Were it not for the Shahrour farm’s dairy products I could have been a vegan (no animal products). I never could tolerate dairy products until I tried the real, preservative-free taste of Shahrour¹s rich butter, dry yogurt balls, and white goat cheese. Abu Mahmoud Shahrour and his extended family, a wife, six sons and three daughters and their spouses and 38 grandchildren are from Bala'a village in the suburb of Tulkarem. On the ever-green coastal hill of Bala¹a, the Shahrours run a small but successful business that spares the family the need to work for Israelis, and provides them a decent life, the pride of self-sufficiency, and the joy of togetherness and productivity within their small village community.
The Shahrours have a small farm where the best Palestinian figs and plums grow, along with a herd of 30 cows and 60 goats. In their little “kingdom,” the Shahrours have a wealth of surviving wild Palestinian herbs that attract the attention of international botanists for their rarity. At a time when the tasteless products of plastic greenhouses flooded the markets, the Shahrours were among the few farmers who planted indigenous/organic tomatoes, cucumbers, onions and peppers that preserve the true taste of the red soil.
All the Shahrours producing and locally distributing 500 liters of milk and other delicious dairy products every day. There in the village, where life is simple and people can survive off the land, the Shahrours have no refrigerators or preservatives for storing their products. The men would start milking the herd at dawn and hand the milk over to the women, who would cook some of it into yogurt, labneh and white cheese. Within three hours, the kids would distribute the dairy products to the villagers and their hungry stomachs.
There was not a single day when the Shahrours had anything left to sell. In the pre-intifada days, when people could travel from Bala’a to Jerusalem, we used to consider ourselves lucky if the Shahrours had saved some of their good products to send to us, their family and friends in Jerusalem.
During the three weeks of curfew Israel imposed on Bala¹a in August, however, the Shahrours faced a real threat to their business and daily life. Not only were they prevented from attending to their crops at the boundaries of their small farm, but every day they witnessed the waste of their work and nvestment. Um Mahmoud related bitterly how they used to get up in the morning to milk the animals but because of the curfew, were unable to market their products. “By noon the 132 gallons of milk would ferment, and we would pour our labor, sacrificed sleep and hopes of progress down the drain along with the spoilt milk,” she recalled sadly. “Each time I discarded the milk the men announced that they will not do the milking job the next morning. But every morning the animals would roar in pain because of their bloated udders, and I would feel sorry for them and force the men to get up to milk them. “If only the world would hear the roar of the pent-up pain and anger in our chests and intervene to end our suffering,” Um Mahmoud added.
The Shahrours¹ experience of life under curfew is mild compared to the suffering of many people in the reoccupied Palestinian towns and villages. Hebron, with its suburban villages, was known as the bride of the Palestinian summer because of its “jewelry” of ripened fruits and vegetables. Today Hebron, which in the past few years provided products to Palestinian, Israeli and Jordanian markets, has become a widow under siege and curfew. Every day, its farmers are losing hundreds of tons of grapes, peaches and plums, which are dying in their orchards and vineyards because the closure and harassment by settlers prevent Palestinian hands from picking the harvest and sending it to even the nearest towns and villages where people need food badly.
In Gaza, 60 miles west of Hebron, the cries of hungry laborers who lost their jobs in Israeli areas since the intifada began grow louder every day. Our laborers have lost their jobs, our farmers have lost their crops, and few of us employed by the government or private businesses can reach our places of work.
Israel’s well-orchestrated strategy of targeting Palestinian social life and destroying our economy independence and personal prosperity, has resulted in exacerbated poverty and unemployment. Recent surveys show that 65 percent of the nation is living below the poverty line, and the unemployment rate has soared to 60 percent. Health indicators are deteriorating dramatically.
This policy of destroying civilian life aims not only to sap Palestinian morale, but to trap those of us with empty stomachs and failing spirits into the quicksand of collaboration. Israeli policymakers think that by starving the Palestinians our cries of hunger will grow louder than our cries for liberation and we will lose the energy to resist. It seems not to have occurred to the Israeli government, however, that some hungry people are capable of “eating” their enemy.
While our villagers mourn the waste of the bounties of their farms, our urban dwellers starve in the confinement of their apartment buildings in Ramallah, Nablus and Bethlehem. In Nablus, where people have been living under a 78-day curfew, our friends, university staff, have starved after consuming all their canned and frozen food in the first few weeks of curfew. Not until some international peace activists brought them a little food to help them survive were they able to regain some of their health and demeanor.
As a Palestinian and a human being, I want to convey my thanks to the international charities and humanitarian organizations which try to send food and medical aid to a nation living under the most absolute brutal oppression imposed by foreign occupiers of a nation whose “crime” is to continue living in the land of their birth.
