Standing on the side of justice is never something to fear – overcoming being made to feel guilty for crimes we did not commit.
The most powerful weapon is our humanity
Dina Elmuti – The Electronic Intifada – 13 July 2011
When I left Palestine a few weeks ago, I left behind more than the place I had come to call home, its generous people I had come to call family, and all the warm, exotic sights, smells, tastes and sounds of a world that revived my spirit, conscience, passion and will to live.
I left my heart behind. Driving away toward Tel Aviv, the Palestine I know and love began to fade into the background, as I quickly made one last mental map of the geography of occupation around me, evident in the carefully-plotted demarcations separating “us” from “them.” A world compartmentalized; the settlements, gates, trenches, and watchtowers confine my heart, leaving a caustic pang in my gut as I continued driving on my way through modern-day apartheid.
After passing an extensive security inspection at the checkpoint a mile outside of Ben Gurion Airport’s main terminal, my family and I were permitted entry into the airport where we stood in line, along with all the other Muslims, Arabs, and people of color, waiting and watching our baggage unpacked and inspected for the second time around, continuing to answer the same questions for the tenth time from the tenth person.
Watching every last thing unpacked and inspected with a chemical sniffing device, I realized that Palestinians are not the only ones strangled and imprisoned by this system of oppression and constant fear of existential threats. Israelis are too. Behind barbed wire and power-operated gates controlled by guard towers and security cameras, their lives have been reduced to the state of animals trapped behind metal cages in the zoos they’ve built themselves on the bloodshed and demolition of others.
A life consumed by fear, intimidation, and oppressive censorship not only dehumanizes the oppressed but the oppressor as well. As I watched the guards meticulously leaf through and swab the pages of my books for bomb residues or any other suspicious evidence, I pitied the ethnocentric hysteria and racial profiling creating Israel’s most dangerous threat and worst enemy: itself.
A life consumed by fear, intimidation, and oppressive censorship not only dehumanizes the oppressed but the oppressor as well. As I watched the guards meticulously leaf through and swab the pages of my books for bomb residues or any other suspicious evidence, I pitied the ethnocentric hysteria and racial profiling creating Israel’s most dangerous threat and worst enemy: itself.
In recent days, hundreds of activists from all around the world flew in to Ben Gurion Airport. Dozens have been deported and dozens more are in detention for nothing more than accepting an invitation from Palestinians to visit them in the West Bank in a peaceful challenge to Israel’s apartheid.
They have refused to be bullied into omitting where they’ll be going or who they’ll be seeing. They won’t play the “tourist card” or hide their affiliation with a noble cause in exchange for a stamped visa by an oppressive state.
Standing on the side of justice is never something to fear, and to ultimately be liberated from our oppression, we must first have the courage to liberate ourselves from the inferiority complex that has debilitated us too long. And when we do, the look on the oppressor’s face will no longer strike fear into our hearts or nail us to the spot. Their voices will no longer petrify us, and we will no longer be uneasy in their presence or be made to feel guilty for crimes we did not commit.
If defending the lives of children, traumatized by being shot at while flying kites, by having to witness their families massacred right before their eyes, and by having their childhoods stolen before ever beginning for the crime of being born Palestinian, makes us criminals and terrorists, then so be it. …source
