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Recent Stories
March 25, 2003
Jeffrey St. Clair
Life During Wartime
Gary
Leupp
What Democracy Looks Like: the Streets
of Cairo
Bill and Kathleen
Christison
An Interview with Hanan Ashrawi
Bruce
Jackson
Why Protest? Why Write?
Uri Avnery
Bitter Rice: Thoughts and Warnings on
the War
Jason
Leopold
Blood Indicator: Casualties and the Stock
Market
Ralph Nader
A Pre-emptive War on a Defenseless Country
Gilad
Atzmon
Strategic Blunders by American Generals
March 24, 2003
Alexander Cockburn
Ominous Signs
David
Lindorff
Peacekeepers at Ground Zero
Diane Christian
Blood Sacrifice
Kathy
Kelly
The Morning After Shock and Awe
John Stanton
US Bombs Iran
Wayne
Madsen
How to Live with a Rogue Superpower
Anthony Gancarski
Iraq and the Death of the West
David
Vest
Earth vs. Bush
Ahmad Faruqui
The Liberation of Iraq in Perspective
Robert
Fisk
We Bomb, They Suffer
March 22 / 23, 2003
Edward Said
The Other America
Saul Landau
The Threats of Empire
Kathleen and Bill Christison
On the Road in the West Bank
Joanne Mariner
Suing Seymour Hersh
Ann Harrison
The Battle of San Francisco
Robert Fisk
A Cauldron of Fire
Hani Shukrallah
The Gates of Hell
Chris Floyd
Memory Lane
Kathy Kelly
Imagine Chicago Under This Kind of Attack
Ramzi Kysia
Bombing Away a Chance for Joy
Linda Heard
Baghdad Burns While Bush Does Lunch
Bradley Burston
Could the US be at War for Years?
Salvador Peralta
Mass Murder as Liberation?
Tom Gorman
Now That's a Coalition!
Jorge Mariscal
Johnny Mack, When Are You Coming Back?
Cindy Milstein
The Grassroots Go Global
Josh Frank
Blocking Portland's Bridges
Elaine Cassel
The Case of Elizabeth Smart: Kidnapping and Insanity
Gordon Solberg
Drowning in Niceness: the Lessons of Elizabeth Smart
Tom Crumpacker
Getting to Know the Real Havana
Poets' Basement
Dobie, Guthrie, Alam, Wechsler
March 21, 2003
Ben Tripp
Blood for Oil:
the Exchange Rate
Cathy Breens
Report from Baghdad: Mothers, Kids and Crash Kits
Scott Handleman
Fourth
Generation Protesting: Shutting Down San Francisco
Vanessa Jones
Paint Them
Red
Brian J. Foley
Patriotic Protest
for Professors
Zoltan Grossman
After Saddam, a War on Iraqi Rebels?
Philip S. Golub
Inventing Demons
Richard Lichtman
On the Current Experience of Terror
Milan Rai
Blitz-Coup
Pepe Escobar
A Cheap Family Farce
Floyd Rudmin
The Nightmare at the Back Door: Nuclear Plant's as Terror Targets
Chris Floyd
See Rome (poem)
Website of the War
Iraq
Body Count
March 20, 2003
Stephen Banko
I Was a Soldier
Once
Kevin Alexander Gray
How Did We Become
an Outlaw Nation?
Shane Claiborne
Nomadic
Solidarity: Glimpses of Life in Baghdad on the Eve of War
Kathy Kelly
Waiting on the Baghdad Skies to Crack
Anthony Gancarski
Michelle
Makin's "Liberty Shields"
Rahul Mahajan and Robert Jensen
Myths and
Facts About the War on Iraq
Jason Leopold
Cheney's
Lies About Halliburton and Iraq
Ron Jacobs
If War is Business as Usual, There Should be No Business as Usual
Chuck O'Connell
Predictions About the Iraq War
Douglas Herman
US Air Force Veteran on the Coming Air Campaign
Ralph Nader
Come On Democrats,
Stand Up for Peace
William Hughes
War is Theft
Sima Saeedi
Dispatch from
Iran
Hammond Guthrie
John Philip Sousa
Website of the Day
Iraq
Body Count
Hot Stories
Gore Vidal
The Erosion
of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach Bush:
A Draft Resolution
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March
26, 2003
A Letter from Ramallah
The Smell of
Death Surrounds Me
By REEMA ABU HAMDIEH
Ramallah.
