[1290] in peace2
Re: Fw: Nurit Peled-Elhanan - The Dominion of Death
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Danny Fox)
Thu Dec 6 15:29:53 2001
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Date: Thu, 06 Dec 2001 15:29:36 -0500
To: peace-list@mit.edu
From: Danny Fox <fox@MIT.EDU>
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This appeared in Yediot Ahronot; the most widely read newspaper in Israel.
Would be nice if we could read things like this around here.
At 09:14 PM 12/6/2001 +0200, you wrote:
>the writer of the piece below, Nurit Peled-Elhanan, daughter of the late
>Matti Peled - an Israeli General turned into a leader of the peace camp,
>lost her 15 year old daughter when a suicide bomber exploded himself in the
>middle of jerusalem several years ago.
>
>Yosef Grodzinsky
>Department of Psychology
>Tel Aviv University
>Tel Aviv 69978, ISRAEL
>
>yosef1@post.tau.ac.il
>http://freud.tau.ac.il/~yosef1
>
>The Dominion of Death
>Nurit Peled-Elhanan
>
>Dylan Thomas wrote a war poem entitled "And Death Shall Have No
>Dominion." In Israel, it does. Here death governs: the government of
>Israel rules over a dominion of death. So the most astonishing thing
>about yesterday's terrorist attack in Jerusalem and all similar attacks
>is that Israelis are astonished.
>
>Israeli propaganda and indoctrination manage to keep coverage of
>these attacks detached from any Israeli reality. The story in the
>Israeli (and American) media is one of Arab murderers and Israeli
>victims, whose only sin was that they asked for seven days of grace.
>
>But anyone who can remember back not even one year but just one week
>or several hours knows the story is different, that each attack is a
>link in a chain of horrific bloody events that extends back 34 years
>and has but one cause: a brutal occupation. An occupation that
>humiliates, starves, denies jobs, demolishes homes, destroys crops,
>murders children, imprisons minors without trial under appalling
>conditions, lets babies die at checkpoints and spreads lies.
>
>Last week, after the assassination of Abu Hanoud, a journalist from
>Yediot Ahronot asked me whether I felt "relief." Hadn't I been
>frightened that "a murderer like that was roaming free"? No, I did
>not feel relief, I told her, and I will feel no relief as long as the
>murderers of Palestinian children continue to roam free. The murders
>of those children, like the murder of a suspect without trial or the
>murder of a ten-year-old boy yesterday, shortly before the attack,
>guarantee that no Israeli child can walk to school safely. Every
>Israeli child will pay for the deaths of the five children in Gaza
>and the others in Jenin, Ramallah, Hebron.
>
>The Palestinians have learned from Israel that every victim must be
>avenged tenfold, a hundredfold. They have said repeatedly that until
>there is peace in Ramallah and Jenin there will be no peace in
>Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. So it is not up to the Palestinians to keep
>seven days of quiet but up to the Israeli Occupation Force.
>
>On Friday it was reported that politicians from both sides had
>reached a deal in Jerusalem to allow the reopening of the casino upon
>which their own livelihood depends. They did it without American
>intervention, without high-level committees, with just the assistance
>of lawyers and business people, who promised the parties what was
>required. What this shows is that the conflict is not between the
>leaders: when an issue affects them directly (unlike the deaths of
>children) they are quick to find a solution.
>
>It strengthens my belief that all of us, Israelis and Palestinians,
>are victims of politicians who gamble the lives of our children on
>games of honour and prestige. To them, children are worth less than
>roulette chips.
>
>But these attacks serve the interests of Israeli policy - policy
>designed to make us forget that the war today is about protecting the
>settlements and the continuation of the occupation, policy that
>drives young Palestinians to commit suicide and take Israeli children
>with them, animated by Samson's invocation "let me die with the
>Philistines," policy contrived to make us believe that "they want Tel
>Aviv and Jaffa too" and "there is no one to talk to," even as they
>liquidate all those who might have been able to talk.
>
>Now that we know our leaders are capable of peace when there is an
>economic motive, we must demand that they make peace when lesser
>things, like the lives of our children, are at stake. Until all the
>parents of Israel and Palestine rise up against the politicians and
>demand they curb their lust for conquest and bloodshed, the
>underground realm of buried children will continue to grow. Since the
>beginning of time, mothers have cried out in a clear voice for life
>and against death. Today, we must rise up against the transformation
>of our children into murderers and murdered, raise our children not
>to support evil machinations, and force the politicians - who say,
>with Abner and Joab, "Let the young men arise and play before us" -
>to make way for those who can sit at the negotiating table and agree
>to a true and just peace, who are prepared to engage in dialogue not
>with the aim of tricking and manipulating the other side, not to
>humiliate the other and force him to his knees, but to reach a
>solution that considers the other, a solution free of racism and
>lies. Otherwise death shall continue to have dominion over us.
>
>I suggest that parents who have not yet lost their children look
>beneath their feet and heed the voices rising from the kingdom of
>death, upon which they step day by day and hour by hour, for only
>there does everyone understand that there is no difference between
>one life and another, that it matters little what is the colour of
>your skin or the colour of your ID, or which flag flies over which
>hill and which direction you face when you pray.
>
>In the kingdom of death Israeli children lie beside Palestinian
>children, soldiers of the occupying army beside suicide bombers, and
>no one remembers who was David and who was Goliath, for they have
>faced the sober truth and realized that they were cheated and lied
>to, that politicians without feeling or conscience gambled away their
>lives as they continue to gamble with the lives of us all. We have
>given them the power, through democratic elections, to turn our home
>into an arena of neverending murder. Only if we stop them can we
>return to a normal life in this place, and then death will have no
>dominion.
>
>Nurit Peled-Elhanan
>Yediot Ahronot, Dec 1, 2001
>
>Translated by Edeet Ravel, Montreal.
_______________________________
Danny Fox
E39-216, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Cambridge MA, 02139
(Tel) 617-258-7411 (Fax) 617-253-5017
