Oguglali na patnju Palestinaca

Kako objasniti indolentnost prema izvještaju UN-a koji optužuje Izrael za zlostavljanje palestinske djece.

Piše: Muhamed Jusić

http://balkans.aljazeera.net/vijesti/oguglali-na-patnju-palestinaca

Sjećam se kako mi je još dok sam bio student jedan kolega iz Saudijske Arabije, dok smo komentarisali neku od tada aktuelnih regionalnih ili svjetskih nepravdi u nizu prema palestinskom narodu, rekao kako mu  je „više dosta Palestine“ i kako je prvo što mu na um padne kada se prisjeti svoga prvog dana u školi to da im je učitelj rekao da sutra trebaju donijeti po rijal za djecu Palestine.

Sjećam se da su me  tada iznenadile, pa i šokirale, očito iskrene riječi tog dvadesetgodišnjaka. Ali, on mi je tada otvorio oči i pomogao da shvatim gorku činjenicu da je najveći dio svijeta, pa i onog arapskog, jednostavno oguglao na patnje palestinskog naroda.

Desetljeća patnje ovog naroda u Izraelu, onome što se nazivaju palestinske autonomne teritorijeili izgnanstvu širom svijeta su nešto što više nije vijest i što se uzima zdravo za gotovo.

Odrastao sam sa palestinskim izbjeglicama u Jordanu, gdje čine polovinu stanovništva i znam da njihov tretman u nekim arapskim zemljama nije bio puno bolji od onog kojeg su imali oni koji su ostajali pod izraelskom okupacijom i znam koliko ih boli sva ta neosjetljivost svijeta, pa i njihove braće po vjeri i naciji.

Brutalnost prema djeci

Volio bih da nisam u pravu, ali kako drugačije objasniti svu indolentnost svjetske medijske i političke javnosti prema posljednjem izvještaju Odbora UN-a za prava djeteta u kojem se optužuju izraelske snage za zlostavljanje palestinske djece, uključujući mučenja onih koji su u pritvoru i korištenje drugih za ljudski štit.

Desetljeća okupacije, otimanje zemlje, ograničavanje kretanja, zatvaranje onih koji se usprotive okupaciji su jedno, ali takva brutalnost prema djeci koja se opisuje u ovom UN-ovom izvještaju su nešto drugo.

U dokumentu kojeg je sastavilo 18 nezavisnih stručnjaka navodi  se kako se "palestinska djeca, koju je uhapsila [izraelska] vojska i policija, sistematski podvrgavaju ponižavajućem postupanju, i to često mučenjima. Ispitivanje se provodi na hebrejskom, jeziku koji ne razumiju, i oni potpisuju priznanja na hebrejskom kako bi ih pustili na slobodu.“

Osim toga, izvještaj upozorava da se palestinskoj novorođenoj djeci u Gazi i na Zapadnoj obali, koju je okupirao Izrael u ratu 1967. godine, često ne dozvoljava da se registruju i dobiju zdravstveno osiguranje, obrazovanje i čistu vodu.

Palestinska djeca se rutinski hapse u noćnim racijama, ruke im se vežu na bolan način, a oči prekrivaju povezima. Vlasti često maloljetnike prebacuju u zatvore, a da i ne obavijeste njihove roditelje.

Živi štit

Djeca koja se drže u pritvoru redovno su izložena „fizičkom i verbalnom nasilju, ponižavanju, bolnom sputavanju... prijeti im se smrću, fizičkim nasiljem i seksualnim napastvovanjem prema njima ili članovima njihove porodice“, navodi se u izvještaju.

Dodaje se i to da se svi ovi i drugi zločini „dešavaju od trenutka hapšenja, tokom transfera i ispitivanja kako bi se iznudila priznanja, ali i tokom pritvora i izdržavanja kazne“, a sve prema svjedočenju nekoliko izraelskih vojnika.

Dokumentovano je i četrnaest slučajeva između januara 2010. i marta 2013. u kojima su palestinska djeca korištena kao živi štit kada su izraelski vojnici ulazili u potencijalno opasne zone i kada su djecu stavljali ispred oklopnih vozila kako bi spriječili Palestince da bacaju kamenje na njih.

