Terrorism: A "Human Rights" Research
In 1997-8, the suicide bombing operations that were done by Hamas were at their top scale. The Israeli society then was in horror anticipating when and where the next operation is going to happen. I remember at that time, late in the evening, a jewish friend came paranoiac to my home in the West Bank. She got horridly into my house horrified and laid in my bed asking me to stay with me for a couple of days. Her face showed contours of horror as she spoke to me. I calmed her down and we sat to chat.
The Israeli intelligence (Shabak) stood helpless in horror not knowing what to do and how to stop that crazy wave of “terrorist” consecutive operations. They imposed closures, curfews, did arrests, assassinations but all was in vain in front of a whole people struggling for its freedom on its occupied homeland.
In early 1998, I was asked by a Palestinian “friend” if I can do an “academic” research for a Palestinian “Human Rights” organization. They were looking for an “academician” who can formulate a “coherent” study of the “suicide bombers”. My “friend” told me that the “offer” (as if talking of a business deal) is so generous and all the expenses are covered plus a huge amount of money… and all is “academic research”
Within this context, I was asked to do this research. The research was to be done on all the freedom-fighters who did suicide bombing operations; to meet their families, to gather and analyze statistics of them and their families, their social and geographical background, their habits, their ages, their degree of education …etc.
They, the Israeli intelligence (Shaback) was trying to preempt and anticipate the coming suicide bomber through studying the “typical suicide bomber”. They thought that through such a “coherent”, “academic” and thorough research they will be able to stop that attacks.
There is nothing better than using a “Human Rights” organization to do such a research pretending it to be a “purely” human rights “academic” research !! But I felt suspicious and refused to do that “academic” research !!! Do you see how some “academicians work under occupation?
For our luck, we Palestinians, have 52 “human rights” organizations in the West Bank only, and an endless number of other “academic” international organizations of NGOs. Every country, every intelligence agency has its own organization(s). I bet even the Somalis have their own NGO working in gathering information on our occupied Palestine and it’s all a “pure”, “academic” research for the help of the poor Palestinians.
Again, in early 2002, two years before Arafat was assassinated, and two years after the beginning of the second in tifada, after the Almighty Sharon decided that Arafat is “irrelevant” peace partner, I faced this trick of “academic” research again. My roommate got the chance (funny, it’s a chance to serve the international intelligence agencies) to do another “academic” research about Arafat
This research, also generous and fat, was done by an “academic” political studies center, directed by Palestinians of course, but moved by…by !! how could I know as a primitive Bedouin?
This research was done to assign “the potential successor of Arafat”, with questionnaires, statistics, interviews, analytical information of politics, economics …etc, compelled very well as if in an well “coherent”, “academic” research done by an “academician” of course !! The result was amazing and fantastic; the “irrelevant” Arafat was assassinated two years later !!!
See how the “benevolent” NGOs and “Human Rights” organizations work under occupation?
Sami, the Bedouin.
Join the Conversation
Oh, here comes tje next one.
The old, “the jews poisned arafat” story.
How many more antisemitic sterotypes will sami throw up today?
Sad, sad,sami
Mr./Miss/Mrs Istvanst,
I believe you got to be happy to read my narrative, simply because not always you meet people who think like me, and give you alternative information than the “hasbara” they deaf your ear with!!!
I started blogging at zionist sites and I like reading the opponents viewpoints that I dont want to follow the mob but to elicit my own way through the steep and rocky roads. I even read the hebrew hasbara always and try to see how others think. I am not like you dear, following what I believe in and read what pleases me only. I like challenging thoughts and challinging discussions, simply because people who think like me cant add nothing to me… and I hope I will learn from you… dont run away, I need to study your mentality, maybe you can prove I am wrong or vice verse !!
Sami, the bedouin.
Istvanst, you apparently have not grasped exactly what Sami was speaking of….try reading again.
An excellent piece of writing Sami…. sometimes being primitive gives one a better grasp of situations than those living in more “enlightened” ways.
