Yom Kippur

October 9, 2019

Today is Yom Kippur in the Jewish calendar, and it has been  so quiet in the whole area, especially that there is a  Jewish settlement Neve Yacov built after 1967 adjacent to our neighborhood.  Of course Israel refers to it as a northern  neighborhood of Jerusalem.  And since I had not written for a long time,  I decided to reflect on that day.  To start with I looked up what the day stands for so that I am sure the information I already have was correct, and that is exactly what I found.  A day of fasting and atonement, and the holiest day in the Jewish Calendar. 

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Holiest Day

Yom Kippur, also known as the Day of Atonement, is the holiest day of the year in Judaism. Its central themes are atonement and repentance. Jews traditionally observe this holy day with an approximate 25-hour period of fasting and intensive prayer, often spending most of the day in synagogue services.

Observances: Fasting, prayer, abstaining from physical pleasures, refraining from work

Observed by: Jews, Samaritans

Significance: Atonement for personal and national sins, fate of each person is sealed for the upcoming year

I  could not help but wonder whether one day per year is enough for atonement for all the atrocities that have been carried out by Israel against our Palestinian people.  The young men and women languishing in Israeli jails, the children who have been harassed on their way to school and interrogated until they wet their pants, the young couples who are not allowed to live in Jerusalem together because one of them does not have a Jerusalem Identity Card, the Palestinians with foreign passports who are denied entry into their country,  the humiliation that people face at the check points on their daily journey to work. 

The people of Gaza alone need a whole year of atonement for what has been happening to them under those long years of siege, and for daring to protest,  so many lives have been lost.  The farmers,  who are losing access to their land, and its income,  especially during this season when they start picking olives. Over and above,  all those  people who have been evicted from their homes without mercy and have strangers occupy them  under their own eyes, just because they claim that they belonged to Jews before 1948.  How ironic that Palestinians have never been able to claim their homes of pre 1948, not even those Palestinians who stayed in Israel and became Israeli citizens, but were evicted from their homes to other areas in what became Israel.  Let alone all those homes that are being demolished every day not only in the Jerusalem area under the pretext of not having the proper license,  but also in Arab towns inside Israel as well as the West Bank, where those homes have a license from their own Palestinian  municipalities.  Indeed, a grave injustice that the whole world has turned a blind eye to.  No wonder Israel continues to get away with all these measures with impunity. 

As I reread the observances for that day I noticed that  abstaining from physical pleasures was on the list.   Some of  those trigger-happy young Israeli soldiers consider shooting, harassing and torturing our people as a physical pleasure.  So hopefully at least for one day per year our people are being  spared.  But honestly and truly,  is one day per year enough for atonement for  a people who are occupying another people and violating international law and all human rights accords?  By the end of the day the slate is clean and ready to get filled up as soon as the next day starts while the world is watching. 

Too Sad For Words

To My American Friends:

After watching the news about the El Paso, Texas shooting I started writing a note of condolences to my friends in Texas.

It has been sixty-five years since I graduated from from Southwestern University in Georgetown, Texas, but I still have a soft spot for that area despite statements by some of the Texas representatives regarding our region and our rights.  Even those who favor peace and a two state solution never seem to be willing to impose sanctions on Israel for violating human rights.  While the shooting in El-Paso was taking place, Israeli soldiers were shooting young Palestinian children and holding a seven year old boy for interrogation and putting restrictions on the funeral of a released prisoner.  

The world has gone crazy, but at least in our area, we know who the enemy is.  As brutal as it is,  we expect it because it is an occupation, and when we resist an occupation we are not terrorists.  But in a free country when you are even free to carry a gun, and your president feels he can twitter any hate messages all over, it is scary because you never know when the next shooting is going to come from.  Actually,  that is terrorism.  

It  was very interesting to hear comments from people interviewed by CNN criticizing statements by president Trump that help feed this white supremacy phenomenon,  which eventually led to that  shooting episode.   I know you were  still trying to get over the California shooting and here you were faced with the shooting in Texas and in no time it was followed by another one in Dayton, Ohio.

My heartiest condolences to all my dear American friends, whether they are in California, Texas or Ohio;  my heart goes out to all those who lost dear ones.  I just hope that the losses of this past week  would be a lesson for legislators to reconsider some of the legislation regarding  the free access to arms, as well as the hate language that prevails by responsible people like the president.  