Posebno je zabrinjavajući dio izvještaja koji govori o procjeni da se u izraelskim zatvorima  nalazi 7.000 djece u dobio od 12 do 17 godina, a neka i u dobi od devet godina. Od 2002. u prosjeku je dvoje djece dnevno privedeno ili uhapšeno. Većina njih je uhapšena pod optužbom da su bacali kamanje na izraelske vojnike, za što mogu dobiti kaznu od 20 godina zatvora.

U Izraelu su priznali da jeste bilo propusta u odnosu prema maloljetnicima i da su oni, nakon što je martovski izvještaj UNICEF-a ukazao na njih, poduzeli niz mjera kako bi se stanje popravilo.

I dok Izraelci tvrde da su ovo stare optužbe koje za cilj imaju da „osvoje naslovne strane“, autori izvještaja tvrde da se  radi o nepristranom izvještaju „koji je zasnovan na činjenicama, a ne političkim stavovima autora.“

Nije pomoglo ni to što je ovaj poduži izvještaj „politički korektan“ i priznaje da postoje problemi u izraelskoj nacionalnoj sigurnosti, navodeći da su djeca na obje strane ubijana i ranjavana, ali da među žrtvama ima daleko više palestinske djece.

Ipak to nije spriječilo mnoge u Izraelu i izvan njega da umjesto da se pozabave njegovim zabrinjavajućim sadržajem ustvrde da se ovi i slični izvještaji koriste samo kako bi se šikanirao Izrael.

Takvi zaboravljaju da ovo nisu prvi, i kako sada stvari stoje, neće biti ni zadnji izvještaji koji dokumentuju brutalnost izraelske države i sigurnosnih agencija nad palestinskom djecom i ne samo nad njima.

Možemo se prisjetiti Izvještaja posebnog UN-ovog Odbora za istraživanje izraelskih postupaka koji pogađaju ljudska prava Palestinaca i drugih Arapa na okupiranim područjima iz avgusta 2008. koji opisuje tešku situaciju u kojoj se nalaze građani koji su pod izraelskom okupacijom ili pod blokadom Izraela, uključujući i sirijske teritorije na okupiranom Golanu.

U tom se izvještaju, između ostalog, navodi kako su tokom prva tri mjeseca 2008. godine izraelske vlasti zbog neposjedovanja građevinskih dozvola srušile 124 građevine. U 61 od tih srušenih kuća stanovali su ljudi i njihovim je rušenjem raseljeno 435 osoba, uključujući 135 djece.

U Gazi, koju je Izrael tada, kao i danas, držao pod blokadom, izvještaj je dokumentovao hroničnu pothranjenost djece mlađe od pet godina u procentu od 13 posto. Jedno na svakih 10 djece je zaostalo u rastu.

Izvještaj je još tada dokumentovao brojne druge primjere nehumanog odnosa izraelskih vlasti prema Palestincima, a naročito djeci.

Nehumani odnos

Zato svako pravdanje neljudskog i nehumanog odnosa prema palestinskoj djeci i predstavljanje istih tek kao incidente, nekorektno je i najblaže kazano nemoralno.

Nehummani odnos prema Palestincima, pa i onim najmlađim među njima, nije izuzetak ili incident nego, čini se, pravilo Izraela u odnosu prema onima čiju zemlju naseljavaju. 

Izraelu bi, više nego Arapima, trebao mir u nestabilnom i trusnom Bliskom istoku, ali to sadašnjim liderima Izraela očito nije cilj.

U međuvremenu, izvještaji poput ovog samo služe da se njima hrani antisemitizam širom muslimanskog svijeta i da se stvaraju osnovi za trajni rat umjesto trajnog mira.

Oni koji nisu spremni uhvatiti se u koštac sa stravičnim UN-ovim izvještajem i onim što se u Palestini dešava trebaju da se zapitaju kako planiraju graditi mir i budućnost s onima koji odrastaju u uslovima u kojima odrastaju djeca Palestine.

Stavovi izraženi u ovom tekstu su autorovi i ne odražavaju nužno uredničku politiku Al Jazeere.

