Since the assassination of Ahmad Jarrar, I could not but think of the amount of love we shared as a nation with this lost life and compassion with his family. After weeks of chasing him by the Israeli army in Jenin and Nablus, he was finally assassinated in another brutal, bloody killing conducted by a massive armory and collaborated with a system of betrayal.
In my rare moments of believing in the afterlife, in a day of resurrection, in a just instant of judgment, I think in martyrdom, in a sense we Palestinians believe in it. It becomes very fundamentalist into the core of the Islamic belief of martyrdom and jihad. It is what we do in this life under occupation. A presence of resistance to having a just life. An experience of a life that should be just, by principle. A life that can be lived with the core of humanity . for what it should be lived like. An experience where humankind is fair. Fair enough to be worthy of living.
This is what martyrs keep reminding us of. That life is not just about counting days. Not about eating and drinking and getting a job and a retreat. Life is not about living well with money and achievements that one can consider with material counts. Not in education. Not in a career. Those who aspire real freedom. A freedom that cannot be lived under the humiliation of occupation.
We believe in death as much as we think in life. But those martyrs make us sense the meaning of it all. I am not trying to glorify death as much as I feel the meaning of praising such people. Those who perish for a purpose as exalted as the meaning of living. But it is not just about life. It is the way we are supposed to live: in freedom and with dignity.
As much as we understand, and in all means adapt to the lack of freedom under occupation. As much as we know, what it means to be humiliated by the occupiers. But yet, the worse is treason. It is those stabs we receive directly from those that are closest.
Reblogged this on Ned Hamson's Second Line View of the News.