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Jailed journalist Mumia Abu-Jamal continues to write about
global freedom struggles.
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Palestine's Despair
By Mumia Abu-Jamal
Special to SeeingBlack.com
Talk
about Mumia's
column and Black politics! Click here.
[A] society that becomes accustomed to using violence to
solve its problems, both large and small, is a society in which
the roots of human relations are diseased."
—Ignacio Martin-Baro, S.J., Writings for a Liberation
Psychology (1994) [p. 112]
War wreaks havoc on human lives, health and property, but military
conflict also decimates personal and communal mental health.
It is this second, hidden feature, that of the wounds of the mind,
of the spirit, that is rarely addressed. Rarer still, is the discussion
of war's impact upon the poor, the young, and the impoverished.
What are the effects of military conflict upon the oppressed, the
dispossessed, the damned?
A Palestinian psychiatrist, Dr. Eyad Sarraj, wrote several years
ago that the Israeli occupation was of such a negative character,
and had such a damaging impact upon the Palestinian psyche, that
"the amazing thing is not the occurrence of the suicide bombing,"
but "the rarity of them." Dr. Sarraj noted:
"I believe it is an act of absolute despair and a very serious
stage of the seemingly perpetual conflict. Since the uprooting
of the Palestinians in 1948 triggered by Irgun Jewish terror under
the leadership of Yitzhak Shamir and Menachem Begin, we have tried
everything. We have tried Nasser and Arab Nationalism, only to
be invaded in 1956 in our second homes in the refugee camps. It
was only because of the Russian threat to bomb London and Paris,
and the resolve of American president Eisenhower that ended the
occupation."
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Read
more of Abu-Jamal's essays in his book Death
Blossoms. co-written with Cornel West. (Click to purchase.)
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Then came the disaster of the Arab-Israeli 1967 War, when Israel,
in a 6-day lightning strike, seized the Sinai from Egypt, stripped
the Golan Heights from Syria, and deprived the Palestinian Arabs
of both the West Bank and Gaza.
For over 30 years the Palestinians have had to live with the Israeli
military occupation (which they call the nagba), with I.D. cards,
residence permits, severe restrictions on internal travel, external
travel passes reflecting "undefined nationality," and the nagging,
persistence of people seen as foreigners, involving themselves in
every facet of life. They have had to live like foreigners in the
land of their fathers, a land freckled with Israeli settlements,
military checkpoints, and despair.
For the Palestinians, nothing has worked. UN resolutions proclaim
their rights to return, to the right of statehood, to an end to
Israeli occupation, but on the ground, nothing changes. The military
bulldozes their homes, and snipers shoot kids with stones. Leaders
are liquidated at home, and F-16s buzz the night sky. And out of
this outsized despair, young men (and now women!) strap their bodies
with death. Their only prayer?
To not die—alone.
© Copyright 2002, Mumia Abu-Jamal.
Mumia Abu-Jamal, a Black journalist who has drawn international
support to fight his conviction for the murder of a Philadelphia
police officer, continues to write a column from prison in Pennsylvania.
Address: Mumia Abu-Jamal, AM 8335, SCI-Greene, 175 Progress Drive,
Waynesburg, PA 15370. http://www.mumia.org
-- April 25, 2002
© Copyright
2001-05 Seeing Black, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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