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The victim is required to guarantee the security of his oppressor
By Mike Odetalla
11/16/05 "ICH
"
Dear Hillary,
My name is Mike Odetalla. I am a Palestinian/American and a father
of three, who was born in 1960 in my ancestral village of Beit
Hanina, which is a suburb of Jerusalem, and according to
internationally recognized laws, conventions, and resolutions, is
considered part of the occupied Palestinian Territories that were
invaded and captured by Israel in the 1967 war. I was a child of
war, having lived through the 1967 war, whereby my mother, my
siblings, and I were forced to flee our home and seek refuge in the
scorpion infested caves that populate the hills that surrounded our
village.
During the first night of the war, our family and the other 20 odd
women, children, and the elderly, which included my 6 days old
nephew, barely escaped getting blown to bits by an Israeli fighter
jet that circled over head, its metallic body glistening under the
full moon lit sky, which then proceeded to fire a missile into the
mouth of the cave a mere few moments after my mother grabbed us,
imploring the others in the cave to follow, as we scampered into a
nearby olive grove, clinging to each other for comfort as the flash
and deafening thunder of the blast rang in our years.
We spent the next 20 odd days moving from cave to cave as my mother
and the other women tried to sneak back into the abandoned houses in
our village, managing at times only gather flour and precious water
for their children. Jews celebrate Passover by eating unleavened
bread, which signifies their hurried Exodus out of Egypt whereby
they took and baked the dough before it had time to rise. My mother
baked our bread in the same fashion since we also did not have the
luxury of waiting for the bread, as we were on the move, trying to
stay one step ahead of the Israelis.
In 2002, when my American born children were old enough to fully
understand and comprehend, I took them back to the hills of Beit
Hanina and the to the very same caves that I huddled in with my
family 35 years prior. We retraced our steps as we fled our homes in
that June moonlit night, stopping in front of the cave whose mouth
was destroyed by the Israeli fired missile. It was important for me
to show my children and tell them of my experiences as well as the
experiences of their grandparents on their mother’s side who were
ethnically cleansed from their homes and lands by the Zionist
founders of Israel in 1948, forcing them and more than 750,000 other
Palestinians to become homeless refugees, living in squalid
conditions in refugee camps. Their grandparent’s home in the village
of Lifta still stands today, even though their grandparents are not
allowed to move back, contrary to UN Resolution 194, and other
internationally recognized Laws, and conventions that deal with the
refugees Right of Return to their homes.
I know that these details might not be of importance to you, but
they are very important to me and to the millions of other
Palestinians, especially in light of your recent trip to the Holy
Land, whereby you reiterated your support for the Apartheid wall
that Israel has been building to imprison my people into
discombobulated walled off ghettos and in the process, steal their
precious lands.
 You stood with your back to the concrete wall and had the audacity
to say to the Palestinians people, "This wall is not against the
Palestinians. This is against the terrorists. The Palestinian people
have to help to prevent terrorism. They have to change the attitudes
about terrorism." Your words proved yet again that neither you nor
anyone else in our government has any grasp of reality of what is
actually happening in the ground in Palestine. The victim is once
gain placed in the unenviable position of having to guarantee the
security of his oppressor, while being denied his own basic human
rights and security or for that matter, the freedom to of movement
in his or her own town or village.
Did you really believe the words that were coming out of your mouth?
Did you actually give thought to those words before uttering them or
were you just going through the motions of being a politician,
saying and doing anything to get elected with out the burden of a
conscience or sense of justice?
My family, as well as the residents of the village of my birth, Beit
Hanina, is some of those Palestinians that you claimed the wall was
not being built against. Beit Hanina, like many other Palestinian
villages and cities, will be turned into a walled off ghetto,
whereby families will be cut off from one another as well as their
fields and orchards. The villagers of Beit Hanina, which include
members of my family, will lose access to their ancestral lands
which will then be confiscated by the Israelis. Did you not find it
odd the way the wall snakes in and around the Palestinian built up
areas, swallowing the most desirable pieces of land, while at the
same time, excluding their rightful owners?
You also saw it fit to visit the Israeli settlement of Gilo, which
is built on the stolen lands of the Palestinian village of Beit Jala,
whereby the colonizer of the illegal settlement cheered and showered
you with their affection. You reciprocated that affection by
pledging your fealty to the state of Israel and her policies, no
matter what the consequences of those policies were to the
brutalized and maligned Palestinian people, the very same people who
graciously and warmly hosted you and your husband Bill. You even
accepted a hand embroidered Palestinian folk dress, which you wore
with a smile on your face, glowing in the world class hospitality of
the Palestinian people, the very same people that you now turn your
back on, joining the right wing chorus as you demonize them and
their society.
Could you not find it in your heart to actually visit with some of
the Palestinian people or were you afraid of photographs showing you
with a Palestinian child might mysteriously crop up during your
future campaigns for higher office?
As the first lady of the United States, you once wrote a book with
the title of "It Takes a Village" in reference to the old African
proverb that it takes a village to raise a child. As you toured the
Palestinian areas, did you ever once think about the children who
were being trapped behind the 30 foot high concrete wall, cutting
them off from their family, friends, and access to their schools?
What kind of a childhood and life will these children have as the
"village" that is supposed to be their home and center of their
universe is reduced to nothing more than an open air prison.
Yes it does indeed take a village, a global village minus the
physical and mental walls which believes in the universal principles
of compassion, mercy, and most of all, justice to raise a child who
will grow up to realize his or her full potential as a human
being...
Mike Odetalla..."A seed in the eternal fruit of Palestine"
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