zaterdag, januari 13, 2007

 

personal

I've always been reluctant to place personal stuff on the internet. First: what use does it serve? Second: who would be interested in one human being out of a few billion walking this earth? However...

since blogging itself is done from one's very own perspective and thus experiences mixed with one's own character and therefore is a 'personal' thing more than anything else ... maybe I should openly be as vain as we, bloggers, are anyway - by thinking that the story I gotta tell is worth being told (only where it serves relevance to the social/political conflict we are ALL experiencing in this region of course).

So, here it goes...

in 2 days time I'll 'celebrate' my 50th birthday... up until 3 years ago - I was looking forward to every birthday I was granted to live (I'm a late-bloomer or no 'bloomer' at all ~ it feels like my emotional world stayed stuck in my childhood years of simplicity and till now, although very hard to defend in a world where plain square moral integrity seems to need academic 'degrees' to analyze, found it -simplicity- my anchor on which I could always rely in order not to lose myself).

However... the past 3 years have been different and this year looks like it's gonna be the worst. Simplicity and personal integrity contains the control only over oneself and, there are people, even very -very close, that cannot and will not let their worldview be influenced by what I think. And, rightfully so - of course. Still... they clash. The worldviews that -when they filter down - are in effect the essence of one's character = a person...

While I'm calling for 'extremists' such as AlGhaliboon to please speak with me, recognize that we are all humans with feelings, no matter which side of the fence you're located at... at my house I'm struggling that very same battle.

Where once the only real good friends we had were muslim and jewish arabs and where palestinians were met without the hautain 'treatment' they received from ashkenazi jews (not all, but still it was very much notable) on terms of equality as it should be anyway - extremism has taken root in my house (not home - I can't feel at home where I'm met with fanaticism).

Maybe that sorta explain the very critical position I'm taking in my postings regarding Israel. What you don't want that happens to you, do not inflict that upon someone else as well. But, they are... doing it.

I love this country dearly. Spent the first 25 years only complaining about it ;) The people, so loud, so impertinent, the education they were giving their children that placed them above good manners and reasonability like they were a kind of miniature kings and queens - it sorta vanished, blended into a mixture that I find way more 'healthy' than the average European sneakyness.

I love this country dearly. But my heart cries... It cries even harder now I came to experience personally, in a private life manner very close to me, that religious fanaticism is inexplicable and a two-way road - each side keeping the other alive - and people like me are squeezed between the by-passing radicals each furying ahead in their own direction...

I love this country dearly. I've never 'done' drugs and don't intend to (although sometimes it surely sounds very attracting LOL) - but that day in late December 2005 - when I got outta the taxi in Jerusalem and heard the moazin of the al-Aqsa and the humming of praying jews underneath near the Western Wall while at my left side Christian bastot were selling religious souvenirs - I felt high. That must have been the closest someone has ever come to feeling PERFECTLY at peace, feeling 'this is how it SHOULD be"...

Where did men come in anyway to claim 'power' over whatever when religion is concerned? What is religion worth if it would take the almightly power of God and place it in the hands of men?

I fight people like you, AlGhaliboon... I fight the people at my house (and it hurts and no-one can have any idea of how difficult this is - but) .... I fight and fight and fight... and through all this just remember religious bigots such as you (including the people that were once close to me at my house) - that MY victory is that I won't lose faith - I won't let go of MY religion: the religion that I am convinced was the root message of ALL religions: the preaching of tolerance, respect, recognition, equality - in short the religion of PEACE!

MY victory is that I won't lose ME.


Tse.

PS... above is a bit of a dramatic post I realize - and I am certainly no drama-queen (I hope, LOL) so here's another 'look' on things:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ewPnbjiyRXA

Comments:
Nice post, I am just discovering your blog! I will do more reading in it later, however, I just wanted to thank you for stopping by in blog. Cheers,
 
Yom Huledet Same'ach for Monday,Tsedek!
 
מזל טוב
Happy birthday
 
יום הולדת שמח

בערבית אומרים :שנה חילווה יא גמיל

I can completely relate to your struggle to remain sane while intolerance is present all around you.

כל הכבוד
 
Yom Huledet Same'ach l'cha Tsedek! I just discovered your blog and have been reading through the archives. Wonderful, honest, sad and so much more. You are on my favorites list.
Kol HaKavod.
Sophie
 
Based on what do you call me a fanatic?

Based on my anger at what your country did to my people?

Based on my pain at my loss, and my hatred of your people because they celebrated my losses, and signed the bombs that killed my brother???

