I was hoping that this opinion piece would be published by the Canberra Times. It was not printed because the topics of Palestine and the occupation were not high on the agenda. At the time of writing this article, the media was preoccupied with the capture of Sadaam Hussain and the fate of Screensound Australia. (January 2004)
I have just finished reading an article in Ha'aretz, an Israeli broadsheet. I read it in the Hebrew original because I did not want to miss out on anything; sometimes things get lost in translation. Dorothy Naor, an activist in the Israeli 'New Profile' peace group sent it to me. She said her "hair stood on end" when she read it. The article, by Gideon Levy, tells the story of Asma Abu al-Haija, a 40 year-old Palestinian woman from the Jenin refugee camp, who was arrested by the Israeli military and kept in jail for nine months. She had to sleep on the floor for the whole time because she was the last one to join a cell with seven other inmates and only six beds. She was not interrogated or accused of anything. After nine months she was released with no explanation. Asma thinks that she was arrested to put pressure on her husband, the Hamas spokesman in Jenin, who is also in an Israeli prison.
The soldiers who arrested Asma knocked on her door at 3am on 11 February 2003. (Arresting people in the small hours of the night is a practice designed primarily for psychological intimidation. It is common among oppressive military, security and police forces around the world.) The soldiers burst in, overturning everything in their path. The children were terrified. Sajida and Hamzi, the two youngest, cried. The whole family was ordered to go out into the street, in the cold and rain, until the search was finished. "I haven't done anything. I just take care of the children," Asma tried to protest. "The Shin Bet wants to talk to you. Two words and you'll be back home." Having no choice, she accompanied the soldiers. She says she didn't take anything with her, because the soldier in charge, nicknamed 'Captain Jamal', said it would just be "two words" with the Shin Bet. The children shouted. Banan, a 17-year-old girl, said to the soldiers: "Take all of us, then. Why do you come and take someone else every time?" Asma told the captain that she had to call someone to watch the children until morning. She was sure she'd be back very soon. But she remembers hearing one of the soldiers say to the children: "Find yourselves another mother." Asma was blindfolded, handcuffed and gagged because 'these are the rules'.
Asma Abu al-Haija suffers from a brain tumour and has already had two brain operations, yet she had to go through hell before anyone was prepared to acknowledge and address her medical condition. Asma says that the prison doctor told her, "Don't think about the children. If you think about the children - it causes headaches." Asma complained to her lawyer, Tamar Peleg-Sarik, that she wasn't receiving proper medical attention. About a month after she was arrested, Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) sent an urgent letter to the prison authorities requesting that a CT Scan be arranged for Asma. It took two and a half months before the examination was performed. PHR informed Professor Shlomo Melamed, director of the Glaucoma Institute at Sheba Medical Centre, and he volunteered to go the prison to examine her. He found that Asma had completely lost her vision in her left eye and that she was suffering from severe headaches, dizziness and nausea.
Asma was not allowed to make any phone calls and had no contact with her children who were left alone in the camp without a mother or a father. Their older brother is also in an Israeli prison. It took seven months before four of the children were granted permits to visit her. 15-year-old Imad, was not - for 'security reasons'. But in the end, he somehow managed to sneak in for the visit. This visit was Asma's only moment of joy during those long months in prison.
Asma was finally released in November. With hands and feet bound, she was taken to one of the checkpoints near Ramallah. At ten that night, she was sent on her way, into the dark night, far from her home. A Palestinian passer-by invited her to sleep at his house. From there, she called her children. "I'm out!" she told them. At six the next morning, she got up and started on the long way home from Ramallah to Jenin. She was on the road until two in the afternoon, having waited at checkpoints and resorted to circuitous dirt roads - an ailing woman finally on the way home to her children, after nine months in prison without trial.
I am not embarrassed to say that I sobbed after reading this story. I was devastated, as I always am after reading the stories of atrocities that the state of Israel regularly commits against Palestinians. The fact that this article was published in an Israeli newspaper should be a sort of a comfort, I suppose. But Ha'aretz is not a mainstream newspaper. It is known for publishing left-wing views and is read mostly by the educated elite. Most Israelis (and most members of my family) do not read Ha'aretz.
There are those in Israel who are speaking and acting against what the government is doing. Professor Melamed who examined Asma, posted a stinging protest letter over the internet about her treatment, and Asma's Israeli lawyer clearly did her best to help her. Even the Israeli Chief of Staff recently criticised Sharon's policies. There are strong and outspoken activist groups in Israel, like 'Yesh Gvul' and 'New Profile' that are doing their best. But these individuals and groups are still part of a very small minority. Those who dare to go as far as signing declarations, like the group of pilots who recently signed a joint letter denouncing Israel's occupation and brutality against the Palestinians, get severely punished. They don't get arrested, they just lose their jobs and get labelled traitors by society and the media. And to think that as an Israeli, for so long I actually believed that I lived in an open, democratic society...
When I express my criticism of Israel, people sometimes say to me that the Israeli public should not be condemned for what their government is doing. But I think they don't understand. Unlike any other country I know of, in Israel every Jewish citizen is a soldier. Israeli men serve in 'Miluim' (reserve) from the moment they finish their three-year compulsory military service at the age of 21 until they turn 45. They are called for active duty and training for at least one month every year and sometimes longer, depending on the needs of the military and on their particular rank and skill. Women are not called very often but they can be called to reserve duty until they become pregnant with their first child.
The Israeli reserve is very different to Australia's. It is the reservists who form the most serious and important part of the Israeli military. It is the reserve force that does most of the fighting in a war. It is for this reason that I believe that most Israelis cannot be considered simply as innocent or ignorant citizens. They know what is going on in the territories because they - or their husbands, fathers, sons or daughters - are the ones doing it. I hold all those who participate in the Israeli military personally responsible for what Israel is doing to the Palestinians. Governments cannot do their job on their own. Someone has to be out there carrying out the orders. Someone has to man the checkpoints, burst into people's houses at night, demolish buildings, arrest, torture, man the jails, drop bombs in densely populated areas, shoot children, fill in the forms and memos. The government of Israel would not be able to do what it is doing if the majority of soldiers refused to carry out their orders. The ones who refuse to serve are real heroes to me but in Israel they are seen as despicable traitors, worse than Israel's enemies.
No, I cannot find excuses for Israeli society any longer. For many years we exploited Palestinian workers. For many years Arab Israelis (Palestinians who are citizens of Israel) have been treated as second class citizens and we 'ordinary' Israelis knew about this all of this. For years now the military has been keeping the Palestinians under a suffocating military rule with none of the basic freedoms or rights that are available to Israelis. The story of Asma is not unique. Many Palestinians have been treated in similar ways for a very long time and most Israelis know all about it. The tactics of bursting into people's homes in the small hours of the night, vandalising their property, randomly arresting them, intimidating and abusing, confiscating identity documents, keeping people in a state of uncertainty are all deliberate ways of exercising power and keeping a whole population under tight control. And I do not buy the excuse that this is done for security reasons. Many Israeli soldiers will tell you that themselves.
Israel's policies and way of life are unsustainable and I believe that a one-state solution is inevitable. The only question is how many more Palestinians will have to die, be tortured and traumatised, and how many more Israelis will become perpetrators before this happens. I have no doubt that Israelis will one day have to pay the price for their actions in the international criminal court and it breaks my heart that the country I once used to call home is descending to such lows. I thought that after what happened to us we would know better.
Page content last modified: 20 Jan 2004
