Updates from Previous JWS Speakers
In April of 2008, we sent out a series of emails to previous JWS speakers to ask them to continue sharing their views and experiences with us through their writing. What follows are the written responses we received.
Why can’t they fix the shutters?
Written by Nahla Assali, a speaker from the 1st JWS Tour
It has been such a long time since I wanted to put my thoughts on paper but failed to hold the pen. Had my brain been a computer and I gave it a print order, I would have filled pages of reverie, reflections, protests, stifled anger; you name it. It is only the approaching commemoration of the 60th anniversary of our Nakba and my coming of nearly 70 years of age that gave the spark. It is either now or never.
I often find myself in a situation where I have to give a speech or relate a personal encounter in relation to our predicament as Palestinians, and I almost always receive the comment: I should write these experiences down especially because our generation – those who were grown enough to remember Palestine pre-1948 – is dwindling. Death and old age spare nobody. And this hard fact reminds me of a short news item that I read in an American newspaper while sitting in a car during one of the speak tours that I did back in 1998 which read under the very appropriate title "Race against Time." A number of Jewish and Zionist groups were protesting the inefficiency and negligence of some law firms who are following up on the restitutions of survivors of the Holocaust who were then in their late seventies or eighties and that if they were not paid now, it would be "too late". There and then, I had my brain working and in silence, although I had company in the car:
* I am a victim as well, but not so vocally recognized.
* I lack the money or support groups to pay a law firm to present my case.
* Who dare talk about the Palestinian right of return or restitution???
There is no acknowledgement on the victimizer's side that there has been a wrong-doing or historical injustice inflicted against the Palestinians. The enemy lives in denial and we live in bitterness while the suffering goes on, and the world wears its blinkers.
Whenever, for some reason or another, I visit our house in Baqá – West Jerusalem, I park my car opposite the building that my father built in the 30ies on what they call now Har Magied Street. It is one of four buildings in a row. Our house in particular has the aspects of architecture that distinguishes it as an Arab house, not like the ugly match box apartment buildings that were built after 1948 in the open space between our house and another row of lovely houses that belong to the Nammari Jerusalemite family. I often wonder how the first comers who occupied or were allocated our house could sleep in our beds, use our kitchen pots and wares, dig into our drawers, eat at our dining table enjoying the view of our back garden with its huge berry tree. One has to be very hard-hearted to endure such an experience. Or is it the rationalization that the Jews were persecuted and they need a haven that justified the dispossession and uprooting of one people to provide space for another. Two wrongs do not make one right! Especially that we, the Palestinians, were not party to the whole Jewish question in Europe; we just happened to be at the receiving end.
My mother (God bless her soul) keeps repeating an argument she had with my father (God bless his soul) back in late April 1948 after the heinous massacre of Deer Yassin, and after a bullet went through the balcony door of my parents ' bedroom and ended in the bottom drawer of the dresser, my father decided to send us all – mother and five kids to Damascus to stay with my maternal grandmother until things settled down. Mother was packing a couple of suitcases and she was adding some woolen sweaters when my father shouted at her saying that there would be no need for woolen wear since it was going to be two or three weeks at most! Mother packed a piece for each of us saying Damascus is cold at night. Well, it is now sixty years after that encounter and we have not gone back to our house in Baqá.
Two years later we came back to join my father, and left my two elder sisters in Damascus to finish high school. After being a landlord, my father rented half a house in Ras El-Amud: entrance from the kitchen, two bedrooms, no electricity, no running water, minimal furniture. Mother borrowed some tiles and wooden boards from the landlord who happened to be a construction contractor to make shift beds for a multipurpose room: living-dining-visitors room day time and bed room at night. Mother's creativity provided us with running water by installing a small tank with a fosset over the kitchen sink; she even heated it by adding boiled water to the tank in the freezing cold winter days. These may sound like boring details, but we have had our share of refugee life though we were never registered as refugees because my father did not allow my mother to register at the UNRWA offices in Damascus. To him, the status of refugee is portrayed in the queue of destitute people waiting for their monthly rations. It was his pride that did not allow his name to be entered in the UNRWA records.
Between 1948 and 1967, we all made it through schooling and higher education. It was my parents' conviction that at least we are not going to be robbed of our education. This possibly explains why the Palestinians – in spite of their meager incomes - put great value on learning.