I
miss my normal life, a life by which I can enjoy a sunny day, hide away
from drops of water on a rainy day, and expect good news as my horoscope
would anticipate every morning. Instead, I get the heat waves of sun
and soldiers' breath burning my face waiting at checkpoints, the mud
dirtying all of me when trying to go the back roads to and from work,
and my horoscope has been lying to me for so long that I stopped reading
it. It never brought any good news, and I still haven't met any special
people, while trying to go through the Israeli checkpoints over and
over. The same soldiers, just different faces.
As it is everyday, soldiers entered the city of Ramallah, wanting to
capture humans, they insult humanity on the way. Soldiers got in, my
sister trapped in a little internet café, unable to get out,
I'm trapped in the office, unable to leave it.
The smell of death is all around me, and there is no way to escape a
destiny written so long ago. The burning of homes, killing of children,
a ninety year old woman trying to pass the ugly checkpoints between
streets now, and inside every rain drop, there is a gas bomb exploding
in the wrong faces at the very wrong times, taking victims, helpless,
unable to scream children.
Road blocks are getting higher than sky scrapers meant to dilute vision
of short-sighted humans. Trees uprooted, families evicted, people herded
towards the unknown in their homes and homeland.
And people don't seem to understand what we all are going through, not
even Palestinians.
I'm losing faith in myself. I was so unafraid to walk past soldiers
on streets that once represented Palestinian dreams and life. Now, as
all streets are gradually becoming more and more occupied by a vicious
force called Israeli soldiers, not only am I afraid, but also try to
avoid them. This isn't true. This isn't me anymore.
Walking down the streets of Ramallah, one day before the Eid made me
smile, involuntarily, kids on streets, buying Eid stuff. I could hardly
believe my own eyes.
It's rainy, has been rainy for sometime now. It's better, rain hides
gas bombs, takes away the effect of shock grenades and gradually calms
everyone down.
I have changed, totally, and I'm trying to avoid life and all its components.
I'm so distracted in everything I do. And I can't let memories slip
away, or hide in my subconscious. I can't let myself enjoy life, or
anything else I do. And the stories that I hear, witness, see or experience
are breaking me day after day. I'm not even half of what I used to be.
The power to go on has vanished. Life doesn't matter anymore, and I'm
so ashamed of such feelings and don't want to confess them to my very
self.
Moving to Ramallah was a hard decision, knowing that we are in an undeclared
war. I didn't want to leave parents behind, neighbors, friends and streets
of childhood. Knowing that the Arabic proverb is applicable more than
ever now 'who ever leaves the house is lost, who ever gets back is reborn
again' made me feel even guilty about the fact that I'm leaving. But
I have to at the same time. I feel like my whole life had stopped, and
is revolving around the same memories and sadness, same scenes that
don't want to depart my brain.
Talking about the stories is a skill that I am loosing as well, just
because it hurts more and more every time I have to go through it again.
Becoming a vegetarian had not stopped the memory of Palestinian children's
meat scattered along the streets of all of Palestine. Watching the news
has become a duty and an awful thing that I have to force myself to
do.
When a ninety year old woman is killed at a checkpoint, and I'm being
stopped at a road block, a child asking about the truth, and another
hoping to grow up to go to the states to work and get money in order
to come back home and open the road block in front of his house. The
road block is as old as the intifada is, the child is one year older,
this is what he grows up to see, and I can't go on pretending it's fine
to know and hear all of this.
The horrendous facts created here, the new roads open for settlers on
Palestinian grape yards, new settlements on what once seemed a green
mountain full of olive trees, the demolished houses of tens and hundreds
of Palestinians and we keep on living.
A painter friend of mine came to visit me in the office the other day,
pale and skinny now, a smile is so fragile that it will crack his mouth
ends and harm him, said that all was fine with him. I asked how come
you look this way then? He said it's a long story. It's not a story,
it's a tragedy.
"My wife went to visit her parents, and she wanted to spend the
night there, I'm glad she did that. It was three am in the morning,
I was painting in my room, when the door bell rang, I looked at my watch,
it's three in the morning, who would come to visit at this hour? So
I asked who it was ringing the bell at this hour. It's your neighbor
the voice replied. But he wasn't my neighbor; this is a wreck of a human
at the door, shaking and shivering from cold and fear. What's wrong
I inquired? Soldiers are outside, they want everyone to get out of the
building, taking nothing with them, nothing. We all went down, we carried
nothing with us, in the cold and rain. And what I saw was just unbelievable,
how many soldiers are there? I can't count them, the jeeps, the bulldozers,
every single resident of the building are all out there, in the cold.
