she said, and she meant it, too. Quite literally. She truly wished us well. She truly believed we were going to hell.
Not the kind of hell some churches talk about. She probably doesn't believe in that, and neither do I, fortunately. Hanna Barag was talking about the checkpoint hellholes administred by the Israeli military (or private companies of ex-militaries) on the West Bank.
And if anyone knows what, she does. Hanna and 400 other elderly Israeli ladies in the organisation Machsom Watch have been watching human rights abuses against Palestinians at these checkpoint terminals every single Saturday for eight years. These amazing grandmothers spend most of their spare time lobbying and nagging contacts in the Israeli legal and administrative system to help the Palestinians who experience the most severe abuses.
My teammate Johanna from Sweden, worked as an accompanier (EA) at the infamous Gilo checkpoint (or 'No. 300') between Betlehem and Jerusalem last year. It broke her completely. - I cried for six weeks after I returned to Sweden, she told me the other night. It was so cruel, so humiliating, so degrading to the ordinary workers who were forced to go through to reach their jobs in Jerusalem.
I'll have to visit the hellhole sometime and see for myself. Then I can write about it.
