Nodutdol . e*News
September 2010
Palestine
by Hyun Lee
Koreans remember 1948 as the year when the people of Jeju Island rose up against the Syngman Rhee puppet regime to demand a unified Korea, and were severely punished by the South Korean military and rightist paramilitary gangs, which massacred 40,000 people as the U.S. military stood watching. For Palestinians, it was the year of the “Nakba” (catastrophe) when 700,000 people were massacred or driven off their land by rightist Jewish armies before they declared the state of Israel on Palestinian land. “Our grandfather was the youngest of eight children,” remember Sahar and Nadeen, third generation Palestinian refugees in Chicago, “A Zionist gang came to their village. He and his siblings were lined up, and they shot their father in the head in front of everyone. They said ‘You have to leave now,’ so they walked all the way to Jordan.”
Today, Korea is still divided with ten million separated families on both sides, and Palestine remains under occupation by a Zionist government that has constructed an apartheid state. This summer, I traveled to Palestine to understand the Palestinian people’s struggle and find inspiration in their continued fight for liberation after so many years of occupation. These are snapshots of Palestinian struggles I gathered on my trip.
Story of Sahar and Nadeen
Sahar and Nadeen’s mother’s family is from a village called Colonia in West Jerusalem. Their father’s family is from Ramle. In 1948, they heard rumors of massacres in nearby villages and were warned to leave immediately. Out of fear, they packed their belongings and walked to Jordan. There was no way of knowing then that they would never again see their home.
Growing up, Nadeen was unsure about what it meant to be Palestinian. One day, her father was talking about Jews, so she asked “What’s a Jew?” He said, “Jews are our cousins,” so for a few weeks, she thought she might be Jewish. For most of her life, she identified herself merely as Arab, but when she started learning about her family's history and the history of Palestine, she began to embrace her identity as Palestinian. “Many Palestinians in the United States say they’re Middle Eastern or Arab,” she said, “But both are broad terms that encompass a vast number of people. We're Palestinians, and it's important to preserve and assert that identity.” This summer, Sahar and Nadeen returned to Palestine for the first time.
“Your last name – what kind of name is that?” the airport security guard demanded to know.
“Arab.”
“Where are you from?”
“Chicago.”
“Before that.”
“My parents were born in Jordan.”
“Before that.”
“I don’t know.”
“Why are you here?”
“Tourists.”
“Why here? Why not Italy or France?”
“Why not here?”
“Why are you really here?”
“We told you, we’re here as tourists.”
“Why do you refuse to cooperate?”
“We are cooperating. We answered all your questions.”
This was the conversation at Tel Aviv airport before Sahar and Nadeen were escorted away to a separate interrogation room seemingly reserved for all Arabs. They were questioned separately – “Your sister already told me you’re going to the West Bank. Tell me the truth. Do you hate the state of Israel?” Three separate interrogators asked the same questions – “Whom do you know here? Whom will you meet?” Finally, after ten hours, they were released only on the condition that they give the airport security access to their email accounts.
The humiliation was a reminder that Palestinians are treated as foreigners on their own land, and denied their right to return. Half of the Palestinian population – approximately 5 million – lives in exile scattered around the world after being forcibly expelled by the Israeli government in 1948 and 1967. After the expulsions, the state of Israel demolished over four hundred towns and villages, and enacted the Absentee Property Law, which denied Palestinian refugees the right to return or reclaim their property. When they do choose to return, the airport security makes a point of letting them know that they are unwelcome.
As soon as they arrived at their hotel in the West Bank, however, Sahar and Nadeen’s spirits were lifted. They were greeted by the hotel cleaning lady, who said, “You look Palestinian.” “Yes, we are Palestinian, but from America,” they replied. “No,” said the cleaning lady, “You’re from here. You belong here. Welcome home.”
Story of Beit Ommar
Beit Ommar is a town of 17,000 people near Hebron. Although it's in the West Bank, it is in an area under Israeli control and security. Beit Ommar is famous for its plums and apricots, but the situation for the farmers is difficult. The Israeli government cuts off the water supply twice a week, and because of the separation wall and checkpoints, the farmers have difficulty getting their crops to the market.
