Battling in Gaza not for religion
We must be very careful how we inform younger Malaysians about the present war in Gaza – that it is not a war between Jews and Muslims but a conflict between two countries.
Since November 2006, I have kept in touch with Nilly, a Palestinian woman who used to be a volunteer with the Palestine Red Crescent Society. We met at an international conference.
Nilly now lives in England because her husband works there. She said she also decided to live there for the sake of her children. If they remained in Palestine, there was always the risk of them dying from gunfire or that they would all perish if their home got bombed, she said. She yearns to return to Palestine once there is peace.
Her parents, meanwhile, still live in Hebron, a 30-minute drive from East Jerusalem. One of her sisters lives in East Jerusalem but no one in the family is allowed to visit her without getting a special permit from the Israeli authorities.
When Israel began its present incursion into Gaza, I e-mailed Nilly to ask if any of her family lives there. She replied that her sister Aisha, 33, lives in Gaza with her husband Moosa and their four children: Nabila, 17; Daud, 13; Harun, 12; and Murad, three.
Murad is so traumatised by the sounds and sights of war that he is now unable to speak. Moosa used to run his own business but has lost everything, including his house, since the siege on Gaza began 19 months ago.
Aisha has not been able to meet up with her family for more than a year now. Nilly tries to stay in touch with her but with no phone lines and no mobile phone networks now, she finds it hard to do so.
“When we manage to contact them, you can hear the sounds of the explosions. My sister is a social worker but when I call her she cries. She can’t handle what is happening. She and her kids are traumatised; they feel there is no hope.
“She used to tell me: ‘I want to see you all before I die. I don’t want to die far away from you without seeing you all. Please God, let me still be alive until I see them all.’ These are her own words,” Nilly wrote.
When I asked her if it was all right if I revealed their real names, she said: “I do know that disclosing real names might be dangerous, but in our case, as Palestinians, what else could happen? We don’t have much more to lose.”
One thing Nilly said makes for a most telling comment: “Many people think this is a war between Jews and Muslims. That is totally wrong. It’s about Palestinians trying to defend their own land.”
In order to understand the never-ending Palestine-Israel conflict, we must have some knowledge about Israel’s history.
“The creation of a religious nation-state that has contributed to a painful global conflict was the creation of the state of Israel in 1948. Up until then, Jews lived all over the Muslim world, from Morocco in the west to Afghanistan and Uzbekistan in the east, from Turkey and the Balkans to Yemen in the southwest corner of the Arabian peninsula. Major Jewish communities existed in Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Iran, and Turkey, the centres of Islamic culture during various parts of Islamic history. Having lived in these areas for many centuries, they looked, spoke, and ate – even sang – like the rest of the people around them, except that their liturgical rites were those of Judaism rather than Christianity or Islam.” – What’s Right With Islam Is Right With America by Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, Imam of the Masjid Al- Farah, New York City, 2004.
Imam Feisal is an American citizen who is also a Muslim, just as there are many Americans who are Buddhists, Hindus and Sikhs, apart from the larger population of Christians and Jews.
I would like to suggest that we, as older, responsible Malaysians, be very careful in how we inform younger Malaysians about the present war in Gaza. We have already made much of racial and religious issues in our own country: most of us have argued that we must think of ourselves as Malaysians rather than identify ourselves as different groups of people according to our religions. Thus, we may confuse younger Malaysians when we talk about “the Muslim world” and “the Jewish people”.
Wouldn’t it be better for us to make sure that they understand that the war in Gaza is about the conflict between two countries, Israel and Palestine?
Although Israel’s population is mainly Jewish, there are also Christians and Muslims who live there. Similarly, not all Palestinians are Muslims.
This is what we must make clear to younger Malaysians: that we identify ourselves by the countries we live in and by our citizenship, whatever our religions may be.
Thus, we must understand that the war in Gaza is a continuation of the ongoing Israeli occupation of Palestine territories that began in the Six-Day War of 1967.
What lies beyond the bounds of logic, however, is how Israel, a tiny country, could wantonly do as it wishes with Palestine. Israel has been able to nip and gnaw at Palestinian land as it so wishes, so that the state of Israel grew but Palestine did not, divided instead into two isolated patches: the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.
As Avi Shlaim, a professor of international relations at the University of Oxford, says: “... I write as someone who served loyally in the Israeli army in the mid-1960s and who has never questioned the legitimacy of the state of Israel within its pre-1967 borders. What I utterly reject is the Zionist colonial project beyond the Green Line. The Israeli occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip in the aftermath of the June 1967 war had very little to do with security and everything to do with territorial expansionism.
“Israel’s propaganda machine persistently purveyed the notion that the Palestinians are terrorists, that they reject co-existence with the Jewish state, that their nationalism is little more than anti-semitism, that Hamas is just a bunch of religious fanatics and that Islam is incompatible with democracy. But the simple truth is that the Palestinian people are a normal people with normal aspirations. They are no better but they are no worse than any other national group. What they aspire to, above all, is a piece of land to call their own on which to live in freedom and dignity.” – (“How Israel brought Gaza to the brink of humanitarian catastrophe”, Wednesday, Jan 7, 2009, guardian.co.uk)
The UN has, after two weeks of intense attacks by the Israelis, passed a resolution for a ceasefire in Gaza. Forty years of stop-and-start ceasefires will give little hope to the Palestinians. They have lived by the flickering light of candles that are snuffed out by slight winds for far too long. For now, the resolution for a ceasefire remains just that – another flicker of another candle that brings a little light into the darkness of their lives.
