Friday prayers just finished, and as I walk toward Damascus Gate a startling scene grips my eyes. On the sidewalks, families by the score ebb and flow in and out of the Gate and down the roads. It's a sea of people. Alive. And all these peoples, jubilant at the close of another week of Ramadan, are absorbing the sun and each other before the moon shows itself in the sky.

In addition to these muslims, numerous camera crews--and Israeli police--dot the scene. It's a strange sight to me, as I've not seen hardly any press people in Jerusalem this week. And the police are out in much greater numbers, as well--two things that make my gut rumble a bit, so I stroll up to one camera crew and ask, "What's happening here?"

The exasperated European cameraman barks, "What you mean!? You mean bomb!? You mean shooting!? You mean fighting!? What you mean!?! We come here for this, but nothing happens."

Really? Nothing?

What about the tens of thousands of people massed here, in harmony with one another, despite a horrific week of historic brutality leveled against them? A week that included (among countless other atrocities):

* The destruction of the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics. * The Apache Helicopter rocket attack on the Palestinian National Authority headquarters in Ramallah. (Note that the PNA, for good or ill, is the elected body of representatives of the Palestinian people). * The destruction of Gaza airport, which, Ephrem Sneh (head of Israeli Security) boasts, is the first destruction of a civilian airport since WWII. * The cancellation of cease-fire talks. Again. * The stripping and parading, in the pouring rain, of young Palestinian men at a Gaza checkpoint. * The seizure of the accounts of the Holy Lands Trust by the US for the HLT's alleged, though adamantly denied and totally unproven, support of Hamas. * The continued closure of all roads leading to Bir Zeit University and Al Quds University. * The deliberate denial of an ambulance to pass through Qalandia checkpoint, which resulted in the death of one young woman.

Despite all this, and despite their internationally upheld right to resist the illegal occupation of their land, tens of thousands came together without even a hint of "violence."

And the journalist said what? "Nothing."

What of the Bedouin women, the Ethiopian men, the Saudi, Jordanian and Jerusalem kaffiyahs wrapped, proud, around the heads of so many peaceful people?

What of the taxi drivers in the street directing traffic? What of the balloon selling boy who bops my noggin as I pass by? What of the man balancing a four-foot-long flat of pita on his head as he swims through all these vibrant people?

Is this "nothing?" Are they, these peoples, "nothing?" Void of their own lives? Only "something" in the context of media bloodlust? Only presentable when masked, firing Kalishnakovs in the air and yelling "Allahu Akbar?"

I left the crew planted on the bench, cell phones slapped up to their ears, to go see some more of these nothings.

I picked up some candy from a vender and plopped one in my mouth as a young boy walked past holding his father's hand. He looked to me, and I raised my forehead and bugged out my eyes. He laughed and told his father about the crazy foreigner making goofy faces. As they walked on, he turned his head back to me, and I caught him with my patented (though I'm strongly against intellectual property) monkey face. A few other young boys and girls took notice, too, and I tried to get them all to chuckle at my fooly-faces.

Nothing?

This nothingness is nothing less than the deliberate covering up of a people. A cruel and inhuman act. As Edward Said says, "the natives of Palestine, such as they are, are not worth considering and therefore nonexistent" to those who would "cover" Palestinians (and muslims, generally). This is an unforgivable passivity from the people who deliver the "news" around the world.

Nor is it a new story. Indeed, beginning with Lord Balfour ("Zionism, be it right or wrong ... is of far profounder import than the desire and prejudices of the 700,000 Arabs who now inhabit that ancient land"), Palestinian people have been consistently erased from both their own physical land, as well as their present (and historical) realities. And this barbaric colonial subjectivity is in a "post-colonial" world.

Well, maybe the press corps will find their story. And after all, there are always checkpoints to visit. There's always (gasp) Hebron, Nablus. There's always Gaza. Always.

As for me, I'm staying out here, inside Damascus Gate. There are some more children coming by. Maybe I can get another laugh.