In the Balata Refugee Camp, mothers send their sons out for chicken, and they bring home a very fresh bird ready to cook. The boy selects a bird from the cage. The butcher slits its throat, drains it, and tosses the bird into a spinner to remove all its feathers. Then he guts it, washes it, and puts it in a plastic bag. The cost: about $4 a bird. Palestinians call the spinner a “ma a’ta” — the same word they use for the turnstile they have to go through at various security checkpoints. To them, whether you’re a chicken or a human being, the ma a’ta robs you of your dignity. Warning: There’s some graphic content in this butcher shop video.
If you can’t see the video below, watch it on YouTube.
Comments
Hello,
I want to thank you for doing this series on Israel and Palestine. I have found it very interesting and informative as is usual for your work. I admire your courage because I am sure you have received many negative comments. However, this kind of even reporting is what I expect from you and have ever since I read your article (I may have title a bit off because it’s been a while) “Travel as a Liberating (liberalizing) Lesson”
Thank you again
Thanks, Rick, for another great post from Balata Refugee Camp. I think the takeaway lesson for me from this post is that these refugees are very resilient, proud people who–despite their difficult circumstances–find ways to live with dignity and joy. Thanks, too, to your guide for helping you to share all this with us.
When I was growing up a million years ago, my Italian grandparents in San Jose Ca, use to go buy all their chickens from the farmer and kill, clean and defeather a whole years worth and freeze them.
Being even older, before refrigerated transport and folks having no home freezers, meat was killed locally. I recall going with my mother to pick a live chicken, than sitting in the front until the butcher presented the dressed chicken wrapped in butcher paper. As a small child I never connected the live bird and the meat. ~ 20 yrs ago I took my then 6 yr old son on a trip through an immigrant neighborhood in Brooklyn. We saw the same activity with rabbits and various birds. In some ways I think it is healthy to appreciate that the meat we eat does not grow on trees wrapped in Styrofoam containers.
I am not sure that I would draw the same connection with the word “turnstile,” any more than the execution of a murderer and the execution of a plan by the CEO.