[Sethreports] Children and Resistance: When a Fighter Dies Who is Lost?

[Seth Porcello]

Children and Resistance:
A short radio documentary from the refugee camp in the West Bank City  
of Jenin
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To Listen or Download Visit:
http://radio.indymedia.org and click or search Children and Resistance

OR for .ogg file download at:
http://www.radio4all.net/proginfo.php?id=18554

For a complete archive of Reports from Palestine by Seth Porcello Visit:
http://www.radio4all.net
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When a fighter dies who is lost?  When a young man ends his life  
strapped to a bomb who is left behind?  And where do the new  
generations find a place from which to start?

This short radio documentary looks at the relationship between  
children and the situations of conflict they inhabit.  Here the line  
between external and internal violence is blurred as children in the  
Jenin refugee camp struggle to reconcile the death and loss they are  
surrounded by on a daily basis with the simple reality of childhood.   
These realities are filled not only with conflict but also with  
contradiction.  I tried to fill this documentary with contradiction.

In the northern west bank city of jenin, there is a road that leads  
from the large arabic coffee pot sculpture in the center of town  
straight to Haifa.

In the past, jenin was one of the wealthiest cities in the west bank,  
but now, it is one of the poorest, and the road that leads to Haifa,  
is virtually abandoned.  Like so many cities, towns, and villages  
here, Jenin has been isolated economically, as well as physically by  
the wall constructed by israel, and residents from the wealthy port  
city of Haifa, now in Israel, no longer bring to Jenin their  
disposable income.

At present, Haifa's major contribution to Jenin consists of refugees  
who have filled the camp that borders the city to it's west.

The Jenin Refugee camp is currently an autonomous territory in  
Palestine.  It is governed and policed not by the Palestinian  
Authority, but internally, by the resistance.  In 2002, the Israeli  
Army occupied Jenin in an attempt to wipe out this resistance,  
resulting in what some call the battle of Jenin, and others call the  
massacre of Jenin.  A large portion of the camp was completely razed  
to the ground durring the invasion.

And it is this invasion that so colors life in Jenin today.  It was a  
new Nakba for the displaced descendants of 1948.  Yet another  
generation has lost everything, and yet another generation will grow  
up in the chaos and aftermath of such a loss.  This new generation is  
what concerns Abdullah Mousa, Director of the Torture Victims' Center  
in Jenin.

Children's behavior has change completely, after the Jenin camp 2002  
massacre.
Their play became violent.  They play the game of soldiers and  
fighters.  (Palestinians Vs Israelis)

So, unlike children in other countries they do not play fun games.   
The Palestinian children, and more specifically children of Jenin  
camp have gone through a very tough experience.

This affected them very badly, and was also reflected on their  
personalities.  They became more violent and very afraid and  
aggressive.  There are many cases of in-voluntary urination in the camp.

This also makes the children behave in such a way as to seem much  
older than they really are, in order to adopt with the environment  
around them.

So, Palestinian children and especially children from the camp, are  
childless, because they did not live their childhood.  Anybody in the  
world will be the same if subject to similar situation.

Many children suffer from social phobia because of the physical  
violence they were subject to by the Israeli soldiers.

Everybody knows that the victim acquires the morals of the  
victimizer, which means that Palestinian children are acquiring the  
morals and the behavior of the Israeli soldiers.

Ahlam Nouah is 10 years old and lives in Jenin camp.  I talked with  
her after school with the help of one of her teachers Mohaned  
Sarhmoud who translates.

Interview with Girl at School in Jenin Camp.WAV

After speaking to Ahlam, I wanted to talk to people who work with  
kids in Jenin. And as it seemed to be more and more of a reasonable  
question to ask, I wanted to try and understand the relationship  
between the kids and the resistance.

So I sought out the children's theatre, which recently reopened in  
2005.  It was started in 1993 by Arna Mer-Khamis, a Jewish Israeli  
peace activist after she won the alternative nobel prize for her work  
in Jenin.  She used the 50,000 dollars she received to build a  
children's theatre seating over 200 people, in the refugee camp.   
Arna died in 1995 but the theatre continued to run until 2002 when it  
was destroyed along with most of the camp itself durring Operation  
Defensive Shield.  In 2005, local community leaders partnered with  
staff of the child rehabilitation center in the camp to start the  
theatre up again.  Juliano Mer-Khamis, Arnas son, left a successful  
career in theatre in Israel to work on the project, now called  
Freedom Theatre, as it's director and currently run's speech therapy  
workshops and various other therapeutic drama programs.  They don't  
have a new theatre yet, but according to Juliano, they will.  I spoke  
with him in his car, as we were leaving Haifa.

For more information on the freedom theatre visit their website  
www.thefreedomtheatre.org.
Also - for an incredible documentary find "Arna's Children" directed  
by Juliano Mer-Khamis

Reporting from the Jenin refugee camp in the West Bank, I'm Seth  
Porcello with the IMEMC.org


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