[Peace-discuss] Human rights--Mazin Qumsiyeh

[Morton K. Brussel]

An update from Mazin Qumsiyeh on life in the West Bank. He has decided  
to move there from the U.S.   --mkb

Begin forwarded message:

> From: Mazin Qumsiyeh <mazin at qumsiyeh.org>
> Date: July 19, 2009 2:45:43 PM CDT
> To: Mort Brussel <brussel at illinois.edu>
> Cc: Human Rights Newsletter <humanrights at lists.qumsiyeh.org>
> Subject: [HumanRights] A crazy world?
>
> The old Hebron to Jerusalem  (now Hebron-to-wall-near Bethlehem)  
> road was lined up with perhaps over 200 armed special forces.  These  
> are not Israeli but Palestinian "security".  I was going to pick a  
> friend at Dheisheh Refugee camp to eat Knafah (a Palestinian sweet).  
> Every 10 meters (30 ft) for a stretch of over a mile there was one  
> of those security men.  Young people 18-24 years old.  The  
> "Palestinian Authority" spends most of its budget not on healthcare  
> or education or any other item but on security.  We were told  
> President Abbas is coming to the area (either to the headquarters in  
> AlMuqata'a or to the "Presidential Palace" in Artas area very near  
> an Israeli settlement).  After the big motorcade the streets had all  
> been cleared of parked cars.  The police were slow to let the  
> original traffic reopen and for cars to park again.  At the Knafa  
> shop, we had to struggle to get parking and I think it happened only  
> after the owner gave free Knafa to the policemen on duty.  No one  
> knows why streets are closed or what is the occasion for the visits  
> of such dignitaries to our little town of Bethlehem (aka Ghetto  
> 12).  After the Knafa we visited the besieged village of Tqu' just  
> two miles southwest of Bethlehem and we saw the desperation of these  
> villages which get no presidential visits.  This village and dozens  
> like it are besieged by colonial Jewish-only settlements which took  
> most of their best lands and water resources. Here the colonies of  
> Tekoa, El David and Nodekim (where Avigdor Lieberman lives) sit on  
> the lands of the village. The water resources have been confiscated  
> and the village must buy its water from the Israeli company that has  
> for some 40 years been pillaging the village water wells.   Near the  
> entrance and one of the water wells, a roving Israeli checkpoint  
> stopped my car and the young (perhaps Russian) kid sweating and out  
> of his elements wearing heavy cloths and carrying a gun perhaps  
> heavier than he is asks me to step out of the car and to then open  
> the trunk etc.  The home we visited had a father with 10 children  
> way below poverty level but with a dignity and generosity that is  
> legendary for such simple decent village people. Unemployment is  
> rampant and some village people are forced to work in the colonial  
> settlements just to survive. But this family says they would prefer  
> to starve than do that.  The colonial settlements have all their  
> needs of water, infrastructure, and Israeli government support (and  
> new buildings not withstanding Obama's empty rhetoric). The lavish  
> life-style reminiscent of Southern California a few hundred yards  
> away from unbelievable man-made poverty is emblematic of the worst  
> forms of apartheid and human cruelty to fellow humans. On stolen  
> lands and using stolen water, they even have a Jewish only water  
> Park overseeing the desert (the Dead Sea and Jordan are visible)  
> attracting colonial settlers from both sides of the apartheid wall.   
> Oh yes, the three colonies are on the so-called Palestinian side of  
> the wall!. I saw enough for one day and on the way back to Beit  
> Sahour, I console myself with the site of the ruints of a castle of  
> the tyrranical King Herod built near Tqu' 2000 years ago.  He and  
> his brutal rule have long dissappeared while the native people (dark  
> skinned and beautiful, the Canaanitic descendents remain in the  
> people of Tqu').  I wished Palestinain self-declared leaders go to  
> Tqu' and other besieged villages.
>
> The lunatic apartheid system unleashed here over the past 127 years  
> is producing some really weird anomalies beyond the sad story of  
> Tqu' and villages like it.  The intensity of these anomalies have  
> increased recently perhaps heralding in the end of the racist  
> ideologies of chosenness (and us versus them) that manifest itself  
> in Zionism. Weird stories are here told every day:  Ultra Orthodox  
> Jews stoning cars in Jerusalem Saturday (hurting 4) in a rioting  
> that will not be quelled with home demolitions or administrative  
> detentions (let alone rubber coated steel bullets or live  
> ammunition) that Palestinians face regularly. It will be little  
> covered in Western media (self-censored due to Zionist sympathies).   
> Ultra Zionist are creating a new settlement to spite Obama and  
> calling it, wait for this, Obama! The Israel ministry of  
> transportation will change signs to show more "Jewish" (Hebrew)  
> names even when written in Arabic.  Thus Nazareth (English) and An- 
> Nasreh (Arabic) will be scrubbed for the hebrew version (notsrim).   
> Ditto for AlQuds/Jerusalem which will hence be Yerushalaym (the  
