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They
raise their children to hate. That’s what we’re told
about the Palestinians. Watch the TV news. Listen to the radio.
Pick up the dramatic US news magazines. Ask the intellectuals
and the political pundits. Palestinian mothers willingly sacrifice
their own children to the cause. In school, the teachers reinforce
the hatred the children learn at home. How can there be peace
in Israel/Palestine if they hate the Jews, the Israelis, and the
Zionists so much? How can the lily-white live with such neighbors?
Iyad
is four years old. His father doesn’t allow him to play outside.
In the streets of Rafah there is too much danger he’ll be
shot by Israeli soldiers –like six-year-old Samiah Najih
Hussan who dared walk home from school along the border road with
her schoolmates. A bullet lodged in her brain and she died shortly
thereafter. That was April 6th, 2002. Do you know how many children
have died in similar circumstances since then? No. You don’t.
Because the news doesn’t report it, just like it didn’t
report the death of 11-month-old Huda who died in her bedroom
in the middle of the night on May 1st, 2002 when a tank shell
blew apart the concrete walls of her home. By the time I got there
the next day, all that was left of her was a ring of blood on
the floor.
Ramzi
laughs cynically after mimicking the poisonous claims of the western
media.
"We
raise our children to hate, don’t you know?"
He
says this sarcastically, but gloom soon overtakes him.
"What
am I suppose to say when Iyad asks me why he can’t play outside?
What am I supposed to tell him when he asks me why there are people
shooting guns at us? Why tanks roll into our neighborhoods and
fire at anything moving? Why airplanes and tanks destroy our city
buildings and his friends’ houses? What am I supposed to
tell him when he wakes up at night because the war is just outside
our door? How can I explain to my son why I am home from work
for the fifth day in a row? Sixteen hours at the checkpoint on
Saturday, 12 on Sunday, 13 on Monday, 10 on Tuesday, and then
the rumors that it would soon open just stopped circulating. Don’t
make me laugh by asking me why. There is no why. There is only
that I am not earning money to feed and clothe my family. I sit
in my room and watch TV. I am restless and bored and humiliated.
My sister is 7 months pregnant and she can’t return to her
husband in the Nuseirat refugee camp 20 minutes north of here.
That’s the price she’s paying for daring to visit my
wife and me. She was so sick in the taxicab at the checkpoint
and I couldn’t do anything to help her. We came back here
after 8pm and she went to sleep on the floor."
Some
of the camp children come by to see me. Luna and Ahmad, Assiel,
Hudiah, and Riham crowd around me in Ramzi’s home. They want
to see what’s in my handbag and touch my light, uncovered
hair. They’ve brought me gifts to take back with me to America:
a child’s notebook with cartoon animals on it, a pencil drawing
of a boat, a plastic flower. Riham wants to give me the bright
headband that keeps her hair from her eyes. They ask me questions
about America and show me how much English they’ve learned.
Do I have to leave? I kiss Assiel on both cheeks to say good-bye
and the others hang their heads until I do them the same honor,
and then they smile with pride.
Assiel’s
grandmother begs to see the ajnabiyah, the foreign woman, before
I leave. This 72-year-old peasant woman holds her hands out to
me and kisses my face four times. She lives in a single room with
a water closet in the corner and an electric burner for coffee
and tea.
"This
is not my real home," she says after our greetings.
"We
had orchards and fields and a house in a village near Ashkelon.
All our food came from our own land. I remember; I was 18."
Her voice trails off.
"Then
the Zionist soldiers forced us to leave. For 54 years they have
been eating our oranges and living on our land and look at how
we are living here…"
"So
what do you tell Iyad when he asks his constant questions?"
I ask Ramzi later that evening.
"That
they took our land and they don’t want us here; that it is
dangerous for him to go too close to their tanks and watch-towers.
That they are waiting for us to leave but that we will stay. What
else can I tell him? Shall I pretend it’s not really happening?
Shall I tell him lies? As it is, he doesn’t understand and
the tears come into his eyes whenever I have to leave. Do you
know what this does to me?"
Iyad
and his friends throw a mini-basketball into a mini-basketball
hoop stuck to the wall in the windowless room of their cramped,
three-room home all day. And his father brings home chips for
him and his friends and his little sister: luxury treats for being
such good children. His father hugs Iyad close in his big arms
at night until they both fall asleep. The image will not leave
me: The terrorist man and the terrorist boy.
"Do
you like Sharon? Do you like George Bush?"
Each
of the older children asks me this question sooner or later before
I leave, waiting with huge eyes for my response.
Shall
I tell them they’re men of peace?
Jennifer
Loewenstein lives in Gaza City, and works for the Mezan
Center for Human Rights.
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