“Shut your mouth up,” barked a huge, scary Israeli soldier at me, like a rabid bulldog, whenever I challenged his orders. This is not even a fair comparison; a bulldog, despite his intimidating appearance, can be quite sweet and loving on the inside. Well, this soldier was anything but! So maybe criminal describes him better. He and a dozen other soldiers smashed through my aunt’s apartment window in the middle of the night last Thursday and took hostage my aunt, Suha, my 22-year old cousin, Hanin, my 69-year old grandmother, and me.
That night of terror -- and defiance -- is unforgettable. It brought back memories of an earlier invasion, when Israeli soldiers came to occupy our apartment and tried to expel us. I was five then. I felt powerless, terrified and sick, and my knee kept shaking. I asked my mother what to do to make it stop, while my father was busy confronting the soldiers: “You will not take our home while we’re alive,” he said. “We are unarmed except with our rights and our dignity.” He kept repeating this, over and over, so it stuck in my mind. I was so worried that they might hurt him, and my knee kept dancing. Mama suggested that I walk up to one of the soldiers and look him in the eyes. I hesitated at first, thinking she must have gone crazy; that guy’s gun was literally bigger than me. But I finally did. To my surprise, he immediately took his eyes down, avoiding any eye contact. I triumphantly said, “Yes!” and my knee stopped shaking. I learned the true meaning of the word defiance - tahaddi, in Arabic.
I was sleeping over at Suha’s last Wednesday night. I woke up a little after 1:00 am to Hanin's voice calling me at the top of her lungs from the corridor. She meant to alert me before the soldiers could enter her room, where I was sleeping. She didn’t want me to see a soldier's face behind a large rifle when I opened my eyes. She later told me how a similar experience had deeply traumatized her when they arrested her father the first time, in 1992, when she was still three. With time, she forgot everything about that horrible night except the haunting details of that Israeli soldier's face.
They kept all four of us in the living room, with several soldiers watching us. They were looking for Hanin's father, Ahmad Qatamesh, who is a political scientist, an author of many books and such a kind and giving person. He wrote about his almost six-year experience in prison under “administrative detention” (with no charges or trial), about what he thought of war, of the Palestinian Authority, of Arab revolutions, of socialism, and many other things, as Hanin told me. You can't arrest someone for telling the truth, or for writing what he/she thinks. An opinion is never wrong when you don't force it on others. In my view, everyone should be free to think, to write, and to oppose injustice.
I asked the soldier to close the door, as it was terribly noisy upstairs. The soldiers were breaking down the neighbors’ door, although Suha told them they are away in the U.S. “You go close it yourself,” he said. I was too nervous to get up, to be honest. I dug in the yellowish couch I was sitting on, trying to hide that I was literally shaking. I felt my skin was turning into the couch’s color. “You're the ones illegally breaking into people’s homes!” I shot back. “Shut the f*** up,” he yelled, again, in a thundering tone. I did, but I felt really bad, afterwards, that he succeeded to shut me up. I started finding excuses for my behavior—they are big and armed, and we are all alone. They could hurt us if we challenged them. I couldn't speak. My mouth was beat-boxing, as my trembling lips could not produce proper sounds. Then finally, I learned how to overcome my fear.
My old memory of my encounter with the soldiers in our apartment flashed back, and I felt empowered. I decided not to shut up, no matter what. Our obedience has never made Israeli soldiers any less ruthless, I thought to myself.
We were kept hostage until they find Ahmad, we found out. Hanin used the excuse of going to the bathroom to alert her father who was staying at his brother’s that night. When she returned to our “prison,” the living room, the home phone rang. The Israeli commander jumped and answered it. It was Ahmad! Hanin was angry that he called, as she was hoping he would somehow avoid arrest. The thought of losing him again horrified her. But Ahmad’s calculations were different, Suha later explained to us. The Israeli commander threatened him saying: “If you don't turn yourself in, we will mess the house up and destroy the furniture.” Ahmad, who was enraged, shouted back loudly enough so even we could faintly hear some of his sentences: “You are an occupation force that is illegally in our house ... You cowards, leave my family alone. If you want me, come and arrest me at my brother’s house. I am not going anywhere.” Ahmad wanted to protect us all, clearly, and felt no need to escape as he had nothing to hide.
Throughout, the commander and some of the soldiers treated us as if we were animals in their farm—their farm! With every arrogant order, with every dirty look, with every aggressive move, their racism and hateful soul completely swallowed up any sense of humanity they may have once had.
