Morning Came
A letter from Palestine. Please forward widely.
07/02/06 "Peace
Palestine"
-- -- Morning came and we found that 90 of the nation's best
men were captured by Israel from their homes in the night.
Our mayor, who was released from four years in prison just a
month ago. Someone for whom I have the utmost respect and
admiration, as do his people here, political allies and
opponents alike. And our vice mayor, too. The last time I
talked with him, earlier this week, he was struggling a lot
with chronic back pain. I wonder where they are now. If they
have been fed today, or tortured. If they will sleep on beds
tonight, or not at all. If they will be home tomorrow. If we
will never see some of them again alive.
It's the first time Palestinians have
captured an Israeli soldier in a long time; families of
prisoners have begged the resistance not to release him
until there is a prisoner exchange no matter what the
consequences to the community -- being well acquainted with
the suffering that implies. Everyone went about their
business today, wedding processions in the streets, families
eating ice cream and watermelon in the sticky heat. Some
with the heavy numb shock of loved ones vanished suddenly,
shock without surprise; they expected that the price that
has been paid, and paid, and paid, for keeping one's spirit
from being broken, must be paid again.
Myself, I couldn't keep from crying from time
to time, although for me it is just a very small taste of
the shock, seeing two good men that I know a little,
powerful in their community with the power the community has
entrusted them with, suddenly made helpless, pieces of meat
for Israeli intelligence officers somewhere to enjoy, and
knowing that if I knew them more, if I knew others, the
sense of anger and sorrow and disbelief would be multiplied.
I know that for the people around me these tears fell years
and years ago. The anger and sorrow and loss and disbelief
have happened too many times to count, but it does not
diminish, to the world it is one more added to a large
number, for each mother and sister and wife it is an
unconsolable agony, an irreplaceable loss, an unimaginable
theft, a violation of a family, a marriage, that might never
be able to recover from the traumas and abuses that are
being suffered, will be suffered in the days ahead.
Israel has over 10,000 Palestinian hostages,
hundreds of them children, and slaughters Palestinians of
any age on a daily basis. When Palestinians take 2 Israeli
hostages and kill two soldiers, Israeli bombs Gaza. Bombs
out the power stations, the water reticulation; no
electricity, no water, bridges blasted severing cities from
each other. Gaza Strip, the most densely populated area on
earth on account of Israel using it as a specially designed
human garbage can where refugees are disposed off and
hermetically sealed off from the rest of the world..
Brilliant, but unsuccessful. If you treat humans as garbage
and they know that they are humans and not garbage, they
will not quietly disappear. You will never sleep safe at
night. You will never have the right to sleep safe at night.
May you never sleep safe at night.
A young woman in my neighborhood asked, can
you believe Israel kidnapped most of our government last
night? Imagine waking up to hear that Palestinian forces had
kidnapped 90 Israeli government leaders. It's hard to
imagine that Israel would leave one house standing, one
person uninjured.
Imagine if Palestinians had the military
capacity to punish Israel on a comparable scale for every 2
hostages it takes and 2 it kills. Imagine if Americans, and
Europeans, valued the blood of Palestinians and Iraqis as
much as their own blood. Imagine if the nations of the world
used their armies to protect the lives of the innocent and
bring to justice thieving, raping, murdering states. A
couple days ago I sat with someone I know, who was taken
hostage last night. He explained part of Hamas'
interpretation of the Qur'an as follows: there are three
kinds of people that Muslims have to deal with. 1) Those who
treat you with respect. In this case, it is a crime against
God to treat them with anything but respect, kindness, and
hospitality. In other words, if a Jew wanted to immigrate to
Palestine with full respect for the people here, wishing to
become a member of Palestinian society, he should be
welcomed. 2) Then there are those who do not respect you,
and oppose you. You have no obligation to extend hospitality
to them. 3) Then there are those who have no respect for
your humanity, your property or your religion, they take
power over your land and your lives, destroy your land and
kill your people. In this case you have an obligation to
fight against them to protect your land and your people. If
they kill your people, you can kill their people.
Today I visited with another friend who
thinks he may be captured tonight; so many of his friends
were captured last night. He said, Israel doesn't care too
much about the lives of the Israeli hostages, in the past
there were cases of them killing the hostages themselves by
indiscriminate bombing of communities. But Israel has been
waiting since Hamas' election for Hamas' first military
operation, and so they knew this massive attack on the
community would come, sooner or later. Even though different
groups have participated in the Palestinian military
operations in the past few days, all of Israel's targets are
Hamas leaders. Israel wants to see Hamas destroyed, Europe
and America want to see Hamas destroyed, and Abu Mazen seems
to be trying his best to join them. Many of those arrested
were among the Hamas members that Israel exiled to the no
mans land between Israel and Lebanon, a decade ago. He told
me some of his friend's stories from those three terrible
years, living in tents through snowy winters. He talked
about the warm spirit that thrived in the tents during
freezing months. He told of how hungry men went to an
apricot orchard and couldn't find the owner, so they took
some fruit and then tied some money in a handkerchief to the
tree. When the owner found it, he tracked them down, and
said to them, with tears coming down his face, what kind of
men are you, starving and rejected by the world, who have
such principles that you will not even take fruit that you
find on a tree. I give you my fruit, I give you my orchards!
