In days to come, I’ll be posting a few videos of talking to Beesan, asking her about life in Palestine. More than anything, she wants visitors to understand her society.
In this video we are in downtown Nablus and she shows me two posters commemorating a family that was killed in Nablus during the second intifada, ten years ago this month.
The video is worth watching for a few reasons: first, to get a feel for the warmth and depth of a young Palestinian activist, second, for Beesan’s explanation (at about 2:30) that an ongoing Palestinian “revolution” began in 1936, with the Arab revolt under British occupation. And third, for Beesan’s answer to my question in the headline: “When I put this on my website, people will say that those people are terrorists.”
In her answer, I believe you can see the defiance of someone who is a member of a subject people, a people who lack the right of consent to the government that controls their lives. Any people in the world would bridle under such conditions. Any people would want their best and brightest– their Beesans– to represent them in the court of world opinion with words, not violence.
And any government that controls an occupied people without granting them the right to vote must soon lose legitimacy. (As the American abolitionist preacher Theodore Parker wrote in 1859, supporting resistance, “it is not to be denied that we must give up DEMOCRACY if we keep SLAVERY, or give up SLAVERY if we keep DEMOCRACY.”)
I’ll be posting more exchanges with Beesan in days to come. This will be an introduction!
I hope that someday – hopefully, soon – a Palestinian government will be led by such articulate young women as Ms. Ramadan.
Beesan is a lovely name. I presume she’s named after Beisan which became the Zionist Beit Shean.
Phillip, Thank you! You are a brave man, all the more reason to THANK YOU!
Interviews like this are something you should have more of. They open a window into a world that many do not get to see.
These Martyrs on the wall are the the ones fighting for their freedom from occupation. And, for all the openness that the US media pretends to represent, the general American population cannot see that Palestinians are the oppressed people (were told it’s the people of Sderot). When has a US reporter ever shown the statistics of the conflict provided by B’Tselem?
Once the smoke screen clears, if it ever does, Israel is going to be despised by a sizable percentage of people that were deceived. Many recent polls indicate that US citizens are increasingly ambivalent about the contradictions of supporting this state. It’s aggravating that progress on this issue is crawling along, even in 2012.
RE: “People seek Beesan out because she is articulate, gracious– and yes, she is also a feminist in a society that is not especially tolerant of that movement.” ~ Weiss
MY COMMENT: You ain’t jus’ whistlin’ Dixie, Phil! *
FROM YNET NEWS – Rabbi Aviner: Women must not wear pants even when alone, by Neta Sela, 05/02/08
One of Religious Zionism’s most prominent leaders defines trousers as a ‘self-prohibition,’ says women ‘must dress modestly also when alone and in the dark’
ENTIRE ARTICLE – http://www.ynet.co.il/english/articles/0,7340,L-3552461,00.htmlcles/0,7340,L-3552461,00.html
* IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER FOR THE RENOWNED PHONOLOGIST ADAM HOLLAND: The dropping of the ‘t’ at the end of the word ‘just’, and the dropping of the ‘g’ at the end of the word ‘whistling’ is not meant to allude to, denigrate, or offend, any racial, ethnic or socioeconomic group. Cross my heart and hope to die!
SEE “ADAM HOLLAND: NEGRO’S GREATEST FRIEND” – http://www.richardsilverstein.com/tikun_olam/2011/08/20/adam-holland-negros-greatest-friend/
ALSO SEE: Phonological history of English consonants – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonological_history_of_English_consonants
Also, no animals were harmed in the making of this comment.
Furthermore, any similarity of this comment to actual persons or actual events is purely coincidental. I swear on my grandmother’s grave. And I’m referring to the grandmother who suffered (as did we) from early-onset Alzheimer’s back before there even was such a thing.