Point Reyes Light - August 12, 2004
From Bolinas to Israel, activism in the genes
By Jim Kravets
In his adaptive posture, crouched, Philip D’Onofrio, advanced slowly between a group of stone-wielding Palestinian boys and a line of impassive Israeli tanks. The boys launched a barrage of stones at the tanks which, in response, swept their gun turrets menacingly at the boys.
Israeli soldiers ordered D’Onofrio to stay where he was as bursts of gunfire erupted 50 meters away. Amidst a hail of shattered glass, he darted for questionable safety at the side of a building.
As Apache helicopter gunships passed low overhead, a Palestinian family approached D’Onofrio where he was crouched beneath a sheet metal awning to escape a hail of shattered glass. They brought him coffee and thanked him for being there, thanked him for coming. "It’s surreal" D’Onofrio wrote in an email. "Welcome to occupation."
Father a prominent sculptor
D’Onofrio, 37, is the son of Bolinas resident and prominent wood sculptor Tom D’Onofrio, who is also a Methodist minister. Philip is in the West Bank city of Jenin with the International Solidarity Movement, a pro-Palestinian activist group which recruits international volunteers to non-violently protest the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories as well as the construction of Israel’s controversial West Bank "security barrier."
A Jenin refuge camp in 2002 was the site of an Israeli attack which resulted in the deaths of 52 Palestinians, half of which were civilians, according to a UN report.
D’Onofrio and other International Solidarity Movement volunteers engage in non-violent disruption, acting ostensibly as human shields and witnesses. D’Onofrio calls it "accompaniment work ... monitoring checkpoints, sleeping with a family who is a potential target of the settlers, observing and participating in peaceful rallies and marches, riding in ambulances to negotiate with the Israeli police and military so the ambulance may actually be able to reach a hospital."
Palestinians’ limited rights
Palestinians in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip have lived under Israeli control since the 1967 Arab-Israeli war. Unlike Arabs born in the state of Israel, those living in the West Bank and Gaza are not Israeli citizens and their rights and movements are restricted.
According to D’Onofrio, his main job is to observe and report back. "I know I cannot go [to the Middle East] and change everything," he wrote in an April 19 farewell letter to family and friends, "but what I can do is help educate my communities about what is truly taking place. In order to do that, I must go and experience Palestine firsthand."
From activist family
D’Onofrio’s activist tendencies are in his blood, said his father Tom last week. Philip was born in Berkeley in 1967, "essentially on Ashby and Telegraph," said Tom. The day after Philip’s birth, Tom was arrested during a civil protest and spent the day in Alameda County’s Santa Rita Jail. Tom was then a student at the Berkeley Graduate Theological Union and a member of the Ministers of Peace activist group.
Tom came to activism abruptly. "In October 1966, within two hours of arriving in Berkeley, I saw naked people, went to a sit-in on campus, and was beaten by cops. I immediately went home, took off my three-piece Brooks Brothers suit and went down to sign up with SDS [Students for a Democratic Society]."
He was granted a minister’s deferment to the draft but, he said, "I gave it up to became a conscientious objector, just to make a point."
Tom, originally from upstate New York, first visited Bolinas in 1966 and moved there permanently in 1968. "In Berkeley," he said, "all I heard was just more rhetoric from anarchists. Their criticisms were right on target, but their solutions stunk. This just frustrated me."
Father & crafts guild
He became a woodcarver and in 1972 helped found the Bolinas Crafts Guild, an apprenticeship woodcarving program.
"My radicalism led to concrete programs," he said. "If you’re going to change the society, the way is through the individual. If people are working at a job that is meaningful, they’ll be happy. If you have enough people working in their passion, it contributes to the community.
"For me, this was how I could use my own activism against all the things I couldn’t possibly change. I got arrested and beat up as Minister for Peace and what good did that do? But the Guild was a way I could make a change, and it worked."
The Bolinas Crafts Guild now has more than 100 members. Their works are represented in major museum collections such as the Smithsonian Institute, the de Young Museum of San Francisco, and the New York Museum of Modern Art. One of Tom’s pieces, The Lord of The Bulls, is a feature on the floor of the Pacific Stock Exchange. Another carving, a rosewood dragon table, was originally sculpted for Grace Slick and Paul Kantner of the Jefferson Airplane.
Son is Army vet
Tom’s son’s route to activism was less abrupt than his father’s but, if possible, even more surprising. Philip grew up in Maine with his mother. He briefly owned a commercial fishing business there but sold it in 1991, at the age of 23, to join the US Army. "I was in a tough spot in my life, and the Army seemed like an easy way out," he said.
