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Published: 2007-09-25 16:37:11 +0000 UTC; Views: 9924; Favourites: 158; Downloads: 0
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From the Ashes of our Misery: A series on hope in the midst of occupation.Bethlehem, Occupied West Bank, Summer 2007.
My gallery: [link]
Domination has a way of leaking out of its immediate context and spilling onto other peoples and places. To adapt an oft used idiom: Domination anywhere, degrades freedom everywhere. And liberation anywhere preserves freedom everywhere. Hence the liberation of the Palestinian people is intertwined with our liberation and we share the scars of their bondage. We also share complicity in the system of domination that has plagued the indigenous people of Palestine since the establishment of the Jewish state of Israel in 1948. The occupation of Palestine was not created in a vacuum. It arose and has been sustained by massive international support. Today the state of Israel receives over 4 billion dollars each year from the United States. This money is used to buy weapons that are used against Palestinian civilians and resistance fighters alike and to expand the infrastructure of apartheid in the West Bank and Gaza.
Nikon D200
Nikkor 10-20 mm
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Comments: 63
This is beautifully sad. You've captured a peice of history in this one picture.
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This is heartbreaking, and very powerful..
I feel bad for the poor girl.
maybe I'm thinking too much into this, but the smallness of her might represent her insignificance in all this..
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that's really powerful
congrats on the DD -- I'm surprised more people haven't taken the time to look though
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oh my god, what an incredible photograph.
congrats on the DD, you deserve it!
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"No wall will stop us." I took a closer look at your photo and saw that. This is amazingly compelling, Great work
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I appreciate your kind words.
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shes so small, where are her parents
Lovely shot wow!
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Excellent question. Perhaps somewhere behind the wall?
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Sad how the child has to be raised in a land torn apart by the generation before her. And it makes it worse to feel that her generation has to clean up a mess they didn't start. Why must people act so crappy to each other?
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Crappy nature I guess?
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It really is brilliant, powerfull, and terribly overlooked.
Weird that I should come upon this today, right after I saw the movie One Day in Spetember, about the Israelis being killed and held hostage by Palestinians at the '72 olympics.
As soon as my eyes are opened to this issue, I see this picture.
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That is interesting. Interesting film too.
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Very powerful in it's desolation. We are all at a crossroads in sync with the tiny red life.
Congratulations on the DD!
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Though I disagree with your political views - I can appreciate a meaningful photo when I see one, well done.
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Thank you sir. I would love to hear your thoughts on the conflict. I am always looking to here new ideas, especially from folks who disagree with me.
cheers.
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Oh, and one thing I forgot to mention - the Palestinian authority receives a lot more international money than Israel (this is a fact, no point denying it), and yet almost all Palestinians live in poverty... so where does this money go?
Even though much of this money has been proven to have found it's way into private PA ministers' bank accounts & used to traffic & buy arms to be used against Israel - this money continues to flow into the PA...
So as you can see, no one's hands are clean.
Your post, on the other hand, places all blame on Israel.
If your going to make an argument- at least be honest about the truth...
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Well, it is my experience internet discussions never end well, since short textual messages aren't nearly enough to discuss a conflict as complicated as the Israeli-Palestinian one.
Non the less, in a nutshell-
The separation wall is not a weapon against the Palestinian people- it is a protective wall to prevent Palestinian terrorists from infiltrating Israeli cities.
Do I like it? Of course not. I hate the fact Israel has to put up walls and fight the Palestinians.
But as long as there are suicide bombers- Israel has to protect it's self.
And though I don't deny Palestinians are killed by Israel - I know for a fact that the IDF isn't a war mongering army & doesn't kill innocent people on purpose.
Like in any war, there are casualties (on both sides), but the IDF only targets terrorists, and since these terrorists use the civilian population as their hiding ground, often innocent people are killed in the cross fire.
The point is - Israel & the Palestinians are part of a vicious circle of violence, and mistakes have been made on both sides.
But the wall (or rather fence, since only about 5% of it is actual wall) is there completely for the goal of protecting Israeli lives - and if you look at it objectively, you understand that that is in fact the Israeli government job, is it not?
As for your use of the word - dominion.
Most of the land the Palestinians claim as theirs - is no more theirs than the Israelis. So in the end, if these two parties are fighting over it, this is a land dispute, not a dominion.
As for the land that the IDF occupies, but which is not part of Israel (such as Hebron), is a subject of bitter disagreement within the Israeli people, and is commonly accepted as a "no choice" situation in which the IDF is stuck.
