Sheikh Jarrah: The Story Behind The Story

 

On 18 June 2021, I am honored to join a forum with my Palestinian brother, Dr. Sharif Abu Shammala and my Palestinian Sister, Leen Saleh. This forum was moderated by Brother Abdurrahman Ismail and was titled "Sheikh Jarrah: The Story Behind The Story". The recording of this event can be found on Facebook and on Youtube. In this posting I wanted to share my notes for the event.

I was born in 1990, 42 years after the Jewish militias, the Haganah, Irgun and Stern Gang ethnically cleanse Palestine in 1948 the year that the Palestinian known as the Nakba. But 73 years on after 1948 the ethnic cleansing still going on in Palestine, in the West Bank, Jerusalem and many other places such as Silwan and the famous one recently in Sheikh Jarrah. Now I am 31 years old, I have 2 kids and Palestine is still not liberated. Which beg the question, is there any hope? Is there any light at the end of the tunnel?

This question relates back to the question asked by the moderator on the slogan “Lan Narhal”. You see, even though the Zionist tried their best to ethnically cleanse Palestine, their operation is not complete. The Palestinians are still there resisting the colonialization and occupation after 73 years. That is for me a success, an optimism to hold on. After 73 years of trying, by the most brutal way you can imagine, Palestinians stay on their land. Palestinians right now can be said to be divided geographically, first the one that been absorbed by Israel as citizen in 1948, second Palestinians that live under occupation after 1967, third Palestinian that lived in open prison in Gaza, and forth, Palestinians living in other countries as refugees and in diaspora. This unique division actually gave Palestinian an edge to struggle in multiple fronts.

The first three is very important, as they hold their ground. Israeli propaganda usually will tell you that Palestine does not exist, there is no letter ‘P’ in Arabic, so it is impossible that Palestinian exist. But then, you have to ask, how come they did not exist, but they resist? So, for me, “Lan Narhal” means that the Palestinians refusal to be erased from history, they will struggle to liberate themselves and they have the full support from us and especially from me.

For the second part of the question, what should we do?

As individual and society, I think we still need to educate our selves and our friends in Malaysia regarding the issue. Especially the Christian Zionist that we have in Malaysia. We need to understand the history and be able to explained it to others. We need to be the voices of our Palestinians brother and sister when the mainstream media were silent about them. We need to write Facebook post, write a tweet, blog post, write articles, do a podcast, so that the issue will be widely known. We also need to participate in a targeted boycott especially the companies which has been highlighted by BDS Malaysia, among others were HP, Puma, security company G4S and caterpillar. We should pressure our government to ban these companies which explicitly complicit in Israeli crime from operating in our country. 

As a country, our government should drop the “two-states solution” stance because this is not a solution, it is just a smokescreen to continue the occupation and colonization. There are more illegal settlement and land grab after Oslo. Our government also needs to vigorously work with international partner to isolate Israel. Make sure apartheid Israel was isolated like apartheid South Africa was once isolated. Including the exclusion of Israel from the Olympics etcetera.