I felt the poverty of being from the West, where the media
can say nothing about these men except to endlessly
regurgitate simpleminded slander... of those captured I know
just a few names, and little of their stories. For anyone
here, each of these names represents a rich story, decades
of struggles, of suffering, heroisim, years of prison, of
pain, of courage, of trying again, of hopes betrayed, of
disappointment and endurance that continues forward to find
new hope.
We had this conversation over lunch in his
daughter's home. She and her husband were active with Hamas
and he was seized by Israel and killed in prison, leaving
her with their 3 small children. Don't forget, it is America
that gives Israel everything it needs to do this to us, she
said. When we left, she and her three boys kissed him over
and over, not knowing if tomorrow they will wake up to hear
that her dad, their grandpa, has become a prisoner. This
week I spent with a French student, an orphan of war in
Bangladesh, who is doing research on women's views of
dignity. Dignity is a word thrown around a lot in
international law but without definition; people have a
"right to dignity" but since no one knows what it is, when
it comes right down to it violations of this right cannot be
prosecuted. I helped her interview dozens of women this
week, from Fatah, Hamas, PFLP, poor and wealthy, educated
and illiterate, young and old. We would sit down with
strangers and as soon as dignity, al karame, was
mentioned, the room burst into life with passionate
opinions, terrible stories, and incredibly brave and
inspiring statements. Here are some of the things I heard
about dignity.
There is no dignity in Palestine; we face
humiliation at checkpoints, restriction from visiting our
families or going to school, soldiers in our homes during
the night, prison... Israel's war is first of all against
our dignity which Israel attacks from every angle and with
every means possible, because if it can succeed in
destroying our dignity, we will not be able to resist
anymore. There is tremendous dignity in Palestine; perhaps
more than anywhere else in the world, because the occupation
with all its mechanisms for humiliation makes us aware of
our dignity; the more they try to destroy our dignity the
stronger our dignity becomes; they are getting the opposite
results that they want. There are two kinds of dignity: one
that you get from others, when you are treated with dignity,
the other comes from inside of you, from what you know about
who you really are before God, and no one has the power to
take this away from you unless you let them. Even if as
women we are captured by Israel, stripped naked and raped in
the prisons, if we resist every attack upon our dignity it
will not be lost. A woman was told at a checkpoint to remove
her scarf. She refused, and the soldier showed her a metal
rod and said he would drive it through her eyes if she did
not take it off. You can have your eyes, or you can have
your dignity. She refused. He drove it through her eyes. She
survived, but she is blind. And she did not lose her
dignity. A friend of the Prophet Mohammad, a woman, was tied
to the ground by a man who made her choose between her
dignity or her life. The only thing she was able to do was
to spit in his face, and she did. He killed her. But he did
not destroy her dignity.
Arab people have a great source of dignity
from the rich and deep history of our culture. But now all
Arab lands are captive and only in Iraq and Palestine are we
free within ourselves, because we do not accept the
enslavement that is forced upon us; our resistance gives us
great dignity.
We get our dignity from our land. It is our
life. As long as we are in our land, no matter how much we
suffer, we will have our dignity. If they succeed in
expelling us to Jordan, our dignity will be lost forever. I
have my family's olive trees. Every year I used to have
precious olive oil from my own trees that I could give
generously to my friends and neighbors. Now Israel has
killed half of my trees and imprisoned the rest. These trees
are like my own children. It is a terrible, terrible sorrow
and shame for me each day to know that I am powerless to
help them. Now, when we need olive oil for ourselves, we
have to go to the store and buy it. But I was one who could
generously give olive oil to my friends and relatives.
We get our dignity from Islam, as women, and
as human beings. In our culture, before Islam, women were
just seen as property, baby girls could be buried alive. We
see women in many parts of the world who have no dignity.
Islam has given us our full rights as women in every sense,
and full equality with every other human being. In the
Qur'an God says that he has given the same dignity to every
human being - it does not depend on whether you are male or
female, or whether you are Muslim or from another religion,
each of us has the same worth.
What do you expect and hope for in the
future?