If I am a fanatic, then it's your people who have made me so, so they should pack their bags and leave, or accept to live alongside those who rightly owned the land and who don't mind if you would live next to them, as long as everyone is treated equally, and not the way people are treated now by your racist, supremacist "people".

If I'm a fanatic, it's your F-16s that have made me so, and your nukes, which your murderous leaders boast they will not hesitate to use, even if it will mean the demise of the whole world.

Take the F-16s, chemical weapons, nukes away, and we can talk peace. Until then, what you want is the peace of the victor, not real peace. You only wish you could live in peace. If we had not fought back for our rights, you would not have cared for our existence even. We brought the fight to the heart of your existence, and made you feel only a tiny fraction of the pain that we have felt for decades because your spoiled people want to live in 'peace' on an occupied and ethnically cleansed land. And yet your people are arrogant enough to speak about peace, when they were cheering only a few months ago for their air force to do more and more damage, and questioning why it had not done more before the ground invasion (real man's war, not cowards' war like your air force was waging against our civilians).
 
everybody who wants 'all' is fanatic.

thanks everybody for the wishes. i still can't believe it, the big five-o.

brrrrrr

Tse.
 
AlGhaliboon, I owe you a more detailed response after having you mentioned in my post.... (sorry for the short sentence, I was tired y'day, but it does sum up what I mean)

I told you before: I feel your pain. Take it outta context, rip it from the layers of circumstances and stay stuck with only the reality: you got an enormous gaping hole in your heart, a wound that will accompany you your whole life, a pain that hurt so much no words exist to describe it.

You can go about it the way you wish, AlGhaliboon - sure Israel hit back way too unhumane when attacked...

(and... killing and kidnapping soldiers IS an attack... - no matter how you want to explain differently, those boys had mothers, fathers, brothers and sisters with feelings, just as you, as well, you know)

...but if you deny one's existence NOW and HERE - and fight it - you can't seriously expect that one sits back and let it happen? Do you really?

There are many, many different stories about how we got where we're at - and not, I repeat, NOT just your version. You may deny that - but believe you me, attacks came from both sides - only one side lost - and, consequently a whole population that had no hand in it was treated inhumane (but not only by the israeli's - your arab 'brothers' are not much better at all) by not being allowed back in (on the other hand: if someone fought you to get out and lost - to let them back in is not the most clever thing to do)

Therefore, AlGhaliboon - fighting injustice with injustice (because denying one's existence IS injustice) will never bring about the results you think you with the hizb will obtain. The opposite: it will confirm for the already convinced 'simple' people just trying to live their life here that you should be destroyed in order for them to be able to live. And that entails:

more hurt, more gaping wounds, more sleepness nights, more broken hearts - and although you don't care for the 'other side's' feelings - I'm sure you noticed it won't be only the 'other side' suffering.

I can't blame you for hating Israel, just as much as I can't blame Mr. Avraham for hating you for killing and kidnapping his son's body...(if he hates you).

so, we're back at the core - by inflicting as much hurt as possible to the 'other' the fire will keep burning and the only ones served by that are everybody BUT the people involved...because it's my very conviction justice for the people will only come when understanding is established, and respect for both sides (like: those people at my house don't think the whole of israel is for the jews because the muslims are devils anyway only after their life and you don't deny that sharing -and thus acknowledging israel's existence in order for a true, peaceful - florishing Palestine to arise next to it- is the only humane solution)

...
 
Well, Happy Birthday Tse. I hope you find the peace you seek.
 
:)

מזל טוב
 
everybody who wants 'all' is fanatic.
One (hypothetical) example is all that is needed, the rest of your lengthy post was not necessary to begin with.

I have a plot of land on which I've built a house, and one day, someone comes and tells me, you have to go out, this is my land, but I was disposessed of it by so and so (nothing to do with you, really),and now I have come to reclaim it. You have to leave, and you are not even entitled to anything, because this doesn't even belong to you to begin with. But it's MY house and MY land because I OWN it, and I have OWNED it justly, without disposessing anyone. Then the person starts getting physical and attempts to drive me out of my house, and succeeds, and drives me out of the entire town, as far away as possible. Then he starts denying I even existed, calls me a cockroach, among other things. So after many years, he has kids, a family, everything, the kids have been raised in that house and everything, so I decide it's not fair to dispossess them, even though I have the rightful ownership of the house technically speaking. So I tell the guy, ok, listen, I don't want to drive you out of MY property the way you drove me out of MINE, but how about living together as equals, like one family in one house? But the guy says, why should I let you back in, when you say this is yours and that you have the right to return to your house? Give me one good reason for it. I tell him, but it's mine, and I am fine with sharing it with you. But no, the guy wants it all for himself, because he feels that if we share MY house, my kids might eventually outnumber his, and his kids would no longer be able to bully mine and order them around in MY house. He says, you can go settle elsewhere, but I won't even give you compensation; you have a lot of family elsewhere, why don't they take you in? But I tell him, but this is where I want to live, it's my house... and plus, my family elsewhere is not obliged to take me in. They also have dire economic circumstances and I would be a burden. Then when I realize that he's not going to share MY house with me, I start throwing stones at MY house, to pressure him into accepting some sort of compromise. He retaliates by killing my entire family. Then he says, oh, how I wish there were peace between us, I long for that day, when we would live side by side in our respective houses. I tell him, but your house is my house, and my house would also be mine. And I'm telling you now, we can still share, as it's not too late. You might not have such an offer in a few years. But he says again, like a spoiled kid who takes over his playmate's toys and refuses to share it with him, but it's MINE, why should I share it with you?

