Returning to Palestine: Dismantling the caged identity

My grandfather, buried
in Northern California

I am the oldest of four children, and so I became the carrier of hopes and aspirations my parents seemed unable to reach. While my father immigrated to the US when he was 15, with only his early childhood and teenage years in Palestine, they  are the bulk of his memories. It was these he related to me: the warm bread his mother made, the cold of winter, the water wells, his father’s visits from the US, his ignorance to how poor they were but the reality of their humble happiness.

My grandmother,
buried in Al Bireh, Palestine

And as a result of these stories, it became my own determination to bring forth the years we spent in diaspora, to hopefully return to live in Palestine. My first visit was when I was five, just shortly after the conclusion of the first intifada. I ran back to the US to relate to my kindergarten teacher the destitution I had seen, wearing a shirt with a Palestinian  flag on it that my parents had dressed me in. It was the apparel of someone baptized by the struggle. With my wild hair in my face, I jumped in front of my teacher to tell her where I had went, the soldiers I had seen, the taste of Rukab and kanafe and barbeque. I had lived in my father’s childhood. I saw those who were left, his uncles, the elders that entertained the stories I had heard my father once speak. The narrative of my father was still alive in my childhood, I lived it for two months, and you would hear them all, all the adults, laugh well into the night.

Hamas shopping cart full as Israel empties Al Aqsa

In a speech last week given at Al Azhar, Ismail Haniya rallied worshipers during the Friday congregational prayers in light of  the plight of Palestinian, Muslim worshipers in Jerusalem, who were being violently put down by Israeli forces. While the screen split between the reality of Al Aqsa under the Judiazation of Jerusalem and Haniya's speech, one side of the screen shows suffering while the other shows lobbying done for an interest outside of Jerusalem. Haniya was loading his shopping cart with Egyptian cries of support, televised into propaganda,  after cutting ties with Bashar al Assad. Leading the chanting and later being seen paraded in the street, Haniya decried Iran, Hezbollah, and Bashar al Assad in Egypt's capital and heart of its own uprisings. 

Today's Arab Nationalism

Cartoon by Omar Abdelat

Victim of the number game: Hana Al Shalabi re-arrested

The number game Israel plays as it arrests Palestinians is nothing but a mere smudging of numbers to satisfy the agenda of Zionists. Within the period of the first wave of the prisoner swap deal, an equivalent amount of Palestinians were arrested as those released. 309 still remain in administrative detention today, voiceless and still without charge that would justify their arrest.

The preemptive nature of colonization is nothing about security, but is a means of collective punishment. And sadly, some of those released during the prisoner swap deals have only found themselves in Israeli prisons once again. As Israeli continously violates the human rights of Palestinians, and continues to arrest Palestinians without charges and imprisoning them, the mechanism of Israeli military remains unchallenged despite the prisoner swap deal. While numbers of prisoners exchanged, there was certainly no will for Israel to change its policy as it continues to oppress Palestinians.

I was trying to reach the rainbow

Frustrated by the news of Friday's clashes in Jerusalem and violence in Al Khalil (Hebron) I attempted to go to Qalandia checkpoint amid news that clashes had broken out there. I weaved through the mess of Kufr Akkab, which is disenfranchised by the Palestinian Authority and Israel and literally sits in filth, potholes, and busted water pipes.

Finally I turned onto the main road where the UN Boys School is located, only to find that traffic was so backed up that cars were driving along the gutter, going against traffic. I slowed down, unable to see the actual checkpoint. It was obvious it was shut down. Cars were coming at  me from the wrong direction, including an ambulance. That is when I spotted this rainbow

Whether or not it was the young martyr, Talat Ramia, who was on that ambulance will always be on my mind. I turned around and ran against traffic just like the others. I followed the ambulance back home, as I live next door to the hospital where martyrs die. I saw the ambulance head back to the checkpoint for more. I got out of the car, went inside, had lunch.

The noise of sirens does not bother me anymore.

Black Hebrew or Israel House Slave

These Israeli Zionists religiously believe their Jewish God has chosen them to replace the outdated European colonialism with a new form of colonialism, so well disguised that it will enable them to deceive the African masses into submitting willingly to their "divine" authority and guidance, without the African masses being aware that they are still colonized. 

- Malcolm X, Egyptian Gazette, September 17, 1964

How can one really liberate oneself when their identity has to be reconstructed from the shards of violent, American slave trade? While Malcolm X grew up in a Christian household, he became a Muslim and yet he always remained a victim of the American experience no matter how free he felt in his identity. 

If the Christian gospel was not attractive, and Muslims were seen as something foreign to the American narrative, what else could an African American identify with when their very identity itself had been manipulated and erased by American and European colonists?

Occupy Movements take a word of colonization

Of all the words to choose, when language is one of the building blocks of oppression, they had to choose occupy? Minorities talk about how offensive the word is while certain people talk about ownership, space, control, and essentially use the same terminology of the oppressor to justify their movement for "justice." Like one of the speakers says, it is amazing how capitalism is ingrained that branding seems like a necessity.

Don't occupy. Liberate. And coming from Palestine, the word occupy can never become a good thing. It is a word where you take space. This should not be about taking. By using these words it will easily flip into more oppression. Words have that much power. Liberate your minds first, then talk about space.