you can see swimming pools, palm trees, it looks very lush. And then same thing once you get into Israel. Not to say that there's not an impoverished area, but Israel 'cause there certainly is. But the level of contrast between the two is very stark. Former President Jimmy Carter used the word in his latest book, Apartheid, and he got a lot of heat for that. Number of people were lambasting him. Does this seem like a really unfair stretch of language to describe what you are seeing right now as Apartheid? - Oh, none at all. I would say in many ways I think that the Apartheid that exists today in the West Bank particularly, but as well in certain ways in Gaza is probably even more severe than that which was in South Africa. - You come from or maybe are involved in Christian practice and you're on site of one of the centers of religion for three of the great Western religions, plus you're an anthropology major, I believe. All those things combined. Can you talk about the role of religion in your life, in the role of religion, the life that you're seeing right there in the Middle East, and where it's leading you? - Well, here in the Middle East, religion is obviously a very formative aspect of the everyday lives of people, whether you're a Muslim, a Christian, or a practice Judaism, has very direct and extreme implications for the choices you make. And I think that in this circumstance, many times religion is used in very negative ways or has very negative ramifications. It's used to justify, of course, on the Muslim side and the West is well acquainted with the phenomenon of suicide bombing. And I think that there's a complex to identify exactly how connected that is to Islam. It's a long conversation, but certainly Islam plays a role in the religious, kind of socio-religious dynamics that creates suicide bombing. But as well, I think that Judaism plays a role in a certain sense of embattled kind of separateness that you see in the Israeli society, creating this kind of very defensive sense that we need to isolate ourselves from others. And for me, I think that I see things like non-violence for claiming truth, speaking prophetically to the powers and exposing evils, things like this is very integral to my faith. This situation here seems almost without hope. There's so many regional, local, and international forces working against peace, working against any resolution that's just. Everything practical, everything social, everything political would seem to suggest that there won't be any resolution. And so I think in that situation of extreme darkness, that context of extreme darkness, the light that we find in the good news of Christ who was also living at a time when Palestine, in the same very land, was under a brutal Roman occupation, think that the nonviolent example exemplified in Christ's life translated into a modern-day context and translated specifically into this conflict is one of the only things that has the power, at this point, to work towards a just resolution. - Do you have a particular religious Christian affiliation? - I think I would call myself a recovering evangelical slash an aspiring Mennonite for hats. I grew up in an evangelical non-denominational church in Denver, Colorado. My dad is actually the pastor of the church. It was something that I became probably fairly bitter towards, evangelical Christianity in the United States, particularly for it, maybe a session with power, a session with having influence on society as we see kind of expressed in the religious right. But I think something that I've gone away to college, I've voted a sending a Mennonite church. But at this point, I still, when I go back home, I still go to the same non-denominational, evangelical church that I grew up in. And I've grown to love that community as people, spite of maybe some theological and political differences that I have from this. - What's your big hope or aspiration out of this filmmaking trip? - I think that first, of course, I have hope that just simply on an artistic level that will produce a film as well as my photography, some things and festivals. On a political level or a social level, I would hope that a film plays a role in exposing what I see as an evil unjust apartheid system here in Palestine by Israel and play some role in changing the public opinion in the United States of the people that view the film. And I think on a spiritual level, I would hope that this film plays some role. And I see it as kind of as a form of speaking prophetically to powers, which has abandoned their biblical mandate to digest something similar to these prophets in the Old Testament calling God's people to digest it. I see the film as a form of exposing evil and proclaiming truth. - You're listening to a Northern spirit radio production called Spirit in Action. And I'm your host, Mark Helpsmeet. The hissing and crackling you're hearing is in the phone line into a hotel in Jerusalem, where I contacted Peter Wietner, Adam Beach and Meghan Tackett about their project to produce a documentary work of art film about the effects of the 40 year plus occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. I've got Adam Beach on the phone at the moment, and he's a member of the project who is studying anthropology with an emphasis in Middle East studies. He's outlined a bit of history to the Middle East conflict, including the Balfour Declaration in the early 1900s, the impact of the Holocaust in leveraging the nations of the world in favor of establishment of an independent Jewish state. And Adam filled me in on some of the other historical currents that led to the current tensions in the region. - Throughout the 1920s and 30s, the Zionist movement began to gain a lot of speed. It became very strong and the waves of immigrants, Jewish immigrants, especially from Eastern Europe, increased