The Order to Destroy | Featured |Axisoflogic.com

This is an excerpt from
“Crimes, Victims and Witnesses: Apartheid in Palestine,”
by Mats Svensson,
published by Real African Publishers,
Johannesburg, South Africa

It is Wednesday afternoon, 5 November. I am at Silwan, south of Jerusalem’s Old City, where a house is to be demolished. Before I reach the house, I stop and look up at all the windows, at all the balconies, and at all the flat roofs. People are everywhere. Old, young, women, men. Soldiers. Everyone gazing in the same direction. I am struck by the silence.

Women stand in the shade, away from the sun. An old man behind the soldiers tries to shout something, but his cry gets caught behind the bars of despair. I see the desperation in his eyes. I see how his back is bent.

I see how the soldier, the soldier who looks like a teenager, shoves him away. He cannot get through. A young soldier carries water bottles. Water for all the soldiers.

I turn to the shade and face the women. Unlike the soldiers with green clothes and heavy weapons, I see dignity. No expressions of hopelessness, but no hope, either. As if they are in an inferior position but still have not lost. As if they have lost everything, but still have everything left.

I have still not reached the house but am stopped by soldiers on horseback. Soldiers who shout at me. I am saved by a photographer from Reuters who speaks to me, as if he recognises me. Together we go on, past clusters of soldiers. Past men with combat equipment; men who do not look proud; men who dodge my eyes; men who do not wish to be photographed.

When I reach the site, the film cameras have begun to register, second upon second. The stage is bathing in a clear light as the sun is setting high above us, over the rooftops. For the photographers, this is the best lighting. It is light that creates contrasts, that creates depth against the white limestone walls.

I think, “This is not real. I must have walked onto a film set.” As if the director had moved from Fårö to Jerusalem. As if Ingemar Bergman was adapting Selma Lagerlöf’s book, “Jerusalem,” for the screen. In
front of me I see how Sven Nykvist shapes his right hand, shapes a three-sided figure to block out the unessential, concentrates and locks the gaze while the director behind him quietly watches. How I wish it were the case, that in front of me I am watching a performance: that everyone around me is acting.

That it is about a tragedy between father and son, or about Swedish farmers who had left Nås for the Holy City. But these feelings last for only a short moment.

A young soldier points while raising his automatic weapon ten degrees, aiming at the man in the door who is carrying the red carpet

I am immediately pulled back to reality when a young soldier points while raising his automatic weapon ten degrees, aiming at the man in the door who is carrying the red carpet, the one that had just covered the floor. A
small table had stood on that carpet. Around the table had been a couch, some armchairs and chairs. This is where they had celebrated Eid and friends had come to visit last Friday. Children had played on the floor and they had drunk strong Arabic coffee.

The silence is almost palpable. The neighbor has become an enemy. Hundreds of soldiers, many of them young, now carry heavy weapons and combat equipment. The order to destroy has been given.

The young soldiers are about to destroy, dominate, take over, demolish, create despair, humiliate, be in control, stand in the center.

In the periphery stands a lonely American diplomat. He registers and takes notes. I am glad and impressed by his presence. When a house is demolished, he is there; when a family is thrown out on the street, he is present.

Then the silence is broken. The house is emptied. Everything has been brought out and placed in a large pile. Toys, toothpaste, the sofa bed, the yellow teddy bear, plastic flowers, tables, carpets, a refrigerator with photos of happy children.

The men are forced away; the soldiers’ attentiveness is sharpened. Everyone’s gaze is sharpened. Everyone is looking at the yellow machine, the machine with the large axe, which reminds us of a dentist’s drill. But here there is no one drilling. Here it is not about being careful; here something is to be axed, struck, broken.

Everyone watches when the man in the machine-from-hell approaches the house, lifts the large thorn and begins to axe through the roof. The ground trembles. The man who earlier tried to cry raises his hands towards the soldiers who prevented him from approaching the house and then he aims his hands towards the sky, to the Almighty.

Hell is suddenly in front of me. I stand beside the family that has lost everything. In front of us we see the machine that breaks their home into pieces, killing all hope. The young soldier who, in a democratic society, should protect the weak was not allowed to do so.

I see spectators from near and far. Fellow beings, journalists, diplomats and activists. Children who are scared of what they see and who wonder whose house will be demolished tomorrow.

I look around and see all the young, all the boys. Boys standing on the roofs, on the balconies, who stand in groups. They begin to talk, begin to point towards the house which is soon a pile of rubble and towards the soldiers.

The young boys stood beside me. They saw a family removing all of their belongings. They saw the family watching their house become crushed. In the middle of Jerusalem, a few hundred meters from Via Dolorosa.

In the middle of the hopelessness I tell myself that this must be stopped, that together we can stop the madness. We have to stop saying it is meaningless, stop all forms of the cynicism that have become part of reality among foreigners, among diplomats in Jerusalem. There must, at the end, be some kind of damned law and order in this place.

Those of you who decide over your country’s foreign policy in relation to Palestine are quite few. Few but powerful. That power must be managed well when your decisions affect the young peoples’ views on democracy and arouse and extinguish dreams.

My mobile phone vibrates. The UN, through OCHA, writes that three more houses are being demolished today: more people are about to become homeless.

Source: Cold Type