October 26 – Wake up, Wipe Your Eyes Clean

Who would have believed. Our children and our younger brothers have spent the past two years, deployed on barren destroyed fields, among the ruins of cities – fields that we have destroyed, cities that we have ruined.

What have they been doing there? Lock up and starve millions of people. Every once in a while shoot someone. Sometimes it’s a child, sometimes an old man or young woman. Sometimes it’s a young man, and then, of course, he was a “terrorist.” Young men are fair game. Sorry, wrong: all Palestinians are fair game, but shooting young men is a must. This is what our young men learn.

Ride on tanks around ruined downtowns, preventing children from going to school. Preventing men from feeding their children. Preventing women from giving birth to them. Day by day, week after week, month after month. Two years already.

Under what right? For what purpose?

If this is not terror, then what is terror?

You don’t know. You don’t want to know. You keep quiet. You are afraid.

And now, supposedly, they are constructing “The Fence” for us. But it is not as promised, a fence of separation, of security. They are building a huge Wall, not on our State’s border but in the middle of the Occupied Territories, a Wall higher than the Berlin Wall. A Wall that looks, feels and acts like the wall of a prison or a Ghetto. They are building it also in order that you won’t hear or see what is going on Over There. And really, what IS going on Over There?

Since there was a long lapse in suicide attacks on our streets, you bought into the story that ‘the IDF has done the job’ and “they” have given up. Really, come on! Don’t let yourself be duped so easily.

Sit for a moment and observe the past two years, thinking about the Other Side – not as victims, nor as monsters, just as human beings who thought they deserve a life better than that of a dog. Then you’ll understand, that everything our rulers have done, served only to intensify the stream of volunteers to suicide. Because the starvation, the destruction, the siege, the despair, were the major factor driving young people out of their minds, to the level of suicide-murder. And the assassinations, the air raids, the ground attacks and the small- and medium-scale massacres – always perpetrated in perfect timing – succeeded again and again in pushing another sector of starved, terrified, angry, desperate population into the arms of the blood dealers on the Other Side.

In spite of all this, over the past few months the people there, yes the Palestinians we have all learned to despise from the day of our birth, they have succeeded – in spite of the hunger, in spite of the continuous murder and willful injury of dozens of Palestinians every week – to keep the faint-hearted among them under control, and to prevent them from obeying the immense urge to take revenge.

You don’t know, or don’t want to know, that the true Palestinian “terror”, the major path of struggle against your young brothers, against your children in uniform, is to send their children to school in spite of the curfew. Go out to the street as soon as the tank leaves it, in spite of the curfew. Try and acquire some food and make a living somehow, even though it’s forbidden. Sometimes, even demonstrate and march towards the tanks in the midst of the endless curfew, women and children armed only with signs. And they are doing that even though, as stated, all Palestinians are fair game nowadays.

And our youth, who have just learned how to put on their uniform, obey orders without blinking, and shoot live fire at them. Some have become completely corrupt, and turn the shooting into a sport. A game with no rules or referees, but with high scores.

Our rulers hope you won’t notice all this. Because, nothing scares our rulers more than a strong, organized yet nonviolent resistance. Our rulers know that they haven’t got a shred of an excuse to remain in the Occupied Territories. They know that the people of Israel have had enough of these Territories, and that the Palestinians may be afraid of the soldiers, but they despise them from the bottom of their hearts, and will never again put up with this tyranny again. And so, our rulers sit and wait for terror attacks, because this is their sole excuse.

Meanwhile, they play a game of cat and mouse, and utilize the immense resources under their command, to turn, now in the 21^st century, in the middle of the so-called civilized world, a whole nation into humiliated prisoners and slaves. The terror attacks, the “war against terror” and the bloodshed, are nothing but game pieces to achieve this end.

You keep quiet. You are afraid. You wait until it will pass.

It won’t pass. Because the architect of starvation and destruction, Chief of Staff “Boogey” Yaalon, and the Knight of Qibbyia and the Lebanon war, PM “Arik” Sharon (whose deeds in the past two years have now surpassed all his past exploits) – both of them, and the entire corrupt bunch of cronies ruling us, are invested in this game up to their ears. They will continue gambling till the bitter end – because that their days are numbered, and sometime in the future (tragically, this may still take a long while – but it will happen, mark my words), sometime in the future people will be ashamed to say they have supported this bunch, or even knew any of them.

You sit in the back seat of Arik and Boogey’s car, and speed into the abyss. And still, you keep quiet. You are afraid. You wait until it will pass.

It won’t pass if you continue to be silent and afraid. We are now two years into the 21^st century. It’s high time we used the terrible lessons of the 20^th century:

Terror attacks by underground organizations are a symptom of conflict and oppression. Escalating the oppression intensifies terror. When the conflicts are resolved, when oppression is gone, terror dissolves.

State Terror – the terror of institutionalized killings and the complete disruption of civil life – are a symptom of tyranny. If they are allowed to continue unabated on one patch of land, they – and the tyranny perpetrating them – have a tendency to spread and destroy everything, everywhere they can. Then, when nothing is left to destroy, the tyranny disintegrates and is thrown onto the garbage pile of history.

Open your eyes. Wipe your eyes clean. Come out of your shock. It is happening now, it is happening to us. There is no more sand left to stick your head into.

There is no “third way”. If you want Israel to become “the Kingdom of Greater Israel”, and go up in smoke, fire and blood, with starved and dangerous Palestinian sub-humans locked away in fenced reservations, then please, continue to be silent.

But if you want your life back, it’s time to leave home – no, don’t wait for the corrupt illusion of the elections, get out now – and end the Occupation.

It can happen very fast, if you decide.

Because after all - you may be afraid, but your rulers are even more afraid from you.

Assaf Oron