History and current events suggest that many scenarios are possible for our region but stagnation or a preservation of the status quo is not one of them.
By Hadas Ziv for JNews Blog
Tuesday, 14 June, 2011 - 09:48
After despairing of negotiations and of US intervention on their behalf, the Palestinians have turned to the UN and it would seem that the hopes and fears of many are now focused on September.
Meanwhile, there is also much talk of civil disobedience among Palestinians – a huge challenge for Israel. Faced with non-violent action, any response seems doomed to failure.
In the shadow of these developments, states calling themselves our ‘friends’ as well our own leaders, who claim they are doing all they can to ensure our future, have shown themselves to be obstacles to any creative thought. Imprisoned in yesterday’s world, they cripple our ability to change the reality we are shackled to.
For many years I sided with slow processes of change in Israeli society, the sort that leads to a change of heart among individual people, one after the other. I believed that uncovering the reality, the act of pointing to it, could in itself lead to change. The fact that this change has not yet occurred begs the question whether we have not been outspoken enough.
In a recent tour of the South Hebron Mountain region in the occupied West Bank, we witnessed yet again that deliberate policy of dispossession, combining settlers, soldiers, civil administration officials and private security guards – and even ‘organic agriculture’. All serving a single end: the entrenchment of Jewish-settler rule in the occupied territories.
This was why I could not understand the applause in the US Congress. I asked myself, are they blind? Do they really not realize that they are listening to a speech that is one resounding No, and that they are supporting the continuation of despair and hopelessness, which are the most fertile bases for violence?
How does the work of Physicians for Human Rights-Israel fit into this harsh picture? When I reported with pride on a recent project in which we gave hearing aids to 1088 Palestinians with hearing difficulties - I received an online response, wishing that the Palestinian child who can now hear would throw a stone at a car carrying the people I most love, exactly as had happened to the person writing the response.
I could have ignored it; deleted the response from my Facebook page. I decided to answer it, to try and open up a fissure in someone turned so bitter by pain and despair that he can wish such a thing on me, and cannot imagine another future for that Palestinian child apart from a thrower of stones, at best.
I know this is not enough. I know it is too localized and specific but I fear that all that I can do at this moment in time is to insist on empathy and solidarity in a universe whose sole aim is segregation.
At the same time, and on a broader level, I must also continue to insist on equality; because inequality – the fact that we have created a reality of occupier and occupied, dominator and dominated – is the obstacle to true peace.
If we have learned anything from recent history, it is that oppression cannot continue forever. Against all the denials of our Prime Minister, against the refusal to look at reality, I know in my heart that the destiny of any oppressed person is to rise up and revolt.
In another time and place, American Civil Rights activist James Farmer Jr. quoted St. Augustine’s maxim that ‘an unjust law is no law at all.’ ‘Which means,’ he added, ‘I have a right, even a duty, to resist – with violence or civil disobedience. You should pray I choose the latter.’
Hadas Ziv is Director of the Public Outreach Department of Physicians For Human Rights - Israel and former Executive Director of the organisation.
This article may be reproduced on condition that JNews is cited as its source
History and current events suggest that many scenarios are possible for our region but stagnation or a preservation of the status quo is not one of them.
Meanwhile, there is also much talk of civil disobedience among Palestinians – a huge challenge for Israel. Faced with non-violent action, any response seems doomed to failure.
In the shadow of these developments, states calling themselves our ‘friends’ as well our own leaders, who claim they are doing all they can to ensure our future, have shown themselves to be obstacles to any creative thought. Imprisoned in yesterday’s world, they cripple our ability to change the reality we are shackled to.
For many years I sided with slow processes of change in Israeli society, the sort that leads to a change of heart among individual people, one after the other. I believed that uncovering the reality, the act of pointing to it, could in itself lead to change. The fact that this change has not yet occurred begs the question whether we have not been outspoken enough.
In a recent tour of the South Hebron Mountain region in the occupied West Bank, we witnessed yet again that deliberate policy of dispossession, combining settlers, soldiers, civil administration officials and private security guards – and even ‘organic agriculture’. All serving a single end: the entrenchment of Jewish-settler rule in the occupied territories.
This was why I could not understand the applause in the US Congress. I asked myself, are they blind? Do they really not realize that they are listening to a speech that is one resounding No, and that they are supporting the continuation of despair and hopelessness, which are the most fertile bases for violence?
How does the work of Physicians for Human Rights-Israel fit into this harsh picture? When I reported with pride on a recent project in which we gave hearing aids to 1088 Palestinians with hearing difficulties - I received an online response, wishing that the Palestinian child who can now hear would throw a stone at a car carrying the people I most love, exactly as had happened to the person writing the response.
I could have ignored it; deleted the response from my Facebook page. I decided to answer it, to try and open up a fissure in someone turned so bitter by pain and despair that he can wish such a thing on me, and cannot imagine another future for that Palestinian child apart from a thrower of stones, at best.
I know this is not enough. I know it is too localized and specific but I fear that all that I can do at this moment in time is to insist on empathy and solidarity in a universe whose sole aim is segregation.
At the same time, and on a broader level, I must also continue to insist on equality; because inequality – the fact that we have created a reality of occupier and occupied, dominator and dominated – is the obstacle to true peace.
If we have learned anything from recent history, it is that oppression cannot continue forever. Against all the denials of our Prime Minister, against the refusal to look at reality, I know in my heart that the destiny of any oppressed person is to rise up and revolt.
In another time and place, American Civil Rights activist James Farmer Jr. quoted St. Augustine’s maxim that ‘an unjust law is no law at all.’ ‘Which means,’ he added, ‘I have a right, even a duty, to resist – with violence or civil disobedience. You should pray I choose the latter.’
Hadas Ziv is Director of the Public Outreach Department of Physicians For Human Rights - Israel and former Executive Director of the organisation.
This article may be reproduced on condition that JNews is cited as its source