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by Edna Yaghi
- Aren’t you ashamed of yourselves? You
allow children to die in the streets of Palestine and you
leave the defense of your sacred places in their tiny hands,
hardly big enough to hold the stone they so bravely hurl at an
armed ruthless militia. You leave the defense of the third
most holy place in Islam to children while you have the money
and the means to halt the barbaric and atheist aggression
against Jerusalem and Al Haram Al Sherif.
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- You each surround yourselves with plush
palaces, hundreds of servants, an army of bodyguards that you
raise and support not for the defense of your country or
people against foreign invading armies, but for your own
personal protection.
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- You pamper your children, bring for them
the best of tutors, send them to the best of schools, provide
for them the best doctors while the children of Palestinian
parents are denied their right to survive, have no schools,
and are either shot dead or permanently injured defending the
holy places of all Muslims.
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- You bear the legacy of foreign empires
which swept through your countries and continents and tried to
destroy your identity and pure way of life. You are still
under the yoke of occupation and the Ottoman and British
colonial systems have only given sway to the new and more evil
American Imperialism which you have allowed to invade the
sanctity of your culture. You yourselves are fattened by this
American Imperialism which fills your coffers to overflowing
while you turn a blind eye to other people’s children dying
in the streets because those children are not your own.
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- You complacently dress yourselves in the
finest silks and linens, comfortably sleep all night without
fear of being bombed or killed, eat the finest food shipped to
you from all corners of the globe, feed your children with
gold and diamond spoons while the children of Palestine eat
dirt and are constantly fed by Israeli bullets that kill them
or take away an eye or a limb, maiming them for life.
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- You bring songs of joy and happiness on
your TV and radio stations sung by half-naked women while
Palestinian children dressed in rags chant songs of Islam and
freedom as their perforated bodies leak red blood on the
streets you pretend not to see.
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- Your wives adorn themselves with emerald
necklaces, rubies rings and crown themselves falsely. They
partake in nonchalant tea and coffee parties and host
luncheons where food of every imaginable kind spreads across
your banqueted tables. Your children play games at your feasts
and you look benevolently over all your vast expenditures
saying proudly, "all is well and good." But
Palestinian mothers drink bitter polluted water in circles
where they cry and mourn for their dead husbands and children.
There are no banquets here, only eloquent deaths and elegant
martyrs carried on stretchers and buried in endless rows of
graves watered by the tears of their loved ones.
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- Have you no conscience? Do you think you
won’t be punished for turning your eyes away from those
little children dying in the streets? United, you have all the
power to stop what is happening. Divided, you can continue to
satiate your desires pretending not to hear the Israeli
bullets cutting down the innocents.
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- You are too blind to see the truth and
your corruption fills your heads with sawdust. But you cannot
wash the blood of the innocents off your hands. As long as you
remain silent, you are responsible for every child who dies in
the streets of Palestine.
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- When pressured slightly by the cries of
your people to defend and protect the Palestinians and holy
places in Palestine, you rush to congregate yourselves in lush
air-conditioned surroundings and give lengthy teary speeches
in your own tongues which most of you have not yet mastered,
yet you change nothing. You are impotent. What really concerns
you is not the mounting death toll of Palestinians, but the
thought that your own thrones could be destabilized.
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- You decorate your walls with Rembrandt,
Picasso and Michelangelo and tune your senses to melodies of
Mozart, Strauss and Beethoven. You think Palestinians have no
culture at all, yet yours is borrowed from foreign sources.
Your sons lose millions of dollars at one go in far away
casinos but you hear not, see not that Palestinian walls are
covered with pictures of fallen martyrs and Al-Aqsa mosque and
the only tunes that Palestinian mothers hear is their own
wails for their dead. Their sons gamble for their lives as
they throw stones at the invincible enemy and they do not even
have a few pennies for pocket money.
- You allow the world to ridicule you and
stereotype your people. As long as your bellies are full and
hang over your belts and your families are safe, you pay no
attention to what is really important., to what really matters.
You can shut your eyes to what is happening all around you, you
can close your ears and you can pretend that it is all right for
little children to die in your defense and in the defense of all
that is right and holy. Aren’t you ashamed of yourselves? All
your wealth is worth nothing if you do not put it to good use.
And in the end, all your money and power will be turned against
you and when you face God, you will be asked what you did with
all your resources. What are you going to say, that you allowed
children to die on your behalf? Wake up before it is too late.
Wake up before all is lost. Wake up before all of Palestine is
taken by those who have no right at all to it. Wake up and stop
being impotent. Wake up and do something useful. Do not just
drop a few of your Durhams in donations on the behalf of those
who are dying. Do something concrete, useful and sincere. Stop
hiding behind the skirts of Palestinian mothers and stop letting
babies die for you, your holy places, the holy places of all
Muslims.
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- From a mother of Palestinian children
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Source:
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- by courtesy & ©
2000 Edna Yaghi