Such aid is very welcome, and what it symbolizes is very moving. I have to say, however, that it is not the cure. What we are demanding is not that the world treat Palestinians’ symptoms of hunger, but rather that it address and correct the pathology of occupation. Help end the cause of our suffering and free our people, who are gasping for breath under Israeli aggression. Then, we, Palestinians, will liberate ourselves, with our own hands, from disease, poverty and pangs of hunger.
Ramadan Ended! Now What?
Date posted: October 26, 2006
By Dana Shalash for MIFTAH
So today is the third day of Eid Al Fitr that all Muslims worldwide celebrate right after the culmination of the month of Ramadan. Not sure if it’s only me, but Ramadan seems to have lost its glory. Years ago when I was a child, people’s attitudes towards both Ramadan and Eid (festival) were way different than now. Maybe I have grown up to the extent that I see in them nothing but the mere fact that few arrogant relatives come for a visit for a couple of minutes, and everyone just sucks them up.
It has been a gloomy day in deed. Being self-centered often times, I thought that my own family never enjoyed the Ramadan that other people celebrate. But the night prior to the Eid, I went for a drive to Ramallah with my uncle and three sisters, we toured around Al Manara and the mall a bit, and felt the legendary atmosphere. People were happy. That hit me; I am not accustomed to seeing them vividly preoccupied with the preparation for the big “day.”
So I came back home and wrote to all my contacts wishing them a Happy Eid and expressed my astonishment and satisfaction to see promising smiles in the crowded streets of Ramallah. But the sad part was that I knew it was merely fleeting moments and that those smiles would be wiped off soon. Not only have my fears become true, but I was blind. Yes, blind. Or may be I just chose not to see it. May be I wanted to believe that we are actually happy.
Would I miss Ramadan? NO. Not really. It has been made hell this year.
While Ramadan is believed to be the holy month during which people get closer to Allah by fasting from food and drink all day long and focus on their faith instead, I am not pretty sure this was the case with us Palestinians. It was only a drug. Ramadan numbed our pain. We could handle both the Israeli and Palestinian political, economic, and security pressure knowing that the day of salvation was approaching; the Eid. But after the three days elapsed, then what?
Now thousands of Palestinians are waiting for the next phase. It has been seven months now. Seven months, and thousands of the PA employees have not received their salaries. And two months elapsed with millions of students deprived form their right of education. I have three sisters and two brothers who do nothing but stay at home. They have not attended school from the very beginning of this term. It is both sad and frustrating that they have to “do the time” and pay a high price.
Reading the news headlines on the first days of Eid is not healthy at all. It lessens the effect of the drug, and one starts to get sober. Sounds funny in deed, but that was the case.
Few minutes ago, I surfed some of the blogs and came across few Iraqi bloggers writing on both Ramadan and Eid. If the titles did not mention “in Iraq,” I swear I could never tell the difference between Iraq and Palestine. The hunger, misery, constant killing, and lack of security are all Palestinian symptoms.
I am speechless now; I can hardly verbalize the so many conflicting thoughts. Heaven knows how things would be like next Ramadan, but I would not speculate it already. It is not time to worry about it now, other issues are on stake; food, money, and education. Until then, there are a lot of things to sort out.
Our Living Martyrs
Date posted: December 03, 2002
By Samah Jabr
WHEN I meet the mother of a Palestinian killed in this conflict, I don't cry with her or ask her to show artificial pride and strength. Instead I say, "Your beloved is in God's hands, where life is more just and fair than ours." Many times, my words have been effective. But when I meet a mother of a Palestinian political prisoner, I don't know what to say. I choke with the words dead in my throat.
A month ago, I went to Neve Tirza to stand in solidarity with a group of women political prisoners inside the jail who were on a hunger strike. There were only about 50 of us in the protest, a meager group compared to the massive crowds that usually follow the funeral of a martyr or the hundreds who line up outside universities to holler out their positions and announce a strike in protest.
Standing there looking at the meager showing, I imagined that some who might have joined us had been stopped at checkpoints. Certainly others had to make use of a day in which Israeli travel restrictions had relented to see what food they could find. Perhaps some hurried to their offices in hopes of getting a little work done before the mid-afternoon rush hour, then racing to get home before a new closure took affect.
But despite my efforts to make the best of things, the sight of the small group made me think of the sad words of Mahmoud Abu Al Sukkar, a Palestinian man who spent 26 years of his life in jail because he dared express dissent when Zionists came to take his land.
"I used to think that if you call Palestinians to stand in solidarity with their prisoners, the streets would be full of the thousands. But that was my fantasy and imagination," he lamented in his loneliness.
Abu Al Sukkar's expression of isolation nudges me to remember how our Palestinian negotiators have neglected and disregarded the thousands of freedom fighters who spent and are still spending the best years of their lives behind bars. What if the greatest among us are in these prisons, waiting and holding out for their chance to lead?