The four of us decided not to show them our fear. Don’t get me wrong, we were scared to death, all of us, but we hid it. After a while we noticed how a lot more scared and nervous they were. When I got up to fix my pants, for example, two of them quickly pointed their guns at me. I said, “Cowards!” That did not go well with them. We decided to start up a conversation with each other, ignoring the soldiers’ very presence. We talked, laughed, and talked again in loud voices. They must have thought that because we are women, Palestinian women (well, I am technically still a child), we would cry, scream, and beg for mercy. Boy, they had us all wrong! We developed a new form of peaceful resistance: TLI—Talk, Laugh and Ignore!
I thought some music would help us relax. They had confiscated all our mobile phones, but I carefully hid mine for the right moment. I put “Li Beirut,” a song by the Lebanese diva Fairouz. The lyrics, set a romantic Spanish tune, talk about Beirut, its beauty and resistance in the face of destruction by the Israeli army. They hate our humanity and cannot stand anything beautiful about us, so they try to destroy it. Many innocent women and children were murdered by them, in Beirut, as in Gaza. They violently confiscated my phone and turned the music off.
We started asking them questions, non-stop. “We hope you won’t steal our valuables from the rooms?” “We never take anything that is not ours,” one shouted indignantly. Hanin replied, “Other than stealing our land every day, you have stolen precious items from Palestinian homes during previous invasions!” Their commander appeared again, giving them new orders. I could not resist saying, “You so remind me of sheep. He’s your shepherd, and all of you are just mindless followers.” One of them pointed his M16 at me, and said: “Shut the f*** up!” So I said: “If you hate the truth so much why don’t you refuse to follow his orders? Why do you insist on terrorizing us?” He repeated his favorite insult and moved closer, with his rifle pointed at my face. Suha jumped and shouted at him, “She is only 14, do you have anything human left in you?”
I was boiling with anger, but I refused to give them the pleasure of watching me cry. They were not only humiliating me, they were also trying to make me a silent victim. I didn’t want to shut up. And I didn’t want to be submissive in anyway. I have had enough already. I wanted them out, now. I was very tired and sleepy. But I still wanted to show them what a Palestinian teenager is made of! Images from Tunisia and Egypt filled my head, and I felt proud.
What bothered me the most was that they used my mobile phone to call Ahmad while they were trying to find his brother’s house to arrest him. I wish I didn't have my mobile with me. I am exhausted. I wish I could disappear and only return after they had left. They split up; some of them remained in the house holding us hostage, while the rest went to arrest Ahmad. We were terribly worried about him. Only when their mission was accomplished did they let go of us. Before leaving, the last one looked at Hanin, who was about to collapse, and teased her: “We took your father. I will take care of him!” So she screamed: “Criminals! He will take care of himself.” We were anxiously waiting for them to leave, to be free, but also to finally express our emotions freely. Hanin and I cried our hearts out—a mix of fear, deep worry about Ahmad, and even deeper anger.
When they finally left we all just sat there trying to understand what had just happened. For a minute we thought we were in an endless nightmare. We couldn't remember every single detail that had happened until much later. It was as if we were there but at the same time we were not. Sleeplessness mixed with intense horror can do that to you, I guess.
After I calmed down, I felt guilty how at one point in the confrontation I hoped to disappear and only return when they had left. How could I just wish to escape like that? To go away without challenging their occupation and racism? To abandon my dream of a free Palestine? To run away as if I didn't care about others? What was I thinking? That can’t be me. I am a girl. I’m a musician. I am a student. I have a family that loves me. But I'm Palestinian, and at the moment that is a lot more important to me than all the rest. I am human, first, and Palestinian, second. Being Palestinian is in my roots. They can kill me; they can steal my land, as they’re already doing, continuously. They can cut our olive trees, as they often do! They can take away everything, but never our identity, our dignity, or our hope to be free.
They can never shut me up.
Nai Barghouti is a 14-year-old Palestinian ninth grade student, flutist and composer living in occupied Ramallah, Palestine. She is describing her experience of being taken hostage during an Israeli army raid recently.
we are very lucky to have this awesome writing here. what integrity, guts and bravery. only 14.
Indeed. Hear-hear.
Nai, may your voice ring out loud and clear, whenever you speak.
Nai Barghouti,
Thanks you and wow!
