Gary Fields tells the story:

The Dispensing of Christmas Candy

December 26, 2004

Last night was Christmas Eve here in the West Bank and consequently there was considerable media attention focused on the city of Bethlehem, where I spent 4 days earlier in the month.

I was able to catch the CNN coverage of Christmas Eve festivities in Bethlehem and I watched, appalled at what I was seeing.  In the clips shown, there was not a single image of the Wall that cuts this city in two, which didn’t surprise me too much.

What really did cause me to take notice was the focus in the clips about Israeli soldiers handing out “Christmas Candy” to visitors coming into the town.

Never mind how it is that Israeli soldiers are there in the first place, performing such a benevolent mission. There was also mention about how Israelis had granted visitors “free passage” into the city for the Christmas holiday, and how even the Palestinian leadership was being allowed to visit the city for Christmas for the first time in four years.  The overall tone was one of Israeli “generosity” in the face of adversity.

In other parts of the West Bank, however -- that is, in virtually every part outside Jerusalem where the media never visit -- it was business as usual.

I was in the North traveling toward Bethlehem and waited one hour at the Jabara checkpoint near Tulkarem.  Ten miles later at the next checkpoint, I was detained because the Israeli soldier claimed that my taxi driver did not have the required DCO permit needed for passage in that area.  So much for free passage.  The soldier told me to get out of the taxi with my luggage and find another one in the line of cars waiting behind us.  It was pouring rain and it was dreadfully cold.  I argued with this soldier.

Finally, after 30 minutes of pleading and arguing, the soldier said he was going to do something good for me because it was Christmas Eve.  He decided that he would let my driver through the checkpoint without the DCO permit and therefore I could pass.  “Just because it’s Christmas,” he repeated.

I finally reached Ramallah after almost 4 hours, the beneficiary of Christmas Candy dispensed by he

soldier at the checkpoint.

Behind the public relations fest of the Christmas sweets, however, lies another reality never, ever mentioned in the media coverage of this conflict.

This man in the photo is Tawfiq Hasam Salim.  He is a farmer from Jayyus near Qalqilya.  I was in Jayyus two weeks ago for five days and witnessed something I

have never seen. Settlers from the nearby Israeli settlement of Zufin came with guns and two bulldozers to his land.  These settlers claimed that Tawfiq’s land belonged to the

settlement.  It was their land, they insisted.  They proceeded to bulldoze his 120 olive trees.  Israeli soldiers nearby did nothing.  They simply let it go on.

By chance, I happened to be with Tawfiq in Jayyus moments after he learned about this tragedy when I took this terribly sad photo.  His story is one of many never heard in a media ever silent and blind, unwilling to look and listen.  All we seem to be told are tales of Christmas Candy.  Will there be a time when soldiers stop dispensing such gifts?