Matt's Writing

My last photo from inside Bethlehem. A Dutch documentary film crew was in front of me. (Tel Aviv, Israel) 26 December 2008: Eight days had passed since the six-month Hamas/Israel truce agreement ended on December 19, 2008. Each day I traveled in Israel, more and more mortars were launched by Hamas from the Gaza Strip into southern Israel. I had seen many Israeli soldiers near the Western Wall in the Old City, Jerusalem during the start of Hanukkah. Legions of their army green bags were stacked in giant piles. M16-yeilding, smoking soldiers sitting on top of the piles, waiting for buses outside Zion Gate. I sensed that something was going to happen in the near future between Israel and Gaza based on this large military gathering in Jerusalem, what I read in the press, and "word on the street"--informal conversations with Israelis, Palestinians, and "adventure travelers" at Petra Hostel who vacationed in conflict areas . Little did I know that the current Isr...

I end my Middle East trip early. What I have kept from my blog is that I've suffered from severe diarrhea for the last week. I got some type of stomach virus or parasite while traveling, which has prevented me from digesting food or retaining fluid. My very kind host family in Bethlehem, seeing me nearly incoherent and unable to eat, recommended I go to the local clinic. On Christmas Day, I went to the ER in Bethlehem, which is part of the Occupied Territories in the West Bank. The people there were very hospitable. I gave them my American passport, and they charged me only 15 shekels to be seen by a doctor (less than $5!). Unlike your average U.S. ER, there were no lines, and they saw me right away. The place looked like any Western hospital, only a lot poorer. My initial impression, in my semi-coherent state, was that it looked kind of like the thrift store of hospitals, in that they didn't change the paper that was ontop of the hospital beds between patients, and most the c...

The tower of the Church of the Nativity, one of the oldest Christian churches in the world. Manger Square in Bethlehem on Christmas Eve, 2008: The Church of the Nativity on Christmas Eve was also the most heavily-guarded church in the world: Here are about 50 of the approximately 500 automatic-riffle bearing Palestinian Authority policemen in Bethlehem for Christmas. To enter the church that marks the spot where Jesus was born, you have to duck through a very low doorway, that's about 3 1/2 feet tall: Once you pass through that, you're in a small room with a metal detector that you walk through, and then you pass through this old wooden doorway into the church itself. Inside the church: Constantine's floor: the original floor of the Church of the Nativity built in 333 under the Emperor Constantine I. Here is the entrance to the underground cave which is the traditional place of Jesus' birth. This 14-pointed star marks the spot where many believe Christ was born in the m...

The title for this blog is from Saul Williams' book, which is a reference to the greatest manuscript find of the twentieth century: the Dead Sea Scrolls. My interview with Saul Williams on Fresh Air: The Alternative can be found here and on iTunes. Wikipedia writes about the story of the the find in 1947: According to rumor, a Bedouin goat herder named Mazra threw a rock into one of the caves, seeking a lost goat. The sound of pottery shattering drew him in, whereupon he discovered ancient jars containing scrolls wrapped in linen. The site was later excavated, and over 900 documents were found spread throughout many caves in Quamran , which contain some of the only known surviving copies of Biblical documents made before 100 AD. On Monday, December 22, 2008, I left Jerusalem on a Jewish tour of the Dead Sea, Masada, and Qumran. There were mainly middle-aged American Jews in the tour van with me, which held about 20 people. I had a great time with them, as we listened to our to...

Today was an emotional day. I took the call of the poster in my hostel in Old Jerusalem, and I went on an ICAHD tour of East Jerusalem, some settlements, and a bit of the Occupied Territories, or Palestine, or Greater Israel, or the Holy Land, or whatever terminology you use to describe the area between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River that is not officially Israel proper. ICAHD , the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions , is an Israeli non-violent, direct-action group that works against the Israeli demolition of Palestinian homes in the Occupied Territories . The first site we went to, pictured above, was right on the other side of the 1967 Green Line in East Jerusalem (traditionally the Palestinian side of Jerusalem). I spoke via a translator with an elderly Palestinian woman who had been forcefully evicted from her house right next to a new settlement. She said that she and her husband had lived there for decades, and had received many requests from the Israeli gov...