But of course we are not as prepared as soldiers are, so we kept on
shivering. Until 8:00am, we just sat there, not allowed to talk to each
other, on the ground, until finally one soldier started questioning
all of us. The questions were the same content every time he asked them,
just in a different format. How long have you been living here? Did
you pay any rent? For whom? Who are your neighbors? Etc. same five or
six questions. And of course, soldier said that if I was lying, he'll
know, so I said, then if you know, why ask me?? Shut up the soldier
replied. And I just shut up, I didn't have a choice. I can't recall
time now, but bulldozers neared from the building and started shelling
and bombing the apartments. A Canadian woman living in the building
started screaming, shouting at soldiers. One soldier approached her
and said, in perfect Arabic, that they won't bomb her house. Her house
was scattered to a million pieces. Nothing was left of the house, the
building, and our spirits as well. For a time I couldn't talk about
this, for a longer time, I wasn't good when I felt it, when I remembered
it. But I go on now. And I live."
He lives? How can he? Where are his wedding pictures? Under the rubble
of a house? But what do I want him to do? Live on the rubble and never
move on with life? But that's what's happening to me. I'm not alive.
I'm not alive because the old city in Hebron is dead, and I'm not ok
because all the injured are still suffering, and I'm not happy because
the Palestinians are so sad, and I'm so afraid because no one's safe,
and I'm tired and weary and feel that the whole world is betraying us
over and over. Leave us alone!
I look for a reason to cry, as if I haven't enough already. I look for
a reason to distract self from daily life, as if I'm not distracted
enough already, look for a reason to live a day dream where people are
just happy and not as bad as they seem to be now, I get lost, I get
lost in everything that I try to find. The unfairness of the world has
turned us all into humans that walk without a direction, live without
an aim.
I look for a reason to live, a reason to have hopes for, a wish that
might come true in my next life, in somebody's life. I can't see war
coming ahead of me, because it's painful, I can't see Israelis in army
uniforms, that's painful too.
Everything is painful, watching anything other than news on tv is painful,
reading a non political book is painful, walking down the streets of
Palestine is painful, it's just a painful life. But I can't apologize
for being who I am, for being a Palestinian, for being what I was chosen
to be, I can't apologize for having been born on the wrong side of the
line, or having been given a different identity color, or for feeling
what I feel.
Harmful grass is what Alex Fichman called the Palestinians holding Jerusalem
IDs in his article that was published in the Arabic version of the Hebrew
Yedeot Ahronot newspaper. If the Jerusalemites, who are not even full
residents in the Zionist state of Israel are harmful grass, what are
we? What does that make the settlers? A growing palm tree? Now I understand
what it is between the Israelis and the trees that they keep uprooting
everyday.
The road to Hebron has much that I don't recognize it anymore. I remember
trees along side Al arroub refugee camp, where have they gone? Uprooted
by harmful grass haters!! Where are the Palestinian streets going back
and forth, taking people like my mother to visit her family, they are
not longer allowed, so is my mother who hasn't seen her mother for almost
ten months now. Where are the donkeys carrying products from farms along
the way, transporting them to nearby cities? Donkeys have been accused
of transporting bombs and were bombed and prevented as well. Palestinian
donkeys is what I'm talking about.
The back dirty hilly unpaved road to Hebron is time consuming, exercising
reading is the best one can do on a road so undefined and so uninhabited.
But then, people like me get so lost in the sceneries of the place,
the cruelty of the roads and the oppressive thought of wondering.
Does anybody know what it means to be questioned on the road home, asking
a million times why I need to go home? Does anybody know what it feels
like when soldiers say we can't go home? Does anybody know the meaning
of forced home-sickness? I do! I'm forced to know.
Are we all depressed? I don't know. But it doesn't seem so. We all get
on with our lives, maybe different but we still do. We all have fun
in our own ways, still take care of the houses that could be demolished
any minute, and still walk the streets that may be turned into settlers'
road any second. People still get married and have children, although
those children are exposed to gas bombs, getting killed under the rubbles
of houses, or get a bullet in the head.
I've been trying to master the art of talking to children, even strange
little ones on streets. Strange little questions are confront me.
