Each time one thinks, things cannot get worse. It only gets worse. This cannot be a coincidence. It cannot be a mere act of fate. It cannot just be merely bad luck. There is a problem in our reality. Our existence as a people that insists on producing such leadership.
I have to admit once again, that my state of disappointment is a state of embarrassment as well. A state of confusion and trying to redefine our own state of reality.
I grew up believing that freedom is what I need to make me alive. That living under occupation can never entitle a life with freedom. Without freedom, the core of life will always be missing. I firmly believe in the just cause of Palestine. It is almost impossible for anyone who is not Palestinian to understand the meaning of this essence of missing life. Unless one experiences real oppression. This is why it is not hard fro those who feel the injustice of the universe to identify with Palestinians.
But then, there is us Palestinians. There is a problem that in a way cannot be related to the occupation. It is true that living under occupation is like residing in a locked room. A prison that no matter how you make it convenience, there is a guard that seals and decides your movement when and how and to where.
A bad leadership after the other is what defines us from the other side of reality. In a way, it is a kind of leadership that keeps producing itself. Coming from a genetic breed that lives on the glory of history, I can also no longer cry on the past that holds a beauty that somehow hides within. Ever since I dug into reading my own history since the fall of the Ottoman Empire and the creation of Israel, I can no longer see Israel as the only problem in the case of Palestine. Not only that, I can no longer blame the others; the Arabs, the mandate, the world. For the catastrophe of Palestine. I don’t even know if the Palestine we are fighting for is the Palestine I grew up to believe in.
The only thing I know is that feeling of being Palestinian.
This is the only thing that I feel connected to, and I no longer feel the connection with those that represent it in the leadership. Our problem as a nation has always been with our representatives. It started with the elite who cared for nothing but securing their properties and their families, until somehow, the flow of life washed them away, to be replaced with the leadership of what was revolutionary to become the new elite of today. For the last two decades, we have been represented by people who are an outcome of a diaspora and continue to behave as outsiders of what it mean to be a Palestinian yearning for freedom. Maybe they had the justification, after living for decades with no homeland and suddenly they were home. But like their predecessors, the nation starts and ends with their own families and a piece of property that they keep increasing.
I feel left out of words when I see the continuous cynical scene of the leadership that insist on embarrassing us as people, and at the end of the day, the world sees them as our representatives. I cannot have words when the BDS is winning points against Israel in the world, and high-level Palestinian representatives participate in the Herzliya conference. When these very same people go out and call for a boycott in times of pressure and empty slogans, and they rush to make a speech at the Zionist convention. These same people call for the end of Israel in public discourse in Ramallah and then go to Herzliya in another public discourse that calls for the end of Palestinians.
The contradictions are so humiliating; to a level, I am getting to this point where I feel the embarrassment of being Palestinian.
When I see as a Palestinian that the internal fraction is stronger in enmity than the feelings towards the occupier. When the weapon is used against Palestinians in internal tribal disturbances when renowned Palestinian leaders are involved in selling or mediating land and houses selling to Israel. When the corruption and the stories of the corrupted governments are the only news, we can have to share for some time as a gossip subject that ends in days. When a fresh graduate from a university becomes a consul to the country because her mother is an ambassador. When the brother of the minister of foreign affairs becomes an ambassador, and the assignments and high ranks are distributed among the government and its circle of connections like Ali Baba and the forty thieves. When people rush to use the free Israeli buses on Ramadan while we call for a boycott because six shekels become an issue to people who are rushing to spend money in Israel under the justification of a prayer. When I see us becoming a nation of beggars and a leadership of corruption, I feel that it is an embarrassment to write …
Reblogged this on Ned Hamson's Second Line View of the News and commented:
It may be little to help marginalized people feel better about themselves despite bad leadership but years and years of poor leadership is a common experience among peoples who are under control of an external or dictatorial power. That kind of power breeds corruption and bribery, as well leadership and methods that mirrors and occupying power.
Will be in tomorrowâs OM. Thanks.
Dorothy