Aziz Abu SarahBereaved Families Forum, All For Peace Radio |
|
“ Before I personally was affected, there was the massacre at the Aqsa in 1990 and our neighbor who lived right next door died as a martyr. I remember at that time, we went to their house to visit and gave our condolences. Everyone was outraged; everybody was sad. But after one...two... three weeks, a month passed by and one started to forget. My brother at that time was in prison. But there’s a feeling that’s a little different when you see something going on around you than when it happens in your own home. ” [Source in Complete Interview]
“ The only thing that was clear to me was that my brother was killed and the soldiers were the ones who killed him. Because of this, I grew up thinking that my goal in life was to seek revenge. Of course, I could not stand anything Jewish. I did not learn Hebrew, and even when we had Hebrew classes at school, I used to run away from the class... I joined [the Fatah] youth movement and a while later I was a member of their Administrative Staff and slowly I became head of the Cultural Committee there concerning writing and their youth magazine in Jerusalem, and those kind of things. While doing that, I thought that it was highly possible for me to get revenge through what I wrote, to influence others and to say what I thought... The more extreme I was in my writing, the more people enjoyed reading them.... The more I wrote the angrier I felt, and I realized that that did me more harm than good! ” [Source in Complete Interview]
“ I think it’s very influential to be able to deliver a message - usually, the media is used negatively. They look for the items, the actions, that make people get angry and scream at each other. I went on an Israeli TV show a while ago, and there were five of us together. One of the things we were told was not to wait for the other person to answer, just talk. Don’t wait until someone else stops. If you want, just cut him in the middle of his sentence or stop him. They usually look for things that spur up trouble more than things that promote peace. ” [Source in Complete Interview]
Community Responses to Peace Work:
“ The most common phrase that comes up from both sides is, “We want peace, but they don’t,” and each talk about their “new start.” When I’m at a Palestinian school, I hear a lot the words like “We’ve stopped the bombings, we want to make peace, we are the pitiful ones in this whole arena.” This is very understandable. On the Israeli side, I hear, “We’ve evacuated Gaza, but they still want to kill us, and whatever we do is not enough.” These are usually the most common answers I hear. In every classroom, the first thing that pops up is, “We want, but they don’t.” But sometimes, it gets really personal. A student might accuse you of being a traitor, betraying your brother or father or mother: “How could you come talk to me about peace with someone like him? How could you put your hands in those of a Jew’s or vice-versa? How could you do such a thing?” This is very hard for me at times, it’s hard to deal with it, because you feel yourself being attacked personally. But it’s very important for one to stay calm, and to understand that whatever is coming out, comes out one of pain. ” [Source in Complete Interview]
“ For the Palestinians, we surely do use the word martyr. [...] It is sometimes hard for an Israeli to accept the word martyr and one of the reasons for that is that they just don’t understand it’s meaning. Anyone who is murdered violently or in an unnatural way could be called a martyr. According to religion, even if a person drowned in the name of religion, he is called a martyr. We’ve decided to refer to the Palestinians as martyrs because that is the way we feel about them. God is really the one who decides, but what we have decided is each person can choose the name he wants to use without judging anyone else. It is hard for a Palestinian to hear someone use the word martyr when referring to a soldier killed in a bombing by a Palestinian. ” [Source in Complete Interview]
Community Responses to Peace Work:
“ There are those who completely support what I’m doing, and there are also those who completely don’t. I have both Arab and Jewish friends, and I have Jewish friends that do not support what I’m doing. But none of my friends have stopped talking to me or stopped wanting to be my friend because of what I do. Each one has his own opinion, and there are many who do not have hope that people can change. ” [Source in Complete Interview]
Occupation and Holocaust:
