June 3, 2010
A Lone Book in a Concentration Camp...
Layla Anwar
I have nothing to add to the humongous amount of information regarding the latest Jewish Israeli massacre...
And I hail Turkey (with reservations - because no major player however much we may like its immediate politics is a totally benign force). And in some way, if I am to choose between the Persian or Ottoman empire, I would opt for the latter,.anytime...
But Turkey aside, this massacre revealed what we have known all along, the total impotence of Arab regimes...and it also revealed the enormous support the Palestinian cause still mobilizes after 60 years of struggle...
Al-Jazeera Arabic has a full coverage of the latest Israeli massacres, actually it has nothing else but this coverage and interview after interview of testimonies from the activists detained and now released...
All of the testimonies were touching but there is one that stood out, and that testimony was by Mohamed Vall, one of Al-Jazeera's English correspondents. This guy is not only a journalist, he is also a writer, I can tell from the way he spoke...
And it is his story I will focus on tonight....because he encapsulated in a few minutes the whole Palestinian tragedy....but not only...
And despite my strong criticisms of both the Palestinian leadership whether it is Hamas or the PA, and despite my strong criticisms of Palestinian "intellectuals" (thinkers, writers, academics, journalists, activists, bloggers etc...and their supporters) and their most disgraceful stands vis a vis Iraq and the Iranian occupation of Iraq, I still feel that the Palestinian tragedy is not the tragedy of the Palestinians alone but the tragedy of all Arabs. And I still believe that at the core of all the Mideast conflicts up to 2003, at least, the Palestinian issue is the kernel...and by correlation the illegal racist existence of the Jewish entity called Israel...
But since 2003, we have another enemy, at least we Iraqis do, and it is called Iran that has done everything in its power to de-Arabize us through the ugliest forms of torture, ethnic cleansing and exile....worse than whatever has been witnessed from the Zionist entity....
Having said, that I will get back to the testimony I registered most...because it touched me the most...and that is of Mohamed Vall's. I am not sure what Vall's nationality is - maybe he is from Mauritania...but I cannot vouch for that...which reminds me, massive demonstrations are taking place everywhere...including Mauritania, and I saw the Mauritanians carrying pictures of President Saddam Hussein. I thought I'd mention that....because Iraq was a big player that had to be re-sized...and I know for a fact that had Iraq been fully sovereign, with all its military capabilities, Israel would have never dared to engage in such a carnage...
It is so easy to see why Iraq and its President had to go....leaving a huge political and strategic vacuum now filled by Turkey and Iran...
OK, I will try not to sidestep the issue no more...back to Mohamed Vall...as well as other testimonies that show the total savagery of the Jewish entity...
An Egyptian doctor that was released yesterday, said and this was corroborated by other witnesses - the wounded were left to bleed until death, the activists were left with no water, no food, on top of the vessel's deck under the scorching sun....some were tortured while detained, insulted, and the Jewish racism was all too obvious -- the Westerners were treated better than the Muslims and the Arabs on board...
That Egyptian doctor said when the boat anchored in the Israeli port, there were hundreds of Israeli "citizens" applauding their army, even applauding the dying wounded...this is the true nature of the Jewish Zionist...make no mistake about it....it's a sick entity...deeply sick, deeply immoral, deeply vile, deeply racist, deeply murderous....
Mohamed Vall's testimony is fit for a novel...
Ten days before he boarded on his way to Gaza, he was reading an Oscar Wilde novel, a story about some prisoner...he took the book with him...he wanted to finish it during his sea trip...on the boat, Mohamed met an elderly man from Gaza with his wife. The man is a cardiac patient and he took his wife to Istanbul for treatment of colon cancer...this Palestinian couple was never allowed to return home...they boarded that ship in the hope of making it back home....back to Gaza...
When the criminal Jewish Zionist attacked the ship, Israeli soldiers grabbed ALL the belongings of the passengers, tore the suitcases, tore the clothes, confiscated the cells phones, the notebooks, the agendas, the money...and Mohamed's book...Right before the raid, the activists tried throwing their personal belongings into the sea, they did not want their privacy raided...cells phones were smashed, notebooks were thrown into the ocean, money carried for Gaza was distributed to other activists...