a lot. And with this, you began to have some tensions, some clashes that began to arise between the indigenous Arab health and the Indian population in mandatory Palestine and the immigrating Zionist Jews. The real problem started in 1948 with the official establishment of the Jewish homeland in mandatory Palestine. With this, most of the major Arab powers surrounded Israel as it was called attacked Israel and were fairly handily defeated by Israel, which unlike is kind of the common opinion or a mythology was quite a regional power by that time even. And so with that, you've already had a beginning of what has become now almost 60 years of Jewish expansion in that region. The next major event that you have in history is the 1967 Six-Day War or June 1967 War, in which there's a whole complex of events that led up to it. But basically, you had war break out in the region and the long and short of that story is that by the end of the Six-Day period in June 1967, Israel had expanded to occupy the Gaza Strip, which is in southwest Israel, one or two Israel, which was under Egyptian control at the time, as well as the Golan Heights, which is in the northeast, portion of what is today Israel, and the West Bank, which is in the east of Israel, which was under Jordanian control before it was occupied. Israel eventually withdrew from the Sinai Peninsula, which they also occupied in 1967, as well as the Golan Heights. But they continued the occupation of the West Bank in Gaza right up until the modern day. And so that kind of sets the context for what we see today going on. In the Gaza Strip in 2004, you had what was called a disengagement, which was a unilateral withdrawal, ordered by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, which means that they withdrew the settlement, as well as the military forces that were occupying Gaza up until 2004. This was something along the lines of, I believe, 10,000 settlers. However, they maintained control over all the borders of Gaza up until today. In addition to this, there are frequent military incursions and planes that fly over, breaking the sound barrier, which is just a devastating thing. People get knocked off their feet, even people can get their legs broken, because the shockwave from the sonic boom is so powerful, as well as fairly consistent shelling, targeted assassinations, kidnapping, et cetera. And then in the West Bank, what's then called apartheid, probably most directly began with, ironically, the Oslo peace process. And with this, in the early 90s, you had, probably the first step was the implementation in the West Bank, which at this point, it's still under Israeli occupation, was the implementation of system of permits. Before the Oslo peace process, Palestinians could fairly, freely travel from the West Bank and control, specifically to Jerusalem, to work. The Palestinian Authority, mainly Yathra Arifat, is an establishment of a system of permits, helping Palestinians to apply for, to get from the Israeli government in order to receive these permits. Alongside this, you had the beginning of the construction of the wall, which has become such a huge issue today, which is done at this point, under the guise of security. But it's not, especially when you look at the specifics of the course of the wall, which kind of makes periodically away from the green line, which is the arm of this line that was formed after the 1967 war, and is an internationally recognized border between Israel and the West Bank. The wall that Israel supposedly building for security periodically snakes even numerous miles into the West Bank, many times encircling or annexing, you could say, lands that happen to be lush agricultural lands, or lands that have underground water aquifers in them, which are the only major source of water in the West Bank. The wall also snakes them and encapsulates areas of land that include Israeli settlements that have been built miles into the West Bank. In addition to all of this, you have also what began and kind of right around the Oslo process, but even before that, was the confiscation of roads, highways, throughout the West Bank, that at this point have been designated Israeli-only or settler-only roads, and so if Palestinians are caught on them, they're arrested or kicked off, and their cars are usually compounded, you have at this point over 530 checkpoints, roadblocks, road gates, or earth mounds within the West Bank. Many of them are placed smack in the middle or even in the east towards cities like Jericho. And this is just various forms of control that together the settlements, the wall, the bypass roads, Israeli or settler-only roads, checkpoints, roadblocks, earth mounds, all of these things kind of combine to form what people have identified as five distinct disparate cantons. In other words, pieces of territory, pieces of land that it's very difficult or impossible for Palestinians to travel in between. This is kind of the basic breakdown of why people are calling the situation in the West Bank today in apartheid, and that's because it's very literally separating Palestinians, not from traveling into Israel. It is doing that, but it's actually separating Palestinians from each other. So, for instance, today, if you were to travel from Hebron to a city like Denim in the North, if you could get there, it'd be very difficult. It's a trip that might take maybe an hour and a half or two hours without all the roadblocks, but with all those, it could take maybe eight hours long if you get there at all. You know, I am pretty sure that people in the US, assuming good faith of the Israeli government, believe that these checkpoints, all of the 530 or whatever you listed, are being implemented for security of Israel. Is that just clearly obviously not the case, or can you see how they might be actually used, maybe