Beit Ommar is surrounded by Israeli settlements, which keep expanding their territory. In 2006, settlers of Karmei Tsur constructed a fence through the farmers’ land, so the farmers cannot reach their land on the other side. Many trees have died as a result, and if the farmers try to cross the fence to reach their land, settlers wearing masks throw stones and threaten them with guns, while Israeli soldiers watch and do nothing. Settlers have also burned and cut down the farmers’ trees. Every Saturday, the villagers, sometimes joined by international activists and journalists, hold a demonstration at the settlement fence. Sometimes they are able to cross so the farmers can farm their land. More often than not, the Israeli soldiers stop them with teargas and stun grenades and sometimes arrest the protesters and journalists.
During the protracted period of the Oslo negotiations, the Israeli government built hundreds of such settlements and a network of bypass roads to enable travel between settlements in the Occupied Territories in a systematic plan to mark its territory to be annexed in the final Oslo agreement. Today, settlement expansion continues, and settler violence against Palestinian farmers is routinely ignored by the Israeli government.
“I believe Israelis and Palestinians can live peacefully in one land,” said Mousa Abu Maria, founder of the Palestine Solidarity Project, “but without settlements, checkpoints, or war. The Israeli government builds checkpoints and harasses us, because its goal in the West Bank is to create a land without people.” Mousa organized people's committees in Beit Ommar and nine other farming villages to resist the occupation and settlement expansion through non-violent direct action. He invites people of conscience from around the world, including progressive Jews from Israel, to spend time in these villages to see for themselves what the settlements are doing to the farmers. The internationals help to plant trees, pick olives, clean the land, and give support to the farmers so they feel they are not alone in their struggle. They also collect testimonies, take photos, and create reports to document settler violence against the farmers. For this, the Israeli government arrested Mousa four times, and in 2008, locked him up behind bars for fourteen months without any charges. He was freed only after the villagers mounted a popular campaign with support from around the world and Israel to demand his release.
Abot, thirteen years old, lives in Beit Ommar. His father is deceased and older brother in prison. Every Saturday, he joins the protests at the settlement fence. "I see the Israeli children in the settlements and they are free to go wherever they want. I want to be free like them,” he said. “When the soldiers push us I ask them, 'Why do you harass us? We're only children.'” “Aren’t you afraid of the soldiers?” I asked. He answered, “No, I'm not afraid of the soldiers because they are human beings just like us."
The Story of Ameer Makhoul
Haifa is a coastal city in the northwest of 1948 Occupied Territory, aka “Israel”. It’s a beach-side resort town that looks and feels like any other western city, and doesn't feel like it belongs in the Middle East. The Israeli government has systematically erased all signs of Arab history there- demolished villages, uprooted and imprisoned the people, and implanted a foreign culture and society.
Palestinians now make up 20% of the population in 1948 Occupied Territory. It is illegal for them to talk about the "Nakba" - "catastrophe" which refers to the 1948 massacres and forced removal of Palestinians from their land by the Jews before establishing the state of Israel. It is illegal for them to display the Palestinian flag. It is illegal for students to join a political organization that advocates for the rights of Palestinians. It is illegal for them to join demonstrations. It is illegal for them talk to or visit family in Syria, Lebanon, or Jordan, designated "enemy state" by the Israeli government. When we asked our taxi driver, who is Palestinian, whether there's discrimination against Arabs in Haifa, he simply said, "I don't talk about politics."
Ameer Makhoul, the leader of Ittijah, the Union of Arab Community Associations, was interrogated by Israel’s General Security Service (GSS) in spring 2010. “We are building a case against you,” they warned him, “We can disappear you. The next time we invite you to come and see us, you can say goodbye to your family for a long time.” A month later, sixteen police and GSS officers forced entry into his home in the middle of the night, searched his home, terrifying his wife and daughters, seized all computers, and arrested him. He was tortured and not allowed to talk to a lawyer for ten days. He has been charged with espionage, and the prosecutors introduced "secret evidence" that the defense team has not been able to see in the interest of "national security". Even now, the courts will not allow his lawyers to see him to prepare his defense.