When I grow up I wanna be just like you.
me too! this is my favorite part
i love it!!! can you imagine that kind of strength when inside you are ‘boiling with anger’? and i loved they put on fairuz singing li beirut. and this: “If you hate the truth so much why don’t you refuse to follow his orders? Why do you insist on terrorizing us?”
this reminds me of what Bassem Tamimi says:
and so smart. Palestinians ROCK
Absolutely amazing. This girl obviously has at least two talents writing and music.
I like this a lot, beautiful daughter of a beautiful mother:
Mama suggested that I walk up to one of the soldiers and look him in the eyes. I hesitated at first, thinking she must have gone crazy; that guy’s gun was literally bigger than me.
and this reminds of my own fights when I was only slightly older than she is now:
The four of us decided not to show them our fear. Don’t get me wrong, we were scared to death, all of us, but we hid it. After a while we noticed how a lot more scared and nervous they were.
This is so very, very true. It confuses people with the power to control you enormously, if you do not show fear. As it is almost surreal to watch their reactions. And yes, it feels very good to not give them what they expect, it’s not even hard to do. The problem is that this doesn’t take away their power to pull all kind of dirty tricks on you as a revenge. So while it definitively feels good, it has to be handled with care in power relations.
Here is what is so sad (and dangerous) for the entire world…..Israel has done this for so long, gotten away with this for so long, that the Geneva Accords have lost all meaning.
The act of genocide has many parts and legal definitions with the Accords and statutes.
What Israel does every day in the way this child related is in fact an element of genocide as described in the Geneva Accords and reaffirmed by the Rome Statutes.
“Act:
Genocide by causing serious bodily or mental harm. inflicted certain conditions of life upon one or more persons.
Note: This conduct may include, but is not necessarily restricted to, acts of torture, rape, sexual violence or inhuman or degrading treatment.
Note: The term “forcibly” is not restricted to physical force, but may include threat of force or coercion, such as that caused by fear of violence, duress, detention, psychological oppression or abuse of power, against such person or persons or another person, or by taking advantage of a coercive environment. ”
If there is any justice, karma is going to be hell for some people.
Maybe some day they will be sitting the same dock the nazis had to sit in.
“Maybe some day they will be sitting the same dock the nazis had to sit in.”
If I was the judge in Nuremberg a lot more nazis would have been stringed up for drying! Perhaps I may have the chance when it is time for the zionist criminals to pay for their deeds.
Poor Israeli soldiers, doing their best to “Remember the Holocaust!” and “humanize ‘the Other’” and all they get for their efforts is “maximalism” and “destabilization”. :-(
Peace and courage to you and your family, Ms. Barghouti.
Palestinians are not safe anywhere.
Palestinian mother of 4 deported from U.S. link to networkedblogs.com
Uncanny how similar the stories seem.
Okay, see, now that is an appropriate way to memorialize the Holocaust: bearing witness to crimes of race hatred, standing up to the perpetrators and striving to make sure this never, ever happen again.
Nai Barghouti, your courage and integrity are a blessing to us all, even to the Israelis who degraded and shamed themselves by their brutish behavior.
I must also add wow. This is how resistance should be conducted. I never experienced anything as intrusive but I do remember clearly when US immigration officials used to come around threatening my father and his mother.
I was just a child (this was in the mid 50s). I once answered the door (they knocked and didn’t force their way in). I called my father. He came out on the porch and said they were not to enter. They began to ask him a bunch of questions about the identities of other people. I knew his body language. He started to get very angry. He had a tick, his upper lip would curl almost like a snarling dog when he got angry. He snarled at them and said in both verbal and body language he had nothing else to say to them. They backed away very cautiously. I was never more proud of my father then at that moment. But I did think, ‘Oh shit, we are in trouble now’. However, it turned out this was the last we heard of them and later we found out that the investigation into my grandmother’s citizenship had been dropped.
Such wisdom, bravery and honesty in such a young girl. I look at my daughter, 15, carefree, no worries, teenage angst about boys, schools, friends and more boys and see this young girl so wise, so strong, old beyond her years. I admire her so, but wonder what she has seen in her young life to make her so, so old.
Wonder no more, mmayer, mighty Dick Witty is hereabouts, somewhere, to fill you in on what all young Nai has seen at so young an age. It’s all recorded in his self-proclaimed liberal Zionist vision of the greater good, and the means to it.
