By LAUREN GELFOND FELDINGER

JPost – Aziz Abu Sarah was seven when he saw television reports of Palestinians throwing rocks at IDF soldiers. It was 1987 and the first time he heard the word intifada. He wasn’t clear what the differences were between Palestinians and Israelis or Muslims and Jews, though the words were starting to echo through his home. The Palestinian uprising against Israel was just about to burst into his east Jerusalem neighborhood of Eizariya.

Aziz Abu Sarah.
Photo: Ariel Jerozolimski

At the time the village was small, with only a few hundred families. When his neighbors were suspected of joining the gangs of children and teenagers throwing stones at cars, buses or homes, Jewish neighbors would march into town in the hundreds with sticks, he remembers.

“They would come for revenge and we would run up on the roof to be safe. They would go house to house breaking windows, and we would call to each other from the roofs, reporting, ‘Now they are here, now they are there.’ We were lucky because we didn’t live close to the main road and had land around our house, so they never got to us, but I could see them and hear them, 200-300 meters away.”

By the time he was nine, Abu Sarah started packing an onion in his backpack. “It cleans your nose and can maybe save your life,” he explains. “I almost fainted a few times running away when Israeli soldiers were throwing tear gas.”

Over the following years of the first intifada, he would secretly join the rock throwers. And eventually – following tragedy after tragedy, including an intifada-related death in the family – he would join and then become a leader in the young vanguard of Fatah.

Abu Sarah, now 29, dedicated years of his young life to promoting violent resistance and revenge. Until he discovered a different way to fight for Palestinian rights. To read the full Portrait Click Here

Abu Sarah is now the director of ME projects at George Mason University.
Photo: Ariel Jerozolimski

Copyrights C.M Abu Sarah @ azizabusarah.wordpress.com

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Israel’s approval of hundreds of new housing units in East Jerusalem is currently generating uproar in the international community, as it should. However, as the media has clamored to cover the government decision, many missed yesterday’s demolition of two Arab houses in the Jerusalem neighborhoods of Issawiyah and Silwan.

I was visiting my parents’ home in Issawiyah yesterday when the trouble started. I walked outside, only to encounter hundreds of Israeli police and soldiers on every corner and roof in the neighborhood. It didn’t take me long to realize that a house was about to be demolished.

The soldiers had closed the entrances to the neighborhood to prevent media and protesters from accessing the demolition. But I was most struck by the soldier’s facial expressions. No one would have guessed from their expressions that they were about to leave two families homeless. Some of the soldiers were joking, laughing and having the time of their lives. I was taken aback. How can a human-being enjoy such a thing? Regardless of your political views, ethnic background and religious beliefs, leaving two families homeless should never be a source of joy. At the least, one might expect some amount of sobriety in response to the gravity of the situation.

Most families in the neighborhood had turned out to watch the demolition. Children seemed especially interested in the presence of the soldiers. I can only imagine what these kids thought of the event. Perhaps, like me in my childhood, their minds were racing with anger, hatred, and a growing desire to pay back these soldiers. I can’t help but think these kids are the best candidates for future extremists. No one should be surprised if any of those children turn out to be the next “terrorist.”

The best terror prevention is not walls, guns, and oppression. No one will experience true peace, freedom or security by inflicting suffering on others. The soldiers at the demolition yesterday are part of a larger ethos in Israeli and Palestinian society that rejoices in the suffering of others. We must learn to rejoice together and cry together rather than rejoice when they suffer and cry when they rejoice. Why? Because when we rejoice in the suffering of the other, we lose the core of our humanity and further inhibit a solution founded on dignity, freedom, and human life.

WASHINGTON, DC – The struggle for civil rights, freedom and independence is not unique to the Palestinian people. Many nations have travelled the same road. Palestinians today have the advantage of looking back and learning from those who succeeded in their struggles.

The American civil rights movement in particular has important lessons for those working to forge peace between Israelis and Palestinians. It succeeded in using non-violent strategies to bring about the end of legally sanctioned segregation in the United States. What principles can the Palestinians learn from the movement?

