Hat Tip to John Deere

Please read my friend's (I'll meet her one day, God willing) post about the tractor driving, baseball playing, Palestinian wannabes, and all the insanity sparked by Rachael's scarf.

Diaspora

Today is Blog about Palestine Day.

The following quote was taken from the war diary of David Ben Gurion, the first Prime Minister of the State of Israel: “The strategic objective [of the Jewish forces] was to destroy the urban communities, which were the most organized and politically conscious sections of the Palestinian people. This was not done by house-to house fighting inside the cities and towns, but by the conquest and destruction of the rural areas surrounding most of the towns. This technique led to the collapse and surrender of Haifa, Jaffa, Tiberias, Safed, Acre, Beit-Shan, Lydda, Ramleh, Majdal, and Beersheba. Deprived of transportation, food, and raw materials, the urban communities underwent a process of disintegration, chaos, and hunger, which forced them to surrender.”

The day the Jewish forces entered the part of Jerusalem where my husband's mother was born, she and her sister had been doing the family's laundry. Situated at a prime location in at-Toor, or the Mt. of Olives, their house held a view of the valley below, including the pathway from the top of the mountain that still winds down into the heart of the Old City. My mother-in-law was nineteen that year--the year of the catastrophe.

Her first instinct was to flee. She dropped the aluminum laundry tub where she was standing, grabbed her sister's hand, and began running down the path eventually leading to al-Aqsa mosque. Shots were being fired in all directions, making it impossible to determine who was shooting whom. They ran, cowering down as low as they could, frightened by this uncertainty and chaos in their neighborhood--perhaps the most religiously diverse and significant stretches of road in all of the Holy Land. They reached the gates of the convent run by the silent order of French Carmelite Sisters. My mother-in-law told me that these nuns used to cover their faces. These nuns provided the frantic and scared young girls a place to hide for nearly two days. She has never forgotten the sisters' benevolence.

When she and her sister Fatima left the convent and returned safely to their house, the gunshots had ceased, and the clothes they had dropped had rusted from sitting wet in the aluminum tub. The world had also changed.

My mother-in-law grew up in the Mt. of Olives speaking Arabic, Hebrew, and Spanish. Her best friends and neighbors were Jews whose origins were Spanish; they were Sephardic or from el Sefardim. Some of the Sephardic Jews boast ancestors dating back to their expulsion from Spain by the Crown in 1492. My mother-in-law roamed the markets with her Spanish-speaking friends, bought vegetables from Hebrew-speaking merchants, recognized Shabbat with her neighbors who would invite her to share their Saturday meals. Her father was much loved among the Jews in Mt. of Olives; when he died, his janazah was attended by more Jews than Arabs. My mother-in-law grew up blissfully unaware of any ideological differences between her family and the families living harmoniously around her. In fact, just last year her most loved childhood friend, now an Israeli, then just a neighbor, came looking for her. She was so happy to find out that my mother-in-law is still alive, although not living in at-Toor.

My mother-in-law is blessed to have been born in a location so dear to the three Abrahamic faiths. No real destruction of any kind has taken place in the Mt. of Olives; it is still one of the most attractive tourist destinations for people from all over the world. Her brother still owns and lives in the home in which they were born, which boasts the most magnificent view of the Dome of the Rock. The Church of the Ascension and the Church of Mary Magdalene are just blocks away from my mother-in-law's childhood home; the silent order of nuns are still where they were in 1948. Not much has changed. They are among the lucky few.

I once called in a radio program hosted by a prominent right-winger in Alabama. They were interviewing a Palestinian intellectual who had come to Birmingham to speak about the Palestinian issue. This was pre 9/11, but in Alabama one could be hard pressed to find a sympathetic general audience willing to listen to anyone who criticizes Israel and its sovereignty, much less the US government's policies regarding the state of Israel. You know, it's the only democracy in the Middle East.

Anyway, the radio host was taken aback by my analogy (and this may sound cliché) of the Mexican Army marching into Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, and California, wiping out cities and towns, setting up its own government, denying all property owners the rights to their homes or lands, stripping the people of their citizenship, and expelling them into places that do not want them. I asked him if he thought any American in his right mind would just bow down and concede, or would it be expected for every able body to take up arms against his oppressor. "Whoa now, you sound like you're for them," he said to me.

For them. The Palestinians. One of the most displaced populations in the world. They constitute one of the largest diasporas, around six million. Six million. Six million. Six million. Six million.

Time to get on this one!

