Member of Parliament (Palestinian, yes she's Hamas) Jamila Shanti writes in the Guardian about the recent shooting of women marchers in Gaza:
We faced the most powerful army in our region unarmed. The soldiers were loaded up with the latest weaponry, and we had nothing, except each other and our yearning for freedom. As we broke through the first barrier, we grew more confident, more determined to break the suffocating siege. The soldiers of Israel's so-called defence force did not hesitate to open fire on unarmed women. The sight of my close friends Ibtissam Yusuf abu Nada and Rajaa Ouda taking their last breaths, bathed in blood, will live with me for ever.
Later an Israeli plane shelled a bus taking children to a kindergarten. Two children were killed, along with their teacher. In the last week 30 children have died. As I go round the crowded hospital, it is deeply poignant to see the large number of small bodies with their scars and amputated limbs. We clutch our children tightly when we go to sleep, vainly hoping that we can shield them from Israel's tanks and warplanes.
I just watched the film Cry Freedom, about the life and murder of Steven Biko of South Africa. The film portrays his last days, and the white reporter (Donald Woods) who interviews him and comes to realize the truth of his words and the oppressiveness of apartheid. I am having my own series of awakenings here. I knew the Israeli occupation is terrible. I am staggered today that it can kill people this openly without the whole world just saying Stop It!
But why am I surprised? Look at Lebanon 2006. Look at the voices commenting on this blog, rabidly defending Israel's assault on Lebanon, 2006.
Does belonging to Hamas and wearing a headscarf mean you deserve to be shot in the street?
Can there be any excuse for this incredible incident? Can you really tell me that this is justice in any form? And do my Israeli brothers and sisters really believe that they can live in peace and freedom in Israel while their military behaves this way?
Ah, I see upon reading further reports - the women were acting as human shields. They were protecting Hamas fighters under siege in a mosque. So of course it is permissible to execute them in the street. Forgive me for questioning. It was all their fault. They possibly thought that if a group of unarmed women walked down the street, they might shame the soldiers into holding their fire.
Maybe the veil is such a dangerous weapon, that they provoked their own execution.
In fact, if I understand non-violent resistance correctly, these women were practicing it. They put their lives on the line, and some of them lost. Perhaps their survivors may live to say that their sacrifice was worth it. I hope so.
And then yesterday there was the murder of 19 civilians in Gaza, many of them children. An accident. A regrettable accident. Just like the many, many regrettable civilian deaths in Lebanon this past summer, and the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis dead by sad, sad happenstance since the United States invasion.
Do not keep quiet.
May we live to see a just peace in Palestine and Israel. Steven Biko died in custody in 1977, and apartheid finally fell just seventeen years later. Living those seventeen years must have seemed like an eternity at the time, but now in retrospect it seems very short. Another world is possible.