The fact of the matter is that the average person out there doesn’t know exactly what to make of these so-called Israeli settlements being built in the Palestinian West Bank. This news footage is balanced coverage of the Palestinian / Israeli conflict by the grandaddy of all news magazines, 60 Minutes. Remove from your mind all you’ve heard and seen about this conflict and watch. The truth is there to see for all.

From Lama J. . .

 I decided to start my article with a phrase taken from a song that belongs to a Palestinian rapper called D.O.N.  He was born and raised in the United States, but is strongly connected to his Middle Eastern roots, especially those that stem from Palestine. His mom and dad, like many Palestinians, immigrated after the Israeli invasion and he was born as an American citizen.  I guess if he were born in this part of the world, would he really sing a song about being “Palestinian to the Bone.”?

I am a Palestinian, with a Palestinian mother and a Palestinian father. My grandmother was Turkish. I’m not sure if I can brag about my Turkish side to try and impress people, as Turkey isn’t really considered a country from the “Classy Category”.  I guess I need to look for someone else in the family to connect myself to, so people can look at me differently and think how great I am. How about my German uncle’s wife? Or my Australian cousin? Maybe my American second cousin’s wife is even better? Wouldn’t be better to say I am a Palestinian-Jordanian, but my mom is American? Or maybe my father’s family side is half German? I guess my future kids will be the happiest ever. They will be able to proudly say they are Canadians. I’m not sure if they’ll like to make a small addition, BUT my mom is a Palestinian… isn’t that what makes some Arabs classier than other fellow Arabs these days!!??

Sometimes it really annoys me when I chat with some fellow Arabs from different countries in the Middle East. It starts when I ask the question “Where are you from?” 90% of the time I hear in return, “I am Lebanese BUT half French” or “I am Palestinian, BUT my mom is American,” or sometimes “I am Syrian, BUT my dad lived in Spain for almost 10 years.“  Egyptians, Jordanian Lebanese, Syrian… we all do it and immediately put it into every sentence.  Some can’t even wait for people to ask them where are we from, so we can start talking about it. Why do so many of us strongly feel the need to add “BUT” every time we talk about ourselves? Why do the words “I am a Bedouin or a farmer” sound so heavy to us? Why do we have to justify it immediately by saying “but I’ve lived in the city all the time”? Why do we feel the need to brag about the Western side in our families, rather than our Arabic roots?

It’s like many of us are erasing our roots and replacing them with fake ones we think sound classier. Have you ever heard of a happy marriage, because the wife was half Italian or the husband was half Sweden? If everybody here is related to the West, then who was living here in the first place? Of course, I am generalizing, but it’s happening a lot. Many even push this way of thinking on our children. Many Jordanian families are teaching their kids to speak in English at home. Yes, it’s good to learn English, but using it as the primary form of communication with your children, even though the parents are both Arabs, is a little bit weird. But hey… it looks classier when our kids speak in English or French in front of the guests. This shows how educated the parents must be.

I guess I will be Canadian one day and will start saying “I am Canadian to the Bone!”  but am I?… I mean really!!

If we read Arabic history and recognize the amazing achievements made by our ancestors, it makes you want to say again and again, “I am proud to be an Arab!”  If we see how great our religion is, how wonderful our Holy Book is and how rewarding it is to be connected to Islam, this makes you want to say loudly “I am a Muslim!” So what’s the problem??

This habit of trying to class ourselves up stems from not only families or language, but even our food. If you are a shawrma fan or falafel fan, you may look little cheap, but if you dine Sushi every night with your Saki drink next to you, then your classy. You can also talk about your adventures in Japan, or how much Saki you can drink without getting drunk, but can we really talk about how many times we have made our prayers on time without missing it, or how beautiful the trip we took to Syria was last summer? If someone visited France for the first time, he will talk about it again and again to his friends and families, but would this be the case when you visit Jordan?