The book by Oscar Wilde on the Prisoner was grabbed and Mohamed Vall found himself in an Israeli cell, he was not allowed to take his book with him...but that elderly Palestinian man was there...a new book, a real story...
That elderly Palestinian man was very lost, very despaired, he kept asking Mohamed to stay by his side...as if Mohamed was his only anchor in this Israeli jail...Mohamed, during a period of 11 hours of imprisonment, got to intimately know and live the whole Palestinian tragedy as embodied in that man's story...
When different consuls came to check on their detained citizens....Mohamed said that this elderly man's eyes were filled with sadness and hopelessness...no consul of his country, of his land was there to mediate for him...
He was a prisoner in his own land...a land stolen by force, by brutality, by lies and by deceit...
Mohamed was released and found himself in Jordan...the elderly man was released and was allowed to return to his family in Gaza, but his wife, the cancer patient, is still held up and detained in her own country....in her own land....by foreigners....blond, blue eyed Ashekenazis, Europeans or by black haired, black eyed Africans from Ethiopian origins...
But the Palestinians know that the sympathy and solidarity exhibited in their regard is overwhelming....they are not alone...and history is merciless....it is all recorded in books...invisible books, invisible faces, nameless lists....all is recorded...
Gaza, the greatest concentration camp, the ghetto of the 21st century, enforced by none other than the survivors of concentration camps and ghettos...history is ashamed, she covers her face with a veil of shame...so do the Jews who died in Nazi concentration camps....they feel shame too...a great shame...
And I cannot forget Iraq. For 13 years,13 years of a draconian embargo, an inhuman siege where not 1.5 million people were held hostages, but 24 million Iraqis were living in the greatest concentration camp for over a decade...how many mobilized for us when Iraqis were starving, dying off like flies from diseases and malnutrition...how many ? The names can be counted on the fingers of one hand...
For over a decade, we lived in a ghetto, the hugest ghetto, the hugest concentration camp installed by America and Great Britain....how many spoke for us ? how many sailed towards us ? how many were willing to risk it for us ?
We were and are just a lone book....still a lone book, in a huge concentration camp. An American- Iranian camp.
And I hail Turkey (with reservations - because no major player however much we may like its immediate politics is a totally benign force). And in some way, if I am to choose between the Persian or Ottoman empire, I would opt for the latter,.anytime...
But Turkey aside, this massacre revealed what we have known all along, the total impotence of Arab regimes...and it also revealed the enormous support the Palestinian cause still mobilizes after 60 years of struggle...
Al-Jazeera Arabic has a full coverage of the latest Israeli massacres, actually it has nothing else but this coverage and interview after interview of testimonies from the activists detained and now released...
All of the testimonies were touching but there is one that stood out, and that testimony was by Mohamed Vall, one of Al-Jazeera's English correspondents. This guy is not only a journalist, he is also a writer, I can tell from the way he spoke...
And it is his story I will focus on tonight....because he encapsulated in a few minutes the whole Palestinian tragedy....but not only...
And despite my strong criticisms of both the Palestinian leadership whether it is Hamas or the PA, and despite my strong criticisms of Palestinian "intellectuals" (thinkers, writers, academics, journalists, activists, bloggers etc...and their supporters) and their most disgraceful stands vis a vis Iraq and the Iranian occupation of Iraq, I still feel that the Palestinian tragedy is not the tragedy of the Palestinians alone but the tragedy of all Arabs. And I still believe that at the core of all the Mideast conflicts up to 2003, at least, the Palestinian issue is the kernel...and by correlation the illegal racist existence of the Jewish entity called Israel...
But since 2003, we have another enemy, at least we Iraqis do, and it is called Iran that has done everything in its power to de-Arabize us through the ugliest forms of torture, ethnic cleansing and exile....worse than whatever has been witnessed from the Zionist entity....
Having said, that I will get back to the testimony I registered most...because it touched me the most...and that is of Mohamed Vall's. I am not sure what Vall's nationality is - maybe he is from Mauritania...but I cannot vouch for that...which reminds me, massive demonstrations are taking place everywhere...including Mauritania, and I saw the Mauritanians carrying pictures of President Saddam Hussein. I thought I'd mention that....because Iraq was a big player that had to be re-sized...and I know for a fact that had Iraq been fully sovereign, with all its military capabilities, Israel would have never dared to engage in such a carnage...