Hi Istvanst, I am not sure exactly how this article qualifies as anti-Semitism. Sami did use some harsh words in the past but revised them due to other people’s suggestions (and in one case by an editor,) but his opinions didn’t grew out of hatred for Jews, but rather his experiences living under an occupation. When you witness anger in his posts at times, remember that it is difficult to contain such anger when you’re surrounded with poverty and corpses.
I think you must tread carefully with this sort of reasoning. In reality, everyone is a product of their experience. By this logic, everyone could justify everything they say or do by saying that critical events in their lifetime caused them to be uncontrollably angry, hateful, or murderous. If that is the case, then no one can be held responsible for their words or deeds because their life experience prompted their behavior to begin with. Everyone who has ever believed, said, or done anything malicious with wash themselves of any guilt or fault. If peace is to be achieved, people must take responsibility for whatever they have done that perpetuated the conflict. That is what makes ending a conflict so difficult, because everyone on both sides must quash the instincts and behaviors that bad experience has taught them. Those who do not will never be able to stop fighting.
Sami,
If the organization that asked you to do this research was truly independent operated by Palestinians, would you have still done the research?
Mr. W.
What are the researches done for? This is the question that you should ask yourself for. I am always ready to do any research that serves the people of the street, any street in the world even if in Kuala-lambour, the real people of the street !!!
First, let me tell you that I was tempted by the PA (in their endeavor to absorb, marginalize and defuse the x-fighters and make them support and cooperate with the new-deluxe occupation of x-Oslo) to work in one of their numerous security systems. Again, the offer (of business) was fat with a flat and a private car…. but I said NO !!! Simply because I cant reconciliate with the occupation and serve it (against my people, of course).
Second, look at all the researches that are done UNDER OCCUPATION and see how many of them REALLY serve the occupied people !!!! Every research is done here by an organization that is connected directly with some ALIEN government or agency, solely to serve them and their interests in our land !!! An excellent example here are the endless researches of the World Bank, they are devastating the land and serving annexing our economy to this or that country and promote their products or services !!! We are occupied to the bones Mr. W. … and only a revolution can set us free…. a revolution in mentality that encounters the invaders’ … Hamas, although backward, but excellent example here !!!
Ti give you example: The UNRWA was established solely to help the refugees settle in the diaspora and to prevent them from fighting to go back homes!!! You might be asked to do an “academic” research about the refugees for the “benevolent” UNRWA titled “Human Rights Conditions of the Palestinian Refugees” and make excellently compelled statistics of all the Palestinian refugees everywhere; there numbers, social and economic conditions, their social position and how it is different from Egypt to Lebanon (for example)…. and you believe that you are doing a great human job serving the poor refugees…. BUT YOU ARE WORKING FOR A NEW AGENDA TO HELP SETTLING THE REFUGEES AWAY FROM THEIR HOMES. TO HELP SETTLING THE ZIONISTS IN THEIR PLACE !!!
Got the point Mr. W.?
Sami, the bedouin
Sami,
I am amazed by your willingness to approve of Hamas even though you acknowledge that they are backward. That’s messed up.
Mr. W.
The Backward zionist mentality of 2500 years back, needs a contra “backward” reaction… At least Hamas is 1100 years more modern than the zionists !!! Who is the backward then?
Sami, the bedouin.
Sami,
What the hell are you talking about?
Are you saying that the values expressed in the Hebrew Bible or the conquests in Canaan 2,500 years ago are backward?
I don’t know much about the Quran, but in the Hebrew Bible, the passages dealing with conquest are descriptive, rather than instructive. This or that happened, but it is not a commandment from God. King David was shown many times as immoral and was punished for it. The Prophet Daniel told him so. In fact, God warns the Israelites from the beginning that there were many down sides to having a king.
Just because a movement is started closer to our time, it doesn’t mean that it is modern therefore good and progressive. The Nazis are 1,000 years more modern than Hamas, but that doesn’t mean that they are good and progressive. How logical is your statement now?
Mr. W,
Back to the roots:
Frist, I said that we are occupied to the bones and lots of us serve the occupier which is disguised in “benevolent” charites or “human rights” organizations … I gave you examples !!