> latter is ironically stolen/distorted from the Aramaic Canaanitic  
> name of the city Ur Salem, the house of Salem, the Canaanitic God of  
> Peace). The Israeli foreign ministry hired legions of commentators  
> to scour the internet and produce blogs and comment-back to make  
> Israel look good and Palestinians bad (http://www.kibush.co.il/show_file.asp?num=34520 
>   ).
>
> Israel, which kidnapped Internationals in an act of state piracy in  
> International waters (on their way to Gaza) gave the permission to  
> Egypt to let the same group into Gaza (but for one day). Gaza  
> civilians continue to die due to a siege that is a war crime and a  
> crime against humanity yet few people in position of influence  
> protest. It is also absurd that the Palestinian "leadership" cannot  
> get the courage to rise above the pettiness (both between people in  
> Fatah, and between Hamas and Fatah not to mention the self- 
> marginalization of other groups) or to rise above the trappings of  
> imagined "authority" while not standing with our own people (when  
> was the last time a "leader" was arrested blocking a bulldozer or  
> protecting a family from eviction). Meanwhile Israeli prosecutors  
> quietly dropped a case against a settler who shot two Palestinians  
> at point blank range because the defense threatened to demand  
> Israeli security services expose what they consider information  
> harmful to state security (my guess is that the information is that  
> the defendant like other racist settlers and state security services  
> are team).  Another court released a settler who shot a Palestinian  
> (on Palestinian land) claiming the unarmed Palestinian "appeared  
> threatening." The Palestinian "authority" (which has limited other  
> authorities) banned AlJazeera television and then unbanned it (at  
> least they respond to some pressure).  Hamas and Fatah officials  
> continue to hold hundreds of prisoners from the opposing camps (but  
> only one Israeli occupation soldier, in Hamas's hands).  Meanwhile,  
> the Israeli occupation authorities continue to "harvest" "wanted"  
> Palestinians going to extremes of joining demonstrations, helping  
> cut apartheid fences and egging on demonstrators to use violence and  
> then arresting those that fall into the trap (e.g. as Happened in  
> Ni'lin last week). And the war criminal and disgraced ex-prime  
> minister of the apartheid regime (Olmert) has the Chutzpah to write  
> and publish a column in the Washington Post titled (this is not a  
> joke): "How to Achieve a Lasting Peace: Stop Focusing on the  
> Settlements".
>
> Perhaps all this fits under the misnamed condition called the  
> "Jerusalem syndrome".  Perhaps like the Swine flue (but far more  
> deadly), it is becoming pandemic since it is spreading around the  
> world.  Obama like Condy Rice before him caught it and began to  
> wisper and wimper nonsense (Condi: we said Israel should withdraw  
> from the cities and we mean it; Obama: We said Israel should freeze  
> settlement activities and we mean it). We mean it by giving Israel  
> billions of our taxes, don't you see..  The Prime minister of Canada  
> shamelessly supports a racist entity called "Jewish National  
> Fund" (imagine a "white national fund" that takes lands to clear  
> them of dark-skinned people). And on and on.
>
>
> The few sane people (or at least those saner than the average person  
> here in Apartheid land) get together and try to challenge the system  
> (see for example: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/8149464.stm
> http://www.time.com/time/video/?bcpid=1485842900&bctid=9018740001  )  
> but it is not easy when you are swimming against the tide and is  
> surrounded by sharks swimming the other direction, blocking it and  
> taking bites every once in a while. Fortunately some sane people  
> remain and more are awakened every day.  I meet such great people  
> everyday.   I just gave a talk to group of 40 bright inquisitive  
> young people from around the world and their understanding of the  
> situation was amazing.
>
> "Our strategy should be not only to confront empire, but to lay  
> siege to it. To deprive it of oxygen. To shame it. To mock it. With  
> our art, our music, our literature, our stubbornness, our joy, our  
> brilliance, our sheer relentlessness -- and our ability to tell our  
> own stories. Stories that are different from the ones we're being  
> brainwashed to believe. The corporate revolution will collapse if we  
> refuse to buy what they are selling -- their ideas, their version of  
> history, their wars, their weapons, their notion of inevitability.  
> Remember this: We be many and they be few. They need us more than we  
> need them."
>
> "Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet  
> day, I can hear her breathing."
>
> Both quotes from Arundhati Roy
>
> PS As several readers pointed out to me, the quote I put from Ali  
> Hebshi was simply his retelling of a famous marxist quote but the  
> above are definitely original Arundhati :-)
>
> Mazin Qumsiyeh, PhD
> A bedouin in cyberspace, a villager at home
> http://qumsiyeh.org
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