jimbrooking
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# Posted: 15 Oct 2007 19:41 - Edited by: jimbrooking
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Exile is a book that was exciting as courtroom drama, but also very thought-provoking to me. It deals with a lawyer's defense of a Palestinian woman accused of having a role in a political assassination. Of course there is much more to the plot, and makes for a good read just for that reason.
But the author takes the reader with the lawyer to Israel and the West Bank/Occupied Territories/Judea and Samaria (depending on whom he is talking to), in order to try and unravel the plot that led to the assassination, and to find out who framed his client for the deed.
Along the way, the inhabitants - extremist Israelis and Palestinians, and "moderate" Israelis and Palestinians, are interviewed and express their feelings about the other side. These feelings, among the so-called moderates on both sides, amount to a total lack of trust (at best) and hatred at worst. Among the extremists on both sides, hatred is the best of it - loathing and blood lust is their norm.
The author claims to have spent much time in Israel and the West Bank, talking with those on the same, wide political spectrum as his attorney-protagonist while researching the book. And he says the dialogs, the expressions of distrust-to-hatred-to-blood-lust accurately portray the sentiments he found in his travels, on both sides.
Each side claims ownership of the same patch of seaside desert, and each side can cite a dozen scriptural justifications for their claim. And these religious arguments, some of them feel, fully justify massacre of the opposing population, including not only combat troops, but non-combatants: women, children, oldsters, or anyone else who gets in the way.
Neither side is able to see or understand the other, except as godless usurpers who need to be expelled or subjugated.
I was really overcome with emotion on reading this, thinking of the many Jewish friends I have, and the one Palestinian friend I have, a man named Marwan. Marwan lives in Gaza with his wife and family. He is well-educated and has a decent job with the Palestinian Authority. And although he and I were not especially close when we knew each other in a work environment several years ago, we do exchange emails every few weeks, and I feel that he and many - probably most - Palestinians want only to live safe and secure, to be able to earn a living and feed their families, to be treated with human dignity.
As I understand it, few Palestinians are treated like humans, but instead are treated like a race of terrorists, fit only to be subjugated and humiliated until (surprise) some decide they have nothing to lose, and become human bombs.
The truly vicious circularity of the Israeli-Palestinian situation reminds me some of the old sci-fi movies - Godzilla vs. Mothra, etc., where two totally different creatures, for reasons that aren't obvious, determine to kill each other.
It also reminds me of an old Star Trek (the original series) episode, where a race of peculiarly colored people (vertically split into white on the left, black on the right) has all but annihilated another race of peculiarly colored people, who are also vertically separated - black on the left, white on the right. To the astonishment of the crew of the Enterprise, the two, sole survivors of robust races of millions, were determined to kill each other, come what may - and their reason was because the other race was so terribly different.
Jews and Muslims at each others' throats because of their "extreme differences"? Well, I'd have to say that from an atheist's perspective, one set of superstitions is no better or worse than any other.
I wish there was a solution to the Middle East other than the annihilation of either Jews or Muslims. But I haven't the knowledge, the sagacity, the diplomacy, or the raw power to see and enact it.
I will offer the observation that Israel, armed to the teeth by the U.S., drunk with the approbation of the Bushovik neocons, and eager to use their arms in punitive raids against "suspected terrorists" like the entire population of Lebanon, could, it seems, show a bit of forbearance toward their practically unarmed Palestinian neighbors. One could say it would be the Christian thing to do - but I won't say it.
I only hope my friend Marwan and his family, and all my Jewish friends and their families, live in peace among themselves and with each other. And stay out of the line of fire of the crazies.
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jimbrooking
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# Posted: 3 Mar 2008 19:02
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During the late February/early March 2008 incursion of the Israel Defense Forces into Gaza, I sent an email of commiseration to my friend Marwan. I received a heartbreaking reply that speaks eloquently of the Palestinian condition. You won't hear this on the American mainstream media:
Dear Jim,
Thanks a lot for your kind words and your comments. I have just arrived to work from the area where the Israeli Offensive Forces has been occupying for the last 45 days. The geography of the area that is known to me for the last 40+ years is totally different. It is like an earthquake that demolished every structure, erased every road and uprooted every tree. The Palestinian casualties were more than 120 dead and more than 250 injured badly with parts of the body has been removed. Among the dead there were more than 50% women and children with the youngest is 12 days old!. I personally know some families who have been razed from existence by the this last offensive and none of them is related to any resistance movement or labeled as "extremist! "
Jim,
If you had to be a "moderate" or even "extremist" Palestinian, what your reaction would be to this new holocaust?.
What would be your feeling when your phone rings at the middle of the night with a stranger on the other side of the phone informing you that I am from the Israeli Forces and you have to leave your home within 5 minutes. And If takes you more than 5 minutes to wake your kids and escape the building, It will be bombed over your head.
I think, and honestly speaking, the Israeli acts have removed any meaning of a "moderate" Palestinian from the agenda. The only "moderate" ones, the Israelis are welling to talk to, are those who accept to be the collaborators with the occupiers.
We, as Palestinians have rights and land that has be stolen from us and there will not be any solution to this crises until those rights and returned back and the land is returned to its real owners. My parent's house was in the town so called "Sderot". I saw the house during the only visit I have to the area in 1971 where I was 6 years old. I will never forget the building or the area and always I describe the scene to my kids. OUR house now is being occupied by some Jews from Poland.
Dear Jim,
It is not that we want to live in peace with our neighbors, we want our rights back and then, and only then, we can live in PEACE with all the world. We are people who love life and eager to enjoy life but with dignity and honor. I am typing this comment while the sirens of the ambulances rocks all over Gaza with the funerals of those who have been killed by the Israelis.
Best regard and wish to write to you with better news very soon.
Marwan
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