indirectly for security purposes of Israel? Yeah, I mean, that would seem to be the case if it were true to fit in at all of these checkpoints or built on the border between the West Bank and Israel, because that would make every sense. Consistently, when we talked about Palestinians and asked them about what they think about the checkpoints in the wall and whether it has anything to do with security, they've all said we have no problem with the wall or the checkpoints as long as they're built along the internationally recognized border called the Green Line between Israel and the West Bank, because that would make purpose. And it's within every state's right to do that, to build the wall and checkpoints on their border and regulate who comes in and who goes out. I think the telling thing is, first of all, where the checkpoints are built. Some of them, of course, are built on the border between the West Bank and Israel, but many of them are built some 20, 30 kilometers into the West Bank. And you encounter them on roads that are specifically connecting one Palestinian to the next. So it's logically, it doesn't seem to make sense by that of anything to do with security to their own property. And it's also very telling, I think, when you look at the construction of the security wall and perhaps more accurately the apartheid wall that's being built when you say, for instance, as I mentioned, identify where these precious water aquifers are throughout the West Bank. And you see how the water aquifers happen to snake in and encapsulate that land or take, for instance, the fact that it's illegal to drill a wall in the West Bank if you're Palestinian. I think the three of you were just at a demonstration right by a field. I believe a number of trees were uprooted by the Israelis. They were just grabbing another piece of land. Tell us about that situation and your experience on that side of the demonstration. Yeah, that's the town near Bethlehem called Aftaf. What the circumstances there is that there's a settlement built near Bethlehem called Aftaf. And the settlement called Aftaf is apparently in need of a sewage treatment plant. So what the IDF has done is gone into this town called Aftaf, which is kind of nestled in a very fertile valley, one of the most fertile valleys in the West Bank, and has issued many local farmers in that valley, papers indicating that their land will be confiscated for security reasons, and that in its place, and in the place of their alt of grows and farmland and houses, there will be a sewage treatment plant built. Of course, this decision was resisted from the beginnings because the families which receive these papers, their whole livelihood is based on the crops that they yield from the farmland. Nevertheless, in a few weeks prior to the demonstration that we were at, the IDF came in to the valley near the village called Aftaf, and uprooted nearly 50 olive trees, which some of the locals told us that they noticed it rather than just throwing the trees aside or throwing them away, they actually collected them and took them and planted them near the settlement, near a fraught settlement. So not only did they uproot the trees, they actually stole them and planted them in the settlement. And so what the demonstrations are is just a continuing form of non-violent resistance, especially because the fear is that this sewage treatment plant that Israel is building in Arctau Valley, some of the people that we spoke with have done the math. They believe that the sewage treatment plant based on the plant, the blueprints, will not have the capacity to handle the sewage coming from a fraught settlement. So this is the case, which I think it will be, then they're suspicious that when the sewage treatment is built, if it doesn't have the capacity to handle the sewage that's being pumped into it, that it may actually begin to overflow into the valley, which would destroy the whole valley and destroy the livelihood of the thousands of villagers, which depend on this farmland in Arctau Valley. And so the demonstrations take place on a weekly basis on Friday and are just a continuing form of non-violent resistance, Palestinian, Israelis, and internationals, standing up to the IDF and expressing the fact that they're not going to stand by and allow them to take this land without at least some resistance. The video I saw of that demonstration, it appeared to me that the Israeli soldiers were really fairly disciplined. They didn't seem to be with just a couple minor exceptions. They didn't seem very reactive. They didn't seem bloodthirsty, anything. What's been your impression? You're standing right there next to them. You're amidst the shouting and the pushing back and forth and so on. What's been your feeling on the spot? Yeah, I think I had a similar feeling to what you experienced in the YouTube video or what your observation was in the YouTube video. The Israeli soldiers generally had a fair amount of restraint. Of course, you're talking about soldiers who are heavily armed. So in that case, it's not, in my opinion, very hard to remain composed when you have an M16 strapped to your shoulder. And you're standing in front of people who are unarmed and are resisting specifically non-violently. But I think that the restraint of the soldiers is somewhat beside the point when I think the real violence taking place is the confiscation of that land, the uprooting of trees, which will leave families essentially without any form of income, and the absolute disregard for any sense of legality or law or justice in the building of this sewage treatment for a settlement which is, by itself, illegal based on conditional law. Do you have a sense of being vulnerable over there? I'm sure a lot of Palestinians are very frightened and I just did a program a couple weeks ago related to what