Photo by Ahmad Omar (this was originally written in response to a comment by a Quaker activist. The entire conversation may be seen at Palestinian Mothers, the web network for those with Palestine in their hearts, no matter who they are or where they come from). I have befriended and cooperated with many Quakers over the years, and I deeply admire their commitment -and yours- to peace, and the time and efforts that you give towards achieving this goal.
However, there is a fundamental issue that tends to be overlooked, oversimplified and ignored by those lovely, compassionate and peace loving people; they are inclined to blame and condemn both sides equally; i.e they equate the immoral actions of the criminal with the understandable reactions of the victim.
Equating the instinctive response of the oppressed -who have been massacred, humiliated and dehumanized day in and day out for generations-, with the aggressive and brutal acts of the oppressor is a severe deviation from justice am afraid.
Morally speaking: how -for the love of God- could we condemn those who are being slaughtered when they try to push their butchers away?
Some times the only way to sincerely help a criminal is by stopping him from committing more crimes.
There is nothing more helpful and supportive to the tyrant criminals than teaching the man who has been constantly crushed and incessantly raped, victimized and butchered not to defend himself.
The ACTION of AGGRESSION and oppression is NOT the same as the REACTION of SELFDEFENCE.
To teach otherwise and to condemn equally both the oppressor and the oppressed is not upholding well with ethics and morality.
God looks with tenderness, love, forgiveness and compassion at those who are severely abused, exploited and browbeaten so much so that they are forced to react.
“Beware of the plea of the oppressed, for he asks God most high only for his due, and God does not keep one who has a right from receiving what is due.”
Our disapproval must be focused on those who initiate aggression, oppress nations, and commit genocide.
We can not possibly equate the actions of oppressor with the reaction of oppressed.
Did we not know that
A man
With a knife
Against his throat
Has the right
To push His butcher
Away!!
“If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.” Bishop Desmond Tutu
To give an analogy;
If a thief comes to your home, kills some of your children, kick some of them out, and lock you in the basement for sixty years, while raging havoc in your house and garden.
Then you are told that the only solution is to negotiate with the murderer thief; however the thief refuses to talk to you because you words are unpleasant and they disturb his peace; as you keep making noise in the basement, and you throw some fire works out to your garden to get the attention of some neighbours with conscience.
Then finally the police intervene, and then after arming the thief to his teeth they persuade him to agree to talk to you.
At long last the thief agrees to talk to you, but he comes with a list of demands, including:
No talks about your children, who’ve been kicked out
No talks about any room in the house
No talks about his incessant torture of your children
No talks about allowing you to use the bathroom upstairs
No talks about which corner of the basement he might give you
Furthermore, he demands that you respect the facts on the grounds, and should never ask to resolve the injustice by going back to how things were 60 years ago.
Not only that, he demands also that you accept his right to exist in your house forever, and his right to control your water supply, electricity, food, and movement.
Then to add the icing on the cake, of course, you are not supposed to moan or mention your pain over the past sixty years.
You must only be grateful, that the murderer thief would humble himself and talk to you.
I am intrigued to find out what would YOU do if you were in that situation?
Would you accept sharing your house with the thief and live in the basement?
If you say you do, I would like to see you openly inviting some zionists who settled in my stolen farm to come to yours and share it with you, and if they come fully armed I hope you don’t mind, and that you accept them graciously.
If all the Quakers would live by their word and do exactly what they want us to do; i.e. offer their homes to the zionists, that would be a breakthrough.
All we need is a few millions to do this ultimate act of sacrifice by being a living archetype, in fact that could be a vital approach to a peaceful solution and a good lesson to us all.
Dear John, we humans find it easy to moralise and pass judgements, but much harder to live by what we preach.
Future of Palestine
We, the Palestinians, cannot accept any solution that does not address the MAJOR issues in this lopsided “conflict,” those major issues are:
1) We are equal in our humanity therefore should be treated equally
2) We have been wronged, our rights, our land and our identity have been robbed from us and must be given back
3) Jews are neither an ethnic group nor a special people, they have no privilege over us or any other human being, hence, they cannot claim ownership of Palestine simply because of their Jewishness
How could the world expect the Palestinians to recognise Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state, when in fact that is not only killing the dream of every Palestinian refugee of returning home, but it also gives a precedence to a unique situation.