To me, it was very saddening when school children threw their school bags to join the demonstrations in the first Intifada. Not that I am against resistance, but the act symbolizes that the younger generation - children and youth - lost faith in a world that is so biased and resorted to the mute stone to speak for them.
Coming back to my father, I remember him strongly denying the very idea of going to see our house in Baqá after 1967 when West Jerusalem became accessible to Palestinians living in East Jerusalem.
It was in the summer of 1969 when my brother, who was then working in Kuwait, came to visit us through what they called then family visit permits. Through appealing, cajoling and repeated arguments, my father finally consented and we drove to Baq’a . Sitting next to me in the front seat, my father did not utter a word but I could see the bluish blood rush to his face. As I parked the car, he remained seated, looked at the 3-story building and noticed one of the shutters facing the road slanted sideways. He mumbled a few intangible utterances and then said aloud “Can’t they fix the shutters?” and ordered me to drive back home.
To me personally, my father’s comment about the shutters was, and still is, one of the most painful memories, and my brother and I really regretted subjecting father to that agonizing ordeal. All that mattered to him at that moment was to have HIS only remaining house in good shape. My father owned another house in upper Bak’a which was leased to Mr. Philip G. Cottel, someone who worked at the USA Consulate in Jerusalem then (I wonder if he or any member of his family can attest to this), but that house was razed to the ground soon after the 1967 war, and an ugly multi-story building stands in its place. My father never saw the house nor did he bother to see the ugly building. This, in fact, is Israel’s way to obliterate our physical existence in West Jerusalem and in Palestine at large; it will never succeed in obliterating our memories .They do not take a delete order.
To add insult to injury, Israel recently came up with the idea of the pure Jewish state; the implication of which means ethnic cleansing of any body who is not Jewish which contradicts its claim that it’s a state for all its people and that it’s democratic. It also negates any implementation of the right of return.
The final blow directed at us Palestinians came from Washington DC where a non-committal resolution to the administration was approved by the Congress that stipulates that any solution to the issue of the Palestinian refugees should also address the case of the Jewish refugees who came to settle in Palestine or other countries. The number, as stated in the news item (850,000) in fact exceeds the number of Palestinian refugees who were forced out of their homeland in 1948 (750,000). If this is to be pursued in any future solution, we, the Palestinians, will owe the Jews some money, or in the best case scenario we’ll break even. Goodbye to justice.
The following is written by Ghada Ageel, a speaker from the 12th JWS Tour
Israel’s deputy defense minister Matan Vilnai issued a terrifying threat early last month to Palestinians in Gaza. He spoke of a “shoah.”
Shortly after the Oslo agreement of 1993, when I harbored naïve hopes of an immediately realized peace, I studied Hebrew at Ulpan Akiva in Israel. My Hebrew has not thrived over the years, but whether Vilnai meant holocaust or cataclysmic catastrophe, he clearly meant real harm. Perhaps one day, twenty years hence, he will be charged for war crimes, for the killing and the maiming of Palestinians his military carried out the very next day; his own words a powerful indictment. Until then, I live in fear for my family in Gaza ’s Khan Yunis refugee camp.
In the past three weeks, I have taken both my children to Exeter hospital in the UK for emergency treatment. This would probably be impossible today in Gaza with under-equipped hospitals being emptied to provide space for the flood of wounded. I have visited these hospitals and witnessed medical personnel choosing which patient might be saved and which cannot due to the limited resources. My words, I confess, were of little comfort to those suffering their last moments.
Increasingly, I have wondered what value my words are to the international community. What more can I offer about the theft of my family land 60 years ago, our flight to Gaza, our subjugation here for forty years under Israeli occupation and imprisonment, and my fervent but fleeting hope for a just peace? When Vilnai calls for a shoah and the newspapers translate it as a catastrophe as if that is acceptable treatment of Palestinians, what are we to think?
I am aware that political leaders in the West are apt to blame the Palestinian victims for their own plight. Perhaps if politicians refuse to comprehend, some of their constituents will listen to them. The African National Congress went around to American presidents and to the American people to state their case. Our case, as Archbishop Desmond Tutu has insisted, is not dissimilar and, indeed, might well be worse.
While Israeli colonizers left Gaza in 2005, Gazans remain imprisoned, unable to trade by sea or air or leave freely for Egypt or the West Bank. Nearly seventy percent of Gaza ’s 1.5 million people have homes and land elsewhere. The refugee camps in Gaza are not home. Home, what is rightfully ours, is now inside modern-day Israel.