In the News: Egypt and Gaza

Could the 2 billion dollars worth of foreign aid that Egypt receives from the United States each year possibly be the impetus for Egypt's attempted sealing of the Rafah border? It's just a thought.

It's not like Egyptian citizens have not been suffering from economic depravity for generations. The dichotomy between rich and poor in Egypt is more widely seen than in most Arab nations. All I have to do is walk down my street and survey the Egyptian building supers or construction workers in my neighborhood to have a clearer picture of what skilled laborers can expect to bring home each month in Egypt. My friend whose mother is from Alexandria and whose father is Palestinian spoke with her cousin in Egypt who just graduated from University a few months ago. Her expected salary now that she is employed is around 22 JD per month, or $31 US, which is 172 Egyptian pounds. Compare that to what a building super can make per month, around 100 JD, or 785 Egyptian pounds. It is no mystery why the Jordanian labor force is largely composed of Egyptian workers. To read more about Egypt's economic and educational crises:

Egyptians Demand Higher Salaries

Brightest Minds Neglected

The Tragedy of Education and Culture in Egypt (long, but interesting)

Egyptian Universities: No room for the mind to grow ?

Now, back to the issue facing Gazans:

Bulldozer Thwarts Egyptians at Gaza border

Border Crisis Key to Gaza's Future

People Power: And the Wall Came Down
(thanks, Aaminah, really beautiful)

Pass Us the Ball

We woke up this morning in Amman to huge flakes of snow falling quickly, enough to really blanket the streets and sidewalks. Yesterday I was walking in the city center and was sweating; today I'm sitting in three layers of winter clothes, waiting for the gas man to drive by, because we have an empty tank.

Which leads me to thinking about all of our brothers and sisters in Gaza, who, if they have an empty tank, cannot fill it. Nor can they have their kidneys dialized, nor can their NICU babies stay on their life saving monitors, nor can the bread stores that are still able to run dole out enough bread to keep the people fed. The hospitals don't even have syringes or antibiotics. A kilo of tomatoes or potatoes can scarcely be purchased.

We couldn't get aid to them if all of the governments of the Arab world suddenly woke up and said, "Let this be the last day for this to happen," which of course, they won't. We cannot get aid through to the people of Gaza, because we must remember that the ball is in their court.

New Blog

Check out my buddy from across the river's new blog, Climbing Walls. She is an American who has been living in Palestine for over a decade.

Welcome, welcome!

a first

I use site meter to track my blog visits. I don't know why I need to know who is reading and from where, but I do.

Anyhow, I have lots of "Unknowns?", which are unknown countries, servers, and ISPs. I have always been suspicious that some of these "Unknowns" were indeed coming from the Holy Land o' Palestine.

Well yesterday when I checked my site meter stats, I had a surprise. One visit actually listed "Palestine--Occupied Territory." A first, indeed.

The Doha Debates

I just watched the Doha Debates. Tonight's subject was the Palestinian right of return.

The Doha Debates are a breath of fresh air in the media that is so wrought with misinformation and slander and propaganda that ends up making most Americans believe that Arabs are nothing more than ignorant bomb-strapping suicidal wanna-be's. We all know who these guys are.

It has been a very long time since I have listened to the likes of Rush Limbaugh or Glen Beck or watched any Fox News, and I stay away from reading any Ann Coulter or any other right-wing columnists who live in total oblivion to truth. I cannot fill my head with their words because I know where I stand, and I don't need to know the flip side, because it is garbage. Plain and simple. They should tune into BBC World for a change.

BBC World does a bang-up job with this show. I was especially impressed with Israeli academic Ilan Pappe, who argues in favor of the Palestinian right to return. Living in the Middle East I am continuously impressed and sometimes just plain blown away by the voices of Israelis who know that their occupation of Palestinian lands must end. If so many Israelis understand this completely and even work towards making it a reality, why are Americans so slow to catch on?

I went to Palestine. I hated Palestine. As bad as it sounds, I was miserable the entire time. It was not the land of milk and honey. It was the land of scary, hulking Israeli women with AK-47s blocking the doors of the third holiest site in Islam, where I wanted to pray. It was the land of
Beverly Hills-type streets on the Jewish side, and disgusting, sewage-ridden slums on the Arab side. And in Tel Aviv, you can't even get a cheeseburger. It just ain't kosher.

Am I anxious to return? I'll go back when the other 5 to 8 million displaced folks can, too. And we'll all have cheeseburgers.