It exempts the Jewish people from being treated like the rest of humanity, as based on their Jewishness alone, they demand special treatment, preference, and exemptions from all the laws that bind the rest of humanity:
They demand to take someone else’s land for a claim that this right is given to them by God.
They demand to have superiority over another group of people who don’t share their Jewishness.
A cousin of mine, who is Palestinian of course but was working as a teacher in occupied/ stolen Palestine (the zionist entity that some call “israel”)
My cousin was trying to be friendly to a Jewish teacher, so he said to him: “you know, we are both cousins, we are all children of the same grandfather, we must find a way of living together in peace”.
The reply of his colleague was chilling -
He said: “yes indeed we are cousins, but you must remember that you are the children of Hagar, the slave woman, and we are the children of Sara, the free woman; therefore, you must realize that you the Palestinians, will be forever our slaves”.
This nauseating mentality IS the root of the problem in Palestine:
This supremacist attitude
This arrogance
This contempt of the other
This superiority complex
Firstly: they justify their attack and occupation of the already inhabited land of Palestine by a claim of a God-given right made exclusively to the Jewish people.
Secondly: they see themselves superior with the false claims such as being God’s chosen people or being light unto the nations or of making the desert bloom.
Thirdly: they want to preserve a Pure Jewish state at all costs; even if that means dismissing the rights of all others
Fourthly: they, unlike any other nation, are getting away with every violation of human rights imaginable without ever being held accountable for their crimes
Are we ever going to see a change of attitude within this community?
It’s only through a real alteration of the Zionists’ mind-set that a solution could become possible.
We, the Palestinians, we can compromise, we can negotiate, we can share, we can give much, but ONE thing, and ONE thing only, that we CANNOT negotiate, nor compromise, and that is our HUMANITY.
We might be able to forgive the zionists, and move on
We might be able to share our land even with previous enemies
But what we will never be able to do is accept them as our superiors
Nor would we welcome them while they are still committing their crimes of murder, theft and oppression.
Reconciliation is only possible with a revolutionary change of attitude within the Zionist community.
And that’s is not up to us to do
The ball is in their court now, and has always been
It’s up to the Jewish people themselves who live in occupied Palestine to work on that change, if they want to spare themselves God’s justice.
People can take oppression for so long, but there comes a time when a threshold is reached, then things could literally change overnight.
Their might will not protect them then
What will, is what they’ve managed to preserve of their humanity.
*******
As with regards to violence and attacks on civilians, Hamas is not proud to kill any innocent person, it has continuously offered cease-fire and a complete halt of attacks on civilians but that was ALWAYS rejected by israel.
Hamas offers to renew cease-fire with Israel
Friday, June 16, 2006
http://edition.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/meast/06/15/hamas.ceasefire/index…
Israel rejects Gaza cease-fire offer
Sep 21, 2007
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1189411457380&pagena…
Ehud Olmert rejects Hamas’ offer of cease-fire in Gaza Strip
23/12/2007
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/937196.html
Olmert rejects Hamas cease-fire offer
Tue., December 25, 2007
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/937511.html
ISRAEL REJECTS HAMAS CEASE-FIRE OFFER AS HUMANITARIAN CRISIS DEEPENS IN GAZA
April 25, 2008
http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/0425/p99s01-duts.html
Israel rejects Hamas cease-fire offer as humanitarian crisis deepens in Gaza
Fri Apr 25 08
http://news.yahoo.com/s/csm/20080425/wl_csm/odu0425
As for the other point about israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state I would say:
To start with; there is no country/ government/ system/ regime on earth that demands the right to exist and makes that demand “holy” and unquestionable.
Yet again, israel, with its self-proclaimed righteousness and with the virtue of its special-ness, feels entitled to ask those whom she robbed them of their homes, of their dignity, and of homeland to recognise her right to steal and thrive at cost of their genocide and ethnic cleansing!
Israel feels no shame in demanding to be recognized as a racist entity (as a Jewish state).
Israel feels no shame in demanding to exist at the expense of hundreds of annihilated villages, hundreds of thousands of corpses, and millions of homeless refugees.
Israel feels no shame in demanding the right to build its nation on the destruction of another.
Israel feels no shame in expanding what she acquired by sheer brutality at the cost of devastated landscapes and ruined ancient alleyways.
Israel feels no shame in demanding that the world should adore its glory at the melody of weeping widows and howling of terrified little ones.