The Demolitions of Sur Baher

There was a wide coverage by the media this past week of the brutal demolition of Palestinian homes in Sur Baher in the Palestinian territories.  It was so brutal that the attack by some settlers from the Neve Yacov settlement on the St. James church in Beit hanina with yogart cartons and tomatoes while they were celebrating the end of the summer camp seemed almost harmless despite its racist significance,  and intrusion on the grounds of the church which is very close to our house and where I usually worship.  

Israel claims that it had to resort to the demolitions  for the sake of its security as the homes were too close to the separation wall. How ironic indeed because the Israeli claim for building the separation wall in the first place was for security reasons, but in reality the wall ended up snaking through the Palestinian territories. And now they claim that the buildings are too close to the separation wall so once again in the name of security those buildings had to be demolished although they were not illegally constructed as Israel claims, because they were located on Palestinian territory and had building permits from the Palestinian authority. Where does Israeli security stop? Is the sky the limit or is it the whole Palestinian territories ?

UN officials and the European Union condemned the demolitions and called for an immediate halt to the policy. Canada expressed its deep concern calling on Israel authorities to halt such demolitions which are illegal under international law and undermines efforts for a two state solution (as if there is a chance anymore for the two state solution!!) 

At this stage of Israeli impunity, condemnation and concern have no impact any more, and Israel has been getting away with all its violations of human rights and international law. So unless there is action and Israel is made to pay for its impunity those statements are useless, and have no power to redress such a grave injustice.  We all still remember that it was the boycott and sanctions that helped bring about the fall of the apartheid regime in South Africa, yet the US staunchly shields Israel from such actions and criminalizes any party that imposes sanctions or boycotts Israel. It is worth reminding my readers of Dorothy Thompson’s quotation in 1951 in the early years after the Nakba when she  said "The state of lsrael has got to learn to live in the same atmosphere of free criticism in which every other state in the world must endure." - 

How long will the international community continue to accept such double standards? 

Once again I would like to end with a quotation by Dr. Martin Luther King:

"In the end we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends" Martin Luther King.

Al-Fawanees (The Lanterns)

Once again I attended the closing performance of Al-Fawnees last night after I had been at its opening on Saturday, the 13^th of July 2019.  It ran full house for a whole week at Yabous Cultural Centre in Jerusalem.  Al-Fawanees is a musical composed by my son Suhail and was performed for the first time at the opening of the Ramallah Cutural Palace in 2004.  

The political situation has deteriorated so much since then and East  Jerusalem has become almost another ghetto in which the Israeli occupation has  been trying to  squeeze us into .  It was so important for a show like Al-Fawanees to lift our spirits and put some life into  the streets of East Jerusalem.  We needed such an evening to divert our attention from watching  the news of so much brutality against our people and so  many  absurdities on the political scene. 

For those of you who have read my book Reflections from Palestine: A Journey of Hope, I have a paragraph about it in my last chapter about Music.  The musical is based on a children’s story “The Little Lantern,” by the renowned Palestinian writer,  Ghassan Kanafani, but special lyrics were written for the musical by Wasim El-Kurdi.  The Orchestra of the National Conservatory of Music  accompanied the musical which was quite an achievement from 2004, when Suhail had to work with a German orchestra at the time, but the orchestration was done by Bishara El-Khil.  However Edward Muallem was still part of the  team who trained the children in acting and helped in the production while  the main Director  was Fernando Toby from Colombia.  I know how much effort  was put into this work as I watched Rania, my daughter in-law, and director of Yabous accompanying the family every day from morning to night.  Both their boys were guards in the musical and the girls played in the orchestra, and the team of Yabous and the Conservatory as well as  the volunteers have been outstanding throughout this great work.  Here is a quote from my friend Cedar, who attended the musical:  “Al-Fawanees was delightful, very very enjoyable. BRAVO Suheil and BRAVO for the whole set. The music, orchestra, the child performers.....everything. A performance to be proud of.Congratulations to every one of them and congratulations to Palestine.”

The story about the will of a dying king to his daughter is symbolic.  The princess  cannot inherit the throne until she brings the sun into the Palace before the long candle goes out.  Eventually that was possible with a united population,  and when everyone in the kingdom carried a lantern making their way to the palace.  The princess, realizing the sun cannot enter the palace behind  walls and barriers  had ordered the guards to pull down the gates and walls, so with everyone carrying a lantern into the palace  it seemed like the sun did enter the palace, and  the story ends happily with a great celebration.   The joy on children’s faces as they performed with so much passion,  was shared with the audience who gave them a standing ovation and the clapping went on and on.  

Will we ever enjoy a world without walls or barriers????