Free Israel

By: Dr. Eyad El-Sarraj

She whispered, “You changed”.

But he did not seem to hear her as his eyes were glued on the magical screen.

With anger rising in her tone, she said, “All we needed was this new toy.”

She returned to him and put her hands on his shoulders and shook him gently saying, “You changed. You are not what you used to be.”

Muttering, he replied, “what? What? Oh yea, I’ll be with you in a little while.”

He continued to stare in front of him; as she said angrily, “You do not love me anymore. Won’t you wake up and listen to me? What are you staring at in that cursed screen?”

He turned to face her while his fingers worked at the keyboard, and said, “Why do you say that? Of course, I love you.” He returned to the screen saying, “I am following what the world says about the Intifada. Zionist propaganda is on the defensive. Arabs everywhere are on offense with intelligent and effective articles. It is like a battle on the Internet.”

“What good is a battle on the Internet when our children and youth are killed daily?”

“Our battle is a media, political, and psychological one. Armies won’t decide it. Media pressure and world conscience will.”

“Our battle is on the ground. The question is how to get rid of the settlers and liberate Gaza, the West Bank, and Jerusalem. The Israelis won’t leave us any option except to kill. It is the only language they understand.”

“That has to go side by side with a sophisticated media campaign to influence the psyche of world Jewry and Israel, until they are convinced of the moral burden and futility of the occupation.”

“Did not they understand the futility of the occupation after all these years of war, resistance, killing, and destruction?”

“They are a scared people. They compile weapons and research. They possess nuclear bombs in an attempt to control their fear; but they remain frightened. All their military might has blinded them. They are unable to see their fate and that of their future generations, who will be victims of guilt. But they remain afraid.”

“Is it expected that we, the victims of their hatred, cure their fear as well? It is strange. All they tell the world is that they want peace and security for the Israeli people, but they also want more land; and they know that confiscating it makes their citizens targets for killings. Their security philosophy is strange. While they want a demilitarized Palestinian State, and ask for security guarantees from this demilitarized state; they have the nuclear weapons and strong military. Are not, we, the victims, more entitled to security?”

“I agree with all that you say. But if we want to win, we have to understand their political, economical, social, and psychological states…”

“They are all united to kill us. That is what I understand.”

“But there are other examples. Look at the appeal of Jewish American women against the occupation, and the appeal of the students in Tel-Aviv University against settlements and the occupation and calling for an immediate withdrawal. There are the new historians like Benny Morris’s new book that puts the blame on Israel for the massacres with evidence from Israeli military documents. He puts the responsibility for the Palestinian exodus on Israel. Don’t you remember Amira Hass and what she writes in Ha’aretz against the occupation. There are intellectuals calling for liberating Israel from the epidemic of racism that has been plaguing it since its establishment. They call for liberation from the military establishment.”

“Yea, yea… but they are only a small minority in Israel. The vast majority want to kill us and think we are lower than animals.”

Liberating Israel will come when it relinquish its hold on other people and stops treating them as slaves. Our freedom will liberate them.