Do you know who Dorothy Naor is?
Like the legendary Dorothy, she's also hurled by the hurricane, a Middle Eastern one, and daily attempts to get closer to the Wizard of Oz...

Dorothy is active in an Israeli women's group named A New Profile. The following is her e-mailed message. If you have any questions, please pose them rationally in your comments and I'll ask her to answer in person.

In my fifth Hebrew book, Once She Was a Child (HudnaPress 2003), French Algerian born poet Michelle Grangaud says, "We were mad. When you are at war, you act crazy."

It seems that this crazy hurricane is sweeping our world and entire glob all over. Do we have the presence of mind to change course, before we are all hurled into an abyss?

This Week in Marda.

Marda is a picturesque village at the foot of a hill under the eastern most tip of the settlement of Ariel. Ariel was built on lands taken from 3 villages: Marda, Kief el-Hares, and Hares. Before Ariel was built, all you could see above Marda, a resident of Marda tells me, were olive groves, wheat, and shepherds grazing their sheep. The olive groves and wheat disappeared under the houses of Ariel. Some olive trees still stand between Ariel and Marda at the foot of the hill on which Ariel sits, but the owners of those trees are not permitted to near them, and the shepherds are not permitted to graze their flocks on the hill's slopes.

Despite all this, villagers appear to have accepted their fate, and have gone on living their lives as best they could. Marda is not a violent village. Its residents, like those of Hares and Kief el-Hares, simply want to live their lives in freedom and peace, neither of which they now have. Marda is in fact so quiet and undemanding that people do not know that it exists. The IOF's actions this week suggest that it wants to change this by provoking violence from Marda. Little else can explain the IOF's conduct towards the village this week.

It began during the night between Friday, July 22 and Saturday, July 23. Shortly after midnight IOF jeeps came into Marda. Soldiers shot stun grenades (they make tons of noise), apparently to wake the residents up, and just in case that didn't do it, also set off sirens. I heard them over the phone. At the same time, bulldozers began uprooting olive trees.

Often in such cases I phone Dan, aide to Knesseth member Roman Bronfman. But I try to avoid phoning him after 10:00 PM, 11:00 PM at the latest. At the later hours I'm on my own, the IWPS conveying on the spot information, I trying to find out reasons why and trying to stop IOF harassment, not often sucessfully. To do this, I phoned the Civil Administration, a branch of the military. Actually, there is no civil administration. The IOF does not accept responsibility for Palestinian affairs. But the title sounds good. In any event, the Civil Administration is the supposed 'humanitarian aid' branch of the IOF, and is supposedly responsible for helping out when needed.