Hamas and the Jewish state:
Our problem – as Palestinians- is not with the Jewish people nor is it with Judaism; our problem is with the injustice inflected upon us for almost a century now.
For no crime (except being Palestinians) we were made to be the sacrificial lamb of Europe’s sins, we paid the price for Hitler’s crimes against the Jewish people.
Neither Hamas nor any Palestinian would have any problem getting along with any ethnic or religious group of people. As Muslims we’ve done that for centuries. In fact the golden age for the Jewish people was when they lived under Islamic rule and as they escaped the inquisitions of Europe to find refuge and protection in Muslim lands.
But, we have serious problems with ethnic cleansing, injustice, oppression, racism, fascism, tyranny, and the claim of superiority of one nation over another.
Unless these issues are justly addressed and resolved, our world would remain in turmoil.
Hamas are constantly been asked to recognize “Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state”; but no one seemed bothered with the fact that “Israel” never recognized “Palestine” or the Palestinians’ right to exist on their own land. No one seems to be bothered with the fact that “Israel” hasn’t and never had any defined borders that they want us to recognize.
But most importantly no one seemed to question the morality and ethical grounds on which “Israel” was founded.
Israel not only has no right to exist as a Jewish state (for the apparent racism that’s embedded in this definition) but also has no right to exist as a state and a political system. Period.
Reasons:
firstly:
The moral and ethical grounds upon which “Israel” was founded are extremely problematic:
a) When the Zionists adopted Palestine as a home land for all the Jewish people they ignored the fact that Palestine had already its own native Palestinian inhabitants, with a very small Jewish minority of 2.5%.
b) The early Jewish refugees did not come with a friendly attitude with intentions to live in peace with the native Inhabitants of Palestine, but rather with the mentality of colonising and ethnically cleansing of the natives.
c) They did not come with olive branches in their hands; rather they came with tanks and machine guns, they engaged in extensive terror attacks on the native Palestinians, they were building their armed forces ever since until it became the fourth most powerful state in the world today.
d) The natives were never asked and their opinions were dismissed by those powers who decided to give away Palestine -which the don’t own-
e) Israel’s recognition as a state (by the United Nations and the International community) was conditional to Israel abiding by UN resolutions including the right of return of Palestinians; which were never implemented by Israel.
Secondly:
The continuous existence of such a state (as defined by the hegemony of one particular group “the Jewish” over the rest of its citizens) is deplorable logically, legally, and morally:
a) Logically unacceptable; as by definition “”Israel” is a Jewish state; in order to maintain its exclusive “Jewishness” it denies millions of exiled Palestinians their basic human right; namely the right of return to their homes and their families.
b) Legally unacceptable; for the inability of this entity to comply by the conditions laid out by the international community, and inability to abide by any UN resolution.
c) Morally unacceptable; for the fact that since its inception over the past 60 years, this entity managed to prove to the world time and again the decay of its moral fibre; as it sank deeply in the abyss of wickedness and inhumanity., through displaying her acts of terror, cruelty, and ruthlessness with no shame or remorse.
The continuous existence of such a state is morally questionable; as by definition “”Israel” is a Jewish state; in order to maintain its exclusive “Jewishness” it denies millions of exiled Palestinians the right of return to their homes and their families ignoring their basic human rights.
When Hitler called for a purely Aryan state the world got up in arms against such an exclusive racists regime.
How can such a state demand the right be recognized and to be secured when the very foundation on which it was established are immoral? How such a state should continue to exist when by its very definition it is insular, exclusive, aggressive and racist?
What I as a Palestinians would like to see is an all inclusive state of Palestine, on the whole land of historic Palestine, a state for all its citizens, where all races, religions living side by side on equal grounds.
A state with no walls between its peoples; where no one is denied their basic human rights for their religious or non-religious beliefs, no one is denied justice for their race; no one is prevented from returning to their homes on the basis of their ethnicity. If that should mean an end to a racist exclusive Jewish state so be it.
(by the way the Jewish state is NOT the Jewish people).
And if I may speak as a mother, seeing my beloved Palestine divided is like seeing my baby chopped in half!
It pains me enormously, I would rather accept to share my baby with an impostor mother, who claims my baby as hers, rather than having him sliced into two pieces.
Originally published here: Palestinian Mothers Network
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