preaching fundamentalism (2)

Preaching fundamentalism ….as a consequence of occupation

The next chapter in yesterday’s episode is what really went inside the interrogation room with my 13 year old niece. Not to mention the legality of the procedure, I fully understand that arguing law in a state that designs law for us every given chance wouldn’t be a closed argument.

Somehow, the maximum of what this girl had in her head cannot outgrow her 13 years of life. She could have thought inside her head that going to the Aqsa and support by being there, the holy site, in contributing to her prayers would help make the Israelis vanish. It would remain inside my assumptions that she didn’t reveal. The fact that the girl is taking the whole issue until this moment with a laugh and is being sarcastic about all the attention and pressure everyone is putting her in. She does know for sure that she got away from being punished for her leaving the house without permission.

Well, the girl is under house arrest for five days, it could be possible that she might be taken to court, because she “confessed” that she “is fond of” al –Aqsa brigades, and she wishes to be a martyr and one the Jerusalem martyrs is her hero. The mother was warned that being a sympathizer to any of those groups is a crime today.

All this could be rationalized in a way or another. I can understand how a mere incident turns into an investigation in such a critical moment. In a normal state, Israel should judge itself when children are seriously turning into potential “terrorists”.

I was very harsh on my sister, I could still be. It is not just my sister. I could be as critical as I am against this entire attitude in how we react to situations, how we raise up our children. What we feed them or what we allow them to be fed with from the different information systems that exist around us.

But there is something else that sat among us today. Fear.

Fear from even expressing what each one was feeling. It was a kind of sarcastic discussion, how everyone turned into an attacker to the Palestinian cause. To all the fractions, to everything. It was kind of amusing to start with, the attitude of the generation of the grandmothers who all turned into mother(s) Teresa and Gandhi’s, and then the pretentious revolutionary mothers (us), and those teen-agers, this time represented by my 12-year-old Serena. Now I should be careful, being a suspected family of terror.

I was looking at my daughter debating with my aunt over the nation, the homeland, the identity, and a debate that started with yelling from my aunt and took the shape of non-stop tears from my daughter.

Serena has been recently provoked, sentimental about what is taking place, has been asking many questions about death, and is leading a boycott campaign, strongly believing that by boycotting we will be lessening the injustice being held on Gaza.

Her tears where filling her eyes that really reddened as she continued to say: “why is it ok that all those people in Gaza get killed. Why is our life more worthy than theirs? If we have nothing left, let us at least have some dignity to live with”.

The way she was running the discussion with the woman, who is her grandmother’s age, kept her stuck in the verge of politeness that she knew she couldn’t step out from. This whole argument between two generations, that a gap of tow other generations at least reside between them, in many ways the fear of being hurt, of trying to protect is the tone in the older generation. All those examples of the incitements that surrounds us. The fear of any harm that may befall on any of us. Being tired enough of a life that lacks all kind of normality, but to the least keep some no-harm situation.

But somehow inside the tears of my daughter, I saw the resilience of a nation. I was amazed listening to what she was saying, reminding myself all the time that she was 12. Bringing confused examples of the Palestinian catastrophe, mixing them with the continued lived tyranny, and in between her continued screams: “ what did you want her to say. What do you want us to do? When they kill us we should bow down and tell them thank you? We should be executed for going to the Aqsa when no one else is going? Why don’t you go she was telling the woman? Why aren’t our men going?”

Amid all this the TV channel was broadcasting live news from Palestine, with a screen saying al Aqsa is calling for you. Another young woman shot for an alleged stabbing, another expulsion, another demolition, and more demonstrations.

Serena’s tears were tremendous, genuine, heated with the pain of a whole generation.

My heart was taken with awe, thinking of how tough things are still going to be … but somehow, something inside me stopped and despite the energy of the filled in fear, I felt proud. I felt that this Palestine is something stronger than stones and some earth. It is with people like Serena and Sama and Yasmina. This generation is a generation of real freedom fighters. It is a generation of children who want to live in freedom, because living in the globalist of social media. They do understand what it means to be free. They can differentiate. They can comprehend what our generation couldn’t grasp or reach. Maybe they also witnessed more powerful atrocities, which somehow only make them stronger and resilient.

This is the generation that Oslo promised to brainwash into a normalization that can make them forget anything related to real concepts of freedom. Apparently freedom is inside the genes. People are born acquiring it. They did brainwash us … but not them.

Oppression, force, tyranny, injustice ….can continue for as long as it can … but it definitely counter breed freedom fighters that are so resilient … that you can see them in a face of an innocent child. An innocent child that dreams of freedom innocently inside a heart and mind of a child.