Since November 2006, I have kept in touch with Nilly, a Palestinian woman who used to be a volunteer with the Palestine Red Crescent Society. We met at an international conference.
Nilly now lives in England because her husband works there. She said she also decided to live there for the sake of her children. If they remained in Palestine, there was always the risk of them dying from gunfire or that they would all perish if their home got bombed, she said. She yearns to return to Palestine once there is peace.
Her parents, meanwhile, still live in Hebron, a 30-minute drive from East Jerusalem. One of her sisters lives in East Jerusalem but no one in the family is allowed to visit her without getting a special permit from the Israeli authorities.
When Israel began its present incursion into Gaza, I e-mailed Nilly to ask if any of her family lives there. She replied that her sister Aisha, 33, lives in Gaza with her husband Moosa and their four children: Nabila, 17; Daud, 13; Harun, 12; and Murad, three.
Murad is so traumatised by the sounds and sights of war that he is now unable to speak. Moosa used to run his own business but has lost everything, including his house, since the siege on Gaza began 19 months ago.
Aisha has not been able to meet up with her family for more than a year now. Nilly tries to stay in touch with her but with no phone lines and no mobile phone networks now, she finds it hard to do so.
“When we manage to contact them, you can hear the sounds of the explosions. My sister is a social worker but when I call her she cries. She can’t handle what is happening. She and her kids are traumatised; they feel there is no hope.
“She used to tell me: ‘I want to see you all before I die. I don’t want to die far away from you without seeing you all. Please God, let me still be alive until I see them all.’ These are her own words,” Nilly wrote.
When I asked her if it was all right if I revealed their real names, she said: “I do know that disclosing real names might be dangerous, but in our case, as Palestinians, what else could happen? We don’t have much more to lose.”
One thing Nilly said makes for a most telling comment: “Many people think this is a war between Jews and Muslims. That is totally wrong. It’s about Palestinians trying to defend their own land.”
In order to understand the never-ending Palestine-Israel conflict, we must have some knowledge about Israel’s history.
“The creation of a religious nation-state that has contributed to a painful global conflict was the creation of the state of Israel in 1948. Up until then, Jews lived all over the Muslim world, from Morocco in the west to Afghanistan and Uzbekistan in the east, from Turkey and the Balkans to Yemen in the southwest corner of the Arabian peninsula. Major Jewish communities existed in Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Iran, and Turkey, the centres of Islamic culture during various parts of Islamic history. Having lived in these areas for many centuries, they looked, spoke, and ate – even sang – like the rest of the people around them, except that their liturgical rites were those of Judaism rather than Christianity or Islam.” – What’s Right With Islam Is Right With America by Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, Imam of the Masjid Al- Farah, New York City, 2004.
Imam Feisal is an American citizen who is also a Muslim, just as there are many Americans who are Buddhists, Hindus and Sikhs, apart from the larger population of Christians and Jews.
I would like to suggest that we, as older, responsible Malaysians, be very careful in how we inform younger Malaysians about the present war in Gaza. We have already made much of racial and religious issues in our own country: most of us have argued that we must think of ourselves as Malaysians rather than identify ourselves as different groups of people according to our religions. Thus, we may confuse younger Malaysians when we talk about “the Muslim world” and “the Jewish people”.
Wouldn’t it be better for us to make sure that they understand that the war in Gaza is about the conflict between two countries, Israel and Palestine?
Although Israel’s population is mainly Jewish, there are also Christians and Muslims who live there. Similarly, not all Palestinians are Muslims.
This is what we must make clear to younger Malaysians: that we identify ourselves by the countries we live in and by our citizenship, whatever our religions may be.
Thus, we must understand that the war in Gaza is a continuation of the ongoing Israeli occupation of Palestine territories that began in the Six-Day War of 1967.
What lies beyond the bounds of logic, however, is how Israel, a tiny country, could wantonly do as it wishes with Palestine. Israel has been able to nip and gnaw at Palestinian land as it so wishes, so that the state of Israel grew but Palestine did not, divided instead into two isolated patches: the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.
As Avi Shlaim, a professor of international relations at the University of Oxford, says: “... I write as someone who served loyally in the Israeli army in the mid-1960s and who has never questioned the legitimacy of the state of Israel within its pre-1967 borders. What I utterly reject is the Zionist colonial project beyond the Green Line. The Israeli occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip in the aftermath of the June 1967 war had very little to do with security and everything to do with territorial expansionism.
“Israel’s propaganda machine persistently purveyed the notion that the Palestinians are terrorists, that they reject co-existence with the Jewish state, that their nationalism is little more than anti-semitism, that Hamas is just a bunch of religious fanatics and that Islam is incompatible with democracy. But the simple truth is that the Palestinian people are a normal people with normal aspirations. They are no better but they are no worse than any other national group. What they aspire to, above all, is a piece of land to call their own on which to live in freedom and dignity.” – (“How Israel brought Gaza to the brink of humanitarian catastrophe”, Wednesday, Jan 7, 2009, guardian.co.uk)
The UN has, after two weeks of intense attacks by the Israelis, passed a resolution for a ceasefire in Gaza. Forty years of stop-and-start ceasefires will give little hope to the Palestinians. They have lived by the flickering light of candles that are snuffed out by slight winds for far too long. For now, the resolution for a ceasefire remains just that – another flicker of another candle that brings a little light into the darkness of their lives.
MOHD ADHA MOHD ZAIN (ADHA ZAIN)
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