An Egyptian friend of mine, who is a holder of a Swedish passport but born and raised in Egypt, always talks about the Swedish experience and seems to hates admitting he’s an Egyptian. Another friend of mine always likes to talk about his French grandmother; a cousin of mine who just became a Canadian citizen finally can’t remember some words in Arabic and sometimes I need to translate things for him to refresh his memory. Seven years in Canada is a quite long and one can easily forget the Arabic he spoke for thirty years beforehand, so I’ll excuse him sometimes. On the other hand, my Canadian husband is always talking about his Ukrainian family roots, not knowing that Ukraine doesn’t go under the “Classy Category.” Maybe things are different in that part of the world, maybe people there wants to brag about their Arabic or Eastern roots. 

The question here is… are we hiding from something? Is being an ARAB embarrassing to us? If your wife is a non-Arab, will your life will be better!?? If your grandmother is Italian, would you be happier?  I’m a woman just into her thirties, who has visited almost many countries and speaks different languages, but always mention that I am a Palestinian Muslim from Jineen. I discuss religious issues with many of my friends, Muslims and non-Muslims alike. I tell them sometimes you can be both civilized, educated, sophisticated AND an Arab Muslim… and that this is the real spirit of Islam. 

When I was in Germany for almost 4 years and had many German friends, I never wanted to hide my identity. Even when people used to tell me you’re different than most Arabs, you’re more like a German, you work hard, you’re committed, sometimes I took it as an insult as it made me feel that this is what Arabs are famous for!!  Being lazy!!  Sometimes when I had visitors I would excuse myself and go to my Friday prayer. This made my German friends respect me even more, knowing that I am proud of what I am and that I am not trying to hide it to look more civilized.

I was watching a Lebanese woman on YouTube who was making a speech in front of the culture centre in New York City. She was talking about the Lebanese background and Arab heritage. I felt so sad when she kept on repeating that Lebanon is a piece of Europe and a small piece of Paris. What’s wrong of being a piece of the Middle East? She couldn’t stop bragging about the French part of the family, totally ignoring her Arab side in the process. I wish I could talk to those people who created the “Classy Category.” I’d like to make a deal with them… maybe we need to add the Arab World and make everyone relaxed about it.

Take a deep breath and think about how great our families are, how wonderful our lands are and the historical legacy we are blessed to have; think of how many prophets were here, of the beautiful pyramids, the rose city Petra, the Holy Land of Palestine, the ancient city Damascus and the modernizing Dubai. Do not forget that this is our ID people, our dignity. We are all ambassadors and responsible for how other nations see who we are and how we are proud to be Arabs. With that said, we need to start with ourselves and be proud of who we are before we expect others to respect us. So wake up ARABS!! Be who you are and be Proud!!

Six months later and what unfolded in the Gaza strip represents so much of what is ugly in the world; apartheid, ethnic cleansing, manipulation, lies, hegemony, greed, prejudice, lust for power, absolute control, humiliation, and mass murder all took centre stage. Israel’s naked and defiant aggression was stunning and once again, Palestinians were on the receiving end. Innocent women and children were burned alive, unarmed men and boys were slaughtered, ambulances and hospitals were attacked, indiscriminant chemical attacks fell form the sky, and United Nation facilities were bombed. Throughout this latest conflict Israel referred to itself as a victim acting in self defense. RELATIVITY OnLine Editor David Anthony Hohol represents the changing views of the world, as more and more people begin to see Israeli action in Palestine as being tantamount to state-sponsored terrorism.

Where does it say there are times when taking the life of an innocent is acceptable? Are there a tolerable number of lives that can be sacrificed in the name of battle? If the deaths of ten children bring security to a nation, are those deaths to be seen as necessary? What about the deaths of one hundred, two hundred, or three hundred children? What about more?