Things will get much, much worse. It is
written that we will suffer like this until near the end.
Our hope comes from knowing that Jesus will
come back and will remove all injustice from the earth, and
at last the race of mankind will be free to live in peace
and equality.
What do you believe should be the political
outcome for Palestine?
If only they would all go back where they
came from, we could live in peace in our homes and land
again.
We can never live with them; if someone has
killed your children, can you accept them as a neighbor?
We already live with them, of course we can
in the future.
We cannot live with them, we must have a
state, and they must have a state. About all the refugees
who have their homes and lands in Israel, I don't
know........
We can live with them in one state, the
refugees must be given back their homes and their land.
If we have an Islamic state on all of
Palestine, it is the only way we will be able to live
together, us and them, because Islam is the only system
where equality between people of different religions is
protected.
Do you think negotiations or armed struggle
is the best strategy at this time?
Of course, if we could get our rights back
without violence, that would be the best way. If
negotiations ever worked, then we should use that instead of
armed struggle, but they have never produced anything. We
have to keep fighting to protect our land and our community.
How could it be right to do nothing when daily they are
attacking our lives and our land?
As a woman would you participate in armed
struggle?
I admire women who do, but I myself don't
think I'm capable of it.
My contribution is to study and be a good
mother to my children.
No, I don't think women should carry weapons.
Yes! It would be a great honor to fight for
my country! Yes! How I wish we had the chance to be trained
as soldiers like all the Israeli women are. I am not married
yet, but I hope that one day I will have a son who will give
his life for our country to be free.
The Americans, Europeans and Israelis place
more value on the blood of their dogs and cats than they do
on the blood of Palestinians. None of us can ever forget the
sight of little Huda screaming for her father on the beach
of Gaza, throwing herself on the sand next to his dead body
over and over. No one in the world has expressed their
outrage, or even sorrow, to us about these atrocities
against us. They care deeply about the Mundial, and Huda's
agony is an interruption, a distraction, from the soccer
score. Our blood is so, so cheap to the world, and Israeli
blood is so valuable. They do not see our humanity at all.
How do you find your sense of your own
humanity, when all the world is telling you your life, your
death, your blood is worthless?
When it comes down to that, we know that God
sees us, even if we are suffering in an Israeli torture
chamber and no one in our family knows if where we are or if
we are alive or dead, we know that God sees us and knows our
value, our humanity. We belong to him, and in that is our
worth, and our hope, our fates are in his hands and our
lives are very precious to him, no matter how worthless they
are to our brothers and sisters in the human race, and in
the end, that is what matters. We know who we are. Our
lives, our deaths, our suffering, our hopes, our
disappointment, are not insignificant.
Yesterday I met a new appointee from the
German government in Jerusalem, a young guy with an American
accent. He was happy that Hamas and Fatah had agreed on the
Prisoners' Document. Great, we've gotten Hamas to recognize
Israel, he said. Now we just have to get them to renounce
armed struggle, and then get rid of these ideas of an
Islamic state. The problem is when we bring democracy to the
middle east, we always have to deal with the challenge of
making sure there is a secular state when so many people
want an Islamic state. (Jewish states, apparently, are just
dandy.) What these Palestinians just don't understand, he
said, is that armed struggle won't get them anywhere.
Haven't they learned anything, after all these years? It's
really hurting their image in the international community.
Well, I said sarcastically, since you understand this so
well, and none of the Palestinians have been able to grasp
it, maybe you should explain it to them then. Oh, I am,
every Palestinian I meet, he said with sincerity.
And what is that dazzling offer that Europe
will extend, if Palestinians promise to sit on their hands
and open their mouths? In exchange for your dignity, what?
Maybe longlife, lifelong food rations? Maybe the chance to
clean toilets in Israel, and the dream that your
grandchildren could do the same?
I have not been here too long, but it is long
enough to be sure of one thing: It is the Europeans, the
Israelis, and the American who fail to grasp the central
truth, after all these decades of trying to finetune the
catastrophe they have engineered in Palestine: these women
and men and children, who carry their heads so high, know
who they are. They are prepared to sacrifice their lives,
but they are not prepared to sacrifice their dignity. While
the world discusses the moral or strategic aspects of armed
resistance, there is no confusion about these issues here.
Undefended, dignity, and the land, would be lost, and death
would be better. With or without your permission, they will
continue to fight.
Visit The
Peace Palestine
Website
Click on "comments" below to read or post comments -
Click Here For Comment Policy
In
accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is
distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior
interest in receiving the included information for research and
educational purposes. Information Clearing House has no affiliation
whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is Information
ClearingHouse endorsed or sponsored by the originator.) |
Are Comments Offensive? Unsuitable? Email us