[Peace-discuss] Fwd: [HumanRights] Compassion fatigue?

Sun May 24 14:25:19 EDT 2015

Thank you, Mort.   I needed to hear this.

On 5/22/15 11:03 PM, Brussel, Morton K via Peace-discuss wrote:
> I can’t forget how Qumsiyeh once visited and talked to us, and in the 
> years since continues his activist passionate work in the Land of 
> Canaan and elsewhere for the Palestinian cause.
> Here’s his latest reflection, about “compassion fatigue”.
>
> —mkb
>
>> Begin forwarded message:
>>
>> *From: *Mazin Qumsiyeh <mazin at qumsiyeh.org <mailto:mazin at qumsiyeh.org>>
>> *Subject: **[HumanRights] Compassion fatigue?*
>> *Date: *May 21, 2015 at 10:57:29 AM CDT
>> *To: *<brussel at uiuc.edu <mailto:brussel at uiuc.edu>>
>> *Cc: *Human Rights Newsletter <humanrights at lists.qumsiyeh.org 
>> <mailto:humanrights at lists.qumsiyeh.org>>
>>
>> Also posted at http://popular-resistance.blogspot.com/2015/05/dream.html
>> where you can leave comments
>>
>> Compassion fatigue is a term I heard many years ago perhaps when 
>> there were
>> a number of natural and man-made disasters and conflicts in the late 
>> 1980s.
>> The term came to my mind in the last few weeks. Another saying: think
>> globally and act locally. So thinking globally, I was thinking how 
>> humanity
>> could descend to such barbarity around the world. How could African
>> migrants risk their lives to leave countries wrecked psychologically and
>> economically by colonial Europeans to seek to arrive in the same 
>> continent
>> that subjugated them? How could Myanmar’s Rohingya Muslims be slaughtered
>> in the thousands by the majority Buddhists and surviving people end up in
>> boats and sent back to starve and die at sea rejected by nearby countries
>> including countries like Indonesia with Muslim majorities? How could
>> relatives of Jewish holocaust survivors engage in racism and ethnic
>> cleansing for native Palestinians while relatives of Armenian holocaust
>> survivors lead amazingly rich productive caring lives? How could a very
>> wealthy country like “Saudi Arabia” (the quotes are needed because it 
>> is an
>> imposed name for a country stolen by the Saud Family) spend billions to
>> support the US/Israeli agenda of destruction and mayhem in countries like
>> Yemen and Syria? How could a pilot who claims being Muslim drop bombs on
>> Muslim civilians? How could a powerful and rich country like the USA 
>> be so
>> occupied by the Zionist lobby that they send their “police” to train in
>> racism and oppression in Apartheid Israel and then go back to kill blacks
>> in American cities? How does the world tolerate the continued siege 
>> on Gaza
>> and its starving and dying population (the largest open air prison 
>> with 1.7
>> million inmates whose only crime is being born in Palestine)? How 
>> could the
>> world stand by and let Egypt execute political dissidents or imprison 
>> them
>> for decades simply for demanding freedom from the entrenched military
>> dictatorship funded by US taxpayers? The US and Canada Zionist 
>> lobbies just
>> might succeed in getting unconstitutional laws passed to ban standing up
>> for human rights (supporting BDS against the apartheid regime).  It might
>> get worse with the lobby getting the subservient governments to force the
>> political neutered Palestinian leadership to accept a version of 
>> apartheid
>> (and no refugees’ right of return).  But then that is what the PA
>> leadership knew would happen when they signed the articles of surrender
>> known as the Oslo accords.
>>
>> So did humans develop compassion fatigue and does this bode ill for our
>> future as a species? I do not know and cannot predict the future. I can
>> only act against the negative trends and draw closer to other activists.
>> When we do find people who still cares, we latch onto them and try to do
>> something together to keep our sanity. Palestinians were genuinely happy
>> that the Pope decided to canonize two 19th century Palestinians nuns as
>> saints and conclude an agreement recognizing “state of Palestine”.  Those
>> positive people trying to do good things are so needed when so many are
>> either apathetic or directly benefitting Israel while getting rich. 
>> Without
>> the few lights in the darkness, we would all be lost and very depressed.
>> Perhaps this is why the presence of volunteers around us in the 
>> museum and
>> the botanical garden/integrated ecosystem is so crucial to our 
>> health. When
>> we walk or work in the garden with others, we feel reinvigorated 
>> physically
>> and psychologically. In fact when we do any work together, we feel
>> empowered. On Nakba memorial day last week we had a number of activities
>> including installing a large visible plaque that included sections of the
>> famous poem by Tawfiq Ziyad (“here we stay”). The next day, we hosted a
>> workshop on trauma relief through herbal medicines and working on 
>> gardens.
>> We then hosed 44 Nazareth colleagues on a tour of Battir then lunch 
>> at the
>> museum.  Yesterday we attended a meeting on biodiversity, did field work
>> and got two Bedouin children to help us near their camp by picking up 
>> some
>> round rocks we needed for our pool at the museum. They were so nice 
>> and so
>> friendly and their smiles even after the sweaty job will always be 
>> with me.
>> Their community spirit is strong even when they are threatened as a
>> community with evictions (was done to them before). So while thinking
>> globally we are able to act on location and keep going based on a vision
>> that all these borders and divisions and conflicts they foist on us 
>> will be
>> gone one day. We dream of an interconnected free society and of traveling
>> free from Bethlehem to Jaffa to Nazareth to Beirut and Damascus without
>> anyone stopping us at any border.  On my desk is a quote from the Dalai
>> Lama “Never give up. No matter what is going on around you. Never 
>> give up…”
>> Sometimes we do not know the best way forward but we should never 
>> give up.
>> I have a friend in Gaza whose son had spinal cord cancer and now partly
>> paralyzed and the family constantly calls for support. But that is one of
>> dozens of stories, needs fulfilled or unfulfilled etc. It is natural
>> occasionally to have doubts about our future as a species and 
>> frequently to
>> reassess our methods. But we must keep the hope alive. We must keep
>> dreaming, keep trying, keep working, and keep living. We must never give
>> up. We must “stay human” as Vittorio used to write to us.
>>
>> South Africans apologize over forest planted on Palestinian village
>> http://electronicintifada.net/content/south-africans-apologize-over-forest-planted-palestinian-village/14494
>> (incidentally our studies and those of others show how environmentally
>> destructive was the planting of European pine trees to cover-up the
>> destroyed Palestinian Villages)
>>
>> In Gaza, the Nakba is ongoing and you can help us end it
>> http://electronicintifada.net/content/gaza-nakba-ongoing-and-you-can-help-us-end-it/14527
>>
>> US press blacks out Israeli defense minister’s citation of ‘Nagasaki and
>> Hiroshima’ as model for dealing with Iran - See more at:
>> http://mondoweiss.net/2015/05/ministers-nagasaki-hiroshima
>>
>> I was asked about Palestinian heroes:
>> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NfeePEHIAHQ
>>
>> Mazin Qumsiyeh
>>
>> Professor and Director
>>
>> Palestine Museum of Natural History
>>
>> Also on facebook
>> http://palestinenature.org
>> http://qumsiyeh.org
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