Mazin Qumsiyeh – Back in Palestine
By Guest Post • Mar 12th, 2010 at 17:22 • Category: Arabian Coffee House, Biography, Culture and Heritage, Israel, Newswire, Palestine, Somoud: Arab Voices of Resistance
It was hard to say goodbye to my wife and friends in the US. The last night was very meaningful as we were in New York seeing the performance of Najla Said, daughter of my friend and mentor, the late Professor Edward Said (for an earlier statement from Najla, seehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CEMrmRCbvA0 ). I cried while she was speaking
because her words expressed deep emotions that I often felt but could not adequately express. I was touched by her openness with her emotions about being, like her father, "out of place" living in New York but somehow connected to Palestine. The play is simply called 'Palestine' and it ends with her saying that Palestine makes her cry! A truly powerful play.
On the flight from New York to Amman, I have time to ponder the past, the future, and the present. Questions race in my mind and most left unanswered. How did we end-up here? Did I reach out enough to those few individuals who came to my talk at Rutgers and Northeastern to defend Zionism? How do I show appreciation for those who came to support or who hosted me? What will happen in the next few weeks, to me and to Palestine? My thoughts are interrupted by the Delta pilot announcing that we will enter
restricted airspace and that everyone is to return to their seat and buckle-up? The US citizen behind me comments as the stewardess passes that this must be a military base. She says simply "we are passing over Israel". I think in my mind "same thing" and want to say it out loud but decide to not say anything.
We land in Amman around 5 PM, and the officer at the passport control asks me how long I will be staying and I say I am leaving directly to Palestine. I chat with the taxi-driver, a Palestinian who never saw Palestine. He tells me I should stay overnight and feels protective of me. I arrive at the Jordanian border controls and it is empty and I am quickly processed and I catch the bus smoothly. As the bus crosses the bridge into the occupied territories my heart beats a little faster. At the first checkpoint before the passport control, I make a call to the lawyer. His phone is turned off. 30 minutes later we are about to disembark in front if the building with passport controls and I call again. No answer. I begin to sweat. I call my sister and tell her to try to reach the lawyer. There are two friendly individuals who happen to be on the same bus. One of them teaches with me
at Bethlehem University. When I give him my card, he just simply says "do not worry, it will be OK". I feel an inner peace that is hard to describe. I smile at him. I smile at the 3 year old child in the seat in front of me.
Half an hour later, my friends passed through and I am at the window being asked questions by a blond Ashkenazi young women who never smiles. After examining my Palestinian document (issued by the Israeli ministry), and spending a few minutes at her computer, she demands I show her my American passport. She asks a few more questions. She consults with the girl next to her, whispers something and points at the screen. The other girl says something like "kin, aval lo." yes but no.. I am still calm. She hands me back my American passport. Three minutes later, she stamps and hands me back the other document. My friend who was waiting for me says "see I told you". I did not answer. I am a bit confused. Questions rush through my head. What does this mean? Does it confirm the idea that they came to my house after I left so that I would be scared and not come back? Or was this because of the pressure from the letters from the senators office, from three congressmen, from many activists demanding that I be given safe
passage? (see below). Or maybe there is yet another game I do not understand. Maybe the Buddhist charm that a friend gave me for good luck worked and they simply missed me buy accident? Maybe they will come for me later? Emotions of relief are tempered by a deep anger at this whole affair. Whatever game is being played, it is sick and not amusing. I promise myself that I am not going to let it pass, I will follow my lawyer's advice and a)
still go to see the military officer Sunday or Monday (after the weekend/Sabbath), b) still keep this issue public and publicized. I resolve to do more to support others who are less fortunate than I am. La lucha continua. I get home at 11:30 PM, tired and drained. My mother is waiting for me on the street. I kiss her cheeks and tears come to my face as
Najla's words come to mine "Palestine makes me cry".
