The HyperTexts
The NAKBA: Why is Israel denying human rights and water to Palestinian
children?
An introduction to "Thirsty for Justice" by Michael R. Burch,
an editor and
publisher of Holocaust and Nakba poetry
I became an editor and publisher of Holocaust poetry because I oppose the the
idea that human beings, including completely innocent children and their
mothers, can be collectively imprisoned and punished for the "crime" of having
been "born wrong." I shudder to think of millions of Jewish mothers and their
children suffering and dying in the Holocaust. Being
an American citizen, I am glad that my native country opposed the Holocaust and
helped end it, but I shudder to think of three Holocausts that Americans
participated in. The first Holocaust was the ethnic cleansing and genocide of
Native Americans, millions of whom suffered and died at the hands of white
supremacists who called it their "manifest destiny" to possess all the land. The
second Holocaust was American slavery, which caused millions of African American
mothers and their children to suffer, and many to die prematurely due to
beatings, terrible living conditions, and sexually transmitted diseases incurred
when women and girls were raped. The third Holocaust is still ongoing: the Nakba
("Catastrophe") of the Palestinian people. The US and Israeli governments are
partners in crime in this new Holocaust, as they both preach the glories of
"human rights," "justice" and "democracy" to the rest of the world, while making
damn sure that Palestinians are denied any hope of equality, justice and
self-determination. This has been going on since 1948, when the government of
Israel chose to destroy hundreds of Palestinian villages and thousands of
individual homes, leaving hundreds of thousands of farmers and their families
homeless and destitute. Most of the Palestinians who became refugees were so
poor they didn't have weapons and couldn't have fought well-armed Israeli Jews
even if they had wanted to.
Hundreds of villages do not disappear by "accident." It takes a lot of money,
manpower, machinery and careful coordination to demolish thousands of homes.
This wanton destruction has been documented by Jewish historians like Ilan Pappé
and Benny Morris. There is no doubt about what happened. Before 1948 the
villages existed; after 1948 they didn't.
Contrary to the prevailing fictions, Israel was not fighting the Palestinians in
1948 because the Palestinians had no military and most of them had no weapons.
When Israel unilaterally declared itself a nation in 1948, not waiting for the
UN to proceed with the plan for two states (one with a Jewish majority, the
other with a Palestinian majority), Israel was attacked by neighboring nations
like Jordan, Egypt and Syria. However, these attackers had their own agendas and
aspirations, and Palestinian farmers had absolutely no say in what the kings and
dictators of other nations chose to do. When the fighting was over and the dust
had settled, the farmers and their families should have been allowed to return
to their homes and resume their lives. But the leaders of Israel chose the dark
path of ethnic cleansing, and the hundreds of villages that once existed but no
longer exist today tell the true story.
Now, more than sixty years later, rather than admitting what really happened and
trying to help the Palestinians regain some semblance of a normal life, Israel
in its racism, hubris and cruelty continues to ethnically cleanse Palestine,
continually demolishing homes in the West Bank. The Israeli Committee Against
Home Demolitions (ICAHD) has recorded more than 24,000 home demolitions. No
nation in the free world demolishes thousands of homes on a racial/ethnic basis;
only Israel does. Not only are Palestinian homes being wantonly destroyed, but
even their olive trees. Why? Because according to the
Zionist ideology that led to ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, the land
must be "redeemed" by Jewish labor. Therefore, even trees planted by Palestinian
hands must be uprooted and destroyed. This is the same kind of fanatical racism
that led to the Holocaust, the Trail of Tears and American slavery.
Why is Israel denying human rights and water to Palestinian children? For the
same dark reasons that racists of the past denied completely innocent children
the stuff of life.
Thirsty for Justice
by Mona El-Farra
Gaza Strip
March 25, 2010
Toni Morrison once wrote “All water has a perfect memory and is forever
trying to get back to where it was.” I feel it is the same for Palestinian
refugees, who have struggled for decades for their right to return home. I
thought of this connection between water and refugees during a recent meeting
about the Middle East Children’s Alliance’s (MECA) Maia Project with Aidan
O’Leary, Deputy Director of the UN agency for Palestine refugees (UNRWA)
Operations in Gaza.
UNRWA provides assistance, protection and advocacy for 4.7 million Palestinian
refugees in the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria. We are
working with UNRWA to install locally-made water purification and desalination
units in their schools. Mr. O’Leary expressed his total appreciation for the
Maia Project and stressed that providing clean drinking water to children is
among the highest priorities and needs for Gaza schools. Mr. John Ging, UNRWA’s
Director of Operations in Gaza, also expressed his admiration for the
Maia Project.
The situation in Gaza continues to deteriorate under Israeli military occupation
and siege. The refugees are often the hardest hit by rising unemployment and
poverty. Access to clean water is one of the many basic needs that UNRWA is no
longer able to meet. A recent UNRWA report states that the most common
infectious diseases affecting Palestinian refugees in Gaza — who make up more
than three-quarters of the population — are directly related to inadequate
supplies of safe water and poor sanitation: diarrhea, acute bloody diarrhea and
viral hepatitis.
Creating a positive impact on children’s health is the main goal of the Maia
Project, and working on water access when you live in Gaza is self-explanatory.
The reality is that tap water in Gaza is undrinkable due to its bad quality and
contamination. At best, when you have access to a running tap, the water is not
clean and is very salty. Our daily water consumption averages around 78 liters a
day per person, while Israelis average over 300 liters each, more than four
times as much. Israel is under increasing scrutiny by international
organizations including Amnesty International for “denying Palestinians the
right to access adequate water by maintaining total control over the shared
water resources and pursuing discriminatory policies.”
We move to help the children as quickly as we can. Children in Gaza will have
the chance to drink clean and soft water, but only at the rate in which we can
implement the Maia Project. And we race against time. The UN estimates that Gaza
will have no drinking water in the next 15 years.
Water is life, but here in Gaza it can also bring death. Numerous military
attacks on the Gaza Strip have devastated Gaza’s water infrastructure. Israel’s
twenty-two day assault last winter destroyed or rendered unusable an estimated
800 of Gaza’s 2,000 wells, and caused $5.97 million in damage to our water and
wastewater treatment facilities. Since January 2009, the Gaza Health Ministry
and the World Health Organization have issued drinking, seafood and
swimming advisories.
We yearn for our water and our freedoms to return to us. We roll up our sleeves
and hope for rain, the kind of rain that floods the hearts and minds of those
who hunger and thirst for justice.
Here in Gaza, we are still thirsty.
Mona El-Farra is a physician and a human rights and women’s rights
activist in the occupied Gaza Strip. Her blog is From
Gaza, with Love.
The HyperTexts