I sad also what we need is a true revolution that can get out of this tricky discourse and create a counter revolutionary discourse of the occupied !!
Hamas, although backward, but it provides such a revolutionary way of thinking that cant cross with the occupiers discourse and is not beguiled by the “international aids” that their sole aim is to deepen the occupation and and annex us economically, culturally, politically and mentaly to their tricks of endless “peace processes” !!!
You asked me how I praise Hamas at the time I say that they are backward.
I told you because they think in a revolutionary way out of the deceptive international discourse !!!
They think in a mentality that goes back to the early Islam some 1400 years, and thus for me are backward !!! However, the zionists (not the jews) are thinking through a mentality that goes back some 2500 years back…. comparatively and historically, Hamas are more modern and progressive than the zionists !!!
I am not talking of religion at all, I respect all religions (and it is stated in the Quran that muslems MUST respect all the monotheist religions, which I do) and all the belief that you might not think of !!!
However, the zionists who justify their crimes against the Palestinians through going back deep in history, are not acceptable at all for me, nor the mentality of Hamas that are intending to take us back in history as well !!!
What we need is a modern and secular state the can GET OUT of this discourse of ancient heresies !!!!
And again back to my article that we are occupied to the bones and all the international intelligence agencies and governments are penetrating us through their “NGOs” and their tricky discourse of “human rights, “democracy”, “peace”, “green ecology”, “charity”, “development” and all what you might think of of the tricky NGOs they create to deceive us more and use our “academicians” to serve their colonial strategy
Got my point Mr. W.
Sami, the bedouin.
Sami,
Sorry for the news Sami, but many Palestinians rely on these services. Whether it getting medical aide in Hadassah Hospital (Israel) or a clinic in the West Bank funded by the US and Europe.
I think a quote from Mahmoud Darwish will fit here:
You won’t see the Tamil or even the Darfurians receive as much attention as the Palestinians. The West watches you and Israel more than anyone else. Now the question is, what are you going to do with that attention, and what are you going to ask for?
You have said many times that you want to live in a secular and democratic state. But does Hamas represent and fight for the secular and democratic state you wish for?
Now, I’m sure you have some nice (though false) quotes from the Zionists about their wicked intentions. But let’s take two documents that I doubt any would question the authenticity of. The two documents are 1.) the Israeli Declaration of Independence, and 2.) the Hamas charter.
Now, my understanding was that the Zionist movement was very secular, as represented by Herzl and Ben-Gurion. Tell me, how many passages from the Hebrew Bible are cited in the Israeli Declaration of Independence? Now compare that number (which if you counted you would have gotten a big fat 0 – zero) with the number of passages the Hamas charter quotes from the Quran. The Quran as some good passages, unfortunately, Hamas picked the wrong ones. So, okay, we have established that Hamas is backwards. But what makes the Zionists backwards? Can you please tell me what in Israel’s declaration of independence says something so profoundly backwards, at least something more so than Hamas? Anything so backwards as what Israel’s neighbors have.
So back to one of my questions above, the world’s eyes are on you, what are you going to do with that attention, and what are you going to ask for? Are you going take a line from Hamas and say this:
… and declare your belief in the Protocols of the Elders of Zion?
Or are you going to say some version of a Palestinian state like this:
Israel still has many roads to cross to fulfill its declaration of i independence, but at least it has done a better job than its regional neighbors under the most extreme situation.
Ever notice how you are the only one talking about “Chosen” this or “People” that? Nobody here is talking about ancient texts but you.
If you present your vision, which aligns much closer to how the West lives than to Hamas’ vision, and drop your childish references to old Tsarist and Nazi propaganda such as the Protocols, then you’ll get support for what you want rather than rely on some fat imam preaching in a mosque in Gaza about the glory of firing rockets at 8 am in the morning when kids are walking to school and then wonder why the only food you are getting is packaged in a box that has the UN logo on it. Or when going to work you see a bunch of posters of “martyrs” who blew themselves and everyone around them in a bus, and then wonder why you have to wait 2 hours to get through a check point.