There was never a time in my life when I was nothing but proud to be Canadian. I actually felt sorry for Americans who suffered under the public relations disaster that was the Bush Administration, and took solace in the fact I would never have to feel embarrassed by the actions of my country. That’s why it was so painful when things changed. The headline read Canada Stands Alone with Israel, and my heart sunk when I first read it. When the Canadian ambassador to the UN voted against a ceasefire resolution for the War of Gaza, I knew there was a problem in my country. The lone nation of forty-seven to vote against the ceasefire proposal, a proposal that was symbolic at best, it was argued the wording was not sufficient, the agreement itself was not durable, and not enough blame was placed on Hamas. I felt embarrassed; I felt sick; I feel sick. Even an abstention would have been better; a silent protest against the semantics of a document that proved meaningless, the United Nations once again showing it’s no longer relevant as an authority of any kind. Stephen Harper is the Prime Minster of Canada; Stephan Harper has brought shame to many Canadians. Throughout its one-hundred and forty-two year existence, Canada has always been known as a socially conscious state of diplomacy. Harper has altered this image for the worse. I urge all of you who hold the power to bring about change, to think about this in our next election.  

 Offering a condemnation of Israeli warfare is not anti-Semitic; calling Israel’s actions against the Palestinians state sponsored terrorism and internationally sanctioned ethnic cleaning is not anti-Semitic. Israelis love to cry foul and liken any criticism of its policies to attack on Judaism itself, but the time has come to stop accepting this manipulative lie. Their tragic history does not excuse them the actions of their  government. The wholesale defacement and mutilation of the Gaza strip, as the world looked on and did nothing, is the collective shame of humanity. The best that could be mustered in the most recent devastation were empty demands for an immediate ceasefire from the United Nations or The European Union; hollow calls of nothingness made for no other reason than protocol. Even worse, cowardly sycophantic Arab world countries sat back and watched their own being slaughtered like animals; their leaders showing they are nothing more than quivering megalomaniacs, too concerned with grasping at wealth and power, at the expense of their own people, to stand up for Palestine. When an Arab world summit was called at the eight of the Gaza massacre, leaders took two weeks to argue over where they should meet; ego their biggest concern when innocent people were being killed in the streets. There is no unity in the Arab world, and the Arab League of Nations stinks of lies and corruption. Most Middle East governments afford more respect to Europeans or North Americans than they do their own people.  

Why did this happen? Take away the voluntary servitude of the Western world media and what is left is the desire for power over the weak; the quest for more by the Israelis.  Peel back the purely cultural labels of the victim’s language and religion, and what it left is are the cries of the oppressed and downtrodden; the cold boot of a tyrant pressed firmly against the Palestinian people, their homes, and their families. Is it too much to ask for the closure of at least some of the more than six hundred checkpoints in the West Bank? And this is supposed to be designated Palestinian territory? In reality, it’s no more than a concentration camp. Guard towers, roadblocks, concrete walls, and barbed wire, hardly sounds like freedom.  All are daily reminders of being occupied and oppressed; all are daily reminders of the degrading humiliation being forced upon the Palestinians by an occupying Israeli state.  All the Palestinians want is a life free of concrete blockades and degradation. Is that too much to ask? For Israel, it is.

The fact of the matter is that Israel has no intention of allowing a sovereign Palestinian state to exist and the signs have been there from the very beginning.  In 1948, immediate aggression was shown, when Israel took nearly 25% more land than was allotted to them by the UN. A steady stream of massacres and schemes played out through the 1950s. In the 1960s, defying international law, Israel continued swallowing up more land, taking over the remaining 22% of historic Palestine. The 1970s saw Israeli settlements built inside the West Bank, instant small cities, with roads and services Palestinians are not allowed to use; all of which exist to inhibit the development of even a single strip of Independent Palestinian territory. To make the position clear, in 1974, Israel, along with the United States, alone voted against a UN sponsored two-state solution. With the 1980s and 1990s came the massive expansion of road blocks, check points, walls, and guard towers, as Israel continued to reinterpret UN Security Council Resolutions to its own liking. In 1982 Israel invaded Lebanon and took hold of the Jordanian border in order to more easily annex the West Bank and in 1987, even funded Hamas in the first Intifada, so that the more secular-minded and diplomatic factions of Palestine would be undermined. What has unfolded since 1948 is clear; the slow but steady eradication of all things Palestinian; the ethnic cleansing of an entire race of people.