At last I realize I was wasting my time, and I say, FINE, your house is MINE, so why should I accept sharing it with you?!??!

That makes me a fanatic, I guess.

Yeah.

"Israeli" logic at its best.
 
and what if your neighbor is selling his house and you start to attack the new inhabitants and they beat back by driving you away but you are unwilling to accept that those new inhabitants are the rightful owners of the house next to you and only after seeing that the help from 3 different 'friends' trying to attack those new owners don't get them removed you start claiming you want your house back?
 
AlGhaliboon....
somehow I KNEW there wouldn't be an answer to this....

disappointed though (again - each time I infringe on generalizing believes and ask 4 ur opinion... )
 
and what if your neighbor is selling his house
I guess by that you mean the absentee landlords who mostly lived in Lebanon and who sold some of their land, which did not amount to more than 1% of Palestine, and at its peak, to more than 7%. So, your attempts at taking over by military and terrorist means the 93% that you did not buy, is OK, because you bought some of the land?

Don't give yourself too much credit. You think you silenced me with your argument?
 
And what do you do if your neighbor is listening to very loud music, and won't turn it down unless you call the cops? Chico Buarque is great, but not at 90dB.

AlG, can you spare me a Katyusha? Tse is too much of a pacifist to lend my a F-16.
 
AlGhaliboon, it doesn't really matter how many percent or where the owners lived, you know that right?
Legally bought land is yours and you have a right to live on it as one wish without being attacked.

You can imagine that -either on small- or large scale- being attacked at home one feels one have to defend himself against such attacks?

Can you also imagine that - from 'smaller' local sparks of violence like these attacks on jews (like fights between neighbours) once the violent spark is there and the street, the city and local and foreign organizations (and indeed the whole of the international community) gets themselves involved it is just a matter of time before what happened is going to happen:

to start mis-using it to shape things to fit into a million diverse international political agendas each with their own interests at heart (and don't take out the role of the arab countries in here - before you point your finger just into one direction again) completely losing sight of the root cause and worsening the situation beyond recognition....

attacks and counter-attacks, AlGhaliboon... and in between a people that were used as pawns and are still being used as pawns - without them even realizing it...

ONLY to stop believing propaganda stuff and reaching out to people (not lables) - 'we' are able to break this circle of mis-use of each-other that's was so carefully build-up and is now 'protected' by 'leaders'...

believe me please: behind those lables ARE people. . . and, isn't people the thing where it should all be about?

(btw: Nobody(!) this goes for you as well - given the 'discussion' we had at raccoon's blog)

PS ;) I wouldn't dare to think I 'silenced' you AlGhaliboon LOL - moreover: I don't wish to 'silence' you - that would mean an end to this two-way road and I just simply 'hate' dead-end streets...

|3run0: no, I'm not (a pacifist) - I'm a fighter, only I decide what my weapons are and they are not the ones automatically forced into my hands before I KNOW there is no other choice because - if not - it will be 'me or you' - while I prefer 'me and you'.
 
definitely, AlGhaliboon. exactly. however......

there is the 'other side' that was also attacked on land they either already had purchased and lived on or lived on for generations and

needed to defend themselves against those attacks.

each side needed defense and ended up being the attackers themselves - only.... one 'side' won.

still - in your assessment you blame only one party, the one that won - which is natural of course but not in accordance with the truth regarding the initiating causes setting it all in action ...

AlGhaliboon NO-ONE is without fault in this conflict, not even the 'losers' (not meant denegrading but I mean in the wars etc.) who are also guilty for dragging a whole population into it mostly (I think) against their will.