According to his wife, Jenan, Ameer has always said publicly, “The Arab world is not our enemy.” He traveled abroad to conferences and regularly kept in contact with like-minded people from Arab countries. He wrote extensively about the right of return for refugees and advocated the one state solution. “His arrest was a message to our community,” said Jenan, “as if to say, ‘We are above the law.’ It is part of the persecution of our political leaders to keep us silenced and afraid.”
According to Adalah, a legal center for Palestinian minority rights in Israel, political prisoners – termed “security prisoners” by the Israeli government – are overwhelmingly Palestinian in Israel’s prisons. Although Israel likes to say it is the only democratic state in the region, the GSS routinely disregards the rights of Palestinians in the name of “national security”. And in the eyes of Israeli law, every Arab is suspect.
A coalition of human rights organizations are planning to launch a “Free Ameer” campaign and are calling for international support to pressure the Israeli government to demand Ameer’s release. “They try to break us, but it only makes us more resolute,” said Jenan, “We have one choice – to believe in Ameer’s right to be free and continue to struggle.”
Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS)
In 2005, Palestinian civil society groups in the 1948 and 1967 occupied territories as well as the diaspora put out a unified call for boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) against the state of Israel. Inspired by the South African people’s struggle and the international divestment campaign that successfully dismantled apartheid, BDS is now endorsed by 170 Palestinian parties, organizations, and trade unions.
“In light of the complete failure of the UN and the so-called international community to hold Israel accountable for its continuous impunity and violations of international law,” says the BDS National Committee, “Palestinian civil society appeals to citizens of the world to shoulder the moral responsibility to end complicity in Israel's violations of international law and Palestinian rights.”
BDS has three clear demands -
1. End to Israeli occupation in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem;
2. Full equality for Palestinian citizens of Israel; and
3. Right of return for Palestinian refugees.
In response to the increasing momentum of the BDS campaign worldwide, the Israeli Knesset is currently considering a bill that would criminalize all BDS activities. The bill forbids Israeli citizens from participating in or supporting the BDS campaign in any way, and persons outside of Israel who aid in boycott efforts would be banned from the country for ten years.
Despite this, the BDS campaign continues to gain momentum, especially after the Israeli attack on the Gaza peace flotilla. Italian supermarkets COOP and Nordiconad and British supermarkets Marks and Spencer and Co-operative Group have all announced that they will cease to sell produce from illegal Israeli settlements in Occupied Palestinian Territory. In May of this year, Global financial giant Deutsche Bank divested from Elbit Systems, an Israeli arms company that supplies the Israeli military and provides components for the Apartheid Wall in Occupied Palestinian Territory. Bolivia and Venezuela have cut ties with Israel, shutting down Israeli embassies in their countries.
There are many ways for individuals to support the BDS campaign. The simplest way is to refuse to buy products made in Israel or by companies that aid Israel’s occupation of Palestine. Some notable ones are – Starbuck’s, which donates money to the Israeli military; Motorola, which supplies surveillance cameras installed along the separation wall; Ahava and L’Oreal, which make cosmetic products with minerals from the Dead Sea, which is in the West Bank but closed to Palestinians and exploited by Israel for tourism and mining. To learn more about the BDS campaign, go to – http://bdsmovement.net.
Bringing Down the Wall
“What’s the first thing you would do when the occupation ends?” I asked our taxi driver in Bethlehem. “Go to Jerusalem to pray and Haifa to see the ocean,” he said. It reminded me of a South Korean song about reunification – “We can go to Russia. We can go to the moon. Why can’t we go to Pyeongyang?” From the DMZ to the West Bank, an impermeable, militarized wall separates people, longing for the day when we can reunite with loved ones.
Israel’s aim is the complete segregation of Jews and Arabs, in the name of “security,” to protect against “terrorism” – just as the Americans told South Koreans the division was necessary to protect us from communism. But for thousands of years, Christians, Jews, and Muslims lived together peacefully in Palestine. Fundamentally, it’s not religion or the cohabitation of different races, but Israel’s refusal to recognize Palestinian right to the land, that is at the core of the conflict. And the walls between people - the physical wall along the “green line,” the barriers created by checkpoints, as well as the invisible wall that people construct around them to not see things that challenge their fixed viewpoints – only serve to create suspicion and mistrust between the people.
