From email to Sherry

It is so weird, before I saw the separation wall, I got weepy just thinking about it.  I got really nervous about seeing a machine gun up close for the first time.  Then after seeing it this stuff so often, they become part of the "landscape" and THAT makes me really angry.

 A culture  (Jewish Culture) with a long history of being abused and thereby oppressed is now collectively abusing and oppressing other cultures -- and not just Arabs -- just as a father who was abused as a child is likely to abuse his own children.  The Nazi government made ghettos of Jewish neighborhoods and now the Israeli government is making ghettos of Arab communities.  The apartheid wall in Bethlehem is choking the lives of Bethlehem citizens in order to "secure" the Jewish settlements on all sides.  Although Bethlehem is "officially" under Palestinian control and Israel has forbidden any of its citizens from visiting the town, Israeli military has a free hand in the streets, especially when building a new section of the wall.  The separation wall cuts farmers and workers off from ancient olive groves and most aren't allowed to leave town to work on them.  The wall is less than 15 meters (and the adjoining guard tower is 35 meters) from the front gates of a public boys school.  Security is so tight that the thousands of tourists who come to Bethlehem every day come to the city for just 40 minutes and then leave without eating at the restaurants or really investigating the shops. Bethlehem citizens must get special permits to leave the city and they must have a very good reason.  Two to three thousand citizens stand in line every day to get through the Bethlehem checkpoint for work and private schools in Jerusalem.  And it goes on and on.
 Wayward Nazis committed horrid atrocities and humiliated millions of Jews and now the Israeli government is committing atrocities on and humiliating millions of Arabs.  EVERY Arab teenager (Christian, Jew, or Muslim) has been bullied by Israeli military troops that are under 22 years old -- especially at one of the hundreds of checkpoints.  They are profiled just like African Americans were and are profiled in Mississippi.  Homes are invaded and demolished.  Being a private security agency willing to evict Arabs is  a lucrative business in Jerusalem.  Jerusalem's right wing mayor
want to demolish nearly twenty (nice) Palestinian homes to expand it's territory on the pretense that his party wants to build a park and have green space for the huge Jewish settlements.  The treatment by the Israeli Zionists (controls military) is so bad that a father told me that his 14-year-old boy urinates himself when a troop waves his assault rifle around -- a victim of post traumatic syndrome from when his home had been invaded and his father for forced to the ground with a booted boot on his neck and a machine gun pressed against his temple.
 Anyway, I could go on and on.  And, I could go on to criticize Palestinian society: their treatment of girls and women, their cultural tradition of revenge and nomadic life, the passion of the extremists.  There is a difference, however, in that Palestinian culture is evolving and Zionists are devolving.