You know, I've not sat in my room 24/7 reaching this formidable age of mine. I DID speak with people, in my 30 years in this country - all kinds of people... there are so many diverse witness-accounts of those (early) days - coming up in friendly random conversations by people that were actually living it and in person-to-person conversations having no need for propaganda and therefore completely lacking this 'touch'....

I tell you: this is NO black&white picture, the way you wish to present it.
 
the hebron massacre and the saffed massacre were fairytale-stories?

did you ever read the cause and effects of the jaffa riots (1921) after which thousands of jews fled jaffa and in effect became refugees?
 
Did you read what I wrote?

Prior to the entry of the parasitic terrorist zionists, the Jews and Muslims and Christians lived in harmony, and no one bothered anyone else, in fact they were all neighbours and friends. The problems started when the terrorists entered Palestine under the cover of colonial usurpers the British, and started terrorizing the Palestinians.

The first influx of zionist terrorists was in the late 19th century, and the major one was during treacherous Brits' colonial rule, under the auspices of which the zionist terrorist regime was armed, terrorized the Palestinians, and eventually committed ethnic cleansing and genocide. The British are known for their treachery against our people. In 1956, in agreement with the terrorist "israelis" and the French, they occupied the Suez, in a war that was unprovoked. I guess if the Arabs had ethnically cleansed the Jews as a result of that war, that would've been fair game and 'part of war'.
 
I agree (*big-eyes-emoticon-here*)with you about the british. However, from a different point of view, not one-sided.

I have a believe
that I can substantiate (for myself only, cause they were verbal) with some of the stories I heard from people that lived that time (both jewish and muslim) who didn't have a clue as to what was going and how they came to be in the position they found themselves in)
that many of the things written down by William Ziff in the Rape of Palestine, for if you haven't heard of it, they discuss this here:

http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/51/202.html

were simply true.

When I read:
"in May l930, the Jerusalem-based Arab newspaper 'Al Iqdam' in wrote: We are led by a group of men who bargain us away, buying and selling us like cattle. The Arab people have not yet said their last word on the Arab-Jewish question. When this word has been said, it will not be one of hatred, but one of peace and brotherhood, as is suitable for two people who live in one country."

I feel like crying. (I mean it - so many lives spoiled and taken while I know the intentions were principally good intentions - but got hi-jacked by extremists from both 'sides' under the auspicien of the British...)

You suggest the jewish immigration into these lands were based on ethnical cleansing (I heard there is a big discussion going on about this in Israeli circles - but not one single shred of evidence exists this 'cleansing' was done premeditated - it came as situations developed) while there is too much substantiated evidence existing that the jewish immigration was at first welcomed by the population here. That things went sour is, in my humble opinion, not due to the people, immigrants or locals - but to 'leaders' - both jewish and muslim but mostly because of the mandate and the vast interest the British had in holding on to their control in these areas - the British... (It would also explain why the British stuffed the nazi-Imam of Jerusalem through the throats of the local population while they had declared they didn't want him to get this function.)

Anyway, AlGhaliboon - too many parties involved and you just keep on pointing in one direction. I know that's easier - specially considering the violence your family underwent and it's tragic results thereof, and so I do understand you, but you are not right.
 
The British were the biggest contributors to the zionist project. Had it not been for the British, the zionists would've never been able to arm themselves, terrorize the Palestinians, and eventually establish the terrorist state called "israel". You owe them a big thanks.

There is actually documentation that there was a premeditated ethnic cleansing. See Plan Gimmel & Dalet.

You are lying to yourself. You desperately want to believe that there was nothing wrong between the two groups, and you want to shift the blame onto a third party (as guilty as it might've been), because you don't want to admit that the zionists terrorized the Palestinians, just like they terrorized Arab Jews and forced them to leave their respective countries and settle in "israel".
 
The British were the biggest contributors because they couldn't do very much else given that they had agreed upon certain promisses made before WWI in which they needed to make agreements in order to stand stronger opposite the Ottoman Empire. They made those promisses to the left and to the right btw. for if you haven't heard of Lawrence of Arabia etc. etc. etc.

They did almost everything in their power to reduce the effect of those agreements - (the White Papers ring a bell? - under which many jews were returned to the nazi-hell of Germany and their deaths? for example?)

And no, I'm not "desparately wanting to believe there was nothing wrong between the two groups - I'm just convinced that those two "groups" - as is the same today - were way less homogeneously covering for all of the respective people than you or so-called 'history' make it out to be. Again: based on the witness accounts of people of both 'side' without the propaganda touch attached to it and without that need of hanging on to a prototype enemy 'monster'.
 
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