Thomas Are

I had two nightmares last night.

In the first, I was watching a boxing match between a “defender” and a “terrorist”.  The defender was wearing brass knuckles, carried a club, wore a helmet and danced freely around the ring. On the other side, the terrorist had only one arm, was forced to stay within a six foot circle, had no head protection, and was about a tenth the size of the defender.  To top it off, the referee was the defender’s Uncle Sam.

My second nightmare was when I woke up and realized that it was not a dream.  It is what is commonly referred to in the U.S. as the “Peace Process” between Israel and Palestine.  Our politicians and news pundits keep saying over and over again, “We must get the Israelis and Palestinians back to the negotiation table. They must work out a peace plan between the two of them.”

Such a dream is a nightmare.

But, it is real life to about 4 million Palestinians living in some of the worst conditions anywhere on the planet.  It is watching helpless as your land is stolen from you to build Jewish settlements connected by Jewish only roads. It is struggling to find water. It is  having the road on which you live blocked by walls and barriers and check points controlled by a power determined to make your life so miserable that you will leave or die.

A YWCA of Palestine Action Alert reports:

Four Palestinians, ages 13-19 have been executed in less than 32 hours. Over 500 have been injured just since Saturday, October 3^rd. More than forty have been shot with live ammunition while another 150 or more shot with rubber bullets. Fourteen ambulances have been attacked. It is for all these reasons that the Red Crescent has declared a “state of Emergency.” We call it the Endless State of Emergency.

Writing for the Alert, Marc Ellis  continues:

Many of those killed were innocent of the alleged crimes they were said to have committed. They were children coming home from school like 13 year old Abed Al-Raham Obeidallah who was shot in the Aida Refugee Camp or Hadeel Al-Hashlamon, an 18 year old young woman trying to cross the Hebron checkpoint. She was shot 10 times and left to bleed out. Later her ambulance was met by her father, the doctor on duty on the eve of the Jewish Holiday, the Atonement or what Jews call Yom Kippur who had to pronounce the death of his own daughter. In one case one of the alleged “terrorists”, Fadi Alloun, 19 years old, was going home and was gunned down by the police in Jerusalem when he approached them for help against an angry mob of settlers calling, “Death to Arabs” in Jerusalem.[1]

Perhaps the worse part of the nightmare is not the massacres and bombardments that rain down every few years. The worst of it is having your name smeared as a terrorist, deserving to be punished, while those who harass you are lifted up as moral heroes.

So, get back in the ring, the U.S. says to the Palestinians, as it throws its full weight and support behind Israel. It is the only hope you have of fulfilling your dream of being a respected and prosperous people.   But to the Palestinian, it is no longer a dream. It is not even a nightmare. It is the only life they are allowed to live.

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