Email from Vermont and Hebron

["Jay Moore" <research@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

FYI -- Here is part of an email from my friend and neighbor, Jules Rabin --
whose moving reflections about Passover this year, in the year of the new
intifada, you may have seen on the MER List and which I now have posted on
my Web site.

best,
jay
www.neravt.com/left/

**********

Dear Jay, Thanks for the notes on August Bondi.  From my vantage poinbt as a
20th C East Coaster, I'm always intrigued by tales of Jewish settlers in the
back country in the 19th C.  The profile you sent mentioned that Bondi"s
"participation in war caused him to be exiled" in 1848.  I would assume that
that delicate or uninformed reference to an unnamed war  really pointed to
the revolution of 1848, which brought a lot of German revolutionaries here;
and for alklk I know, Austrian revolutionaries, too.

Below is a copy of one of two letters I've just received from a friend in
Hebron, with whom I had corresponded until she fell silent.  This letter
tells something about the anguish of people in wear zones even when their
flesh is untouched by bullet or bomb.  I think our imaginations took us in
this direction during the siege of Sarajevo.

Reema, the writer, is smart and articulate.  She works for a Palestinian
human rights organizatioin.  It occurs to me as I write this that she might
agree to be a correspondent for your website.  Hebron is one of the most
difficult and bizarre places in the West Bank...bizarre because the 40,000
Palestinian inhabitants have to endure lengthy curfews so that the 400
Israeli settlers, mostly Ultra-Orthodox, who have moved into the heart of
the city, can come and go freely. . .

Jules

**********

Dear Jules,

I'm sorry I haven't written in ages, I went to the physician today, and as
he
couldn't diagnose what problem I have as I can't eat and when I do, I have
to
throw it all up, he told me that I have symbtoms of depression. I went mad
because
I'm just not the type of person who would enter a depression course. He told
me I
should start taking some relaxing pills but I'm not sure I want to take
them. I
told him I'm not the type, although, I myself confessed to him that I would
cry
for the simplest thing and many of my habbits have changed, I feel tired and
so
helpless that reading seems such a huge task now.

I'm sure it's nothing physical that's wrong with me, and I also know that
it's not depression, it's only the situation that result in more and more
victims.
Not by bullets, not by tear gas, but rather by pressure that is building so
much
that will just make us 'me' explode.

Last night, they started shooting around midnight, I was just about to fall
asleep when I heard it. I stayed up until four in the morning, and I wanted
to cry
so hard and loud, but I couldn't. I'm supposed to be the strong one. The
night
before, they started shooting early, I wasn't home, and as we live right
under
their bombs, I couldn't go home. I was waiting for my mother's phone call to
tell
me that it's safe to go home but it didn't come until around 9:00pm. I
didn't yet
reach the door steps when they started shooting again. Mom laughed and
panicked
and said something about the end of their coffee break, it's time for more
bombs.
It was so loud that my ears started to hurt, and by the time it was
midnight, I
wanted to sneank into my parent's bed but my muscles wouldn't move, and so I
stayed right where I was, waiting for the next coffee break so I could go to
my
paren't room. I don't remember when I went to sleep, I had a funny feeling
that I
will wake up, and just like in cartoons movies, stars will be spinning
around my
head, and I will look around and all I will see will be the ruins of what
once
used to be my house, my neighbors' houses, my neighborhood.

I woke up, and I felt like I was dreaming, there wasn't any stars, but there
were definetly now windows broken, roof to pick up bullet shells from, and
martyrs
and injuries to look for.

That's what has kept me from writing, and from living.

I'm sorry and I will write another message soon!
reema