When the American presidential candidates jockey for favor among Jewish and Christian voters, who support an expansionist Israel, they do so by degrading Palestinians to second-class status. Their insistence on Israel being a “Jewish state” ignores the reality that twenty percent of Israel’s populace is actually Palestinian – imagine calling the United States a white, Christian state. Rhetoric regarding a Jewish state also suggests that my grandmother and mother, who were born on land seized for Israel, are somehow less human than Jews.
My grandmother has lived a long and difficult life, but she saw to it that her children and grandchildren became professionally successful. She is – at least in my mind – the equal of Jews around the world. She is no better, and she is no worse. I grieve in her late years, as she expresses fear that no proper burial casket will be available to her because of the sanctions imposed upon us.
For years, Hamas, a party that won a free and fair elections in 2006, has called for a long-term cease-fire with Israel. The rocket fire from Gaza, which many Palestinians oppose a desperate act of retaliation for the long siege, the imprisonment and the shelling, would cease in order for the far deadlier Israeli attacks on Palestinians to come to a halt. Israel has refused. Consequently, we have war, and Palestinians in growing numbers are flocking to Hamas on account of its willingness to fight both siege and threats of a shoah.
In this climate, I hold little hope for the promise of the Bush administration to create a Palestinian state before the end of his time. Two years ago, this administration supported continuing Israeli attacks on Lebanon even as most of the world urged an immediate cease-fire. It dubbed Lebanese suffering the birth-pangs of a new Middle East. Such an administration will always continue to lay the blame on Palestinians. Such sentiments are woefully out of touch with the sentiments expressed by Palestinians and Arabs around the region who believe Israel is at fault for treating Palestinians as inferior beings not worthy of freedom.
Israel has now threatened to inflict a shoah upon the Palestinians. Will this terrifying language be sufficient to jar the international community to its senses before our region is plunged into still-worse calamities? I suspect not.
I fear for my family and my people. I fear the consequences – and still more the unintended consequences – of turning loose military men who speak easily of inflicting the next shoah.
Roni Hammermann, a speaker from the 11th JWS Tour
Birth at the Checkpoint
Hebron looked particularly dilapidated, grey and uninviting on this rainy and foggy winter Tuesday in January. It fit its status as the most plagued city in the Occupied West Bank. No people on the streets, the deserted houses along Shuhada Street like forfeited remnants of a better past. Soldiers everywhere, huddled against the walls of the houses to evade the rain and the wind. On the street, we met two women from the Christian Peacemaker Team, who immediately told us the news: the night before, a woman had given birth at the Tarpad Checkpoint. We were about to meet Issa, the investigator from B`Tselem and waited to hear the fact from him. We arrived at the Tarpad Checkpoint, which divides the Palestinian and Jewish Hebron, obstructing the north - south traffic of Hebron and effecting the whole town. We had time to observe how several Palestinians crossed the checkpoint. The soldiers were rather indifferent to the pedestrians, who pursued their own matters and did not interfere. An old Palestinian peasant went back and forth several timesthough the checking area, carrying sacks, packages and jerrycans , leaving them on the Jewish side. At last he led his donkey through a side opening of the checkpoint and reloaded him with all the goods. It was a rather cumbersome way of transporting.
At 14:30 Issa arrived with a young man and with several journalists. The young man, Ashraf Siders, turned out to be the father of the baby Ahmed born last night at this checkpoint. The baby is the first son in the family and Ashraf is now called Abu Ahmed (Father of Ahmed). We congratulated him and he gave us the following testimony. In the early morning hours of Monday, his wife Kifah’s labor pains were coming in short intervals and wanted to call for an ambulance. Ashraf and Kifah live in the neighborhood of Tel Rumeida, very near the Tarpad Checkpoint. At 3:20 AM the ambulance was ordered and was expected to come to the Tel Rumeida side, the Jewish side. As the couple walked down to the checkpoint, the labor pains were increasing and they decided to pass through the checkpoint and to take the ambulance on the Palestinian side. They rightly assumed that the ambulance had problems crossing over to the Jewish side, which is completely closed to any Palestinian traffic, except when the drive is coordinated with the army. The soldier on duty at the checkpoint declared that he had to call his superior and ask for permission to let the couple pass. Kifah screamed in pains and urged the soldier to hurry and let her pass. After 20 minutes of waitin and screaming, they were allowed at last to the other side. Kifah collapsed after walking10 meters, and lying on the stones she began to give birth. At this moment, at 3:45, the ambulance arrived at the Palestinian side, after having tried in vain to cross over to Tel Rumeida. The medical team spread a mattress on the floor and assisted Kifah with the birth. Baby Ahmed was born into an extremely cold winter night (-2 degrees Celsuis) and the medics did was to rush him to the hospital to avoid him freezing to death. They took Kifah as well. But the Alia Hospital in Hebron was rather crowded. As soon as Kifah felt stronger again and the baby had been taken care of, mother and son returned to their home, where they are now both in good health. A happy ending.