Coming to Terms with the Desperation

Usually when I see one of those doctored-up American "feel good" pieces about the peace that must co-exist between Palestinians and Israelis, or the "Peace School" or "Seeds of Peace" programs that are intended to bring the children or even adults together through understanding, dialogue, love, and a basket of warm fuzzies, I want to puke my guts out. I detest these sorts of programs because they achieve nothing but a propagation of the misunderstanding in the West about this conflicted region, mainly because they refuse to examine the source of the conflict and instead offer up trite solutions that do not even skim the surface of the real problem. It is like putting a band-aid on a wound made with a machete. I have tried to talk to my non-Muslim friends and family time after time about what is really going on, but I usually get that "oh you've fallen for the axis-of-evil Muslim propaganda" blank stare.

No, folks, I haven't.

Finally, something real ! Yesterday, Al-Jazeera English channel's documentary showcase Witness featured the documentary Another Road Home, made by Danae Elon, an Israeli-born citizen who lives in New York. Danae is the daughter of Amos Elon, an Austrian-born Israeli writer, speaker, and political activist.

When I turned it on, I did not fully understand the emotional roller coaster I was about to ride. Another Road Home is the story of the director, Danae, and her family's relationship with the Obeidallah family from Battir, near Bethlehem.

Mahmoud Musa Obeidallah, Palestinian, worked for the Elon family, Israeli. He took care of their home and land, leaving his own home in the village of Battir every day for up to eighteen hours to work for the Elons and provide a life for his wife and eleven children. Mahmoud preferred for the Elon family to call him "Musa," his father's name, because the Israelis typically pronounce the "ha" as a "kha," and he thought "Musa" would be easier for them to say. Musa spent every day of Danae's life with her, in her home, preparing her food, caring for her needs, and being, in essence, her father.

The last time Danae had seen Musa was in 1991 when she left Israel and moved to New York. She knew that Musa had sent all eight of his sons to the U.S. to be educated, and she knew they were living in Paterson, New Jersey. So she set out to find the sons and hopefully contact their father.

What amazed me was the warmth with which the sons greeted Danae when she found them. In one scene, one of the sons speaks candidly with Danae about how he used to feel seeing his father leave Battir each day to go spend long hours in her home, spending more time with her than with any of Musa's own children. He understood, however, that his father made those sacrifices so that he could give his children a way out of a hopeless situation. He succeeded. Here were eight boys who were successful, contributing members of society, and whose love for their father knew no end. I swear it made me want to go out and have an army of sons. These are the fruits of sacrifice, when grown men weep at the thought of their father's love and commitment to the family.

Selflessness.

Danae, throughout most of the film, is quiet and profoundly sad. I think the entire point of the film is that she wants to discover the root of her sadness, but cannot. Danae and her mother and father are examples of those enlightened Israelis who see the hypocrisy and terror as being Israeli-born, unlike the majority of the West. Her father, Amos, at one point said something that I will never forget. On speaking with Palestinians, he says, "I cannot be around them often. I always feel I am in pain when I am with them. I am in pain because I know they are right."

Danae and her father have another exchange where she asks him how it felt for this man, Musa, to have been more of a father to her than her own father. "I was in the house, too," he tells her. "Yes, but you had no tolerance for children, no tolerance for me," she tells him. Her father agrees. Musa was the one who had showed Danae patience and tolerance.

Musa is able to come to Paterson to see Danae and his sons. He embarks on a four-day journey, having to travel first to Amman because as a Palestinian he cannot fly out of the Israeli airport. Musa is 76 years old and frail. He arrives in New Jersey in the middle of cold and rain, but nothing can describe the emotions displayed when he is reunited with his sons. At the airport, Danae asks him why he went to so much trouble to try to come for a visit. He says, quietly and sincerely, "I came here for you."

As all Israeli men and women must, Danae had to serve two compulsory years in the Israeli army. Musa ironed her uniform every day. She asks him how that must have made him feel, to iron her army fatigues, and he says, "I did not think of it as the army. I was doing it for you." She tells him that it bothers her, it troubles her, how he had to iron it. He tells her, "Just take it off, just take it off," meaning, "Just take the heaviness off of your heart."

This film is a human story, not a fluffed up heart warmer. The oppressed are forever forgiving the oppressors, and Musa exemplifies this. However, this film demonstrates that somewhere, the oppressors do have a conscience, and the guilt can run deeply enough to not give them rest.

Ya Allah, do not give them rest.