The civil rights movement in the United States based its struggle on messages that were hard to disagree with, even for those who did not identify with its aims and objectives. Prominent civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., for instance, reminded the American people of one of the most basic principles in their constitution: “all men are created equal”. He highlighted the law of humanity and lifted it above man-made laws. He called any law or practice that denigrates human dignity or limits freedom unnatural and immoral, and said these laws shouldn’t be obeyed because they inspire a false sense of superiority in one race against another. He touched people’s hearts by reasoning with them and speaking their own language.

Dr. King appealed to the deepest consciousness of the American people. He invoked the highest standard of American values: the constitution and the writings of the founding fathers. Thus, his appeals reached millions of American people and resonated within their hearts and minds.

In the same way, Palestinians can reach the hearts and minds of the Jewish citizens of Israel by appealing to their hopes and fears, ideals and principles. But as Israel has no constitution, this means calling on the Hebrew Scriptures and Jewish traditions.

By presenting Jewish morals, standards and beliefs in a new light, Palestinians can make their arguments more salient to Israelis. For example, the words of the prophet Isaiah are particularly resonant, especially as they are read during the Yom Kippur service: “Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen: to loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free and break every yoke?”

Moses’ cry to Pharaoh is also powerful: “Let my people go”. Moses was asking for freedom, and his words are sharper than any sword. It is a phrase that can reach the hearts of the Jewish community far more effectively than any angry slogan or threat.

Palestinians should also appeal to Israel’s democratic ideals. As Israel maintains a belief in liberty and self-determination, so should Palestinians insist that Israel live up to its own ideals. This means highlighting that true democracy cannot allow for the occupation and oppression of others.

In recent years, many Palestinians have chosen non-violence as a form of resistance, from weekly demonstrations against the Israeli separation barrier to economic and cultural boycotts. However the majority of activities have been unilateral or have failed to reach the mainstream Israeli public.

In America, the civil rights movement geared its campaign toward the large silent majority of white Christians. It is time for Palestinians and Jews who support freedom to do something similar, and call on Israel to uphold the principles it claims to espouse. This appeal should not just be made with words, but through non-violent actions aimed at evoking symbols that will reach every Israeli and Jew, from the soldiers at the checkpoints and the settlers in the West Bank to the businesspeople in Tel Aviv.

The Palestinian struggle shares many similarities with Jewish history. From its fight for existence to the Diaspora experience, Jews and Palestinians have both desired a secure and free homeland.

These struggles have been burdened by disappointment. Here we can also learn from the American Civil Rights Movement. Martin Luther King wrote in his letter from Birmingham Jail about his own disappointment, but he did not let his frustration distract him from his ultimate goal. Instead, he kept building bridges between people who were divided by walls of fear, racism and even hatred. He was sustained by a belief that he was not fighting a war that would be won or lost by conventional weapons, but a struggle for the triumph of humanity over extremism.

Palestinians, like King, should fight not only for freedom, but also for humanity to defeat separation and prejudice.

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* Aziz Abu Sarah is the Director of Middle East Projects at Center for World Religions, Diplomacy and Conflict Resolution at George Mason University at George Mason University. His blog can be found at http://azizabusarah.wordpress.com. Email: azizabusarah@gmail.com. This article was written for the Common Ground News Service (CGNews).

A report from the Associated Press on the arrest of a Jewish terrorist recently caught my attention. It seems that the American media was uncomfortable calling the arrested man (Ya’acov Teitel) a terrorist. They decided to create a new term. The title of the news article is ”Israel nabs serial attacker of Arabs, leftist Jews“.

All of the major Israeli news outlets (on the left and the right) have called Ya’acov Teitel a terrorist, as these Jerusalem Post, Haaretz, and Ynet articles demonstrate. However, the only mention of the word “terrorist” in the AP article is a quotation from an Israeli police officer.

The creation of a new euphemism, “serial attacker,” to describe a Jewish terrorist is absurd.

This is another disappointment of the American news coverage on the Israeli Palestinian conflict. It also proves that we must not depend on a single media source.  For receiving a more accurate account of the news we should follow a variety of media outlets.