Rachel Corrie experienced. So do you have a sense of that kind of vulnerability? I would say not an overriding sense of fear or vulnerability. I think that being an American gives us a certain amount of immunity to the violence of the Israeli soldiers, which is such a common reality for Palestinians. And in that sense, I almost have had some feelings of guilt as if I based on no merit, but just based on where I was born, more immune to the violence of the Israeli soldiers in the Palestinians. However, I think that if certain choices, for instance, like what Rachel Corrie was doing, acting as a human shield in Gaza, where things are much more tense now as they were when she was killed. I think that, for instance, I'll give an example. There were points at which I felt vulnerable, one of which was that another demonstration that we attended, in a village called Deline, which is just outside of Ramallah. At this demonstration, it was another instance of land confiscation, in which the IDF has moved in and blocked off a road which farmers used to get to their farmland and made the farming of those lands illegal. Just, I think, a few weeks ago, or perhaps a few months ago, the Israeli High Court actually ruled that it was illegal for the IDF to block the farmers of Deline from traveling to their farmlands. And so, there's demonstrations also on a weekly basis at Deline on Fridays, and so we attended this protest. What happened is that we met in the village, in Deline, international Israelis and Palestinians, once again, we gathered up and then began to march down this road, where the Israeli soldiers at the IDF had set up a bar bar road, probably 100 meters behind that had formed a line, but not very beautiful, between 30 or 50 soldiers. As we approached them, they didn't move, they just continued to stand there. We stopped at the barbed wire, and then the Palestinians that were taking part of this demonstration began to yell 'cause the Israeli soldiers were yelling back and forth. I think it's a negotiation, I mean, it was an Arabic, I didn't understand it, but I think they were just negotiating, saying, even based on Israeli law, we're allowed to go to our farmlands. We've got a path, and we've come in a spirit of non-violence. We don't want to hear to hurt you, we're not here to threaten you, we just want to go to our farmlands. And so, this one went for maybe a few minutes, and then at some point, one of the Palestinians who had come with us actually began, and I think they told Israelis that they were going to do this. The soldiers at the IDF that were there, actually began to take the barbed wire, which had been draped kind of across the dirt road that we are on, began to move it back. After the Palestinians began to pull back this barbed wire almost immediately, the IDF soldiers responded with a huge amount of tear gas being fired into the crowd, as well as rubber bullets. Since then, naturally, we all scattered. There was many children with us under the age of certainly 18 and even children there, who I think were in the age of 10. Yet the tear gas continued to be, as we ran away, they kind of filled the hole, all of the growth that we were running into, the tear gas, and so many people were, of course, exposed to that and were coughing, their eyes burning, et cetera. And so then, as we continued to kind of run away, firing of the tear gas continued and rubber bullets, and I think certainly at that point I felt vulnerable. I think probably more so than even the fact that I was feeling the effects of tear gas, my eyes were burning, their lungs were burning, I was coughing almost to the point of vomiting. Suddenly, a little more scary than that, was that it sounds that the tear gas canisters made as they passed by your head. So this kind of barrage of tear gas and rubber bullets went on for probably a few hours. There was a number of Palestinians who were involved in the demonstration injured. One man was shot in the head. He didn't die but was taken away by the Palestinian Red Cross, which was there. Another man was shot by a rubber bullet in the stomach and had a real large well. And of course, the vast majority of us suffered the effects of tear gas. Now, at that point I felt somewhat vulnerable. Adam, I just want to commend you for your willingness to spend your summer vacations and really to spend your life in this kind of service to a vision. Serves you on intellectual and really on deep spiritual levels. I want to uphold you in prayer, in your witness there, and in bringing truth and justice to that area. Thank you very much, Adam. That was Adam Beach, who, along with Peter Weekner and Meghan Tuckett, is on site in the occupied territories and Israel to attempt to capture on film the effects of the long-term occupation of Gaza and the West Bank. Adam, Peter, and Meghan are my guests for this northern spirit radio production, which is called Spirit in Action. And it's time for Adam to pass the phone over to Meghan, allowing Meghan a chance to convey her sense of their joint work and her own leading to be part of it over the crackly challenging phone line into their hotel in Jerusalem. Hello, Meghan, you sure are patient? Hi, I'd like to think so. Meghan, thank you for joining me for Spirit in Action. I understand you're the premier photographer for this film project that you're doing. It's your course of study, right? Yes, it is. Actually, I am studying English communication at Fort Worth College, which is the closest major that they offer at my school to film. What in the world motivated you to go to the Middle East? Didn't your mother tell you that you shouldn't go to that area? I mean, not on a humorous level. Didn't you have some sense that says, this is a dangerous area. I shouldn't be going there. So what has possessed you to go and be part of this project? Well, of