Why stuck? Because if they move out of these lands - Israeli civilians will be killed. As long as the IDF sits guard, it can prevent terrorists from reaching Israeli towns... think of it from their point of view - its their job to protect Israelis, and that is the only way to do it.
If you ask for my personal opinion - I support the wall, for the reasons written above.
But I also support pulling the IDF & the Israeli settlers out of many of the disputed lands (such as Hebron, again) and handing it over to the Palestinian authority in order to allow them to finaly have their own state. Which is something I would be very happy to see.
War is bad, no one in his right mind can support it, but violence must be stopped and if the way to do that is separate the Israeli population & the Palestinian population - then so be it.
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Thank you for your thoughts. I agree internet discussions are usually incomplete and get nasty quickly. And usually I avoid them as not constructive.
I am right to assume that you are a Jewish Israeli? Correct? I like knowing who I am talking to, which largely shapes the kinds of things I say and in this case the aspects of the conflict that are pertinent to talk about. I am interested in your history...when did your family move to Israel? From what country did they immigrate and what year? (Of course I am also assuming its a possibility that you Mizrahi and thus your family has lived in Palestine for centuries...but that is the exception.)
No body is suggesting the wall is a weapon. I would put it something like the wall is an important part of a designed land-grab that was planned prior to 1948 and is just recently getting close to full fruition. And in that sense the wall is very offensive, while not a literal weapon. However to the families whose homes were demolished, farmland annexed, or villages divided the wall is very much a weapon of a sort. The separation barrier is a way to make what you support as a solution (a military and settler withdrawal roughly along the '67 borders) inviable. Am I right to assume that you think Palestinians are humans just like you and other Jewish Israelis? If so, then we must agree that, in general, both Jewish Israelis and Palestinians who have chosen to defend their homeland violently have good reason to do so...in other words their is reason rather than animal passion behind why Palestinians kill Israelis and IDF soldiers who kill Palestinians...am I right? The difference is power. You can go on on about how much aid the PA receives and how corrupt they are and how many weapons they have (and I agree with all the above points, by the way) but I assume you recognize the massive power imbalance between the IDF and Palestinian militants? Correct? In other words the IDF is a much more lethal force, just by sheer weaponry...right? With this in mind I am interested to hear how you deal with the massive imbalance of civilian casualties between Israelis and Palestinians (BEFORE and after the wall was built) and please don't repeat this goofy American idea that Palestinian terrorists are so vicious that they embed themselves in civilian areas! They are around civilians because they are defending their homes, usually from Israeli, incursions! And in the case of Gaza (the quassams) they are firing rockets blindly because the IDF is too cowardly to go into Gaza and face them themselves. The people of Sderot are suffering because of Israel's security obsessed policies not in spite of them.
This is a lot already...respond as you have time.
Also, at some point if you would like to continue talking I would like to hear how you understand what happened in 1948. For me, how you think of the formation of Israel is key for how you interpret contemporary issues.
Cheers, Adam
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I'm not going to bother answering, since this is never going to lead anywhere.
If you wish to take my silence as "admiting I'm wrong"- go right ahead.
It makes no difference to me, since no matter what I say you'll disagree with my opinion since we differ in our opinion of the basics, so how could we ever agree on the complexities?
Have a nice day.
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I would love to hear what you believe about the "basics." I do not interpret silence as being wrong...that is far outside of the point of the matter...silence is violence and domination when someone is asking you to tell them about your story, not admitting you are wrong. I interpret your silence, if you chose to stand by the threat as a violent and coercive decision to reject mutual hospitality.
It is a very cowardly to flee from conversation that is hospitable and open like this. Your silence does not mean you are wrong, but it does prove that you are afraid of people that refuse to converse within your binaries...of either this or that. I asked you to tell me something of yourself and your past and your understanding of how your memory intersects with reality, nothing more. The important thing is not that we agree on [all] the complexities" but rather that we continue to talk in spite of difference. I am very seriously asking you to continue writing...I want to learn from you. I responded to you because I had faith in you to hear me and be heard yourself. To deny such an invitation is very un-Jewish of you. Both Judaic and and Arabic cultures are cultures of hospitality saturated in debate and the tense maintenance of ongoing difference, which is what keeps the cultures healthy and alive, and I am asking you to tell about your world...
Please don't reject my questions. Thanks!
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Quite an eerie photograph. Powerful image of the young girl.
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