You got so many people from all walks of life, including those from Israeli, trying to make Palestine succeed, but instead, your message is that they are serving the occupation.
The only point I got from you is illogical and hypocritical.
Very funny, made me laugh a lot!
Seriously, personally I would consider this whole issue has to be taken to be pieces and dissected finely, because not all parts of the beast can always be eaten.
Hamas, in my opinion have a valid point of view, when they defend the land rights of the Islamic Waqf under the Ottomans, which is simply to be taken as ‘valid land laws’ which should be respected by any people, who have made the decision to occupy and to rule over a territory.
These land laws that were registered under the Ottomans, of the indigenous people, should be respected. The British justified their mandate using colonialist laws called ‘Terra Nullius’ from the 1800s, which was basically a Latin term, that justified a racist colonial era, that should also be in the past, the same as the legal claim of the descendants of Solomon is also in the past.
At least the Ottoman period ended in the last century.
Regarding the research done on behalf of understanding the mentality of suicidally depressed people who might ‘turn’ to commit violent acts against themselves.
From what I have understood, bombing people and denying them their human rights and rights to exist, is not normally a very good way in which to prevent them from committing suicide. If I was suicidally depressed under the Palestinian occupation, I would understand how they felt, I wouldn’t need to do academic research in order to be suicidally depressed.
Personally, over the different periods that I spent travelling in Israel and Palestine, I got to understand maybe part of the answer to this question for myself. I saw the bombed Palestinian Authority Security building in Bethlehem, that got bombed by an F16 fighter aeroplane. It was bombed, it didn’t look very authoritarian, or able to give any kind of security for the Palestinian people. It was a wreck, a demolition site.
Another time I went on a bus from Jerusalem to Bethlehem, and I discovered the day before, someone had blown herself up, on a bus in Jerusalem. I was told that the reason that she had blown herself up, was because her house had been demolished, her father had been killed and her fiancee had also been killed. That meant that she had no home. She had no father. She had no future husband, and therefore she had no future. Therefore she had no life, and therefore she decided that she did not want her life. I can empathise with her.
If the Israeli people want to stop people from blowing themselves up because they are suicidally depressed, it would help if they could give the Palestinian freedoms and human rights, and to give them a sense that they actually have a ‘life’.
PS – I should categorically state – I do not support the actions of Hamas that are taken against any person – whether that has been in the fighting against Fatah in Gaza or in terms of their aggressions against Israeli people in their rocket attacks.
All I am defending is the right to respect the original land laws of the people who lived on the territory that the British supposedly ‘liberated’ for the indigenous people.
It doesn’t matter what the religion is – what is important is the land laws and the right to respect those people.
Religion is TOTALLY IRRELEVANT in this discussion.
People under the Ottomans, lived under ALL religions – the land rights and right of occupancy are what is important. The fact that the legal system happened to be Islamic is irrelevant.
It is ridiculous to state that the land of Israel can go back to represent a time when there was no Islamic land laws. Rights of ownership are separate to religious belief.
The Sanhedrin of the temple and many of the legal judges of the original Hebrews were different to priests who were a different part of the society who practiced and developed mystical teachings.
The developments from the original writings of people over an immense period of history is just totally impossible to contain nor to apply to a period now in the modern era.
Israel is a mess, for various reasons. Partly because it was created under the British occupation, when they were fighting the Ottomans and the Nazis and the French and British were partitioning the region, and the entire region was a battle ground throughout the 1st and 2nd world war period. I still think that the land of former Palestine, still is suffering from the psychological trauma of major dramatic shifts in the memory of the landscape.
Technically, now there should be peace, so therefore according to international law the UN should be helping the Palestinians to return and to re-settle in their homes that they abandoned. The West Bank and Gaza were re-captured in 1967, why are these areas not re-incorporated into Israel, and people allowed to re-integrate into the society and to live normal free lives?
How can there be peace if the racist apartheid is allowed to continue to exist?
How can Israelis expect Palestinians to feel, if they are left subject to constant bomb attacks from aeroplanes, incursions where people are getting shot, and their homes being demolished?
When will Israel rest and put down her guns?