I will keep you informed of what happens next but for now I will call friends here to see where we are with planned activities of popular resistance. I will also prepare my lectures for tomorrow at Birzeit University and take it one day at a time occasionally reporting to you as before on life under occupation. I am truly grateful for and touched by all the letters of support. A petition was created and is posted at TheStuggle.org. There is even a facebook page which has now hundreds of members to support me (http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=341498237214 ). This outpouring of love is hard to reciprocate but if there is anything I could ever do for any of you, please do not hesitate to ask. For example, I would love to host you in Palestine and show you around.
<http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=341498237214&ref=mf> &ref=mf
For now, I enjoy the simple pleasure of eating green almonds from my yard. And the journey continues of seeking to have "joyful participation in the sorrows of this world". Life under colonial occupation continues. Negev human rights activist Nuri el Okbi was brought to the Be'er Sheba Magistrate's Court on many "charges" because he refuses to leave his land.
Israel continues to intensify efforts at social engineering in the Negev as elsewhere to remove Palestinians from their land. Today (Friday), the occupied areas are under full closure with worshippers prevented from getting to Al-Aqsa mosque to avoid any demonstrations over Israel's approval of 1600 new housing units for Jews in Arab parts of the city. The latter represented not just a spit on the face of Abu Mazen but visiting US vice president Joe Biden who wiped it off and called it rain according to Haaretz
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1155895.html ). There is a Zionist man I sometimes exchange views with openly and on numerous occasions he told me in response to incidents like these: the world is based on might/power and state interests, get used to it. I choose to believe that all good comes from people who disagree with this Machiavellian notion. After all, if we all believed in entrenched power, we would have no civil rights in the US, no end to the war on Vietnam, and Palestine would have become a pure Jewish Zionist state by now.
With love to all.
Mazin Qumsiyeh, PhD
Popular Committee to Defend Ush Ghrab (PCDUG)
A Bedouin in Cyberspace, a villager at home
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Hello Mazin,
I have tears in my eyes as I read your letter. I had to stop listening to Najla Said's play for now. Tomorrow perhaps.
What I wish to briefly comment on, is first this statement:
"There is a Zionist man I sometimes exchange views with openly and on numerous occasions he told me in response to incidents like these: the world is based on might/power and state interests, get used to it."
Interestingly, a former Israeli air force pilot instructor taught me how to drive a car! He was my collegue at high-tech work in California in the early 1980s, openly Zionist, and I too, like yourself, had very open conversations with him without any personal animosity. We were actually friends. When he learned that I didn't have a driving license and needed to drive to work, and thus needed to purchase a car – I used to bicycle to work 7 or 8 miles each way during the sunny days of summer/fall – he took me out in the company's parking lot and gave me a few short-lessons. Needless to say, how can even a Pakistani student of an Israeli air force training instructor ever fail a driving test?
Pertinent here however, is our long conversations on Palestine. He had found me, I think, rather peculiar – for I was already familiar with his every argument before he made them, just as he was apparently with mine. Neither did I inform him of anything he didn't already know, nor did he enlighten me, except when he automatically stopped the exchanges by admitting something to the effect – and this an approximate quote, it's still etched in my memory, the time, the place, and the exact moment he said it, at a friend's home were we were both invited for dinner – ~"if I accepted your arguments Zahir, I would forcibly be driven into the sea [by my ownself]".
Afterwards, we never talked about Palestine. Only about work.
And that, is indeed the unvarnished reality of the matter.
"I choose to believe that all good comes from people who disagree with this Machiavellian notion."
'InshaAllah!'
Please permit me to expand on that as well. It is in single quotes because I am quoting the author of Theft of a Nation, William Baker (http://www.amazon.com/Theft-Nation-William-W-Baker/dp/0910643008 )
I met him in either 2002 or 2003, at an Al-Quds conference in California. I have an autographed first edition copy of his book, my prized possession. It is prized not because of what's in it, but because of what I am about to briefly narrate in exposition to his single word statement quoted above. He is of course, obviously an "anti-Semite" for what's in the book.
