Since Jewish American surfing ‘legend’ “Doc” Paskowitz teamed up with the good folks of Israel’s surfboard retail industry and their flexible friends at the Erez crossing to ensure 15 surfboards were delivered to the slavishly grateful people of the Gaza Strip last month (reported here), folks over on the West Bank have got to thinking, “those fuckers down on the strip have got it too good”. Fair play. And so begins this humble appeal on behalf of the West Bank population – send segways! Send them now. Tomorrow may be too late. Seriously. Times are tough, and segways are all but unattainable.
The harsh reality of the inequities which characterise the ongoing ethnocide here can perhaps only be fully comprehended when the stark contrast between access to surfboards and segways between the people of the gun, and the people of the ghettoes is faced head on. In Jerusalem, the overwhelming majority of the non-surfing Jewish population enjoy unfettered access to segways. In contrast, not a single segway is available to Palestinians in their capital and across the remainder of West Bank.
Although surfboards can be attained on the black market and at considerable personal risk (these must be smuggled across the violent and (in a perverse echo of the surf itself) perpetually shifting frontiers like sick babies, students, spouses, or dialysis patients), they are a thoroughly impractical mode of transport in the West Bank and provide little if any defence from Israel’s frequent so-called “precision strikes” against athletes and children. Meanwhile, segways, with their low fuel costs, modish appearance, and zippy acceleration are well suited to the terrain; able to turn on a dime, they offer a modicum of evasive potential in the event of a missile strike, and with a top speed of 15miles an hour, are more than fast enough to carry families, merchants and medical staff alike within the small cantons they call home.
The following video, shot undercover and entirely in Israeli occupied East Jerusalem shows a group of rabid settlers (from the Barkan site in the battered and buggered Salfit governorate) brazenly flouting their segwaying skills. Only when Palestinians too, like the surfers of Gaza, can stand tall and lean into the flow of human motion, will there truly be hope for justice in the holy land. It is in this faith that we the people of the segway, call upon you, the people of the dollar, to send Segways! Send them now! Please forward this appeal on! You know it matters!
