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In the morning, I walked through the old city and took pictures of soldiers on the jewish end. Jerusalem is divided by many parts; jewish quarter, orthodox jewish quarter, Christian quarter, and last but not least, Islamic quarter (Palestine-of course Israel calls all of it their own). My friends and I met a pole from London named greg. Greg is a photographer and he wants to eventually be paid for his work. We walked to the western wall and officials made us put on goofy hats in order to kiss the wall and take silly pictures. As we were moving through the checkpoint, an American jewish woman was in front of me. The woman looked like a typical 50 year old preparing for a cruise ship to heaven. The lady had a floral shirt and a funny haircut that probably cost a fortune. The woman set off the alarm and the soldier just let her pass. My belt set the metal detector off and the soldier made me take all my things off. I asked him why he wouldn’t let me pass like the old princess in front of me and he said, “zu look like an arab.” He smiled because he thought I would laugh at his typical racist joke and I replied, “I’m obviously a fucking American.” The man started talking about me with his Zionist soldier checkpoint friends and that’s when I started thinking.

I kissed the wall even though I’m not a jew and took pictures of mostly orthodox jews. During tea, someone informed me that there would be violence in the orthodox jewish quarter up the street. The orthodox jews were having a demonstration on their side of town in the name of homo-hatred for the gay parade in a week. My friends and I ended up going with our video camera and the soldiers and police told us on our way in, “we will not distinguish who is who and when violence starts to set off, and fires start to burn we cannot do anything for you." They said there would be a strong possibility that we will be injured and they reminded us a few times that they will not be responsible.

we made our way through the orthodox neighborhood. Signs on the street read, “do not come into our neighborhood wearing immodest clothing;” this means short sleeve shirts, and basically anything that reveals skin. The whole, ethnic cleansing vibe pushed its way through the air. My pole friend and I left the group and went deep into the neighborhood for photographs. I looked for laundry in every ally, only to receive hatred in the eyes of these modest people caught off guard. Thankfully we made our way back to our friends in an intersection.

Soldiers started screaming at my crew of friends and the orthodox jews surrounding us. Apparently, someone left a large, black, suitcase next to a building and the imperialists wanted everyone to stand back at least 200 meters. The soldiers forced us to turn our cameras off. The children in the building were not called to evacuate and an IDF special bomb squad man set off a charge-I thought it was the bomb going off. After the mob was informed that the suitcase was just a false alarm, the mob of homo-hating, orthodox jewish children rushed the suitcase. A few rocks were thrown, but all in all, boring.

In the evening, we met up with a few pals we’ve come across. I haven’t been eating very well because I’m always busy. Greg (my polish friend from london) was with us and he purchased me a couple beers from Russia called number 9. We kept laughing because I was singing butt rock songs by: quiet riot, motley crew, poison, and gg allin. Even though he’s 19, Greg said he wanted to adopt me and take me to his mother in Poland. Hannah from Sweden wanted to meet up with us at this pub called D1 in the jewish quarter (not the economic draining orthodox jewish quarter). A drum and bass group was playing, beers were 18 NIS, and we were packed like sardines. I didn’t buy any beers there because the price is equivalent to 4.25 US for Christian Palestinian beer (Teh-Bah) and there isn’t an open container policy in the jewish quarter. Other things happened, but I don’t want to write about it on our public space. We stayed up laughing with Palestinian children in front of our building. Muhammad told us to keep it down; we were sitting in the dark, smoking sheesha, and laughing our faces off.

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