On sisters and personal reflection

 This message now reaches over 60,000 individuals directly and many more by forwards. They are mostly activists (perhaps 75-80%), 15-20% spectators and “neutral” people (journalists etc), and perhaps 400 Zionists (which is OK with me as in some cases they may see the light). I usually try to relay situations on the ground that are missing from the manipulated/controlled western “mainstream” media. I also sometimes quote articles for example today I could put links to articles about the extermination in Jabalia and Beit Hannoun.  Craig Murray wrote from Scotland: "A deliberate and complete extermination of the population of Jabalia and Beit Hanoun is happening this very second, so that Israel can annex this piece of Northern Gaza. The world does nothing. Sorry, that is not true. The western world supplies the weapons." And Francesca Albanese wrote: "You can be a celebrity or an ordinary person. If you stay SILENT, PASSIVE, INACTIVE while Palestinians trapped in Gaza - human beings who breathe, feel and dream exactly like you - get slaughtered by an unchecked army, you are no different from those who continued to go by their lives during past genocides who erased millions from the earth." And John Gutterman Tranen wrote: "The IOF observed Yom Kippur by turning Jabalia into an extermination zone. May they never be forgiven and may their names be removed from the book of life." and John Lyons, ABC Sydney correspondent, wrote from Beirut: "Israel has bombed one of the main water channels from Litani River. Thousands of hectares now without irrigation. This will cause huge food shortages. On top of heavy shelling and “widespread” (HRW) use of chemical weapons by Israel (white phosphorus) on south Lebanon. This is devastating."

On some (rather rare) occasions I state my own fears, hopes, and thoughts. This message is one to do so more poignantly. What prompted me to do this is a message from Hiam in Gaza (displaced now a fourth time and living with her surviving family in a tent). Hiam lost an eye to an Israeli bullet in 2001 (she was 7 years old then) and we had hosted her then in our home in the US as we got her a prosthetic eye (which she has since outgrown and now merely puts a batch on her eye. Hiam, now 30 years old, has a 10-year-old son Mohannad whose school was bombed. She still calls me Baba (dad) and calls Jessie Mama (Mom) and our son Akhoya (my brother). Her daily description of the horrors she is witnessing around her and her feelings keeps me awake at night. Islam whose son Mohammad on a whee chair was partly burned with his sister from the Israeli shelling of their tent. But the two families of Hiam and Islam are two of many I am in touch with in Gaza and they are ones still alive (awaiting the machine of extermination to reach them). I dread the coming winter for them all (1.9 million people). Sometimes they tell me they envy the dead (>200,000 dead in Gaza in the last 12 months) as they are starving and since most of them are highly religious they believe in an afterlife which has no suffering and pain.

Hiam  and her son Muhannad in 2023 (before the horrors) 

Mohammad Abulkhair in early 2023 (before that home was demolished and he was burned with his sister) and his sister Layan being treated

Here in Bethlehem, I talk daily to people who were beaten by Israeli soldiers and settlers or who were denied access to tend to their lands. Just last week we lost Ziad Abuhleil (a person I knew who, in his 60s was my age) beaten to death by Israeli soldiers. And yesterday were were informed of the death in Israeli prison of a Bethlehemite 37 year old (he would be 58th tortured to death this past year). This past week, our friend Dr. Ramzy Baroud lost his sister. Ramzi, a renouned author co-edited with Dr. Ilan Pappe the book "Our Vision For Liberation: Engaged Palestinian Leaders & Intellectuals Speak Out"  (available in Arabic and English) in which I had a chapter. Ramzy wrote Friday 1 AM about his sister:

"Early this evening, Israel has killed, or more accurately assassinated, my sister Dr Soma Baroud, by bombing her taxi in the Khan Yunis area, killing her and six other innocent people. She was the kindest soul, a great mother and a most loving sister. She was a member of a generation of female doctors that revolutionized medicine in the Strip. She healed many people, never charged the poor and until the last day of her life remained principled, loving, kind and patient, even when Israel blew up her house a few weeks ago. I don’t know what else to say, aside from the fact that I suddenly feel as if a child who became orphaned all over again. She was a leader of our family, and fulfilled the role of our mother who died at a young age. I am sorry, sister, that I could do nothing to protect you. I feel deep shame that I live in the very country that paid for and made the bombs that killed you. When the numbness is gone, I will try to stay strong only driven by the hope that we will meet again in Paradise."

Dr. Soma

Dr. Soma is gone as a sister. Hiam and Layan are disfigured as sisters but still alive for now. Each death and each injury and each difficulty produces a scar and Palestine has millions of scars.  For each of us who care, these scars are personal and they do not heal. They shape our minds and hearts. We do not forget. The only thing we try to do is channel these traumas towards actions for justice and for peace. I investigated hundreds of forms of resistance and wrote a book and many papers on popular resistance. This allowed me to experiment and work with various forms of resistance also as therapeutic to our traumas. It is not merely civil disobedience or being in the wrong place at the wrong time that results in our detention or arrest (this of course happened to me as to over 1 million Palestinians). There are hundreds of other forms of resistance which I explained in my book and that I personally practice. I must say in retrospect that the most important form of resistance is resistance to mental colonization (see this paper). That also means not losing our mind over all the atrocities we see but to stay focused on the work that needs to be done. I wrote lessons I learned in a reflection in  2018 still valid.

Keep Palestine alive by staying humane and active