Good for you Nai! Imagine if we all refused to be silenced by their tactics of fear and intimidation. I hope these army boys are haunted by your strength and humanity ya ukhti. Our existence is resistance let us live loudly, with dignity and our rights. We are beni-adam. Armed men who come in at night to destroy homes and lives are the ones who should be locked up, not Palestinians who defend their rights, homes and family.
I wonder what is the reverse side of resistance.
I think is a joyous celebration of national uniqueness and “redemption” through daily rites of humiliation and subjugation of the Enemy. It is also important to maintain the creative spirit of the Nation by having a myriad of different ways those rites can be conducted. There is a very recent video of suppression of a demonstration in a Palestinian village followed with the application of skunk water on the houses next to a deserted street. If you watch the video carefully, you can see faces of the soldiers who are watching, and one pretty girl soldier flashes a broad smile.
It is definitely not Genocide. Apartheid could be a good word, except that some rites require almost bodily contact with the Enemy, rather than staying apart. I also read other reasons why Israel is not an Apartheid state, like that South African economy was based on extractive industries, and Israel is a high tech economy. While the argument seemed absurd to me at the time, there is something to it. South African Whites had economic benefit from the subjugated population that was providing labor in the fields and mines. The needs of Israeli Jews are less material and more spiritual.
And this spirit can be enjoyed vicariously, even from across an ocean. We Americans participate too, we can watch, cheer, support. And we are a bit lazy, our elective representative shall do it for us.
Other than providing us with spiritual nourishment, I do not see any point in detaining Ahmad Qatamesh, although one can write an essay why he is a particularly bad Enemy. It is easy, because all of them are particularly bad. From what I could find, Qatamesh is an ideologue of one of the smaller Palestinian movements, he is a Leftist and opposes TSS.
There is a very recent video of suppression of a demonstration in a Palestinian village followed with the application of skunk water on the houses next to a deserted street. If you watch the video carefully, you can see faces of the soldiers who are watching, and one pretty girl soldier flashes a broad smile.
link?
South African Whites had economic benefit from the subjugated population that was providing labor in the fields and mines. The needs of Israeli Jews are less material and more spiritual.
you might want to do a rethink on this. have you visited link to whoprofits.org
lately?
piotr said, “The needs of Israeli Jews are less material and more spiritual.”
like?
Lev Leviev: link to forbes.com
or, link to english.themarker.com
link to english.themarker.com
link to english.themarker.com
I wonder, all those billions of dollars invested by israelis in the USA, where do they come from?
Our tax money is coming home to roost?
link from +972 Magazine. I am not sure if the soldier is smiling — it is almost a single frame.
Nai, yours is the courage and the bravery of lions. You stood up to armed adult men who were shameless cowards hiding behind their guns and their uniform.
You have within you the power and the strength that no person on earth can take away, that is the power of your pristine words, wise thoughts and strong conviction.
Teen-age and young adult conscripts are less shamless than they are ignorant and constrained in a manner anybody who ever served in a US Army or Marine combat unit as grunt knows while the US still had an active military draft. Childhood indocrination by all social forces surrounding them helps complete the picture of what this 14 year old girl was facing. Today, in the US those kids in the know the most, and with the most influential soci-economic political connections via their parents, won’t be found in the US military; they’re preparing for careers back and fourth between the government and Wall St. Chelsea Clinton knows the score, as does her hubby. In Israel, in great contrast, serving in the IDF is a prerequsite career move for any ambitious Jewish Israeli kid. And again, they’re subject to conscription.
I think this is the video of the skunk referred to, and an article discussing its effects
link to 972mag.com
“They hate our humanity and cannot stand anything beautiful about us”
Such wisdom. You are beautiful, Nai, and our hearts are with you, against these vile racist cowards whose attitude and contempt for humanity exemplifies the ugliness at the core of the Israeli soul.
Odd, justicewillprevail, Nai’s wisdom echoes what Dick Witty, the self-proclaimed liberal Zionist, says about BDS folks and, about anybody he thinks too critical of Israeli’s activities. Of course, he’s not age 14.
You are a very gifted writer and a heroic and courageous person. This scene will be burned into our memories for a long, long time, especially the part about looking the soldier directly in the eye at the age of 5 (!!). Remember, “the pen is mightier than the sword!” Writing like this–first-person testimony–is an extremely powerful form of resistance. Although not, of course, nearly as powerful or brave as what you did when those soldiers were terrorizing your family — you demonstrably held on to your humanity and your dignity and refused to submit or be humiliated, despite the fact that they literally held all your lives in their hands.
