Challenge No. 71
January, 2002

Sixty-two Israeli youth offer hope to one Palestinian

A letter from Samah Jabr*

On August 19, sixty-two Israeli high school seniors wrote to their Prime Minister refusing military induction. Evidently, they understand that joining the army means giving their government the freedom to use and, if necessary, sacrifice their lives, while making it legal for them to kill others. The students object to their government's political agenda, especially the treatment of us Palestinians, just because we happen to live on land that the government and its radical Zionists want to possess.
The students' letter took courage and an understanding gained through the experience of living here with us Palestinians. It reflects a moral maturity that challenges the nationalistic and classic prejudice against us-the Christian and Muslim Arab Semitic people. Israeli youths who have stood so tall among their own people have great potential to lead. They give me hope. Is it possible that they are saying that the whole earth is a sacred gift for humankind to treasure, and that no section of this earth is set aside for one group or another as a special gift to them alone from a God who cares more about them than the rest of humanity? Like me, these 62 young people were born here in the womb of a political conflict. They are the children of those who immigrated to our land in the hope of finding a refuge from persecution. Unfortunately, the immigrants followed directives from their Zionist leaders who told them to do unto us what had been done unto them. Revisionist Zionists felt it was their turn in history to oppress, murder, rob and express unbelievable disdain for the Other-us Palestinians. They went so far as to tell the rest of the world that we didn't exist.

The students who wrote the letter, however, are not like their parents or their ancestors. Each is his or her own person. Each realizes, as I do, that the knowledge we have today, knowledge of the whole world, should nudge us beyond a primitive urge to annihilate and replace. Surely, we no longer need a Solomon threatening to halve the baby. That's a good story, though. If we cut the Holy Land in half, or if neither side will make essential concessions, we shall totally destroy the land we say we love. This is the issue Israeli and Palestinian youths of the present generation must decide before our elders do it for us, closing off the future.
I grew up believing that every person belongs to the place where he or she was born. I know that few Americans understand the intensity of this belief. Most Americans, like most Israelis, came from immigrant populations. For us, however, maintenance of our property is not only a right but also a duty. Staying rather than going is sometimes a painful option, but remaining, keeping a family together and caring for our land are as much a part of our collective personality as is, for Americans, the freedom to move from place to place. Whether through my genes or environmental heritage, I cannot help resisting expulsion and displacement.
Of course, human expulsion and takeovers have occurred time and again throughout history. Revisionist Zionist Jabotinsky spoke of this back in 1923. Does that give Israel the right to harm us, to modernize the punitive concept of winner-take-all, or to disperse indigenous people whose only crime is living where they do? Are Zionists still so stuck in their position that they can only act on the principle that might-makes-right, even if that means the death of us all? Are all those living here like the helpless baby, before the true mother spoke up? Here are 62 students willing to speak. I want to join them.

What do I ask in return for giving up my end of the struggle? I ask you, the Jewish people of Israel and you, their Zionist supporters in America, to do to us as you have asked the rest of the world to do to you. If Zionists demand compensation for the rights, land and money lost in the Holocaust, I want reparation for rights, land and money lost in our Catastrophe, which started in 1948, continued in 1967 and still goes on. It's difficult to admit the misdeeds of one's ancestors, but one need not repeat what one knows to have been wrong. I say to you 62 students, only a few years younger than I, "Help manage this land of ours, not destroy it. Keep responding to the wrong so that our land becomes a haven in which all people, men and women, Muslim, Christian or Jew, former citizens of other countries who come and those of us born here, have a voice, a vote, in what happens next. I call for my people's freedom to return and for releasing all the Palestinian political prisoners, who have paid for freedom with long years of their lives. We may not be able to reverse the past, but we have it in our power to serve all the people here now.
As for concessions, it is not reasonable to expect us to compromise while settlements expand. There is arrogance in "allowing" us to have our own State on land we lived on long before the arrival of Zionists. It is wrong to expect Gazans, many of whose families lost their livelihoods when Israelis seized their lands, to work for Israeli masters at substandard wages with no chance for re-education or advancement. Let's listen again to words that everyone hears nowadays, but this time with an ear to how we Palestinians hear them. Terrorism, the current catchword for evil, can come from a State as well as an individual. Who knows that better than you, the 62 Israeli high school seniors, and us, the people of occupied Palestine? I fear the future, yet my hope persists, buoyed by your letter. It is time for all of us who want happy and productive lives to reject the lies our governments or religious institutions teach through curricula designed to make the Other look evil. We should demonstrate to the warlords that neither side is entirely good or entirely evil.

You 62 youths want to end occupation. We young Palestinians do as well. It's up to you and us to stop the violence committed by slingshot or tank. You cannot continue to live amid endless political conflict, fearful that every action by some branch of the Israeli government or a Zionist zealot will renew the violence and perhaps bring about your death. Resist, I ask you, the financial aid sent from American friends who say they want a promised land, but not enough to come live with you in your distress. We Palestinians cannot continue to endure the unnatural yoke of occupation, making concessions to a foreign country that does not care about us no matter what we give up.
You are a beginning for me. Are you willing to live in harmony with me and other Palestinian youths here in this land of red earth, cacti, olive trees and orange groves and, yes, computers and technology that have nothing to do with weapons of mass destruction? You are not the zealots who come eager to transgress upon us. You give me hope. When can we get together?
* Samah Jabr is a physician and a lifelong resident of Jerusalem. This letter also appeared in the Palestinian Times, London.

A Statement of Refusal on Grounds of Conscience My name is Yair Hilu, and I am 18 years old. I have refused induction into Israel's army, and I will soon be sent to military prison for that. I have decided to write this statement before I am imprisoned because I believe that the reasons motivating me in my refusal are shared by many people. When I am ordered to join a large and violent body such as the Israeli army, I should ask what activities it is engaged in and whom it serves. My parents, teachers and peers might answer that the army of the state is necessary to preserve my security and that of other citizens. I desire very much that there will be security for the citizens of Israel and for me. And still, I find this answer unsatisfactory. I fail to see how the pure Jewish space that the State of Israel has tried to create by force since its establishment can increase our security. I fail to see how the repression of the Palestinian resistance by means of state terror - even crueler and of wider scope than the counter-terror it provokes - serves the society that I am a part of. How does the activity of the state, implemented through the army, benefit me and those I care for? The 'sterile' Jewish space created by the State of Israel is a ghetto for its Jewish residents. It prevents them from integrating into the Middle East. Nobody is safe in this space - either Jews or Arabs. Still, my opponents might claim, the State of Israel is a democracy and its army is the people's army. I wonder where these people live. I have no ability to affect the actions of the army, although my friends and I do try. I am unable to stop war, unemployment, inequality. The vast majority of Israeli citizens wish to change this state of affairs. And still, the state does everything to block peace, welfare and equality. Mysteriously, everything ends up serving the interests of capitalists and generals. The Israeli military men and capitalists, together with their Palestinian peers, do everything they can to remain in power. Their mass media and educational system spread vicious nationalistic propaganda, hatred and fear. Thus they divide and rule us. They incite against each other Arabs and Jews, East and West, while they continue to reign. These are our real enemies, preventing us from attaining physical and economic security. Against them Arabs and Jews should stand together. I am not willing to accept such a reality. Much less am I willing to contribute to it by serving in the Israeli army or in any other terrorist organisation.