Remember what the Dormouse said...

The ink of the scholar and the blood of the martyr are of equal value in heaven - the Koran

Many years ago, I read "Occidentalism" by Edward Said. That was my first introduction to what became an intense interest of mine. The similarities between indigenous people worldwide. Heretofore, the separation had always been one of West vs. East. I would rethink that distinction.

Western cultures are driven by history: a sense of linear, irreversible time. By unique events, piled upon by competing ideologies. Rather, tribal peoples, indigenous people including many Arabs, tend to be people of place, not of time. People of tradition, not history. And a culture based upon cycles rather than linear constructs. Colonist vs. indigenous. The Occident versus the Orient.

Our languages reflect this separation. It is crucial to note that linguistic criticism plays an important role in any analysis because the hierarchical structure of Western societies - therefore of their languages - is antagonistic toward any display of wholesomeness.

”Man” named himself by an act of separation from and power over nature, animals and women as illustrated tidily in the Book of Genesis. Exorcising the distortions propagated by such language is required for they corrupt our very souls. The importance of language can hardly be overrated since, as one acquires a language, one acquires the mental dispositions implicit in it. Humans construct language based upon their need to illuminate their surroundings, give them consciousness. And, as we construct language, it begins to define us.

There are many similarities between the Arab Nations and Native American peoples.

Arabs have been persecuted for centuries. Their religious beliefs are vilified by the Judeo-Christian world powers. Their men are hunted as terrorists while the women are accorded two well-fostered stereotypes: that of the grenade-laden Leila Khaled (the first female Palestinian hijacker) or the illiterate refugee willingly producing sons for the revolution.

Need I say that there were not nationwide attacks against white Christian males after Timothy McVeigh was apprehended for the Oklahoma City bombing?

Consider the plight of Native Americans from the 16th century to the early 20th centuries. The banning of religious ceremonies by the Spanish in the Southwest, the massacres at Sand Creek, Wounded Knee, the Trail of Tears and the Long Walk. And then the stereotypes fostered by Hollywood ever since. Consider the FBI's persecution of the American Indian Movement, a group considered to be domestic terrorists in the '60;s and '70's. The takeovers of both the BIA headquarters in Washington, D.C. and Alcatraz in the early 1970's. Here in North America, the level of and manner in which we are persecuted has evolved. But we are still occupied.

Unlike most Americans who exist in the safety of a world run by people whose beliefs match their own, who know only what AIPAC (American Israeli Public Affairs Committee) and Rupert Murdoch wants them to know about the situation in Palestine, I have come to understand the history. The history of Zionism, The Balfour Declaration. The abandonment of European Jews by the West during the Holocaust and after World War II. I also understand the history of Palestine and the abandonment of Palestinians by the East and the West. The founding constitution of the PLO. The Great Powers’ creation of Lebanon and fabrication of Jordan, impositions of a Western-State format on lands charged with ethnic differences and tribal enmities. The 1967 Six-Day War. The 1973 Yom Kippur War. Meron Benvenisti’s in-depth West Bank Data Base project reports.

For Native American women and Palestinian women, the issues and challenges of occupation are similar as well. The vast and infinite struggle to maintain cultural integrity under the most adverse of conditions with little or no support from within or without your own communities.

Women constitute the real government of the Palestinian people, not in the visible sense, like Fatah and Hamas, but in that these women are preparing the substructure of what they trust will be their people’s future: training the workers and technicians, teachers, professionals, artists and politicians. They do this against insurmountable odds. As women they face sexism-as-usual inside and outside their respective agencies.

