The American-Israel Public Affairs Committee has come in for some deservedly bad press lately, with two employees being indicted for spying on the US and with John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt’s controversial article about the Israel Lobby’s influence on US policy. So it must have seemed to AIPAC a good time to thank its supporters, which it did in Boston tonight with a dinner at the Westin Copley Hotel in tribute to the Massachusetts Congressional Delegation.
Protesters from a variety of Jewish and other peace groups showed up to express disgust with AIPAC’s efforts to out-right-wing Israel’s right wing.
The cops made sure we didn’t rush the Westin.
But we had signs…
Doesn’t seem like enough, really.
I wrote this letter to Oprah and send it by E mail, waiting for an answer, do you think I will receive an answer?
Dear Oprah,
Greetings. As I am among many others in the Middle East always watch your show and believe in the human topics you address. Long time ago I started to write a letter to you to tell you about a story of a nation. The idea struck me after I watched your show about the apartheid in South Africa. Your compassion and sincerity really touched my heart and as I was watching the show and crying, I thought of writing to you, but, I cowered out. Two days ago I was watching your show when you drove to Arizona and passed by the Native American Indians and the impact they had on you regarding their life and the poverty they are living in and how it left you wondering how the Native Americans can be living such a miserable life in this century. The lady you talked to who was crying because she has no income to cover the expenses of her child, or couldn’t feed him, reminded me of the struggle of almost every Palestinian family living under the Israeli occupation in the Middle East.
What I would like is to invite you to come to Palestine in the Middle East. Of course you will think of Israel. But NO, that is not what I am talking about, it’s what is left of the Palestinian Nation after the 1948 war and the 1967 war and the long occupation from the Israelis to my home land Palestine.
I am a Palestinian American Who was born in Jerusalem and grew up there. I grew up in the Holy City of Jerusalem and had my elementary and my high school education there. I then went to Egypt for my University Education and then returned to my homeland; married had my first baby in Jerusalem, all before the 1967 war. After the resulting occupation of the West Bank and Jerusalem I had to leave with my family. My husband, my son (who was a year and a half old at the time) and I went to Jordan as refugees. Later on we had to flee to Lebanon and then to the USA with my three children. Now I have moved back to the Middle East in Amman, Jordan and can’t go to my home land except as an American tourist but not as a Palestinian.
My family lived in the city of Jerusalem for 800 years. The Israeli State confiscated our property on the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem, where the Hebrew University was built and stands now. They demolished the old Family Mansion where my brothers and I were born and confiscated the thirty five acres of land where our house stood, that was in 1968. As tragic as this is to me and my family, I have been one of the lucky ones and I don’t want to put my situation as the major issue but just one example of many tragedies for a whole nation and its dispersed people for over half a century.
That is the past, but unfortunately there is no happy ending here because the situation has gotten from bad to worse. Currently the situation in the West Bank and The Gaza Strip is disastrous; the Israeli Army is killing children, women and the elderly and whole families by air strikes on a daily basis. The innocent civilians sleeping in their homes in the Gaza Strip at Beit Hanoun District are bombarded by the most sophisticated weapons in the middle of the night by the the Israeli Military. The Palestinians have to endure the occupation, the daily humiliation, starvation of a whole people and just in the last four days the killing of over sixty people and over 200 injuries. To add insult to injury, there is also the daily demolition of homes and uprooting of all the trees (two hundred year old olive trees that feed whole families).
Surely, you have heard of the Segregation Wall that Israel is building supposedly for security reasons. This wall has stolen most of the land from the Palestinian farmers, put the whole population in isolated cantons whereas if they want to leave their city they have to go through a gate, guarded with Israeli soldiers, the whole city of Toulkarrem which has around 80thousand people cannot leave their city except through that gate. If by some soldiers’ whim the gate is closed, the sick seeking hospitals, the students, the teachers, will have to wait till they open that gate to go to their schools or jobs. Patients who wanted to go to a hospital have to wait till the soldier finishes his cup of tea or his conversation on the phone, because they are not ready to allow them to go, pregnant women have delivered their babies on the checkpoints and some have died waiting for the soldiers to allow them to pass a checkpoint that any soldier can close or open when ever they want Recently many of the citizens of Israel are opposing what the Israeli government and Military are doing and are leaving Tel Aviv to live in the Arab parts of Palestine. Like the author Susan Nathan, Jewish, British, South African, and Israeli citizens who experienced the life in Israel wrote a book “The other side of Israel” which explains the situation in Palestine under the Israeli occupation. If you are interested I would like to send this book to you. Also there is a web site that tells the whole story and shows a map what and how Palestine was in 1948 and what remain of it now. The web site is
http://www.jerusalemites.org
The Israeli settlements are built in the occupied territories of the West Bank on top of the hills. These illegal settlements do not allow the Palestinian citizens of that city to get close because it is now Israeli land and Israeli homes and not ours any more. When a highway is opened for the Israeli use, Palestinians citizens are not allowed to use it even though it passes through their back yards and under their windows. This is just a small part of the whole issue. The apartheid regime in Israel, that has built a whole state based on a religion, looking down on anyone who is not of that religion, is just as bad if not worse than the prejudice and oppression which went on in South Africa. But unfortunately the whole World has turned a blind Eye and a deaf Ear for more than half a century, considering Israel the only democracy in the Middle East.
I cannot tell you how miserable I feel when I watch the news and see the suffering of our people, today they hit a school with a rocket and the children were running scared and crying some of them were 8 or 9 years old. Are they fighters? Are they carrying guns or bombs, they are with their schoolbags on their shoulders, where is justice? Did it ever occur to you that there is such injustice in the world like what the Palestinian are going through in the 21st century? With our current technological advancements, with all the cameras and the press in this small continuant any more, when you can watch live anything happening all over the world, who can believe that there could be this daily suffering and humiliation suffered at the hands of the Israeli Soldiers on a daily basis?
Israel justifies everything it does by saying that it is protecting itself. Well, who is protecting the innocent civilians of what is left of my Palestine? The State of Israel occupies our land, humiliates us, starves us, shoots and kills us, and then calls us the terrorists? The entire world and the Arab world stand idle as this happens to a people on a daily basis….. Who is going to stand up for the innocent children of Palestine who have learned to stand in front of soldiers and tankers with only rocks? They do it because they have nothing to lose….. We need a strong voice who speaks for justice and for the innocent…….. I never miss any of your shows and know in my heart that your voice is heard throughout the world…. So, please be that voice of justice for the innocent children of Palestine……
This is just a small part of the Palestinian reality on the ground and the suffering is much wider and painful to us. I hope with all my heart to hear from you and to tell me that you can come to the Middle East;
Thank you very much and hope to hear from you,
Sincerely
Nawal Shihabi Al-Khatib
November 9, 2006
Amman, Jordan
>>
>>
>>
Instead of calling the arab and muslim armies for help! You call Oprah! Yea, you think Oprah is going 2 help bc u like her, yea right! she visited ISRAEL to express her solidarity with ISRAEL! do u know what does this mean? A solidarity visit to Israel….. You should call for Boycotting Oprah and the TV networks that broadcast them…. this is how u pressure OPRAH! not by calling her for help . Sorry, but u suck!
It is unacceptable that organisations as AIPAC (with a lot of American republicain senators in it), support the criminal politic
of Israel’s out-right-wing with persons like Avigdor Lieberman who want an ethnic cleansing of Israel and a military confrontation with Iran.