course Adam and I have been good friends in high school. And he came on this trip in 2005, just after our senior year. And when he went, I was actually going to join them and the rest of the group from our school that was going on the trip. But some things fell through. And so I was never able to go. And last summer, Peter and Adam began to play on this trip. And they kind of told me about it. And I had always come to come to the area. I had been interested about the conflict since roughly around 2005. And I guess you could say I've always been pretty reckless. And I feel like sometimes my own safety is less important than I think issues that need to be addressed. I do think that within this competition the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, if there were more media and more journalists that were willing to come over here and represent the actual story, I think the situation would be much different. In my experience, as far as American media goes, I've never even actually seen a picture of the wall. It's so-called security sense. And because of that, I think when people say security events, you assume it's this small chain makes sense from reality. It's twice as high as the iron curtain. You've been seeing much of this from behind the viewfinder of a camera. You're watching it from that side. What's been its impact on you, as you've seen things like the checkpoints, the demonstrations, and the wall? How did that affect you inside? How has it changed you? Being behind the lens with my camera, I think that it's a double-edged sword. Because on one hand, it gives you a grant to a sort of immunity. People, you know, they see you behind a camera, and they don't tell you. But on the other hand, I feel trapped behind my camera. I feel like I'm not really involved in helping people. There's a big part of me that I know that, obviously, being behind my camera is defined in another itself, showing people that you are going to go back and tell them your stories. What have been the emotions and the changes that have taken place in you? As you've witnessed the checkpoints, the demonstrations, the wall, how have these affected you at your heart's level? It's, you know, it's been very difficult for me, and I had read about the walls and the checkpoints and everything, and I even heard firsthand accounts of them, but I think we went to a checkpoint in film called Tech.300. It's one that connects Bethlehem to Jerusalem. It's a checkpoint to Palestinian. They opened at five in the morning, so we were there pretty early. Well, it's supposed to open at five in the morning, sometimes it opens at six thirty or seven. But when we got there, there were hundreds of Palestinians lined up waiting for it to open so that they could go into Jerusalem because that's what they make their livelihood. So we got in there and filmed it, and it was this overwhelming sense that they were being herded like animals at a zoo. That somehow, because of the color of the skin, or their origin, they were less human than I was, you know? I mean, they didn't even look at me as I walked through each turned silent. I mean, it's difficult seeing the way that I'm treated just because I have an American passport, as opposed to the Palestinians. It makes me sad to see the racism that goes on, and that's, you know, that's in both the recommendations. I think that many Israelis are racist towards Palestinians and many Arabs, I think that many Palestinians are racist towards Jews, because they think that they're all the same, when Israelis are perfectly human people on both sides. Peter told me that you are filming also Israelis. Have you started doing that already? Apart from some of the Israeli protesters that were at the demonstration, when we were in West Bank, we have interviewed three people now, just from various Israeli police activists, like groups. Are you saying these were Israelis who were resisting the Israelis? Yeah, actually, all the groups that we've met with are very much against the occupation, and things that, in order for there to be peace, the first step is to end the occupation, to end the disengagement. Tell me a little bit about what you see this film as being at the end. I'm assuming somehow you'll have a major part in editing and formatting it all together. Is it going to be beautiful, pastoral scenes, or is it all going to be stark, wild pictures, or just what are you hoping is the ambience, I guess, of this film? Well, at this point, my hope for the end result of this film is that it will display some sense of hope, some sense of beauty, in this area where hope and beauty seems like it shouldn't flourish. I think that it's important for people to see that despite everything, all the humiliation and the hardships that Palestinians have put there, that they still manage to find hope and to find peace. And I think that that can be conveyed through things that there's one home to the marsh, who will rebuild them or that they're rebuilding in general. Why rebuild if you have no hope? Why rebuild if you think the situation is never going to change? I think that one of the main goals of the documentary is to show this side of nonviolent resistance of hope. Peter and Adam both spoke a little bit about their backgrounds and how their backgrounds end up motivating them to be involved in this. Clearly, there's many hundreds of millions of Americans who haven't given a lot of attention to the plight of the Palestinians. What in your background has predisposed you to be concerned about these people who, after all, live halfway across the world from you? Well, I am ethnically Native American and Native Hawaiian. And I've actually never lived on a reservation, and that's been a Native American reservation, which is due to the fact that my dad, who grew up on a reservation, wanted to protect us from