He spent two years in California’s Fort Irwin during the Gulf War and never saw combat. During this period, he said, "I started to question all I knew," which included, evidently, America’s role in world politics and, by extension, his own.
Upon his discharge from the military, he returned to Bolinas in 1992 to help his father rebuild after a disastrous fire destroyed Tom’s studio and half his home. "It was a great opportunity for me to continue my quest for my truth and be around many new people with such different perspectives than those I grew up around," Philip said.
Philip saved his money and traveled to Southeast Asia for six months. The change upon his return was unmistakable. "He came home wearing a ‘Free Tibet’ t-shirt," his father said. "I wasn’t surprised. I’d been waiting for this day a long time. The name ‘D’Onofrio’ roughly translates to ‘defender of peace.’"
School of the Americas
Activism was now firmly a part of Philip’s life. In 2002, Philip went to Fort Benning, Georgia, to protest the School of the Americas, a US training center for foreign military operatives, winding up with a three-month sentence in federal prison for trespassing on federal property – a result Philip expected.
"When the judge threw him in jail," said Tom, "he didn’t know it but he was doing him a favor." The experience solidified Philip’s beliefs. "It was a life-changing experience to walk my truth in the face of adversity, to stand up to an oppressive system and accept all that the system threw my way."
A need to relay the truth
Soon thereafter, Philip joined the International Solidarity Movement. "I don’t know all the issues at hand in the Middle East," he said before he left for Israel this June, "but I do know that people are living in fear on both sides of the wall and that the region is a tinder box...The only way for our communities to know the truth is if people like myself go and seek the truth and then bring it home...
"I cannot expect others to do something when I do nothing, so I must go and see firsthand what is happening in my name."
The International Solidarity Movement received media attention in March 2003 when volunteer Rachel Corrie of Olympia Wash., was killed by an Israeli bulldozer while she was protesting the destruction of Palestinian houses in the city of Rafah in the Gaza Strip. Other International Solidarity Movement fatalities have followed.
Tom Hurndall, a 22-year-old British student, was shot and killed by the Israeli army in 2003. Another International Solidarity Movement volunteer, Brian Avery, a 24-year-old from New Mexico was shot in the face in 2003 but survived.
Protesting ‘security wall’
In the Gaza town of Azzawiya, Philip and his "affinity group" of International Solidarity Movement volunteers accompanied Palestinians protesting the construction of the "security wall." When 300 protesters marched towards a phalanx of Israeli soldiers, tensions soared, and the international volunteers stepped between the Palestinians and the heavily armed soldiers, attempting to avert almost-certain violence.
The soldiers responded with tear gas, rubber bullets and head butts. Live rounds flew overhead. With the media taping, the international volunteers stood their ground, and this time a more catastrophic outcome was averted.
In such a volatile situation, does Philip ever consider the benefit of his participation in the context of a millennia-old conflict which could conceivable continue for another 100+ years?
Doesn’t overrate his effect
"I have no misconception that I am going to make a tangible change, that I will actually see with my two eyes here," he told The Light. "Yet I know that my presence does make a difference. So if I die tomorrow here it is not in vain and I have no regrets.
"Any time a person makes a stand for truth and justice, for humanity against the powers at be, it is not in vain. If we take no risks, raise no voice, and patiently wait, we will never see a change, and we will wait in vain."
Motivation
To what extent is political activism for its stated cause and how much of it is for the activists’ personal development – their needing to feel engaged, vital and involved or simply to have an outlet for youthful fervor?
"Activists act," his father Tom answered, "and as you act, your mind plays catchup and tries to bring some rationale to why you’re doing it. For Philip now, it’s about the injustice. He can’t look at himself in the mirror without thinking of people getting shot, and he decides he needs to go stop it."
"For me," he said, "I can now see that I was just putting myself into situations that would test myself. In putting myself under stress, I learned about myself. In so doing, I learned about others. If [Philip] lives through this, he’ll develop an evolved sense of his own activism."
Philip will leave the Middle East and return to Portland, Oregon, on Sept. 15. There he will resume studying at a community college with the objective of eventually becoming a nurse. However, Philip’s main goal, he said, will be to give presentations about his experiences in the International Solidarity Movement and his three months in federal prison.
Those wanting to read more about Philip D’Onofrio’s experiences in the Middle East can find his journal online here: <http://philipdonofrio.livejournal.com/>.