This story began when I was looking for a child who has lived through the First Palestinian Intifada (uprising), or been active participant. The project was part of Palestinian bloggers’ campaign to mark the twenty-fourth anniversary of the “First Intifada.” We had agreed, each of us, will publish a text or story commemorating this important era in our history which we have nostalgia to.
Due to Mustafa Tamimi’s murder by the Israeli army in Nabi Saleh village, I had lost my desire to write for some time. So the story came late.
Two days before the anniversary of the Intifada, I came a cross a tweet by Mahmoud Omar, a young Palestinian living in Egypt, saying “after watching it perhaps hundred times, after I was able to escape few inches away of her eyes, I saw she was still making the victory sign.” And he shared this video:
Few minutes later, he added another tweet “the Palestinian cause, the whole Palestinian cause, is in the eyes of this young girl.”
This drew me to watch the video, I watched it several times, and I understood what Mahmoud meant. At that moment, I decided to reach that child, who is now an adult woman.
I examined the picture she was holding of her father, the martyr of the first Intifada. His name was clear: The martyr Ibrahim Ahmed Hussein Odeh. After few taps on the web, I found out that he was martyred in 1988 in Dheisheh refugee camp near Bethlehem.
I called and emailed some friends, asking if anyone has good connections with people from Dheisheh and if they could help me reach the family of martyr Ibrahim Ahmed Hussein Odeh. My friend Najla was quick to reply and promised to help. Later on, Najla reached a friend of her who knows the son of the martyr, the brother of the little child.
I called him, and explained the long story, who am I and why am I contacting him, the video, the picture, the child, her eyes, the Internet everything. He was very kind and gave me the phone number of his sister, Nour. Now I know her name, Nour.
I called Nour, and again told her the long story.
Then I was silent and she spoke.
She told me how her father was killed, she still remembers.
At the time, she was three years old, she was at home with her family, mother, father, and her seven siblings. She is the one before the last. Her younger sister was still in her mother’s womb when the father was killed. Her father was standing in the kitchen with her mother, when a bullet called “dumdum” hit his head. It was a shot by Israeli soldiers from outside the house. His head exploded in front of them.
What she remembers from the funeral is the image of his body wrapped with Palestinian flag. From now on, she has become the daughter of a martyr.
Today, Nour, 26 years old, remember how she met a week later Israeli soldiers who were passing in front of their home, she screamed at them: “damn your fathers, you shot baba.” They responded by throwing at her a thick ax-like stick, it did not hit her, but made her fall down the stairs, the horror stayed inside her body for long time.
Nour remembers that after the murder of her father she found a small piece of his head skin with some hair. She kept it for six years, until her mother convinced her to bury it, because this will help her release her grief and trauma. Nour used to hold her father’s picture and talk to it for long.
She also remembers how her father’s martyrdom became a charge against her family. The Israeli army used to raid the house every couple of days, take her brothers, and sometimes force them to remove the political graffiti on the camp’s walls.
Nour told me a lot, many things she asked not to publish, so upon her request I stop here. All that’s left for me is to quote what she said at the end of our conversation, when I asked her what she thinks about the First Intifada, she answered with honesty and simplicity, “I do not like it because I lost my father. I am angry at our grandparents, if they were like our generation, we wouldn’t have lost Palestine.”
When we talk about the First Intifada, with great romance, we must remember that there are thousands of children who have lived orphans against their will, so we can be free. The least we can do to reward them, is to liberate ourselves and them.
This piece was originally published at AbirKopty.wordpress.com. For the Arabic version of this article, click here.
Haunting. And disturbing.
The story of one girl, the story of an entire people.
Palestine will be liberated.
And no matter Ben-Gurion’s pronouncement, Palestine’s children and their grand children will always remember and never forget.
Meanwhile, the likes of Ben-Ami, his children, and his sense of entitlement — from 7000 miles away — will fall by the wayside of history and out of favor with the world.
Christian Arabs never had it so good living in Israel.
When Moslems control ‘Palestine’, and Christians like you become dhimmis again, you’ll then ask yourself, ‘What on earth have I done?’.
What happened to all the Arab Christians in Bethlehem and Nazareth? Where did they go and why?
“Christian Arabs never had it so good living in Israel”???
Proudzionist, you make all of us Palestinians.
I stand by what I said.
Arab Spring Sending Shudders Through Christians in the Middle East
by Khaled Abu Toameh
December 20, 2011 at 5:00 am
http://www.hudson-ny.org/2685/arab-spring-christians
In his annual Christmas message to the world, Bethlehem mayor Victor Batarseh called for a comprehensive boycott of Israel, arguing that this would force the Jewish state to return to the negotiating table with the Palestinians.
“It worked with Apartheid South Africa,” Batarseh declared. “We call for boycotting Israel culturally, educationally, in sports, economics and trade. We want peace, but boycott is the only language that Israel understands.”
The mayor’s anti-Israel message came at a time when Christians throughout the Arab world — and in Bethlehem and the Gaza Strip — are facing serious threats. But of course Batarseh has chosen to bury his head in the sand and does not want to look around him and see what is happening to his fellow Christians.
The Bethlehem mayor’s Christmas message completely ignored the fact that the “Arab Spring” has been anything but a blessing to Christians living in the Arab countries. According to Rita Daou, a reporter for Agence France Press, “The rise of Islamist movements in countries swept by the Arab revolutions has sent shudders throughout the region’s Christians who fear for their survival and question the make-up of the Middle East.”
The Palestinian Authority has done little to protect Christians against assaults by Muslims — including rape, intimidation, land theft and financial extortion. But these are all “sensitive” issues that many Christian leaders do not want to discuss in public out of fear of being accused of serving the Israeli “propaganda machine.”
This is why Batarseh and many leaders of the Christian community deliberately ignore what happened in 2002 in Bethlehem, when dozens of Muslim gunmen stormed the Church of Nativity to escape from Israeli soldiers. The gunmen hid inside the church on Manger Square for five weeks. Priests later complained that they and some nuns had been held hostage by the gunmen, who also desecrated the church by smoking, drinking alcohol and littering.
Christian leaders who ignore the torching of churches in Egypt and the persecution of Christians there and in Iraq and other Arab countries are betraying the cause of their people. Have these leaders ever asked what is happening to the few Christians who still live under Hamas in the Gaza Strip?
It is hard to see how boycotting Israel “culturally and educationally” could help solve the plight of Arab Christians.
Batarseh could have done a service to his people had he, for example, talked in his message about the fact that many Christian families continue to leave Bethlehem in search of a better life in the West.
The claim that Christian families flee the Palestinian territories because of Israel’s security measures is irrelevant. Christian emigration started long before Israel captured the West Bank and Gaza Strip in 1967.
Also, the claim that Christians leave because of the bad economic situation is also invalid because the same would have applied to Muslim Palestinians.
The truth is that Christians leave Bethlehem mainly because they do not feel comfortable living as a tiny minority in their city.
In the 2005 Palestinian municipal election, Hamas gained the majority of the open seats of the Bethlehem municipal council, which consists of 15 elected members, including the mayor and deputy mayor.
Since its establishment in 1994, the Palestinian Authority has done almost nothing to encourage Christian families to stay.
Boycotting Israel “culturally and educationally” is certainly not going to solve the problems and dangers facing Arab Christians. For now, Israel remains the only place in the Middle East where Arab Christians feel protected and safe.