The House On The Hill In Al Khadr

No one likes a sob story. People want to hear good news.

In my trip to the West Bank in the Middle East I was fortunate to visit a family that lived in a place called Al Khadr.  Al Khadr is a small village on the outskirts of Bethlehem.




In the map you can see that yellow road.  I remember walking up to an area in the outskirts of Al Khadr which was set in beautiful rolling hills, with a cool breeze.  Back to that yellow road, on the Al Khadr side there is a huge wall surrounding al Khadr that has been built to keep Palestinians out of Israel.  You can see the wall in the picture below;

In this ideallic setting there is a watchtower with cameras that watch across the Palestinian side of this wall.  As you look at the picture above I am sure that you will agree that it would be a beautiful site if it wasn't for the wall and watch tower.

The land that this is built upon from which I took this photo belongs to a family that has owned this land for generations.  The day before I visited this family they lived in their own home living off the land with a bore whole for a water supply next to it.  There were many children in this family with a new born.

With an hour's notice, that family was told to leave the house as it was going to be knocked down by the Israeli Defence Force to make way for an illegal settlement for Israeli citizens that had just moved into the country.

Please help me to reach my fundraising goal of £1000 For Amos Trust

What was their home became a pile of rubble and that family were displaced despite their land being in their possession for generations.  The Israeli Defence Force even filled in the borehole so as to force the family to move on.

The lad in the photo below showed me around.

The demolished home of this Palestinian family.

The children were forced to live in tents.

The children showed me the coverage of their situation in the local newspaper.

This is the site of their only drinking water source, filled in courtesy of the Israeli Defence Force.

I sat down with the boy in the first picture as he explained in Arabic about what happened to his family.  He didn't even sound angry, he sounded hurt, tired, flat.  His tone of voice (despite my lack of Arabic ability) spoke volumes of the hardship he had experienced.  It took all my effort to not to fall apart weeping for this family.

A year an a bit on from then, I am pleased to say that Amos Trust made a difference to that family by helping to rebuild their home in peaceful protest to the Israeli Defence Force.  It was a huge risk for the volunteers and builders that did the work.  They could have been arrested and worse still , the Israeli Defence Force could have demolished the house again.

In a later blog I will give you an update on how that project went.

For now, please do consider my motivation for jumping out of a plane to support this work and click the banner below to help me to raise £1000 for Amos so that they can help more families to gain justice in the West Bank.

Thanks!

The Children Of Hebron

In recent years I have found that I have been increasingly more concerned personally and professionally about the welfare of children.

In my trips to Durban and Palestine, this was particularly pertinent, hence the skydive in July this year.

I was inspired in Palestine to write some poetry as I found that it condensed my thoughts really well about what I was seeing.  As I share my blog posts you will see some of these pieces as they explain what I saw better than what I could write now.  I felt raw at the time and the poetry brings back that feeling for me.

In Hebron, West Bank,  I walked through the market area a long covered street through the middle of the town.  I say it was covered because when I looked up there was a net and on that net was a load of rubbish.

What was happening here was that in the apartments at the top of the buildings, Palestinian families had been evicted from their homes and were replaced by Israeli settlers.  The settlers seem to all be orthodox Zionist Jews who believe that this land is theirs.  I don't have a problem with their religion or beliefs, but I have a problem with the way that they treat the Palestinians.

Back to that netting.... The reason for the netting being there is so that the rubbish being thrown out of the windows of the now settler owned apartments, can be caught and not allowed to fall on the people below in the market.

If I throw rubbish at someone here in the UK, I am pretty sure that they wouldn't like it and might even get the Police involved.  In Hebron, this behaviour (and other strategies for trying to push out the Palestinians) is protected by the Israeli Defense Force.  It would seem that Palestinians have no rights.
For me, I am saddened that there are kids living in this mess.  All around them is conflict, hate, distrust.  What kind of life is that for a child?  Lots of the kids I came across where selling trinkets on the market to make money for their families.

Please share this blog if you like the poetry, not for my benefit but because I hope that it will help others to understand more about the issues facing Palestinians and this of course means their children too.

Your sponsorship will change children's lives for the better.

Why I am jumping for justice.

Hi I am John Hicks.

I am nearly 44 and I live with my wife Diane and my two daughters Beth and Jess in Cambridgeshire, UK.  On July 10th,  I am going to take part in a tandem skydive raising awareness about human rights and raising money for the London based human rights charity, Amos Trust.  Today I received the all clear from my doctor and I have a certificate to say that I am medically ready to jump out of that plane!

Ooh er!  It looks like I am committed now!

One of the things that we love to do as a family is to travel and we have been to many different countries and explored different cultures.
In 2009, we visited Durban in South Africa, almost at the tip of Africa.




We decided to go there because we had heard a lot about a project that sought to help children and young people that lived on the streets of a city famous for violent crimes and abuse.
The project, Umthombo Street Child, gave street children a place to go for support and hope to one day be reunited with family or develop a better life for themselves.
Umthombo used sport (surfing and football), art and dedicated workers to reach out to those children, some of whom could be as young as four.
On one occasion, the then director of the project, Tom Hewitt MBE, said to me that every street child that I would have met will have had experienced some form of sexual abuse in order to be accepted into the numerous gangs in the city.  For many of those kids, being in a gang meant being 'safe' on the streets.
Considering what these kids had to deal with, they were always friendly to us and Umthombo gave them hope for the future, and opportunities to set away from life on the streets.

In June 2014, I was fortunate to visit another project based in Bethlehem in the West Bank, Middle East.



I was playing in a band for an arts festival and so by night I did the rock n roll thing and by day I visited places where Palestinians lived.
On one occasion I visited a family just outside Bethlehem and they gave me a seat under an olive tree and served me tea.  I played with their kids for a while too, I tried to teach them to juggle.  They thought it was funny.

The only problem with this scene, was that in the background lay the demolished house of that family.  The Israeli Defence Force, gave them an hour to abandon the house before a bulldozer smashed it down.  This was the start of Israel taking their land, which the family had owned for generations, and trying to force the family out.
Despite this, they welcomed us and gave us what little they had and told us their story.  Their water supply which was a borehole was even demolished by the bulldozer so as to make life really hard.

You can read about my visit there by visiting my blog which includes photos, stories and some poetry that I wrote about my experience.  Click here

In both South Africa and in The West Bank, despite what is happening at a political level, children's lives are being negatively affected by the selfish actions of adults.  These actions take away justice and hope for these children.

I am committed to doing what I can to change situations like those described and I am doing this by raising money for The Amos Trust, a UK organisation that supports grass roots organisations in countries that rebuild hope and restore justice.

This is why I am going to jump out of a plane at 15000 ft in a tandem skydive. As I do this I will think of those kids that I have met, some of whom have died at the hands of people that do not champion hope and justice choosing to oppress, damage and belittle the lives of children and adults that have such potential.

I will write more blogs about my upcoming experience and about the experiences that have led me to do the skydive. I hope that I can help you to understand some of what I have seen and maybe even get involved yourself.

For now, if you would like to very practically get involved, I would be delighted if you could sponsor my jump by clicking the banner below or at the very least simply share my story to your Twitter, Facebook or Google accounts.

Thanks for listening.

John