Thank you Nai Barghouti, for sharing a searing, honest, insightful, and incredibly moving account of what it means to be a Palestinian living under Israeli occupation. I plan to share it far and wide and I hope others will too.
Please keep writing; please make your voice heard here and everywhere.
I have never experienced anything remotely similar to what this young lady has gone through. This piece made me feel very sentimental and nostalgic.
I’m an American citizen and an Israeli citizen. My father was born before 1948 in Palestine, near A’kka (or Acre or Akko) and my mother was born post 1948, in Israel, in the same area. They came to the states before I was born.
I have lived in the US and very briefly in Israel and I spent about a year in Egypt with my family when my father was on sabbatical doing research. The worst treatment I encountered was in entering Israel from Egypt using my Israeli passport and a couple of times at Ben-Gurion airport when I was in my mid-teens when I was separated from my family for light interrogation.
I just remember my mother’s white knuckles as she clutched all of our passports and we pushed our piles of luggage forward in the long lines, and her furious whispers, under her breath, in Arabic that the Israeli soldiers–just kids themselves–were tormenting us simply for making the mistake of being born Palestinian. She would have the worst headaches when we traveled but it always seemed to hit her right after we made it through the Israeli interrogations. She would cry softly as we waited on the plane and watched the West Bank Palestinians, always boarding last, fresh from their (more thorough) interrogations.
It was all so frightening to me as a 15 year old kid but I think ultimately writing about those experiences in my law school application essay actually helped me gain admission into my preferred law school.
The conduct of the Israeli reservists serving in the territories is an example of what happens in situations with extreme peer pressure and strict conformity. These soldiers know what is expected of them and know how they must treat Palestinians in order to impress each other and please their superiors. Many of them go back to their families and live “normal” lives after rotating out of their OT service.
As many of you will know intuitively, this type of cruel and criminal behavior can weigh heavily on the conscience of the perpetrator, just as it scars the psyche of the victims. Many of these soldiers are not pleased with their own conduct and ultimately are not pleased with their country’s policies. I think there is a lot of pressure in Israel (especially as the country’s military/security establishment has become more and more entrenched, as it is in the US) to conform to the view that Palestinians are cockroaches and Arabs in general are stupid, evil and treacherous.
A family friend commented after the 2006 war in Lebanon, after the Israeli reservists were giving tearful interviews about how much they feared for their lives from the ferocious Hezbollah fighters, that he had never seen anything like that from Israeli society. He thinks that the Israelis of today are very different from the “first Israelis” (great book of the same title by Tom Segev by the way). He believes that on the whole they are emotionally weaker, disconnected from the land and hesitant to die fighting for their country; basically, the opposite of the attitude of the Palestinians in the Occupied Territories.
He was very young at the time but he remembers 1948. Sometimes he is willing to talk to me about it. He believes his village was spared because the city council voted not to resist and suggested that everyone hang white sheets out of their windows and welcome the Israeli soldiers. (Ironically, my grandfather was the mayor of that very same village at the time and he climbed up on a hill with his hunting rifle and a couple of buddies to engage the Jewish forces. My grandmother quickly talked them out of that plan.)
My friend also claims that the Israelis had a policy, though I have not seen this specific allegation discussed or supported elsewhere: If even one shot was fired at them from a Palestinian village/town, they usually ethnically cleansed it.
I have some very close Palestinian-American friends my age whose parents were able to re-settle in Nazareth after the Israeli War of Independence/Nakba and subsequently successfully immigrated to the US. Jewish forces killed many of their (unarmed) relatives during 1948 as they escaped the homes to which they were never allowed to return. Their collective reaction to the situation has been the opposite of my family’s: They don’t read about the conflict or engage in any political speech or organizations, they don’t talk about their experiences, and they rarely visit their remaining family in Israel.
Anyway, thank you if you have read my long post. I feel a little better having shared it.
thanks Haytham
Every single Palestinian diaspora story MUST be recorded and known.
I urge every single Palestinian in the four corners of the world to get to writing their personal stories and blogging them in as many places as possible. Like the utterly honest and well-mannered Haytham does above.
Lets flood the net/twitter/fb/etc with your soulful stories, stories that history ALMOST forgot.
… Well what the heck you waiting for, good people of Palestine?! We’re already in the late morning hour of the revolution!
agreed!
Thank you for your excellent post, Haytham, it was well worth reading.
They are theiving scum and cowards my dear. They will never possess the dignity and courage of people like you.