Israel has repeatedly shown the world, again and again, it will never accept an independent Palestinian state. What will it take for the rest of us to see? What will it take to end the criminal silence of the ‘international community’? The events that unfolded in Gaza had little or nothing to do with Hamas; what has unfolded over the past several decades has little or nothing to do with Iran or Syria, with Mahmood Abbas or Hassan Nassrallah, with terror or Hezbollah. The Israeli / Palestinian conflict, at its core, is about empire, greed, wealth, and egotism. In the end, when one takes away all the political cliché and sophisticated academic theory, all that’s left is the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people, driven solely by the ideology of power and dominion over the weak. The world, along with an indifferent collectivity of Arab nations, continues to look on without seeing. What will it take to open our eyes? Perhaps, it was Gaza; perhaps all those that died, did not die in vain.

From David Anthony Hohol. . .

From Lama J…

Like many Palestinians, his options were limited. He was forced to leave and he had no place to go. His house was taken from him, his life held hostage, as were his dreams. Nothing was left but his faith and the strong belief that he would one day return to Jineen. That was my grandfather, Adam Jassim. God bless his soul.

  He didn’t have any choice, but to head towards the Jordanian border. At that time, King Hussein was offering the Jordanian passport to certain families in Palestine. Those from Jineen, Nablus or Jerusalem qualified and would be a granted a Jordanian passport, along with the national security number. If you were from Gaza, however, then you would be stuck with your Palestinian ID forever.

            My father was born in 1939, in Al Nasrah. Always filled with enthusiasm, I have been told he argued many times with my grandfather about topic of nationality. My dad always wanted to be Palestinian and nothing but Palestinian. He was ready to carry the ID forever, and didn’t care about not having a passport. He never wanted to be called Jordanian. “I’m from Jineen! There’s no Jineen in Jordan … I belong to my own country, my own soil.” These were his words.

   He was young and didn’t understand all the problems that come not having a passport. Despite my father’s protests, the J.’s family left Jineen and crossed the borders into Amman. The beginning was quite hard. A war in Palestine, an impoverished population, issues of dignity and identity, and so much more – it was a tremendous burden for all Palestinians. My father went on to graduate from Ber-Zeit University with a Law degree. A smart and passionate man, he worked for short time in Amman, but was never convinced with what Jordan offered him. He took his first opportunity to leave Amman and headed to a small tiny desert nation called Qatar. An empty patch of desert no one could even find on a map, Qatar was a brand new country no one had ever heard of. He couldn’t believe that destiny had taken him from the beautiful breezes and green olive trees of Jineen, to an isolated desert in the middle of nowhere. But he did his best, with what God gave him.

            He started his career working for one of the big sheikhs and earned what was considered a good living at the time. The Qataris used to call him the J. sheikh, as not many expats were making the amount of money he made. After establishing himself in Doha, he visited Amman in the summer and decided to find a wife. It was hard to do so at that time, due to the war and old-fashioned Arabic traditions. Further still, during these times it was difficult for men and women to love before marriage. In fact, in some ways, it simply wasn’t acceptable. My grandmother was excited to find him a wife when my father told her he was wanted to marry a girl from his beloved Jineen. My father was not too demanding, as he was ready to share his life with a decent woman. His only condition was that she be willing to live in Qatar.

         After only a short while, my grandmother found a girl she wanted my dad to meet. He was getting ready to visit his potential new bride and her family, when a beautiful young woman came to the room to tell him the young lady in question was ready to meet him. My father couldn’t take his eyes off this beautiful young woman and suddenly, he wasn’t sure if he even wanted to meet the girl my grandmother found for him.      

He asked my grandmother who this exotic young woman was. When she asked him why he wanted to know, he simply answered. “That is the women I want to marry, if she’ll have me.”       