I lament the lack of care we appear to express for these prisoners. Except for the prisoners' own families who have longings and fears for their loved ones' safety, few among us recreate the greatness of our prisoners outside the walls that encircle them. Think, for example, how Nelson Mandela made prison his platform, supported by his community outside.
Israel is notorious for its political prisons - Neve Tirza, Abu Kbeir, Dimona, and others. While the government of Israel keeps captives as young as 14 in these jails, few Israeli human rights organizations speak out consistently against the inhuman conditions and physical and psychological torture endured by the captives.
That no one in the Palestinian Authority moves to improve conditions in these prisons is proof of the current void between the Palestinian power structures and morally concerned people within and without Israel's iron walls. Palestinian and Israeli peace activists alike lament the situation.
"Where," wrote one concerned Israeli, "where in the world do you put 14-year-old girls in prison for being politically active? Only in Israel!"
In South Africa, Nelson Mandela spent 28 years in prison. He was tough, refusing to capitulate to his captors' demands, rejecting opportunities for freedom and waiting instead for the moment that he would gain freedom not only for himself, but for all his people. He had the strength of character to be a man of the people and the people were ready to engage the leadership he offered. Mandela never forgot his people and, they, in turn, did not forget him.
Standing outside Neve Tirza, I know the names of some of the prisoners. But there are so many. Whom have we forgotten?
When our prisoners leave their cells, will we Palestinians be ready to embrace the sacrifices they made and open to them the avenues of leadership? Given that we are all virtually prisoners in our own homes, are we even able to see potential for leadership among ourselves? Could it be dormant,lying in front of our very eyes, unrecognized, but ready just the same?
Since the beginning of Intifada II more than one year ago, Israeli (and now Palestinian) prisons have swelled, occupied by those who would not follow the rules. Given that half of the Palestinian population is under the age of l5, it isn't surprising that many of the prisoners are in their prime: youthful, willful, wanting more from life. What do we say to the parents and grandparents of our young prisoners, especially when some of these have been captured by their own police and put away, out of sight and out of mind?
We bend, abashed, like the animals in George Orwell's "Animal Farm." In Orwell's satire, the leaders of the animals are pigs. It is a sad day when the lowly citizen-animals open the doors of their leaders' inner sanctums and discover that those they trusted are eating ham. Saddened, the animals take the ham and give it a decent burial.
Will we gain freedom at last only to cringe in resentment for those who used our youth not to win our freedom, but to feed themselves? Or will we bow in reverence to those great and small who sacrificed themselves for our well-being?
If any place on the globe has witnessed conflict as wearing as that in Palestine, it is Africa and yet, look at the men who have risen from the depths of African despair: Nelson Mandela, Bishop Desmond Tutu and others who have lead an effective relevant life despite all the traumatic experiences they had.
For us, the young people of Palestine, the future is ours. Either we will succumb to self-pity or we can bury our dead, hold our heads high, turn away from our prison walls and lead.
While I felt that our protest in front of Neve Tirza was disappointingly small, I'm glad I stood with 50 people on that day. It was my way of remembering, and of sharing in initiative.
Mother Teresa wrote, "Don't wait for leaders, do it alone, person to person." So, I and the 49 others who made our presence known gave credence and visibility to the women inside the Israeli government had hoped would slip into oblivion (along with the rest of us).
We may not have a Nelson Mandela among us, but perhaps we have better. We have thousands of political prisoners willing to sacrifice freedom and happiness for Palestinian independence.
Whether hidden inside Israeli or Palestinian prisons or locked away through house arrest or community bantustans, none of us are giving in. We stand broken but not bowed, troubled but not humiliated, by Israel's expression of might.
Mandela stands out as one leader whom prison could not quell. The other great rule-breaker of our time, Mahatma Gandhi, died in 1948, the same year Zionists occupied the first part of Palestine. But those were different times for those seeking independence.
Now, governments of the "civilized" world manufacture conflicts that reverberate like the movie "Star Wars." Here in dusty Palestine, we're not thinking of Star Wars. We've seen the missiles come and go with flares and sprays of light. We've felt billy clubs on our heads, endured the kick of soldiers' heavy boots and resisted the bullets of contempt. We need to stand tall, not dissolve in flames of hateful conflagration.
If we fail to honor our living as well as our dead, I worry that our national liberation will not be what we expect. I am troubled that we may succumb to the humiliation of our own silence and remain captives, unable to take control of our own destinies.
I honor our prisoners of war; I pray that they will not be forgotten at the negotiation table and I await the day when we, the young people of Palestine, can show the world what leadership means.
Samah Jabr is a Physician and a life long resident of Jerusalem.
Source: Palestine Report (JMCC)