Izvor: Al Jazeera

Muslim Clerics Learn Lessons of Auschwitz Firsthand

Imams Say Jews' Suffering Offers Universal Warning About Hate

By A.J. Goldmann

Published May 29, 2013, issue of June 07, 2013.

Krakow, Poland — When Muslims tour Auschwitz and other sites of the Jewish Holocaust, and encounter survivors of that genocide face-to-face, the points of connection they make can be quite unpredictable.

For Barakat Fawzi Hasan, a Palestinian assistant professor in Islamic Education at Al-Quds University in Jerusalem, a moment of clarity came as he and his co-religionists listened, spellbound, to Lidia Maksymowicz as she told her harrowing story of survival. Although she was only five years old when she was liberated from Auschwitz, Maksymowicz could still remember the taste of buttered bread and coffee with milk given to her by the Soviet soldiers who entered the camp.

“As Palestinians who have felt for 65 years the pain of being displaced, we feel the pain of the others,” said Hasan after hearing her talk. Seeing the children’s belongings at Auschwitz, reminded him of “some of the stories of the children of Palestine,” he added.

Hasan said that he would like to bring Holocaust survivors to Palestine to relate their stories. “I cannot hold back my tears when I see the tragedy that took place here in Europe, especially what happened to the Jews. I hope that Palestinians and Israelis take a lesson from all of this and that we both have a future of hope and peace.”

For Muhamed Jusic, a religious education teacher from Bosnia, the touchstone was his own first-hand experience of genocidal war in his native land during the break-up of Yugoslavia in the 1990’s.

“For many people to visit such places is just history,” said Jusic, who is also a public affairs commentator and interfaith activist back home. “For me it isn’t. The fact that I come from Bosnia affects everything that I saw here. My personal experience of the war and the things that I went through emphasize that we need to learn and study about what happened during the Second World War because what happened in Bosnia proves that it can happen again, maybe not on the same scale, but it can be repeated.”

Marshall Breger, an Orthodox Jew, has seen such reactions from Muslims before. In 2010, he and Rabbi Jack Bemporad, organized a similar trip for American Muslim leaders. But the trip Hasan and Jusic took part in, from May 17 to May 24, was designed by Breger, Bemporad and Suhail Khan, a senior fellow at the Institute for Global Engagement, to be international in scope.

“It’s the nature of religion in America to have a little more tolerance, and for clerics in America to know a little more about other religions,” said Breger, a former senior official in the presidential administrations of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush. “Many of the people on this trip, frankly, at best knew nothing. I say ‘at best’ because they probably have read ‘Protocols [of the Elders of Zion’] or other things.”

The undertaking proved far more daunting than the previous trip for American Muslims. Just obtaining visas for some of the participants proved incredibly difficult. Several of the confirmed participants never showed up. Others arrived late, due to travel restrictions. Hasan, who as a Palestinian is stateless, with no passport of his own, was granted a visa to go abroad by Israel but denied passage through Ben Gurion International Airport. Instead, he had to travel to neighboring Jordan and fly from there to Germany.

“We moved heaven and earth to get them here. They’re heroic,” said Bemporad.

In the end, a dozen Muslims attended the week-long program — imams, educators, activists and scholars drawn from all over the Muslim world, including Saudi Arabia, Jordan, the Palestinian Authority, Bosnia, Turkey, Nigeria, Indonesia, India and the United States.

The tour, which included visits to concentration and extermination camps in Germany and Poland, was funded by the U.S. Department of State and S.A. Ibrahim, an Indian American businessman and interfaith activist. Additional support came from Poland’s Foreign Ministry.

“People use the Holocaust for all sorts of political and ideological purposes,” said Bemporad, explaining his rationale for the excursion. “If you want to change people’s ideas, you need to present them with the actual experiences of a person who went through it, you need to see the actual conditions and know something about the history.”

Bemporad, director of the New Jersey-based Center for Interreligious Understanding, which sponsored the trip, said he hoped the experience would inspire participants to speak out against Holocaust denial in their countries as well as help them understand that when it was happening, the Holocaust “had nothing to do with Israel.”