I can’t even to begin to imagine how embarrassed my grandmother was. Here   she was, arranging a meeting with another family in hopes of arranging a marriage, and her son decides he wants to marry somebody else! But this is typical of my father, as he always says what he wants. In the end, his mother has no choice but to discover if this young lady’s family was interested in meeting. After a couple of visits with my mother’s family, both he and this beautiful young girl from Nablus got along quite well. The families did as well, and so, not long after, they were married and moved to Doha. God rewarded them with three daughters and a son, including yours truly, the baby of the family.

 My father’s original plan was to stay in Doha for only two or three of years, before moving back to Palestine. Unfortunately, there were many politically problems that prevented most Palestinians from going back to their land. The so-called options were to return to Palestine and give up your Jordanian passport, or stay where you were. My father would have given up his career in a minute to return to his beloved homeland, but now, with a wife and four children, he knew he couldn’t. He decided to stay in Qatar as long as he could. We ended up living in Doha for twenty-eight years. And so, I, along with my two sisters and brother, grew up in tiny Qatar.

           During those twenty-eight years, I remember him trying many times to get the Qatari nationality. He thought it was his right; he lived in Qatar for even longer than he did in Palestine, his kids were born in Qatar, he helped establish the legal community of the country, my mother built a career that eventually saw her as Branch manager of the National Bank of Qatar – it was our home. I remember all of us telling mom, each and every time we flew to Amman for summer vacation, how much we wanted to go back home. The place we called home, however, never considered us as real citizens. As I grew older, I slowly came to understand the nationality game in my region, and how unfair it is to so many.

           I was young and special, as my mom used to say. She noticed my passion for language and thought I might make a good translator or maybe even English teacher someday. As a result, I was the only one among my sisters and brother to be sent to a British school and was treated like a little queen. My two sisters and brother were sent to a government schools. I was soon like a little parrot and could repeat any sentence from almost any language. She eventually decided to send me back to Jordan to study, because the education system in Amman is much better than Doha. My family was not ready to move at the time, but she sent me to live with my uncle and his wife. I didn’t want to go, but I was 15 years old and couldn’t say anything.

        Although we lived in Qatar, we had a beautiful house in Amman. No one ever knows what’s going to happen in the Middle East, and my parents built it for us in case of an emergency. My dad thought one day we’d have to leave Qatar and he was right. In 1991, a year or so after I left to live with my uncle and at the onset of the first Gulf War, the whole family moved to Jordan.

             This war was a nightmare for Palestinians and Jordanians who lived in the Gulf, especially in Kuwait. Saddam Hussein started shooting rockets into Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Qatar. King Hussein and Yasser Arafat were the only Arab leaders who supported Saddam’s actions. The reason? Iraq offered a free and non-stop supply of oil and gas to Jordan, along with millions in cash for Arafat. Palestinians and Jordanians living in the Gulf paid the price.  My uncle and his family were in Kuwait. He told us Kuwaitis used to knock on the people’s doors looking for Palestinians and Jordanians, so they could torture them. They smashed his cars and house windows; they beat him and afterwards, his entire family. He was a Palestinian Jordanian, so in their eyes this meant he supported Saddam. This, however, was not the case. My uncle loved Kuwait, even more than Palestine. Most everyone didn’t like what Iraq was doing. Iraq has no right to control another independent country like Kuwait. Further still, Syria has no right to control Lebanon and of course, Israel has no right to control Palestine. No one has any right to control any one we are born free; at least that’s the way it should be.

Many Jordanians and Palestinians left everything that had worked so hard for in Kuwait and ran to Jordanian borders. It seems like a nightmare when I picture it in my head – it was like judgment day. Since that time, the hatred between Jordan and Kuwait is still there.  After a football game between the Jordanian and Kuwaiti national teams that took a place in Amman, all hell broke loose. The Kuwaiti won the game and afterwards, Jordanians ran around beating the shit out of Kuwaitis throughout every corner of Amman. Jordanian football players were later beaten in Kuwait after the game there. Each side even sent barrages of text messages through to anonymous Jordanian and Kuwaiti TV channels, using language I can not even begin to repeat.