In order to resist, we must insist on sitting down with each other face to face and hearing each others’ stories, to refuse to be segregated, and cross those borders as often as possible until the day we can dismantle them once and for all. “What’s sixty years?” said the taxi driver, “We’ve been on this land for thousands. Sixty years is nothing. We will get it back.” If not in our generation, then the next – we must carry on the torch of resistance with steadfastness until the day we can tear down the wall – in Korea and in Palestine.
Koreans remember 1948 as the year when the people of Jeju Island rose up against the Syngman Rhee puppet regime to demand a unified Korea, and were severely punished by the South Korean military and rightist paramilitary gangs, which massacred 40,000 people as the U.S. military stood watching. For Palestinians, it was the year of the “Nakba” (catastrophe) when 700,000 people were massacred or driven off their land by rightist Jewish armies before they declared the state of Israel on Palestinian land. “Our grandfather was the youngest of eight children,” remember Sahar and Nadeen, third generation Palestinian refugees in Chicago, “A Zionist gang came to their village. He and his siblings were lined up, and they shot their father in the head in front of everyone. They said ‘You have to leave now,’ so they walked all the way to Jordan.”
Today, Korea is still divided with ten million separated families on both sides, and Palestine remains under occupation by a Zionist government that has constructed an apartheid state. This summer, I traveled to Palestine to understand the Palestinian people’s struggle and find inspiration in their continued fight for liberation after so many years of occupation. These are snapshots of Palestinian struggles I gathered on my trip.
Story of Sahar and Nadeen
Sahar and Nadeen’s mother’s family is from a village called Colonia in West Jerusalem. Their father’s family is from Ramle. In 1948, they heard rumors of massacres in nearby villages and were warned to leave immediately. Out of fear, they packed their belongings and walked to Jordan. There was no way of knowing then that they would never again see their home.
Growing up, Nadeen was unsure about what it meant to be Palestinian. One day, her father was talking about Jews, so she asked “What’s a Jew?” He said, “Jews are our cousins,” so for a few weeks, she thought she might be Jewish. For most of her life, she identified herself merely as Arab, but when she started learning about her family's history and the history of Palestine, she began to embrace her identity as Palestinian. “Many Palestinians in the United States say they’re Middle Eastern or Arab,” she said, “But both are broad terms that encompass a vast number of people. We're Palestinians, and it's important to preserve and assert that identity.” This summer, Sahar and Nadeen returned to Palestine for the first time.
“Your last name – what kind of name is that?” the airport security guard demanded to know.
“Arab.”
“Where are you from?”
“Chicago.”
“Before that.”
“My parents were born in Jordan.”
“Before that.”
“I don’t know.”
“Why are you here?”
“Tourists.”
“Why here? Why not Italy or France?”
“Why not here?”
“Why are you really here?”
“We told you, we’re here as tourists.”
“Why do you refuse to cooperate?”
“We are cooperating. We answered all your questions.”
This was the conversation at Tel Aviv airport before Sahar and Nadeen were escorted away to a separate interrogation room seemingly reserved for all Arabs. They were questioned separately – “Your sister already told me you’re going to the West Bank. Tell me the truth. Do you hate the state of Israel?” Three separate interrogators asked the same questions – “Whom do you know here? Whom will you meet?” Finally, after ten hours, they were released only on the condition that they give the airport security access to their email accounts.
The humiliation was a reminder that Palestinians are treated as foreigners on their own land, and denied their right to return. Half of the Palestinian population – approximately 5 million – lives in exile scattered around the world after being forcibly expelled by the Israeli government in 1948 and 1967. After the expulsions, the state of Israel demolished over four hundred towns and villages, and enacted the Absentee Property Law, which denied Palestinian refugees the right to return or reclaim their property. When they do choose to return, the airport security makes a point of letting them know that they are unwelcome.
