Friday, April 1, 2011

First summer saving time day in Bil'in


Roy Wagner sent me the following report which I gladly share.

Over 30 Israelis and some 50 internationals joined the people of Bil'in to celebrate the first day of summer saving time while protesting against the wall, resisting the occupation, and expressing solidarity with the people of Syria. Mustafa Bargouthi dropped in surrounded by Mubadra flags, but Fatah and Marwan Bargouthi flags were not absent either.
On the northern fence front the gas and stone exchange started pretty much immediately, but at the main gate the soldiers preferred skunk and stun grenades, forcing a couple of demonstrators who got sprayed while trying to cross the fence to continue the demonstration with their shirts off. The soldiers held the gas back for a while, either because of the unfavorable wind, or because they liked the popular Arab music played from a car-borne loud speaker, or because they have discovered the power of de-escalation and gone hippie on us (scat squirting and sound bombing hippie, that is).

But the gas did eventually come, maybe because the sound bombs scared a flock of storks into circling in the air above the demo, upsetting the fine balance of mother nature, which is surely a definite no-no for our armed friends of the Zionist earth.

During one of the pauses between the relatively thin showers of gas, a red ice-cream car came a-gingling and offered radioactive-colored lumps of sweet frozen vegetable fat which, given the heat, duped some of the demonstrators into buying and eating it.

Eventually, when the shabab was almost done expressing its protest by stoning the skunk truck, the soldiers corssed the fence to scare the few remaining demonstrators away. But while some demonstrators did retreat, others took the opportunity to give the soldiers a 30 minute lecture about the evils of the occupation, describe the soldiers' personal faults, comment on their mothers, and rub skunk-soaked bodies in their noses. This tactic led the army to retreat, repent and promise to end the occupation.

Well, maybe the repenting and ending the occupation thing was a heat induced delusion or an April fool's hoax. A couple of demonstrators required first aid for exposure to gas and a rubber bullet bruise.