My father initially believed that Qatar would be fine and on the issue of the first Gulf War, it was. A couple of months later, however, a sudden political upheaval changed my family’s life forever. The son of Qatar’s ruler, who on several occsaions tried to take power, staged a coup while his father was out of the country. He took over the government and banished hi father. To this day, the son rules and the father has never returned. As a result of the takeover, my father lost his position. After twenty-eight years, he was forcibly kicked out of Qatar.  It did not matter that he was a pioneer in the legal community of the country. His long history and experience, his hard work and loyalty to a country no one ever heard of, were all flushed in the toilet.

Fifteen years passed since I last saw Doha. I’d been around the world, lived here and there, had married and established a career in banking. I eventually thought it would be nice to visit Qatar, to see our old house that I still remember so very well. I thought I could even visit my old school, see the places where I used to take my little bike for a ride, or visit the beach we went to every Friday with mom and dad for family BBQ day. The more I thought about it, the more I looked forward to going. I decided to apply for a visa and was shocked when I was rejected. I tried many times but was simply told no. Even though I was proud to say I was born there, the answer was, so what if you were born here!  I guess if I was born in Canada I would be treated like a human being with rights. If I were like my cousin Manar, who was born in the United States while her father was on a business trip with his wife, I guess I’d have a golden passport, too.

        On another occasion, just this past Eid, My beloved husband decided to surprise me with a vacation to Muscat. He thought a few days in a nice five-star resort would be a great way for us to relax from our busy lives. He also figured Oman would be an easy country for me to gain access. Most people plan their vacation according to where they would like to go, but in my case my husband always tries to plan for a vacation in a country that will accept my passport. And so, once again I readied a visa application, this time for the Omani consulate.  A few days later, much to my surprise, I was rejected. Their reason? My job title was not high enough. I’d never heard of this in my whole life. I have a good job, great credit, and no outstanding loans, but according to the Omanis, I don’t deserve to vacation in their country. What’s most unbelievable is that my husband, a Canadian, can go almost anywhere he wants in the Arab world, without even applying for a visa… and I can’t! There’s something wrong with that, isn’t there?

             I guess I can’t really be too angry, as my own country of Jordan is treating people from places like Iran, Sudan and Iraq the same way I’ve been treated by Qatar or Oman. In 1999, when relations between Jordan and Lebanon were bad, Jordanians applying for a Lebanese visa was like applying to go to Paris. On the other side, for Lebanese to come to Jordan was like getting the Canadian Landed Immigrant card. People simply could not cross. Jordan’s King Abdullah II eventually took the lead and opened the Jordanian side of the border. Policies can change in a heartbeat as well, so we Arabs have to keep our eyes on the news and watch for updates about whether Jordan will decide to keep relations with Egypt, or fight with Syria, or if Gulf countries like the UAE or Qatar are allowing us to enter and at what cost. The fact is family and friends can sometimes not see each other for awhile and all because of the passport game.

              I often wonder why all these complications are necessary. What kinds of countries make their own people’s lives so miserable? Is this the price of being an Arab? Wasn’t it God who said “I will never change what it’s inside your souls, if you don’t first don’t do it yourself.” What’s happened to our Arab brothers and sisters? Why does each country treat the other so poorly?

       Will we ever be united like the European Union or live side by side in cooperation like Canada and the United States? Will our borders ever simply be open to fellow Arabs someday? I hope so, but I have a hard time believing it will ever happen. And so, I’m not the only stranger here. We Arabs are all strangers to one another, strangers in our own land. I only wish it was different.

Born in the city of Doha and raised in the tiny desert nation of Qatar, Staff Writer Lama J. is one of millions of displaced Palestinians. A Jordanian national, she received her BA in English translation from Applied Science University in Amman, Jordan. Not long after graduating, she left the Middle East for Europe, taking a job in Germany and later, Switzerland. Over the years, she has worked and travelled through places as diverse as Libya, Syria, Holland, Canada, China and Thailand, and currently works as a financial analyst for one of the world’s largest investment banks. Without question, she best represents RELATIVITY OnLine’s benevolent spirit.