Lara who is called Lulu by everyone at home says that there is a tank
at the door in her own little way, very confused language as she's too
small to talk, but that's the sentence that she first learnt how to
say. We all joke with her, ask her to say that sentence in her cute
way, and one time, she said no, they are not at the door, they are out
there, shelling people's houses, killing children, will they ever come
here? They did come. Very close to where she lives. Very close to what
she thought was a strong fortress called her house. Now her sentence
is the tanks are all over the neighborhood, don't get out of the house.
She's afraid now, just like the rest of us. Just like the rest of the
whole world.
How will I ever comprehend what's going on? A friend is being treated
at the Abu Rayya rehabilitation center, he saw a little girl from Nablus.
She's five, six, he can't tell. She's orphan, he knows. And she also
lost her two aunts raising her up when the Israeli soldiers entered
the old city of Nablus, both were killed under the rubbles of their
home. The girl was hit, badly in the spine, and can't move her legs
or arms, paralyzed from the neck down. Her three brothers are wanted
by the Israelis, why she doesn't know, no one knows, maybe the Israelis
don't know either, but they are wanted. One was injured in the invasion,
upon his returning from treatment, he was arrested by soldiers. The
girl now lives alone at the rehabilitation center. We all do live alone
in Palestine; there is no one else living with us, or watching us, or
hearing our cries.
I am so afraid when Nida leaves to the university in the morning, and
keep call her a million times, scared to death every time fida has to
cross the Israeli checkpoints, and feels like my hands stop from moving,
I am so scared every time Salah Eddin goes out to his school, and when
rami goes to his work. I am afraid every time my father wants to visit
the old house, I don't want him to visit anywhere, I want him safe here
next to all of us, and when my mother has grocery shopping to do, it
feels as if my breath stops until she comes back. But I go, and leave
the house, and go past checkpoints, and still have fights with inhuman
soldiers, and stutter when I come across a martyr's mother or family
member, cry when I talk with families of prisoners and get so helpless
when I have to see families of injured who are not getting the proper
medical treatment. Maybe that's why I left the Red Crescent, I couldn't
take it anymore, I couldn't handle all the miseries of the people, in
addition to what I see everyday. I couldn't just tolerate what's happening
to them. I stopped functioning, I stopped thinking, I heard the stories
and just stored them in my memory, I felt so helpless and wanted to
get away from all of that. It never stops, nor does my thought!
Ramallah version of life isn't much different from Hebron life. Soldiers
get in and out, it's their backyard so doesn't matter what they do.
Ramallah new work isn't much different from my previous one, seems that
always end up with the wrong kind of work, knowing I want to be close
to people. Journalism has brought me nothing but more misery into my
life. People are great, have gained nothing from knowing them but more
stories of people getting hurt by an occupation that is so unjustified
they need tanks to consolidate. Our offices overlook the vegetable market,
which is, just like in Hebron, has been moved from one area to the other
over the time. When soldiers get in, they like to go to the vegetables
market and exercise the hobby of smashing vegetables and fruits to the
ground. It's not the tomato festival in Spain!!
Last time I went to visit my old neighborhood in Hebron; I had a conversation
with a soldier that lasted for half an hour. He told me that his mission
in life was to cleanse the area from all of the Palestinians including
the two year olds. These are his words. Two year olds. Why? I wanted
to know. Because they are Palestinian terrorists. Can they be any worse
than this? Can they be any more paranoid or crazy in their heads; I
try to not think about it. If a soldier is in Abu Sneineh is there to
kill everyone there, I wonder what kind agreements were we talking about
with the Israelis? And maybe I shouldn't be surprised; he's just a soldier
in the Israeli army, that's what they were made to do. Kill others.
How can a rapist apologize to a girl he raped, or a killer to a family
he just took their son away? How can we come to terms with a killer,
a rapist, a fascist systematic racist order?
I'm afraid of the war, afraid of Sharon, of what might happen in case
Iraq is invaded, afraid of any Israeli jeep inside the Palestinian areas,
outside the Palestinian territories. I've been afraid all my life; I
just want a moment of peace.
Today's Features
Gary
Leupp
What Democracy Looks Like: the Streets
of Cairo
Bill and Kathleen
Christison
An Interview with Hanan Ashrawi
Bruce
Jackson
Why
Protest? Why Write?
Uri Avnery
Bitter Rice: Thoughts and Warnings on
the War
Jason
Leopold
Blood Indicator: Casualties and the Stock
Market
Jeffrey St. Clair
Life During Wartime
Gilad
Atzmon
Strategic Blunders by American Generals
Ralph Nader
A Pre-emptive War on a Defenseless Country
Website of the War
Iraq
Body Count
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