Moral
Indignation: To Be Free Of Being Oppressor Or Oppressed?
11 February 2010By Mazin Qumsiyeh
NOTE to people near Bethlehem-Beit Sahour area: We
need you here tomorrow (Thursday) and Friday mornings
at 9 AM at Ush Ghrab. Thursday up the hill and Friday
below the hill for planting (see below).
At around 3 PM today (Wednesday), a friend who lives
near the area of the threatened land of Ush Ghrab
called to say the military just arrived and are
bulldozing the top of the hill. As I explained in a
previous email, this hill of over 1000 dunums is in
Beit Sahour surrounded by Palestinian homes
on all sides. From this hill the soldiers shelled the
town destroying and damaging many homes. But the
Israeli occupation army vacated the military base in
2006 (a site of nonviolent resistance for many years).
I arrive within five minutes and see extensive
activities. The soldiers show me an
order issued January 29th 2010 with a map showing
closure for a significant size (much more even than
the original military base). I call some people and
they call others and soon we have over 40 people. The
order is in Hebrew and no one reads Hebrew. Later at
night, we do partial translation and it is typical of
all Israeli orders: using vague justifications of
security to achieve what is clearly land thefts,
harassments, etc. The private land owners have decided
last week to plant trees on Friday. WE will expand
this and also asked people to come Thursday to the
site. Video at:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i45TKWxMPNU (but again
please understand this is amateur video). Please join
us and support popular resistance Thursday and Friday.
The quick response by many activists to the phone
calls got me to think about why there are so many
people willing to drop everything and work for justice
while other people (e.g. soldiers) blindly obey orders
manifestly illegal per International law or simply
stay silent (silence is complicity)? There were many
white South Africans who joined the ANC and other
indigenous liberation movements while others stayed
silent or participated in the crimes! There were many
Israelis who abandoned Zionism and joined the local
struggle. Others go about their daily lives oblivious
to what is happenning behind the fences of segregation
(Geder HaHafrada in Hebrew). But why would one
employee of Yad Vashem obey orders and simply tell all
visitors of the perpetual victimhood and that Zionism
is the answer while another gets fired for simply
pointing out to a few visitors that just down the hill
is the ethnically cleansed village of Deir Yassin
where the future leaders of Israel committed a
massacre of indescribable brutality in 1948.
What exactly distinguishes people? Why does someone
like Alan Dershowitz choose to support torture,
support racism, and defend war crimes and crimes
against humanity? And why does someone like Hedy
Epstein, a survivor of the concentration camps, choose
to go on hunger strike to support the besieged and
impoverished 1.5 million people of Gaza? Why does a
Palestinian politician drive a gas-guzzling SUV and
wear nice suits while other Palestinians choose to
stand in front of a Bulldozer or an army tank and get
shot or thrown in jail? Why does a privileged white
person in America choose to be silent and pay taxes
that go to kill Iraqis, Afghanis, and Palestinians?
Why does another privileged white person choose to
come and join us here in the struggle? Rachel Corrie,
a young 23 year old American student was intentionally
crushed by an Israeli bulldozer while trying to defend
a Palestinian pharmacist home. Tom Hurndall and others
paid dearly. Thousands of Internationals come here
annually to support our struggle. Why do millions
remain compliant? Is it not true that "silence is
complicity" and "you can't be neutral on a moving
train"?
It would be superficially and wrong to say things
along the line of having a conscience can
differentiate people. We all have seen people switch
and join the struggle all the time telling us that it
is indeed not people by ideas and education. So what
can convince them to change? A colleague
wrote once that those who comply live more comfortably
but they are like the "house slaves". In the time of
slavery, there were field slaves who were in the sun
all day doing the work and then the privileged house
slaves who dressed nicely, fed nicely but who were
still slaves. They got promoted to
house slaves by being more compliant and trustworthy
(to the masters). I personally believe the slave
owners were also slaves. I believe those who rejected
the system and yes occasionally got the whip, those
were free in their hearts and minds. Today, I believe
those who are suffering are in
many ways freer and more comfortable in their skin
than all the privileged masters and house slaves. I
believe that freedom comes to the slave owners
themselves when they free their slaves and when in the
meantime the house slaves refuse to be house slaves.
In our situation here, I believe many Israelis and
Palestinians are enslaved and they don't even know it.
There are few Who managed to shed the self-imposed
chains around their brains (as my late grandfather
advised us when we were kids). I find that the
friendship and support of those is the best bliss in
life. But still the question lingers of why people
behave teh way they do and, perhaps more importantly,
how do people change. We would like to hear your views
on this.
What can help us reach people to get them to show some
moral fortitude, to show some spine, to shed their
chains, to be free of being oppressor or oppressed? I
want to share your views with the rest of the world
(these emails reach tens of thousands of people). If
you share your view with me
please tell me it is OK to post it at the website
qumsiyeh.org or you want kept private.
If you reached here thank you, and if you live near
Bethlehem area, come join us Thursday and Friday
mornings (9 AM) for planting trees (Friday only), for
camaraderie, for activism, and for expressing moral
courage.
Mazin Qumsiyeh, PhD, Popular Committee to Defend Ush
Ghrab (PCDUG), A Bedouin in Cyberspace, a villager at
home http://www.qumsiyeh.org
©
EsinIslam.Com
Add Comments