As soon as they arrived at their hotel in the West Bank, however, Sahar and Nadeen’s spirits were lifted. They were greeted by the hotel cleaning lady, who said, “You look Palestinian.” “Yes, we are Palestinian, but from America,” they replied. “No,” said the cleaning lady, “You’re from here. You belong here. Welcome home.”
Story of Beit Ommar
Beit Ommar is a town of 17,000 people near Hebron. Although it's in the West Bank, it is in an area under Israeli control and security. Beit Ommar is famous for its plums and apricots, but the situation for the farmers is difficult. The Israeli government cuts off the water supply twice a week, and because of the separation wall and checkpoints, the farmers have difficulty getting their crops to the market.
Beit Ommar is surrounded by Israeli settlements, which keep expanding their territory. In 2006, settlers of Karmei Tsur constructed a fence through the farmers’ land, so the farmers cannot reach their land on the other side. Many trees have died as a result, and if the farmers try to cross the fence to reach their land, settlers wearing masks throw stones and threaten them with guns, while Israeli soldiers watch and do nothing. Settlers have also burned and cut down the farmers’ trees. Every Saturday, the villagers, sometimes joined by international activists and journalists, hold a demonstration at the settlement fence. Sometimes they are able to cross so the farmers can farm their land. More often than not, the Israeli soldiers stop them with teargas and stun grenades and sometimes arrest the protesters and journalists.
During the protracted period of the Oslo negotiations, the Israeli government built hundreds of such settlements and a network of bypass roads to enable travel between settlements in the Occupied Territories in a systematic plan to mark its territory to be annexed in the final Oslo agreement. Today, settlement expansion continues, and settler violence against Palestinian farmers is routinely ignored by the Israeli government.
“I believe Israelis and Palestinians can live peacefully in one land,” said Mousa Abu Maria, founder of the Palestine Solidarity Project, “but without settlements, checkpoints, or war. The Israeli government builds checkpoints and harasses us, because its goal in the West Bank is to create a land without people.” Mousa organized people's committees in Beit Ommar and nine other farming villages to resist the occupation and settlement expansion through non-violent direct action. He invites people of conscience from around the world, including progressive Jews from Israel, to spend time in these villages to see for themselves what the settlements are doing to the farmers. The internationals help to plant trees, pick olives, clean the land, and give support to the farmers so they feel they are not alone in their struggle. They also collect testimonies, take photos, and create reports to document settler violence against the farmers. For this, the Israeli government arrested Mousa four times, and in 2008, locked him up behind bars for fourteen months without any charges. He was freed only after the villagers mounted a popular campaign with support from around the world and Israel to demand his release.
Abot, thirteen years old, lives in Beit Ommar. His father is deceased and older brother in prison. Every Saturday, he joins the protests at the settlement fence. "I see the Israeli children in the settlements and they are free to go wherever they want. I want to be free like them,” he said. “When the soldiers push us I ask them, 'Why do you harass us? We're only children.'” “Aren’t you afraid of the soldiers?” I asked. He answered, “No, I'm not afraid of the soldiers because they are human beings just like us."
The Story of Ameer Makhoul
Haifa is a coastal city in the northwest of 1948 Occupied Territory, aka “Israel”. It’s a beach-side resort town that looks and feels like any other western city, and doesn't feel like it belongs in the Middle East. The Israeli government has systematically erased all signs of Arab history there- demolished villages, uprooted and imprisoned the people, and implanted a foreign culture and society.
Palestinians now make up 20% of the population in 1948 Occupied Territory. It is illegal for them to talk about the "Nakba" - "catastrophe" which refers to the 1948 massacres and forced removal of Palestinians from their land by the Jews before establishing the state of Israel. It is illegal for them to display the Palestinian flag. It is illegal for students to join a political organization that advocates for the rights of Palestinians. It is illegal for them to join demonstrations. It is illegal for them talk to or visit family in Syria, Lebanon, or Jordan, designated "enemy state" by the Israeli government. When we asked our taxi driver, who is Palestinian, whether there's discrimination against Arabs in Haifa, he simply said, "I don't talk about politics."
