No photographs here of dead children, Palestinian and Israeli nor of grieving parents, Israeli and Palestinian. That would be too easy, an insult to the private suffering, the inconsolable grief of families I do not know, but what I do know on my own body, in my own heart, that Occupation makes all brutalities possible, complete power over a trapped people creates complete hatred of the Occupier that sings its own song through the decades. We who have had the power over the years, through the vote, through public outcry, through civil disobedience, to make our governments, American and Australian, to stop their cynical support of Israels use of military force to weaken a people, have played a role in these murders of childhood. Occupation means that Palestinian children have no childhood except one of restrictions, worry and rage. Occupation means that new generations of Israeli young people now think Arabs are only to be hated and burned alive in the forests of Jerusalem. Guns and armament flow from factories in Europe, Russia, America making more billionaires and more dead children; soon more bullets will be fired every day then children are born, but wealth is made, the wealth of nations that care so much about balancing their budgets. Shady deals, applauded deals, the roar of newly bought killing machines, the death of children. At 74, I know my words can slip into gray places, the place where the shades of the dead can be found, those of us so close to our own leave takings, what will we say to the children whom we threw into the cauldron of our own Greed, our own armored Childishness--we knew that Occupations destroy the present and the future but History, we said, demanded the soldiers with guns break down your doors in the middle of the night and and take away your children by the thousands, putting them in detention without end. Now at least you have names, Muhammad Abu Khdeir, the Occupied, and Eyal Yifrach, Naftali Fraenkel and Gilad Shaar, the Occupiers--lifeless. We knew that organized hatred of Others is the end of the sweetness of life for us all. This we know in our bones in other forests. The mothers and the fathers of the lifeless now look up and say, no more killing, no more of our children sacrificed to our failures of the heart. Their voices I can hear even in the darkness. We must work harder to break through the deadlocks of national wills; time is running out for those at the threshold of their lives and for ourselves.
Posted on: Sat, 05 Jul 2014 03:21:55 +0000
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