What happens under crises like the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and blockade of Gaza is that the enemy is so atrocious and the danger so immediate that this helps in suppressing these internal contradictions, turning the nation into an imaginary reality that is not necessarily just or equal. The IOF (Israeli Occupation Force) attacks do not distinguish between poor and rich, between women and men and children, or between Muslims and Christians. These ‘blind’ attacks create a generalized feeling that expresses itself in a similarly ‘blind ‘response. And there was always Yasser Arafat, and the Palestinian National Authority that he headed. The Authority had major problems in its structure, performance and vision and there have always been allegations of corruption and nepotism since the very beginning of its establishment in 1994 up until right now. Amid the frustrations of the national leadership -the enemy from within -and the Israeli occupier -the enemy from without -the only way to say ‘enough suffering ‘and ‘enough humiliation’ was through speaking up and resisting, thus the Intifadas of 1986 and 2000.

The response from the Israeli government, especially when Ariel Sharon became president, instead of crystallizing the voices against the internal rule, ended up making Palestinians concerned overwhelmingly with the ‘external enemy’ only. The painful result of this has been the suppression of all these different voices. Suicide bombs were historically associated with fringe terrorist groups like the Islamic Jihad and Al-Quds Brigades. And at the beginning, most Palestinians were against bombings in Israel. Intellectuals, writers and many ordinary people were against violence that targeted civilians. This is a human position. This must be differentiated from the Intifada and from armed resistance within the Occupied Territories, which are legitimate forms of resistance. As stated by United Nations.

I not only support Hamas because of the clear personal connection I have to the movement, but because they are the legitimate ruling party in the OT as elected freely by the Palestinian people.

Hamas had been seen by many Palestinians and particularly women as a politicizing of Islam with an adverse social impact on women. It was not seen as a political move that was going to be helpful or positive in building civil society. Many women were against Hamas because their dream had been to build a secular state and not a state that would suppress women in the name of religion. Hamas, to a large extent, was a creation of Israel, in a way similar to the Taliban being largely a product of the US.

The Israeli State supported Hamas at the very beginning and used it, especially during the first Intifada, as a counterbalance or preventative rod to the secular PLO (Palestine Liberation Organization) stronghold in the OT (Occupied Territories). Unfortunately for them, after the second year of the first Intifada, Hamas began to muster more support among disparate Palestinians. While Hamas has declared an open public strategy of resistance to Israeli occupation, its fundamental social vision has always been one of equality towards women. Many Palestinian women worried needlessly about forced veilings and being pushed back into the domestic-private domain. This has not happened.

With ripe economic and political conditions at the time; high unemployment, absence of clear leadership -Hamas began to infiltrate many refugee camps, built schools, healthcare and daycare centers, and provided employment to some of the unemployed. The combination of people’s frustration and
desperation, along with their provision of vitally needed services,and the appeal for religion at such difficult times, made Hamas appear as a viable, and popular force.

Also, the issue of Palestinian violence must be clearly contextualized - much of the world seems to have historical amnesia when it comes to Palestinians using violence against the Israeli military occupation. Violence as a form of resistance to settler colonialism is not historically new, nor is it an illegitimate force of resistance. Violence as a form of resistance against fundamentally violent forms of rule such as colonialism and occupation has historically been validated and internationally acknowledged in various examples, including the Algerian and South African struggles.

Fundamentally, the conflict is not a Jewish/Arab conflict or a Palestinian/Jewish conflict. It is definitely not a Muslim/Jewish conflict. The conflict is between occupied and occupier, between colonizer and colonized, although the Israeli government tries to present the conflict as Arab and Muslim fanatics against the survival of the Jews. Using the terms ‘Jewish ‘and ‘the State’ interchangeably is dangerous. It intends to block the minds of so many Jews and non-Jews all over the world by equating Zionism, which is racist in its ideology, policies and practices with all individual Jews.

Criticizing the state of Israel is as legitimate as criticizing any other state. It must not be equated with anti-Semitism. The struggle for Palestine in the 21st century is a struggle against settler colonialism: it is a struggle for justice and freedom. Yes, the Holocaust was perpetrated against many peoples, including the Jews, but the perpetrators were not the Palestinians. Remember that genocidal policies against the Palestinians have been committed since the Nakba of 1948, which resulted in the forced expulsion of about 80 percent of the Palestinians from their homeland. ‘Transfer ‘is genocide. Cultural genocide is also genocide.