by AlicetheCurious » Thu Jul 06, 2006 5:46 pm
What can I say? You're right in so many ways. Nobody can argue that participating in a demonstration in New York or Vancouver involves the same commitment as participating in a demonstration right next to the separation barrier, or standing in front of a bulldozer. But I think you're taking the narrow view in saying that the contribution of one is necessarily greater than that of the other.<br><br>I have to repeat, the way you see things as all or nothing is paralysing, and unrealistic, and ultimately serves the purposes of the enemy. You seem to expect that either there will be one dramatic act to resolve the situation overnight, or all is lost. <br><br>Demonstrations, letters, boycotts, lectures, screening documentaries, workshops, etc., etc., will not by themselves save Palestinian lives, nor will they stop the Israeli military machine. But what they WILL do, is create and maintain a vital fertile ground where information and help can be exchanged, and where new things can continue to grow. <br><br>Palestinians live with death, they are born to a world where death can be as near as the chair next to theirs in a classroom, or their bedroom window, or around the corner as they're going to the store. No Palestinian family has escaped the devastation of losing of someone they love, but ask any Palestinian, especially the ones directly in the line of fire, and over and over again, they will tell you that the death they fear most of all, is the death of memory, the death of their identity, their death AS A PEOPLE.<br><br>Remember, twenty years ago, the WORD Palestinian was a virtual taboo.<br><br>Forty years ago, there was no "Palestinian cause" at all -- the Palestinians themselves were voiceless and invisible. The "PLO" was created at the time to be a puppet of various Arab regimes, designed to further their own hidden agendas, and its so-called "head" Ahmed Shuqeiri, was a clown for sale to the highest bidder, with no credibility and not even a pretence of speaking for real Palestinians.<br><br>'The Palestinian Problem" was a <!--EZCODE ITALIC START--><em>refugee</em><!--EZCODE ITALIC END--> problem, dealt with mainly by providing sacks of flour and tins of oil, maybe a few lentils, to the human beings packed like animals in subhuman conditions, behind barbed wire.<br><br>Although Yasser Arafat has been libelled and slandered and mythologized beyond recognition, and nobody will argue that he was perfect, most Palestinians deeply respect him for his single greatest accomplishment, which was to wrest the "Palestinian cause" away from the Arab regimes and the UN bureaucrats, and put it firmly in the hands of real Palestinians.<br><br>One way he did this, was by taking a handful of "camp" refugees who had lost all hope, as he once put it, and turning them into resistance fighters. The contrast between the ragtag Palestinian men and women who had taken up arms to fight and sometimes even score victories against the Israeli forces, and the hypocritical rhetoric of the "suits", was devastating to the so-called "Palestine Liberation Organization", which was exposed as the fig leaf it was. That was how Fateh came to take over the PLO and how the PLO became the voice of Palestinians, and how the Palestinians went about breaking the wall of silence and indifference that had buried them.<br><br>It's easy, from one's comfortable armchair, to criticize the way some renegades later went about it, plane hijackings and the like. Yet those same critics had no problem celebrating the "birth of Israel" and less of a problem consigning generations of Palestinian survivors to a living hell.<br><br>Many of those same critics think that it's perfectly reasonable to subject 1.4 million people under military occupation to starvation, depriving them of water in the scorching summer, bulldozing their homes and killing several people, including children, in order to obtain the release of one occupation soldier.<br><br>So, f**k them, until they can come up with one moral yardstick for measuring all acts, regardless of who commits them.<br><br>But armed resistance is only one very small aspect of the Palestinian struggle. Even more important is the constant nurturing of a vibrant and evolving Palestinian identity, and of Palestinian generations capable of leading and defending their people, at home and abroad, not militarily, of course, but culturally, politically and legally.<br><br>When one Palestinian is murdered, thousands of people march in the funeral, console the family, provide them with shelter if their home has been destroyed, share their food and raise the orphaned children. Other Palestinians inform the outside world, through photos, video and testimony, and records are kept by the many Palestinian NGO's, and shared with their counterparts abroad through a global network formed between foreign and local activists.<br><br>Doctors, teachers and engineers are trained and hospitals and schools and roads are built and equipped because of this network of local and foreign activists. Psychologists are trained and volunteers come from abroad to help traumatized people cope with the horrors they've experienced.<br><br>These people, and so many others, did not start out as informed activists. They may have started out as someone who saw a poster for some lecture, or who met someone during a demonstration, or whose university or church or school screened a documentary film. Who knows what brought them to that critical point where they had something to give and the motivation to give it, and how many lives were saved because of that? <br><br>How many Palestinian lawyers and doctors and nurses and teachers and musicians and artists and writers and contractors and film-makers and journalists and physical therapists, owe their very existence to the assistance they received from countless faceless people who couldn't, or wouldn't go to Palestine, but who gave or did what they could? Who only learned that Palestinians even exist as people, not as a bunch of bloodthirsty fanatic "terrorists" because of the countless anonymous individuals who worked so hard to inform and educate people in their societies?<br><br>To you, maybe they are playing "a game", they're irresponsibly "egging people on"? Who are they "egging on"? Palestinians don't need to be "egged on" to fight to survive, to fight the occupation. And to be an activist is damn hard work; the only reward you are likely to get is spiritual and moral. If you need to be "egged on" to do it, you won't last long. <br><br>I think a big part of where you're coming from, is that the Israeli Left, the Israeli human rights activists, tend to be isolated and scorned among most Israelis, when they're not being accused of treason etc. It's very hard to be active and make a contribution without the moral support of a strong network, people who care about each other and will cover each other's back, eat and talk together, baby-sit each other's kids, argue and discuss various issues and strategies, etc.<br><br>The Palestinians may be weak militarily, but they are very strong emotionally and morally and spiritually, partly because of their circumstances, which force them to be interdependent. But a big part of their remarkable stoicism and high morale in the face of a vastly more powerful, genocidal army, comes from the certainty that they have right on their side, and that there are good people all over the globe who recognize this.<br><br>They know that they will pay a very high price as individuals, but they also know that they have no choice.<br><br>They're taking the long view, because the short view offers nothing but despair. Nobody's offering them compensation or even a viable alternative, so the only question left for many Palestinians, is whether to die in silence, or to die shouting to the world and to their own future generations. <br><br>They've chosen to shout, and are asking that their shouts be heard. Not everyone hears their shout in the same way: some hear it as a call to immediate action, others to open their hearts and minds. Note that their shout has gone from inaudible to loud in 40 years, two generations (an instant in Middle Eastern time).<br><br>Why are you telling people not to bother, to shut their ears, to shut their mouths, because it's not enough? What alternative are you offering? Are you sure it's necessarily better? <p></p><i></i>