| April 7, 2005 Occupied: Palestine, Iraq, and the U.S.A. by Karen Button, insurgent49 Imagine the army shows up at your front door and informs you that your house will be destroyed in 24 hours because your brother or uncle or grandfather’s sister has committed some crime. Period. There is no one to appeal to. No agency that will listen. No recourse, no redress ... guilt by association. Occupied Palestine  For many years, the Israeli Defense Force has bulldozed Palestinian houses and olive groves. Whole families have been made homeless or penniless because of the suspected, not convicted, activities of a single family member. These families have no recourse, no hope for their day in court, no justice and no reprieve. Often the IDF gives only 24 hours notice. Twenty-four hours to remove a lifetime of belongings. Twenty-four hours to leave behind a lifetime of memories. Twenty-four hours to find some other place to store belongings, house family members, and then the heartache of watching the walls of one’s life crumble into rubble. This is judgment and punishment wrapped into one. It’s hard to imagine, and if the imagination will carry far enough, imagine the rage that is wrought from the despair and powerlessness. Yet it happens nearly every day in occupied Palestine. Injustice fuels rage, and the cycle of Palestinian suicide bombers and bulldozed houses, Israeli assassinations, detentions, and torture feeds on itself. We in the United States have listened well, it seems, but not to the lessons that are perhaps the most obvious – violence and injustice breeds violence and injustice. No. Instead, our lesson has been tactical. Our government began giving Iraqis the Palestinian treatment last year, bulldozing the family homes and the village date orchards of those suspected of violence against American forces in occupied Iraq. Small wonder, since the U.S. government has supported these Israeli policies financially for years and brought Israeli counter-intelligence forces to train the US military in Iraq. Imagine this. Occupied Iraq You’re at home, eating dinner when a group of soldiers shows up at your door, only this time they don’t even bother to knock. Instead, they kick in the door as you are eating, storming into your living room with guns at the ready, their faces obscured by shields so you cannot look into their eyes. They bark out orders in a language you cannot understand, yet the wild gestures they make with their guns you understand completely as you scurry toward the corner of the room. You sink into your comfortable couch in this uncomfortable situation and note the irony as these strangers are tearing your house apart, pulling out drawers, bashing in the bathroom door, upending furniture, all the while yelling what are obviously questions to you. They scream more unintelligible words and fire a few rounds into the wall over your head as they grab your nephew (who had come by to give the girls a writing lesson since they are no longer going to school) and shove him out the door. It all happens too fast and you watch each other in horror as they make their way out the gaping hole that was once your front door. “Fuckin’ lucky!” are their departing words.  Fuckin’ lucky. Terrified, you etch these words in your mind to ask someone about, thinking it will give you some clue as to why they took your nephew, as you pull your children to you in what will be a very long night. Tomorrow, perhaps, you will attempt to clean up and take stock of what, of value, you still own. Or imagine this: You are sitting in unbearable heat in a long corridor that smells of sweat and fear. Occasionally, you see them bring in someone new, handcuffed and hooded, and you look away, shamed for them. As you scan the benches of weary and despondent faces, you recognize more than a few of your neighbor’s faces; you’ve seen them in this very hallway for months now and you play your little game: who is missing from this lengthy queue? Those who are no longer here, you tell yourself, have found their relatives and gone home. You see them happily hugging one another, checking each other’s faces and searching their eyes. You see them eating together that night, as if nothing had ever disrupted their home. And then you turn back to your own situation, a little more hopeful because you noticed three neighbors are not here today. You do not allow yourself to imagine anything other than this happy outcome for them, because you’re certain it must be your own, too. Today, you do not allow yourself to think about the stories emerging from the prisons. The crumpled piece of paper you hold in your hand may be your only link to your daughter for the past four months, but still, you are hopeful. You review what you do know in your head. They came for her one night about 3 a.m. (the children’s screaming had woken the neighbors and they related this bit of information to you). The family was sleeping, your daughter and her two sons and one daughter. Her husband had been killed three months earlier on his way home from work when a car bomb exploded 20 feet away. Perhaps he was fortunate. His death was immediate, not the slow, painful death of those whose limbs had been torn away and then who laid for weeks in a hospital ill-equipped to care for such serious injuries, until their lives drained painfully away. You have heard rumors that other women have been taken into custody as well. There are no charges, nor reasons given. Even so, you show up daily to let these prison guards know your daughter is not forgotten and you will never stop questioning. You do your best to reassure your grandchildren, yet there are those moments, when you’ve made certain you’re alone, that you allow yourself the tears of the despair that have set in. You cannot imagine what horrors and abuses your daughter will tell once she is released from the occupiers’ prison, especially since the horrific videos and pictures have been made public. You simply hope she is still alive. Now, imagine one more scene: Occupied America  You and your small family have recently had fortune smile upon you. After years of witnessing first only students disappear and comforting yourself that they were probably breaking many laws and now the country was safer, you were no longer able to deny the truth when your working-class neighbors began disappearing as well. When government agents began following your husband home from the hospital where he was a doctor, you were scared enough to think about escape. Fortunately, your brother lived across the seas in a “free” country and you are now a refugee in that country of democracy. You are sure that you are finally safe under the protection of their “just” laws. Even more fortunately, this country is in need of doctors. Your husband speaks good English, having gone to medical school in Great Britain, and he’s been granted documents allowing him to work at the local hospital. Finally, you feel that nagging fear drain away and you realize this is what freedom feels like – until the night your husband doesn’t come home. Just like your home country. This time though, you are frantic with the disorientation that comes from not understanding the language, the culture, the subtleties you may be missing in this new country. Fortunately, there are some organizations that help. They find you interpreters, help you understand the law and fill out something called a missing-persons report; they even help with buying food for your children. Yet, ultimately they cannot help pay the rent that your husband’s salary maintained. Although the landlord is understanding, an eviction notice shows up in the third month. You’ve attempted work, but there aren’t many who hire without a green card or some knowledge of English. With despair, you answer the knock on your door one late afternoon to find government agents handing you a piece of paper that is illegible until you take it to your neighbor. This document, so casually placed in your hands, just delivered your fate. Your husband has been, for the past three months, in an immigration detention center under suspicion of supporting terrorist activities. You laugh ... nervously. Your husband involved in terrorist activities? Crazy! You’ve heard mumblings of this government unfairly holding people, yet hadn’t thought too much of it before. It felt so far away. After all, it was Somalis who’ve been mostly detained in your city, not your people. The next part you are completely unprepared for. Your husband is to remain in detention but you and your children are being flown back to your home. Deported. Dropped, unwanted, back into the country you just fled from, without your husband. Stunned, your mind barely grasps this information before it lurches forward to what you, a married woman without any financial support, could possibly do for your children once back home. You will live on the streets. How can this government of democracy send you back into the abyss from which you came? And without your husband. Have they no idea what that means for a woman in a country like yours? These scenes all have one thing in common: The U.S. government. It is occupying Iraq and Afghanistan, but it is also occupying the hearts and minds of every person in this country who accepts the fear that is being dished out, who believes we must strip away our civil rights in order to be safe, and who willingly buys the line that dissent is unpatriotic. Now. Imagine that one of these scenes has happened to you, or to someone you love dearly and you have no police to turn to for they are part of the problem. Certainly, there is no possibility of your day in court (of which we are guaranteed in the United States). What would you do in the face of such injustice? To imagine this is to have the face of the resistance. Karen Button is a freelance journalist and peace activist.
She can be reached at kbutton@insurgent49.com
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2005
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Reserved. in-sur-gent (in sur'jent), n. 1. a member of a group which revolts against the policies of its leadership. |
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