In 1982 (or was it 1981) when Baker's book came out (thereabouts the invasion of Lebanon by Israel), the Jewish Rabbi Meir Kahane of New York called up Baker, and as Baker narrated it, issued a stream of bodily threats on the phone. William Baker simply responded, as he put it: "Okay, shall we meet in front of your place or mine?".
Being a former US Marine, and still build like one twenty years later, he didn't scare easy. As the threats to his life increased from the Zionist errand-boys in NY, Baker narrated that the FBI, perhaps they were his friends there, suggested that he carry a weapon for personal protection as he was already trained on weapons.
Mr. William Baker stated at the Al Quds conference to a largely Muslim audience, a combination of Arabs and the Sub-continentalese, but with many non-Muslims from the community also present, that he replied to the FBI with the word: 'InshaAllah'.
The FBI didn't quite seem to get the meaning of that foreign sounding word, which William Baker, even as a Christian theologian, had picked up while living among the Arabs in Palestine during his archeological digs in Jerusalem.
I vividly remember what William Baker told his audience on that day. He said he had explained to the FBI that he didn't need to carry any weapon because, and this is a paraphrase: 'the word is an Islamic word and it means that my life will not end one day sooner than God has willed it, and I will not live one day longer than the time apportioned for me.' 20 years later, he was still here, looking as hearty as any Marine – and Meir Kahane was long dead.
Keep the faith dear Palestinian. That very thing which they, the hectoring hegemons, would strip away from mankind in order to foist and sustain their scientific dictatorhship in a world government! Only the power of faith, regardless of its wrappings, can permit us to endure, and to prevail in this long battle against the common enemies of mankind.
Zahir Ebrahim
Project Humanbeingsfirst.org
To clarify, this should read:
'the word is an Islamic word and it means ["God Willing, in this context it means] that my life will not end one day sooner than God has willed it, and I will not live one day longer than the time apportioned for me.'
[...] by Mazin Qumsiyeh, source [...]
Dear Mazin,
You make us so proud.
Mazin is on his journey to Freedom….
IT IS A LONG WALK TO FREEDOM….
"I dare not linger, for my long walk is not yet ended."
"Any man that tries to rob me of my dignity will lose"
"A Man who takes away another man’s freedom is a prisoner of hatred"
"You may succeed in delaying, but never in preventing the transition of South Africa to a democracy"
- NELSON MANDELA -
“No people anywhere in the world would accept being expelled en masse from their own country; how can anyone require the people of Palestine to accept a punishment which nobody else would tolerate?”
- Bertrand Russell, 1970
"I have tried to impress on the PLO leadership, and every Palestinian or Arab I have met, that the quest for a protector in the White House is a complete chimera, since all recent presidents have been devoted to Zionist aims, and that the only way to change US policy is through a mass campaign on behalf of Palestinian human rights, out-flanking the Zionist establishment and going straight to the American people. Uninformed and yet open to appeals for justice as they are, Americans are capable of reacting as they did to the ANC campaign against apartheid, which finally changed the balance of forces inside South Africa."
- Edward Said, 2002 (See: America's Last Taboo)
- Debbie Menon -
Thanks for coming home to Palestine, Mazin Qumsiyeh. Thanks to Silver lining, Debbie Menon and to Zahir Ebrahim and to Haitham Sabbah for hosting this site.
Mazin Qumsiyeh overcomes his fear and returns to Palestine to participate in protests and dissent of the Israeli occupation, BRAVO!
Haitham, Maybe you could report on the news from Al Mezan in Gaza, Israeli attacks are increasing by the day, Contact Al Mezan and report on the daily abuses of Palestine on this site.
It's getting pretty hot in Palestine and as Steve Amsel reports, Haithams brother is the first to be exiled from the West Bank By Israel's new policy of ethnic cleansing. We pray that he is safe and sound in Gaza.
Things are not as they may seem today in the world of Palestine verses the Zionist regime in Israel, and elswhere. Palestine is rallying with force these days and hope is springing eternal, Inshallah.
