Article in The Charlotte Observer
30 March 2004
Article in The Charlotte Observer
The voices of human pain
Women of differing faiths speak as one for compassion
BARBARA THIEDE
Special to the Observer
Just listen, without knowing who is speaking when, or where.
Some information can awaken compassion and put prejudice to sleep.
“To try and overcome this sense of humiliation, to try and validate your humanity every day and keep your spirits up — that’s the hardest thing.”
“How many people do soul searching, and put themselves in the shoes of the occupied people?”
“If I didn’t believe that reconciliation is possible, I wouldn’t be here. Pessimism is a luxury we can’t afford.”
Who is speaking? A Bosnian man? An Iraqi woman? An Irish-Catholic soldier in Belfast? Try these possibilities: a black South African living in the days of apartheid; an Indian who lived under British rule; a Southerner after the Civil War.
“To try and overcome this sense of humiliation,” Nuha Khoury said, “to try and validate your humanity every day and keep your spirits up — that’s the hardest thing.”
Nuha Khoury is a Christian Palestinian who received her Ph.D. from the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor, a member of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Palestine and Jordan, and a church elder at the Christmas Lutheran Church in Bethlehem. Two months ago, Khoury’s 75-year-old father was not allowed to make a 10-minute trip to a nearby hospital. His daughter pleaded with the soldiers at two different checkpoints while her father’s fingers and lips turned blue and his body began shaking uncontrollably.
Khoury’s father died of a massive heart attack.
He had a permit to buy and sell in nearby Jerusalem, where the hospital was. But, his daughter says, he did not possess a permit to be sick.
“How many people do soul searching, and put themselves in the shoes of the occupied people?” asks Nahla Assali. Assali is a Muslim Palestinian. She earned her master’s degree from Indiana State University. She is co-founder and chair of Project Loving Care, a child sponsorship program that began its work in 1968. Her family was sent to Damascus after the Deir Yassin massacre. But when they came back, they were homeless. She is not allowed to enter the house her father built and her family once owned.
“If I didn’t believe that reconciliation is possible, I wouldn’t be here,” insists Michal Sagi. “Pessimism is a luxury we can’t afford.”
Sagi is a Jewish Israeli, a member of Checkpoint Watch, a woman’s human rights group that reports on its observations at Israeli military and police checkpoints in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, and an educator at Melitz, an organization providing educational services to Israelis and Diaspora Jews. A picture she took shows Palestinians lined up at a checkpoint and squatting uncomfortably in the sun. “That’s not allowed,” she says, “you must supply shade and water.” She assures her audience that immediately after taking the picture to document the abuse, she stepped in — an Israeli citizen, she confronted Israeli soldiers.
These three women traveled this spring to cities across the Southeast, including Charlotte. Palestinian Christian, Palestinian Muslim, Israeli Jew — all three are trying to tell us something about the lives of everyday Palestinians. They are giving Americans a chance to put aside the pronouncements that equate Palestinians with terrorists, and recognize human pain and human needs.
Sixty percent of Palestinian children go hungry each day. Seventy-five percent lack the minimum of vitamin A they need, though it would take just one unattainable glass of milk to get it. Eighty percent of those same children have witnessed a shooting; over 60 percent have seen a relative get shot. Add those statistics together and you will get horror and anger. It ought to be yours.
It will not do to dismiss these problems by blaming the whole for the fanatic actions of the few. Nowhere have children deserved to live in such a world.
Their peoples, these women say, are destined to live together. But how?
South Africa is no longer a place of apartheid. India is not ruled by Great Britain. What shall we say someday about Israel and Palestine?
We are paying monstrous, unacceptable costs in the degradation of human dignity each day in Israel and Palestine. If no one demands reason in an insane world, if we allow our own government to ignore its responsibility to encourage — even demand — communication between these peoples, we must expect ongoing, useless, destructive madness.
The words “Israeli” or “Palestinian” should not alter our obvious conclusion: There is no excuse for gratuitous suffering.
Barbara Thiede
