Where the Revelations Descended and the Prophets Ascended
By Shakeel Syed
Los Angeles, CA
The streets of Jerusalem and the alleys around Al-Aqsa were silently screaming in my ears as I walked the streets of Al-Quds.
There were, in my ears, the silent screams of one thousand years from the violent era of Crusaders [1099].
Their reign of terror ended with Salahuddin Ayyoub, a.k.a. Saladin. During his reign and thereafter for seven hundred sixty one years, the people of the Star, the Cross and the Crescent lived as neighbors in relative peace.
It was thereafter in 1948 that the Palestinians were humiliatingly displaced from their homes and farms; dispossessed of their belongings and property, and deprived of a living with honor and dignity.
It is these sixty years of continued occupation that we now call the Naqba, that I went to commemorate and also to witness the wrongs in our midst, in 2008!
Whether it is the East Jerusalem or the West Bank, the abhorrent oppression and illegal occupation is vividly blatant.
I had the painful privilege to travel through a great deal of the Occupied West Bank in the cities of Ramallah, Bethlehem, Nazareth and Hebron …
I met restaurant waiters and bus drivers, professors and students, young and old, rich and poor, men and women, religious and secular and their cry and call is one - “Occupation Must End.”
In the city of Bethlehem, the city of the birth of Jesus (may peace be always with him), I met a Muslim and a Christian, both elected officials of the city where in spite of a Muslim majority, the Mayor of the City is always a Christian and theCity Council has a Christian majority always … clearly demonstrating that people of faiths can live side by side, in peace, with mutual respect, and as equal citizens and loving neighbors.
Contrary to Bethlehem …
In Hebron, the City of Prophet Ibrahim (the father of all (may peace be always with him), where a New York born Baruch Goldstein had killed Muslim worshippers in Masjid al-Khaleel during the Fajr prayers in the Ramadan of 1994 continues to remain under siege by the occupying forces and settlers.
In Hebron, I met and patiently listened to a New Jersey-born David Wilder (a settler), now an Israeli citizen (under the Israeli Law of Return), while a Palestinian born in Hebron or Ramallah or any other occupied city, now living anywhere or in Southern California, cannot even return to his homeland, if and when he/she so chooses, let alone claiming any citizenship.
There is much to say of the persecuted lands and the people of Palestine. About them and in their suffering is a heart wrenching story.
There is a wall that is continually being built, anywhere from 5 feet to 20 feet high (with barbed wire), tearing apart families, businesses and lives.
There are checkpoints, where each day hundreds of Palestinians’ basic human dignity is stripped bare.
Neither students nor teachers can reach their classrooms - with certainty each day.
Neither doctors can render nor patients can receive medical care when needed.
Neither a son can visit his mother nor a wife can visit her beloved, at will.
But, at will, the American-made Israeli bulldozers can raze orchards full of olive and fig trees and demolish homes while the inhabitants are sleeping or barely awake.
I find hope in the owner of that restaurant in Nazareth who offered baklawa to our group members of various faiths and said, "Sweets are on-house, although we live in bitterness."
I find hope in Bassam Aramin, who co-founded Combatants for Peace (along with Israeli refuseniks), whose ten-year-old daughter, Abir, was killed by a teenage IDF soldier (January 16, 2007). A grieving but patient father, Bassam, is calling for “justice” and not for “revenge.”
I find hope in Emad, a father of six, from the village of B’lin, who is leading a weekly vigil, against the apartheid wall that divides his village in two parts, his part with nothing and the part on the other side, now taken by the Israeli Military, full of olive trees and fertile land.
I have also witnessed people of Judaic faith, my friends accompanying me in the travels, courageous enough to stand by me when I was questioned of my origins and ethnicity (by the Israeli security), and who were also brave enough to visit the refugee camps and hold the hands of a Palestinian grandmother and say sorry for what had happened to her and her grandchildren.
In such courage and morality I have hope, for a better tomorrow.
But before I and you, hope for a better tomorrow, we ought to also recommit ourselves to our duty - “to be a firm witness for justice even if it be against ourselves.”
We also must remember the Prophetic legacy - “that, when you see wrong, right it with your hand, or speak against it or at least feel it in your heart – indeed that’ll be the weakest of your faith.”
Let us pray that we become of those who stand firmly for justice and are resolved against any form of injustice anywhere, against anyone by anyone.
Let us pray that we lend our ears to the silent cries of the ancient al-Aqsa, the alleys of Ramallah, the corners of Hebron and the circles of Nablus.
Let us pray that the grandmothers and grandfathers, orphans and widows, be embraced by all of us, as people who deserve dignity and honor and who are no less or more, than any other people, and that we all, one day can enjoy the fragrance of olives and the shade of a fig tree sitting with a person of any faith or color, enjoying the beauty of God’s creation with respect for all.