Many different groups are assembling and becoming knowledgeable in the truths of Palestine and also concerning the lies and blasphemies of Israeli zionists.
Some metrics are showing great promise in the progress against the zionist regimes, however there is yet much to be done and the return of Mazin Qumsiyeh to his mother is one metric that does inspire tears of joy, Any Palestinian Mother is tearful as her son returns home.
We are , by many measures the Unconventional forces of Palestine, united against oppression but with no army, no commander in chief and no weapons to kill enemies of Palestine, which is laudable and to be applauded with vigor. Joy is defined as being exuberant and happy , not negative or self defeating, Positive thinking emanates from such Joy and as Mazins Mother sheds her tears, we all have such tears of joy when sons return home to the people and families. Unconventional warriors from Israel and the US, UK and Cabada Austrailia and elswhere use coercion, sedition, blackmail, usery, bribes, murder massacre and subversive strategic tactics to undermine enemies and reinforce allies. Palestinian UW is not like that…..
We use love, sharing of information, honesty, forthright righteous indignation , truth and protest, peaceful that, to reinforce allies and attack enemies, but also turn the other cheek seventy times seven to show our resolve not to be intimidated by idiocy, divisions and evil practices perpetrated against us. The UW of zionism is now undermined by lies, so many infact that the sewing of them employs many zionists, a veritable army in fact, and yet they are losing ground in hearts and minds procurement rapidly if not in exponetially impressive terms. We are winning the battles for hearts and minds, but perhaps well behind in the domain of the flesh, so to speak, as Palestine continues to be assaulted bodily daily with no releif in sight, which is cause for some reflection as to where this will all come home.
It has always been my assertion that the truth and love conquers all, but weapons of mass destruction and war mongering has it's advantages over the truth in this earthy domain in some wise, so the battle continues in earnest to manifest the gains in hearts and minds in a material and productive way as regards the BODY of Palestine.
This BODY, so to speak has been repeatedly violated maligned killed injured tortured and divided in many ways yet it remain a solid rock in my mind in some ways, ever there, ever vigilant and ever resistant, which is cause for joy, but perhaps bittersweet and long-suffering Joy as we are called to endure by Allah, Inshallah.
Faith plays a part in the struggle of Palestine against Zionism in many lives, Mazin Qumsiyeh's , My own and many others faiths are intermingled in Palestinian culture and becoming intertwined as such as brothers and sisters of many disciplines are becoming more knowledgeable about others faiths and showing tolerance and love as regards some differences in doctrine and structures of our faiths, or no faith whatsoever, all are welcome at this inn, we could say, which bring me great joy.
I met with Mazin Qumsiyeh at Mepeace a few years back and can speak to his love, his patience and considerate approach to any people, which is a good brother being a good brother to every sister and brother, to which we are called. Unity is made in such loving and understanding for Palestine, the sisterhood and brotherhood is translating into a family .
If we are a family whom loves it's mother, this mother is the women of Palestine and our father the men of Palestine our children the children of Palestine with aunts uncles cousins and grandparents all sharing the joy of every achievment and also the heartsickness of every hurt and funeral. This is the greatest love of all, ordained and blessed by Allah, Inshallah,
If then, our family is growing, loving sharing and healing these hurts, finding unified resistance our best effort to free Palestine, we invite every earthy brother and sister into this fold with love, showing them our hearts, often on sleeves wet with tears and as such, we grow as the family if unity that transcends religion to become unified, rock solid and breathing in and out together as one, Inshallah and we will over come our adversity as we ought by being graceful peaceful people whose shared cultural differences become the tolerant and rightful heirs to the kingdom, in our hearts in our minds, we are together as believers in Palestine and we grow by the second, which is beautiful and to be appreciated as such, not maligned, not rejected for petty reasons, but fortified, justified and ordained as God's will for us, which we dutifully follow to victory, even in the flesh. Inshallah Ameen