It is so easy to see why Iraq and its President had to go....leaving a huge political and strategic vacuum now filled by Turkey and Iran...
OK, I will try not to sidestep the issue no more...back to Mohamed Vall...as well as other testimonies that show the total savagery of the Jewish entity...
An Egyptian doctor that was released yesterday, said and this was corroborated by other witnesses - the wounded were left to bleed until death, the activists were left with no water, no food, on top of the vessel's deck under the scorching sun....some were tortured while detained, insulted, and the Jewish racism was all too obvious -- the Westerners were treated better than the Muslims and the Arabs on board...
That Egyptian doctor said when the boat anchored in the Israeli port, there were hundreds of Israeli "citizens" applauding their army, even applauding the dying wounded...this is the true nature of the Jewish Zionist...make no mistake about it....it's a sick entity...deeply sick, deeply immoral, deeply vile, deeply racist, deeply murderous....
Mohamed Vall's testimony is fit for a novel...
Ten days before he boarded on his way to Gaza, he was reading an Oscar Wilde novel, a story about some prisoner...he took the book with him...he wanted to finish it during his sea trip...on the boat, Mohamed met an elderly man from Gaza with his wife. The man is a cardiac patient and he took his wife to Istanbul for treatment of colon cancer...this Palestinian couple was never allowed to return home...they boarded that ship in the hope of making it back home....back to Gaza...
When the criminal Jewish Zionist attacked the ship, Israeli soldiers grabbed ALL the belongings of the passengers, tore the suitcases, tore the clothes, confiscated the cells phones, the notebooks, the agendas, the money...and Mohamed's book...Right before the raid, the activists tried throwing their personal belongings into the sea, they did not want their privacy raided...cells phones were smashed, notebooks were thrown into the ocean, money carried for Gaza was distributed to other activists...
The book by Oscar Wilde on the Prisoner was grabbed and Mohamed Vall found himself in an Israeli cell, he was not allowed to take his book with him...but that elderly Palestinian man was there...a new book, a real story...
That elderly Palestinian man was very lost, very despaired, he kept asking Mohamed to stay by his side...as if Mohamed was his only anchor in this Israeli jail...Mohamed, during a period of 11 hours of imprisonment, got to intimately know and live the whole Palestinian tragedy as embodied in that man's story...
When different consuls came to check on their detained citizens....Mohamed said that this elderly man's eyes were filled with sadness and hopelessness...no consul of his country, of his land was there to mediate for him...
He was a prisoner in his own land...a land stolen by force, by brutality, by lies and by deceit...
Mohamed was released and found himself in Jordan...the elderly man was released and was allowed to return to his family in Gaza, but his wife, the cancer patient, is still held up and detained in her own country....in her own land....by foreigners....blond, blue eyed Ashekenazis, Europeans or by black haired, black eyed Africans from Ethiopian origins...
But the Palestinians know that the sympathy and solidarity exhibited in their regard is overwhelming....they are not alone...and history is merciless....it is all recorded in books...invisible books, invisible faces, nameless lists....all is recorded...
Gaza, the greatest concentration camp, the ghetto of the 21st century, enforced by none other than the survivors of concentration camps and ghettos...history is ashamed, she covers her face with a veil of shame...so do the Jews who died in Nazi concentration camps....they feel shame too...a great shame...
And I cannot forget Iraq. For 13 years,13 years of a draconian embargo, an inhuman siege where not 1.5 million people were held hostages, but 24 million Iraqis were living in the greatest concentration camp for over a decade...how many mobilized for us when Iraqis were starving, dying off like flies from diseases and malnutrition...how many ? The names can be counted on the fingers of one hand...
For over a decade, we lived in a ghetto, the hugest ghetto, the hugest concentration camp installed by America and Great Britain....how many spoke for us ? how many sailed towards us ? how many were willing to risk it for us ?
We were and are just a lone book....still a lone book, in a huge concentration camp. An American- Iranian camp.
Link: arabwomanblues.blogspot.com/
No comments:
Post a Comment