Refugee Voices
I witnessed
I have witnessed with my own eyes the decline of human beings
into savage beasts…
I am a son of a refugee, living in ‘Aida refugee camp…
Aida, a tragic operation, but this time written not by Verdi, but
by the Israeli occupation…
An opera, where the Israeli offense army plays music that changes
rhythm and force every day and every hour…
The machineguns, automatic guns – light or heavy – an entrée, then
a main dish of F-16 s and Apache helicopters with some spices from
the tanks all around…
And finally, the dessert, blood and tears of the victims ripped and
spread at every corner of the streets…
No light neither in the eyes of my mother…
No tears for our joy or hope or melancholy…
The field of tears, dryness…
The fire of our emotion, flameless…
The ocean of our forgiveness, evaporated…
The force of resistance and belief is lost in our loneliness and abandoned by those who are relatives and those who are not relatives…
The river of our memory is still running, fertile as always…
WE DO NOT FORGET…
What remains for us, human beings, so that we could attach ourselves to this dress full of holes that humanity wears for the dancing night?
Be happy, world enveloped in silence…
Be happy people of this world, enriched by the silence…
On 8 March of the year 2002 Israeli missiles and the automatic machine guns of the Apache helicopters transformed the asphalt in Aida streets into a volcano… the floor was boiling fire… the fire escaped from the shelled cars and the bombarded houses… The blood of innocent people and animals was irrigating the streets and the floors of the houses that had been hit… Israeli soldiers, of the powerful army equipped with the highest and latest technologies, hiding behind his heavy machines, started to carve the walls of the houses, destroying the walls and opening tunnels between the neighboring houses to pass from one house to the next, like moles… What a courageous tactic for the undefeatable army…
Go on soldiers… In position… fire
There, probably a man… maybe armed… on the other side his son… and there behind, his pregnant wife and her little daughter…
Go on soldiers… fire…
There, an old man… he doesn’t stop telling stories about some rights of return to ancestral villages, and other idiocies as well…
Go on soldiers… prepare yourselves… fire…
And there, on the other corner of the street, a woman… her husband in prison… her eldest son exiled… the second is a terrorist… her youngest son is a martyr, I want to say dead like a dog… this woman is dangerous… go on soldiers… fire…
And there also… walk some cats… they violated the curfew… go on soldiers of Israel… fire… fire… fire…
Here… there… And there is a house… and another… this place and somewhere else…
Fire soldiers…
Fire on everything that moves or does not move…
We have nobody to care about… we are not afraid from anybody… we do not deliver accounts to anyone except our respected leaders…
We are the soldiers of Israel… nobody will dare to ask us anything, to criticize our actions… otherwise… anti-Semitism is the accusation for him…
Let us kill these barbaric Arabs… these savage terrorists… These rates that fled as fast they can from our helicopters and F16s and our tanks… and our skilled snipers…
Let’s demolish all the houses, homes of martyrs who dared to resist the arrogance of Israel…
Go on soldiers… take the bodies of these Palestinian beasts… exhibit them on our tanks and bulldozers…
Let all who see them be terrorized forever…
Let’s devastate all the houses and the shops and institutions and schools and hospitals…
Let’s vandalize… steal… rob… divest all what we can…
Let’s leave nothing… take everything… money… electronics… cellular phones… computers… jewelry… things to eat…
Everything is good to be stolen by the army of Israel…
Soldiers of a regular army… not mercenaries…
Thieves and assassins of no values… without honor… without any respect for the uniform they wear… if the uniform of a soldier, even though army of occupation inspires respect…
Go soldiers… prepare yourselves…
In that house, a lot of cries… someone is dead… an old woman…
Nobody shall be allowed to go there… Blocks on all the roads… no ambulances… fire… no doctors… fire… no journalists… fire…
Let’s do better… soldiers… let’s send the Special Forces… they are very clever these stupid Palestinians…
So let’s prepare a plan…
Take an ambulance… go in and infiltrate in the middle of the Palestinians… kill all the activists, terrorists… and while you are there, fire on everything that moves… or antying that has the intention to move even if it does not move…
No protestations what so ever… No protestation from the Red Cross? Let’s demolish their entire infrastructure… No protestation from the European Union and the donor states?
Let’s kill some journalists… no protestation from the media?
Well… we do not care… who dares to protest against Israel? And even if someone dares, we shall say that we will do an investigation… nobody will followup the results of an investigation that will remain with no results…
But… what is wrong? Why don’t you feel victorious? Why are you ashamed of your achievements?
What will happen to you soldiers when you return home, to your mothers… wives and children… how will you look into their eyes and feel again as a human being? Who would you look at yourself in the mirror?
People of the world… whether you are politicians or simple citizens… intellectuals or alphabets… rich or poor… oppressor or oppressed… powerful or powerless…
No one can say today that he didn’t know… that he was not informed… that he is not responsible of what the others do…
I will cry as Emile Zola did: I accuse…
I accuse you of being witnesses to the massacres committed… and not doing anything…
Your silence is hypocrisy…
Your silence permits the massacre of an entire people…
Your silence is a good prize for the injustice and the oppression…
Your silence is against human rights… children’s rights… animal rights… and the right of all living things to live in dignity…
Your silence sacrifices embryos that are not yet born… pregnant women who did not give birth… children who did not learn how to speak yet… old men who still live a dream to return to their ancestral lands… young people who have the power to hope, to live and to resist the oppression and negation and abandon and forgetfulness…
Your silence is unjust…
Your silence is nonhuman…
You silence kills us all…
Dr. AbdelFattah Abu-Srour
Director of al-Rowwad Theatre
‘Aida Camp, Bethlehem, Palestine
[email protected]
Dr. Abu-Srour is also a the al-Majdal Advisory Board