We asked the soldiers if they knew about this incident. One of them knew and declared that the circumstances we were told now were wrong. There is no way that a pregnant woman would have to wait more that one and a half minutes. She should be checked through in no time. Issa went to take evidence from one of the neighbors, who were waken in the night by Kifa’s screams. He will carefully compare and verify several testimonies and B`Tselem will send the report to the army spokesperson and will receive their version. In the end, there will be a well researched report with the exact waiting time at the checkpoint and with the respective complaints. But the point is not how many minutes Kifah had really waited! The point is that the 2500 Palestinian residents who still live in H2 (Jewish Hebron) are left without any means of transportation and with severe restrictions of movement, so that the 500 settlers can move around "undisturbed.” The point is that H2 is surrounded by countless checkpoints, barriers and roadblocks and that the Palestinians cannot lead even the resemblance of a normal life, but are helplessly exposed to the harassment of violent and fanatic settlers. The point is that Tarpad Checkpoint had been put up between the Palestinian and the Jewish Hebron. Otherwise, the ambulance could have reached Kifah' s house in short time and taken her safely to the hospital. We confront again a reality which tells of the impossibility of Palestinian life in occupied Hebron. As long as the settler-intruders and the checkpoints which protect them will stay in Hebron, incidents of this kind will happen time and again - and not always with a happy ending.
Politics goes with you everywhere
Written by Nina Mayorek, from the 9th JWS Tour
I am presently on at a conference in the US at the Snowbird Ski Resort. It is a good opportunity for me to forget about what is going on in Israel and concentrate on science.
But politics follows you everywhere and one cannot run away from it if one is a conscious person. I am staying in a nice hotel and everyday they provide guests with the New York Times. One day, I took the newspaper and on the front-page is a huge article about anti-Jewish, anti-Israeli speeches that some, (most or all) imams preach in Gaza mosques. These are really terrible-full of hate speeches; they just want all Jews to die. In this article, there is no description of life in Gaza.
Before I left Israel, one week ago, I spoke with my friend Aitimad Muhana, a Palestinian woman who was my partner on the Partners for Peace Speaking Tour in spring 2005. She lives in Gaza and we speak by phone from time to time. She described to me life in Gaza –she said, “This is a dead city". She told me she is unable to hear any more talk about death-not only death caused by Israeli bombs and tanks, but death caused by lack of health care. She told me about a friend whose daughter suffers from cancer. This woman just prays for her daughter’s quick death- she is unable to pay for her needed medications, and even if she was able to afford the medications, they are impossible to find.
The effect of the New York Times article was predictable-I could see it. Today was a last day of the conference, and the schedule allowed me to go on a snow-shoes walk with a ranger and another couple from New York. They were Jews and the wife, who identified herself as left wing, immediately cited this New York Times article. The idea was the usual: we Jews are hated so often and those Hamas preachers, how they dare to speak like that.
I told the lady that I am not a fan of Hamas , but the New York Times article’s message can be compared to a person whose only comment about a rape is that the woman scratched the offender's eyes and kicked him in his sensitive organs.
Israelis have raped the Palestinians and they do not respond nicely to this rape that has lasted many decades. The promoting of feelings of victim hood among Jews and Israelis will not stop imams’ hateful speeches. Only ending the occupation and providing conditions for normal life for Palestinians have the chance to stop it.
So these were topics that I discussed with a nice couple from NY in the beautiful scenery of snow-covered Rocky Mountains. And I thought, why on earth I have to do it here?
It is so pleasant to feel a victim.