that, because reservations are very poverty-stricken in a lot of ways to prep at places, because Native Americans in the United States have pretty well lost all sense of their culture. It's still there a little bit, but it's pretty much gone. And pretty much as I've gone throughout the West Bank, more and more, I've seen the conflict and the occupation as the beginning stages of the colonization of America. I think that one of my main passions in helping them is because I truly hope that the Palestinians never end up like the Native Americans, you know, living on small, included poverty-stricken parts of land that was once there, living off of government rations and living in government subsidized houses. I understand, Meghan, that you're not really there to be the demonstration. You're trying to capture pictures of what's going on. So you're not determining necessarily the tactics of the demonstrations. If you were, would you personally be advocating non-violence as opposed to, let's get violence and trash as many of the oppressors as possible? I can imagine that kind of anger being there. What's your basis or beliefs or background related to that kind of thing? What was just for you, my background, I grew up in a Christian family, in a Christian home. So I suppose I've always gone to observe a church, my parents haven't chosen attending at the time, but it became more difficult as I went to college because I didn't go to a Christian college, I go to a secular college, a public over-art college, and many of the Christians there are viewed as extracurical, and many of them will basically tell everybody that they're going to tell the person that comes out of their mouth. So I certainly still believe in God, I still believe in Jesus, but I wouldn't necessarily say that I'm a religious leader. It's just because I have grown very cynical towards religion. But apart from that, I am a pacifist, and while it's very difficult to see the way that Palestinians are treated and certainly puts a lot of anger in me, I think that's the best way, the only way to resist, mainly based on the imbalance of power is non-violently, I think that it's the only effective way. You know, when we were at, I think Adam told you about the Berlin demonstration. There are many, many children, and some adults even throwing stones at the soldiers, and while it's completely understandable why they would do it, they were obviously getting infected. They didn't come within 200 liters of the soldiers, once they hit any of them, and it just angered them, you know, it just made them throw more to your gas and throw more of a rubber bullet. And beyond that, I think that in general, the best way to overcome oppression is non-violently, because I think you respond violently, it just kills more people. So what are your plans ahead when you get back to the U.S., and you're going to obviously be editing this film, you've got a couple more years of college, what do you want to do? Initially, obviously, I'm going to get back and spend a good amount of time editing this film. My deadline, for myself as is now, is around December, so I can make it into the winter film festival. I'll be entering the film into what was called film festival, Durango Independent Film Festival, which has been capitalied via Four Corners area, probably over the summer, this instant barber film festival in California, and then, obviously, from there, it's much more than one film festival, if you do, and you go on to bigger ones. But, ultimately, I think that I will go to graduate school, possibly at the Art Institute in Denver, for cinematography, either that or I'll go into video journalism or print journalism. And are you doing this for simply art or for profit or for other motives? You know, I had a mentor in high school, and he, if I could in my life in many, many ways, that's what I think that there wouldn't even be any sort of Christian left in me if it wasn't for this man, and he told me about it in everything in my life, I should search for truth, and I think that that's how I live my life high. And I would like to go into journalism, video, and print for that. I can show the world of truth that film and me journals neglect based on profit, based on preparation that controls the company. But, I do think that every person should try to convey truth, and I feel like that is certainly a calling in my life. Thanks so much, Meghan, for your part in this witness, putting yourself on the line over there in the pursuit of truth, as you've said, and I hope it all develops very well, and I hope I get to see the film certainly by December. Yeah, I'll let you guys know it's finished. We know when the film should be really analysis changed, but it will either be ready around December or July, one of the two. Thanks so much, Meghan. Be very well. I've just finished speaking with the third member of the crew on site in Jerusalem to film the effects of the 40-year Israeli occupation of Gaza and the West Bank. My guests for today's Spirit and Action program were Peter Wiegner, Adam Beach, and Meghan Tuckett. Be sure to follow up on their project via the links on my webpage. The theme music for this program is Turning of the World, performed by Sarah Thompson. This Spirit and Action program is an effort of Northern Spirit Radio. You can listen to our programs and find links and information about us and our guests on our website, northernspiritradio.org. Thank you for listening. I am your host Mark Helpsmeet, and I welcome your comments and stories of those leading lives of spiritual fruit. May you find deep roots to support you and grow steadily toward the light. This is Spirit in Action. With every voice, with every song, we will move this world along. With every voice, with every song, we will move this world along, and our lives will feel the echo of our healing.