At several points, the participants made a clear connection linking the fates of Muslims and Jews. One such moment occurred inside of the crematorium at Dachau, where the participants recited the Janazah — the Muslim prayer for the dead — for Noor Inayat Khan, an Indian Muslim anti-Nazi spy who was murdered at Dachau in 1944.

The program also visited several sites of Muslim interest, including an excursion to the architecturally striking mosque in the Munich suburb of Penzberg, a rare success story in Germany, since it was built without any of the controversy that often accompanies such projects there today.

The group was also supposed to tour Munich’s grand Orthodox synagogue and meet Jewish community leaders, but community president Charlotte Knobloch flatly refused to welcome the delegation. In the city that was once Hitler’s ideological stronghold, Knobloch’s refusal to engage seemed particularly a missed opportunity.

“I thought it was very important for the imams to see that Jewish life — and in particular Jewish religious life — in Munich has not been destroyed,” a disappointed Breger said.

After Munich and Dachau, the group went on to Warsaw, where they toured the recently-opened Museum of Polish Jews and met with Holocaust survivors and with Righteous Gentiles, as non-Jews who saved Jewish lives are known. That night they dined with Poland’s chief rabbi Michael Shudrich and several Polish imams. The participants were impressed by the solidarity between Jewish and Muslim leaders, which has been strengthened by recent debates in Poland about hallal and kosher slaughtering.

From Warsaw, the group was driven to Auschwitz. There, they toured both the museum at Auschwitz 1 and Birkenau, many with tears in their eyes. As the group viewed the exhibitions housed in the former barracks, Imam Mohamed Magid, an American veteran from the first trip, routinely added commentary to the official guide’s explanations.

“I want everyone to know that behind every object here there was a real human being,” he said, stopping before a vitrine full of children’s shoes. “You can hear their footsteps,” he added chillingly. Before entering the gas chamber in Auschwitz I, he turned to the group:

“As you go in, I’d like you to imagine that screaming, to imagine the crying. We go here in a nice bus, we had a nice lunch and later we’re going back to the hotel,” he reminded his fellow visitors.

The most remarkable moment came when the group decided to take their afternoon prayers in front of the infamous “Wall of Death.” Imam Muzammil Siddiqi of the Islamic Society of Orange County, California, another participant in the 2010 trip, led the service. The participants kneeled down on the naked earth and genuflected repeatedly, the coarse dirt sticking to several foreheads. By the time the group reached Birkenau, they were running several hours behind schedule. But the participants collectively defied an irate bus driver in order to spend the extra time walking along the “Judenrampe” to the site of the crematoria.

“None of us is here out of curiosity,” said Safi Kaskas, a businessman and interfaith activist who was born in Lebanon, has U.S. citizenship and lives in Saudi Arabia. “We’re all here because we care deeply about human suffering and what happened to the Jews.”

“It’s important to understand what happened to the Jews, to understand and appreciate the suffering they’ve been through…in order to better communicate,” he explained, “in order to convince my Jewish neighbors that it is better to have peace than to have war [so] the suffering they experienced in Europe should not repeat itself in the Middle East.”

Echoing the sentiments of many of the other participants, Jusic, the Bosnian religious educator, said that the proper meaning of Auschwitz belongs not to the past, but to the future. “We cannot go back and help those children and women we saw and those innocent people being gassed and burned, but we can make sure that it doesn’t happen to anyone else,” he said.

Breger was pleasantly surprised at the trip’s end, when the participants all signed a public condemnation of Holocaust denial nearly identical to the one that was drafted by the 2010 group.

Breger added that he was now looking to organize a third trip that would bring rabbis and imams together to visit both Auschwitz and Srebrenika, the site of the July 1995 Serbian massacre of 8,000 Bosnian Muslims, which many Muslims perceive as an example of the West looking the other way while Muslims were slaughtered. “By speaking to that belief, you would go a great way towards making it easier to engage with the tragedy of the Shoah and Jewish pain and trauma,” said Breger.

Contact Adam Goldmann at feedback@forward.com.

Read more: http://forward.com/articles/177510/muslim-clerics-learn-lessons-of-auschwitz-firsthan/?p=all#ixzz2Vw7kvo41