“ I also like going to the Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Museum, but it’s really hard to do that as a Palestinian because if you admit that the Jews have gone through some really hard times, then that means I accept their being here, and that the occupation is OK, and that is something that’s not true. To accept the fact that they’ve been through a lot is one thing, and to say that the occupation is OK is another thing. It’s not about land, but I’m trying to understand how they think, and I’m learning about what they have gone through. This helps me understand where the other person is coming from. I can’t just say, OK, they just came here all of a sudden and they have no history. Being able to understand how they think allows me to understand why they act the way they do. Again, this doesn’t mean I agree with their actions. A lot of people whom I talk to think that my working for peace means that I accept their taking our land, their killing my brother, etc. Until now, I believe that what the soldier has done to my brother is inhumane, I think it’s wrong. Until now, I think that the occupation is wrong and it needs to stop. ” [Source in Complete Interview]
Political Peace Processes/Political Leadership:
“ In the end, I guess that the political leaders are the ones that are going to have to do something - there are certain things that I personally cannot do. If I sign a paper with an Israeli and solve the whole conflict, it would be great. But I’m not the one who will do this. In the end, it will be Sharon or someone else, maybe Abu Mazen or his successor who will sign the paper. I think that the grassroot’s work is very important. In the previous peace process - the Oslo Convention -people felt no change taking place, nothing that made them feel peace. i.e. There was no change in education. The leaders thought that if they only signed papers for a peace process, everything would change, and this belief is erroneous. If the common people did not understand or interact or agree with what is going on, it’s hard for anyone to succeed in fulfilling a treaty. ” [Source in Complete Interview]
Israeli/Palestinian Power Dynamics:
“ Take for example the checkpoints and the soldiers who stand at checkpoints. One of my friends refused to enroll in the army,so I asked him why he did so. He said: “when I am at the checkpoint, I become a god. I don’t feel like a soldier. It doesn’t matter what is right or wrong. I feel like I am god and I decide everything. As a human being, I can’t take the place of God, so I refuse to stand at checkpoints.” I look at those who do stand at the checkpoint, as victims, because after they come out of a place like that, they can never be normal human beings. It becomes hard to act like one. If you’re 18 years old and you’re taught that it’s OK to humiliate someone aged 60, you will think the same way when you go back home, it’s not going to change. Both societies think that they need to destroy the other but they don’t see that they are destroying themselves along the way. ” [Source in Complete Interview]
“ There is a story that talks about a person who got to the seashore and found a lot of starfish dying there. So he began throwing them back into the water. Another person standing there told him, “You won’t be able to do anything; what you’re doing will not have a lot of influence. Look, there are 10,000 starfish, you won’t make a difference.” So he picked one starfish up and replied, “This is the difference that I can make,” and he put the starfish back into the water. ” [Source in Complete Interview]
“ In the movie Lord of the Rings, there’s a point where Gandolf sits with the young guy, Frodo, the bearer of the ring, and Frodo tells him, “ I wish this ring had never gotten to me, I wish none of this ever happened to me, I wish this responsibility didn’t fall on me.” So Gandolf replies, “We don’t choose the time or the things that we go through, but we do get to choose how we want to use the time that is given to us.” Sometimes the things you go through that are really tough make you the person you are, who wouldn’t be as strong if you had a simple, easy life. ” [Source in Complete Interview]
“ I learned that in order for me to live here, I needed to know Hebrew. This gave me a really bad feeling, but when you have to do it, you have to do it. When I went to all the Arab institutions that taught Hebrew, I realized that none of their graduates advance much after that, so I knew that I had to learn at a Jewish institution... Everyone in my class were either Jewish or foreign, and I believe that the first change in me started here. In this class there was something a little different. The teacher was nice to me, the students were nice to me. I didn’t find the racism I had encountered all my life... Even when I was with them, I used to question their kindness - why were they treating me like this, why were they nice to me? Maybe they’re trying to get something out of me. Maybe they were from the intelligence service. ” [Source in Complete Interview]
“ I think that we do need a third party, but that party should not be biased... America which is the most involved right now, is one-sided. I keep hearing Bush saying that Israel is our ally and no matter what happens, we will always choose to be their ally. These phrases will make any Palestinian wonder how he or she could trust America to be a mediator. It has been Israel’s ally from the beginning, so it will definitely not help the situation. This will not help at all, and what America doesn’t know is that these actions hurt Israel as much as they hurt Palestine. ” [Source in Complete Interview]
^ back to top
