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Hanna
and her Sisters
Ruth Wishart gave a one-sided view of Israel when she wrote a sanitised
account of the activities of grandmother, Hanna Barag, and her Machsom
Watch (The Herald, Nov 22, 2004). She wrote;
"The other week I was privileged to dine with a diminutive, elderly
Israeli woman called Hanna Barag. With like-minded women, she set up an
organisation called Machsom Watch which peacefully protests on a daily
basis at the checkpoints where Israeli troops harass, abuse and detain
Palestinian commuters and families. You can imagine the kind of courage
it takes for these unarmed, unprotected guardians of civil liberties verbally
to confront army guards, reminding them of their obligations under national
and international law. Not only do they remonstrate with their own countrymen
about their behaviour, but they meticulously record and publish incidents
and e-mail them worldwide. For their trouble they are reviled as traitors
and worse.
Hanna recalls
one of the first times she spoke to a young soldier maltreating a group
of Palestinians trying to traverse a checkpoint. He was about the same
age as my grandson, she says, and he called me a Palestinian whore. All
over the world there are groups like Hanna's, using personal protest as
a potent weapon against injustice and tyranny. Very often their cause
will seem to be hopeless; their likely impact on the goals of peace and
reconciliation minimal".
In Israel, Hanna and her group are reportedly viewed in a very different
light. Many ask, if what they do is so courageous, how come these elderly
ladies come away unscathed? How many of these ladies realise or care that,
by their behaviour, they are putting some other Israeli granny's grandchild
in danger? Israeli soldiers at roadblocks are doing a difficult job of
trying to pick out the bombers from the civilians that they hide amongst,
while trying to keep delays to a minimum, and all at great personal risk.
While these selfless young men and women are performing this difficult
task, politically-motivated provocateurs such as the "diminutive"
Hanna Barag are seen as working to make their lives even more difficult
and minimize their effectiveness by harrassing, distracting, threatening
and photographing them. As the harried soldiers are pressed to work faster,
they make mistakes and the bombers can slip in.
Ruth Wishart reported that provocateurs such as Ms. Barag are "reviled
as traitors and worse". Small wonder!
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Redressing the Balance