The past lessons have been represented into today's learning.
Today I recieved an email and want to share here openly.
SEPTEMBER 09, 2014
Denying Palestinians Their Humanity
A Response to Elie Wiesel
by SARA ROY
Mr. Wiesel,
I read your statement about Palestinians, which appeared in The New York Times on August 4th. I cannot help feeling that your attack against Hamas and stunning accusations of child sacrifice are really an attack, carefully veiled but unmistakable, against all Palestinians, their children included. As a child of Holocaust survivors—both my parents survived Auschwitz—I am appalled by your anti-Palestinian position, one I know you have long held. I have always wanted to ask you, why? What crime have Palestinians committed in your eyes? Exposing Israel as an occupier and themselves as its nearly defenseless victims?
Resisting a near half century of oppression imposed by Jews and through such resistance forcing us as a people to confront our lost innocence (to which you so tenaciously cling)?
Unlike you, Mr. Wiesel, I have spent a great deal of time in Gaza among Palestinians. In that time, I have seen many terrible things and I must confess I try not to remember them because of the agony they continue to inflict. I have seen Israeli soldiers shoot into crowds of young children who were doing nothing more than taunting them, some with stones, some with just words. I have witnessed too many horrors, more than I want to describe. But I must tell you that the worst things I have seen, those memories that continue to haunt me, insisting never to be forgotten, are not acts of violence but acts of dehumanization.
There is a story I want to tell you, Mr. Wiesel, for I have carried it inside of me for many years and have only written about it once a very long time ago. I was in a refugee camp in Gaza when an Israeli army unit on foot patrol came upon a small baby perched in the sand sitting just outside the door to its home. Some soldiers approached the baby and surrounded it. Standing close together, the soldiers began shunting the child between them with their feet, mimicking a ball in a game of soccer. The baby began screaming hysterically and its mother rushed out shrieking, trying desperately to extricate her child from the soldiers’ legs and feet. After a few more seconds of “play,” the soldiers stopped and walked away, leaving the terrified child to its distraught mother.
Now, I know what you must be thinking: this was the act of a few misguided men. But I do not agree because I have seen so many acts of dehumanization since, among which I must now include yours. Mr. Wiesel, how can you defend the slaughter of over 500 innocent children by arguing that Hamas uses them as human shields? Let us say for the sake of argument that Hamas does use children in this way; does this then justify or vindicate their murder in your eyes? How can any ethical human being make such a grotesque argument? In doing so, Mr. Wiesel, I see no difference between you and the Israeli soldiers who used the baby as a soccer ball. Your manner may differ from theirs—perhaps you could never bring yourself to treat a Palestinian child as an inanimate object—but the effect of your words is the same: to dehumanize and objectify Palestinians to the point where the death of Arab children, some murdered inside their own homes, no longer affects you. All that truly concerns you is that Jews not be blamed for the children’s savage destruction.
Despite your eloquence, it is clear that you believe only Jews are capable of loving and protecting their children and possess a humanity that Palestinians do not. If this is so, Mr. Wiesel, how would you explain the very public satisfaction among many Israelis over the carnage in Gaza—some assembled as if at a party, within easy sight of the bombing, watching the destruction of innocents, entertained by the devastation? How are these Israelis different from those people who stood outside the walls of the Jewish ghettos in Poland watching the ghettos burn or listening indifferently to the gunshots and screams of other innocents within—among them members of my own family and perhaps yours—while they were being hunted and destroyed?
You see us as you want us to be and not as many of us actually are. We are not all insensate to the suffering we inflict, acceding to cruelty with ease and calm. And because of you, Mr. Wiesel, because of your words—which deny Palestinians their humanity and deprive them of their victimhood—too many can embrace our lack of mercy as if it were something noble, which it is not. Rather, it is something monstrous.
Sara Roy is a senior research scholar at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies, Harvard University.
Palestine is where Jesus Christ was born, where his mother Mary was born, where King David was born - the chosen annointed King of Israel.
Around Easter 2014 Jesus appeared in a dream to a deaf ladu and showed her by gestures that the Arabs are his family bloodline. Children - boys with black hair; wearing long white tunic were given wine from a chalice- Jesus pointed to his arms and said this is my blood. Then he broke bread and gave this to them, gesturing this is my body...
It is known that from the israelites, thoughtout history that someone will be born - as Moses was chosen, who will bring the truth to people. To liberate people from slavery and oppression is a promise that God has made to people and yet this is ignored. The answer is not in war and retaliation. It is in remembering our God given rights.
Who is actually the Royal Ruler over military decisions?
Pharaoh and Palestine came to mind.
This is the word of the LORD that came to Jeremiah the prophet concerning the Philistines before Pharaoh attacked Gaza: Jeremiah 47:1
That which came as the word of the LORD to Jeremiah the prophet concerning the Philistines, before Pharaoh conquered Gaza. 2Thus says the LORD: "Behold, waters are going to rise from the north And become an overflowing torrent, And overflow the land and all its fullness, The city and those who live in it; And the men will cry out, And every inhabitant of the land will wail. Jeremiah Jeremiah 47:1-2
History has shown the Pharaoh was brought down and the Isrealites were led out of slavery into new land being under the authority of God - never again would people be slaves.
There is no justification for the monstrocities taking place. There are people who have ancestors who remember the Holocaust - if survivors then become aggressors and murderers what lesson did they learn to value life? And if Palestinians live with hate and wanting retaliation, did they not understand the message of loving your brother and cousin and the message of Peace between all men.
There are people in our world with no care or conscience - eventually lessons are given so that people start to care and develop a conscience. In suffering if anything people draw closer to God and perhaps this is His Plan especially with what is happening in our world today.
There is a complex tapestry to this life and humanity in some way we are all related. There have been promises made to the people 'the meek shall in herit the earth. Why is it that Many billions - trillions of dollars is spent on war and yet there are people with barely any food to eat and without even clean water? Without the ability to survive.
Who is denying the Palestinians their humanity?
This is a time when dark forces are ruling. If anyone supports these human rights abuses anywhere to any people - they must also reap the consequences.
Great floods have happened before..
Peace be with you
Pauline Maria
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