By Bassam Aramin
Translated by Miriam Asnes

26/04/08 "ICH" - -- How beautiful and wondrous is the exodus from slavery to freedom, and how glorious is liberation from the ropes of enslavement! How heavenly is it to be freed from occupation, and how fine is the justice that follows oppression! How good it is to win the opportunity to express oneself freely after years of repression and exploitation, and to be saved from death during a time of massacre! The concepts around which all of these statements revolve are the freedom and liberty that each human being deserves, those grand ideals that affect every individual as well as society as a whole. And if we look at the underlying values of the Jewish holidays we will find a focus upon freedom and liberation and opposing slavery and oppression.

But the reality we live in is the complete opposite. For in a way that never ceases to amaze there is no end to the oppressive behavior of those who originated these holidays and speak in the name of these values. For what is the Israeli occupation but a fusion of enslavement and suppression and oppression, incarceration and the hijacking of the freedom of the Palestinian people as a whole in a way that prevents them from moving freely and carrying out their daily lives? It is as if the whole concept of freedom doesn't apply to anyone except the Israeli Jewish people.

Take, for instance, the holiday of Passover, the holiday of liberation that is going on right now. Jews all over the world are reclining, family by family, around the seder table, the table of freedom. Above all, each celebrant must imagine himself as if he himself was a slave in Egypt , and remember that today he is a free man, Ben Khorin. And the members of the Israeli families, like all Jews around the world, talk about the value of freedom for all humans, regardless of their differences—with the exception of the Palestinians whom they place on the outside of this moral equation. Perhaps because in the eyes of the Israelis (and I do not wish to say, `the Jews`), we do not belong to the human family. Therefore, from the beginning of the celebration of Passover a complete closure has been enacted upon the Palestinians, all of whom are now subject to restrictions of movement enforced by the soldiers of the occupying Israeli army. And all this in the name of a transcendent, noble need: that the Chosen People can celebrate their holiday of freedom, and commemorate their deliverance and their exodus from slavery to freedom, even at the cost of enslaving another people. We can see how the well-known saying that the freedom of one man ends where the freedom of another begins has not yet penetrated the minds and hearts of Israeli Jewish celebrants.

So I take this opportunity to call upon the Israeli Jew who is celebrating his holiday of freedom to answer this question: How on this night can you stand to celebrate your freedom at the expense of another's freedom? Was the value of human freedom created for you and you alone? How can you even think about celebrating your holiday when your neighbors suffer under closure? Have you never stopped to think that the values this holiday embodies are in complete opposition to your behavior in reality?

And to all the progressive Jews who feel ashamed at the actions of the government of the occupation that decrees closures upon the Palestinians to commemorate Passover, I say to them: How can your voices be heard at the highest levels against the continuation of the oppression of the Palestinian people? I wish that next year the Palestinian people will celebrate its independence from the Israeli occupation, and that this will be the biggest and sweetest celebration in the history of our people—we who dedicate our lives day in and day out to the pursuit of our freedom. And until that day comes, I wish my friends a happy holiday and ask that they wish us, at the very least, a `quiet closure.`