Ameer Makhoul, the leader of Ittijah, the Union of Arab Community Associations, was interrogated by Israel’s General Security Service (GSS) in spring 2010. “We are building a case against you,” they warned him, “We can disappear you. The next time we invite you to come and see us, you can say goodbye to your family for a long time.” A month later, sixteen police and GSS officers forced entry into his home in the middle of the night, searched his home, terrifying his wife and daughters, seized all computers, and arrested him. He was tortured and not allowed to talk to a lawyer for ten days. He has been charged with espionage, and the prosecutors introduced "secret evidence" that the defense team has not been able to see in the interest of "national security". Even now, the courts will not allow his lawyers to see him to prepare his defense.
According to his wife, Jenan, Ameer has always said publicly, “The Arab world is not our enemy.” He traveled abroad to conferences and regularly kept in contact with like-minded people from Arab countries. He wrote extensively about the right of return for refugees and advocated the one state solution. “His arrest was a message to our community,” said Jenan, “as if to say, ‘We are above the law.’ It is part of the persecution of our political leaders to keep us silenced and afraid.”
According to Adalah, a legal center for Palestinian minority rights in Israel, political prisoners – termed “security prisoners” by the Israeli government – are overwhelmingly Palestinian in Israel’s prisons. Although Israel likes to say it is the only democratic state in the region, the GSS routinely disregards the rights of Palestinians in the name of “national security”. And in the eyes of Israeli law, every Arab is suspect.
A coalition of human rights organizations are planning to launch a “Free Ameer” campaign and are calling for international support to pressure the Israeli government to demand Ameer’s release. “They try to break us, but it only makes us more resolute,” said Jenan, “We have one choice – to believe in Ameer’s right to be free and continue to struggle.”
Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS)
In 2005, Palestinian civil society groups in the 1948 and 1967 occupied territories as well as the diaspora put out a unified call for boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) against the state of Israel. Inspired by the South African people’s struggle and the international divestment campaign that successfully dismantled apartheid, BDS is now endorsed by 170 Palestinian parties, organizations, and trade unions.
“In light of the complete failure of the UN and the so-called international community to hold Israel accountable for its continuous impunity and violations of international law,” says the BDS National Committee, “Palestinian civil society appeals to citizens of the world to shoulder the moral responsibility to end complicity in Israel's violations of international law and Palestinian rights.”
BDS has three clear demands -
1. End to Israeli occupation in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem;
2. Full equality for Palestinian citizens of Israel; and
3. Right of return for Palestinian refugees.
In response to the increasing momentum of the BDS campaign worldwide, the Israeli Knesset is currently considering a bill that would criminalize all BDS activities. The bill forbids Israeli citizens from participating in or supporting the BDS campaign in any way, and persons outside of Israel who aid in boycott efforts would be banned from the country for ten years.
Despite this, the BDS campaign continues to gain momentum, especially after the Israeli attack on the Gaza peace flotilla. Italian supermarkets COOP and Nordiconad and British supermarkets Marks and Spencer and Co-operative Group have all announced that they will cease to sell produce from illegal Israeli settlements in Occupied Palestinian Territory. In May of this year, Global financial giant Deutsche Bank divested from Elbit Systems, an Israeli arms company that supplies the Israeli military and provides components for the Apartheid Wall in Occupied Palestinian Territory. Bolivia and Venezuela have cut ties with Israel, shutting down Israeli embassies in their countries.
There are many ways for individuals to support the BDS campaign. The simplest way is to refuse to buy products made in Israel or by companies that aid Israel’s occupation of Palestine. Some notable ones are – Starbuck’s, which donates money to the Israeli military; Motorola, which supplies surveillance cameras installed along the separation wall; Ahava and L’Oreal, which make cosmetic products with minerals from the Dead Sea, which is in the West Bank but closed to Palestinians and exploited by Israel for tourism and mining. To learn more about the BDS campaign, go to – http://bdsmovement.net.
Bringing Down the Wall
“What’s the first thing you would do when the occupation ends?” I asked our taxi driver in Bethlehem. “Go to Jerusalem to pray and Haifa to see the ocean,” he said. It reminded me of a South Korean song about reunification – “We can go to Russia. We can go to the moon. Why can’t we go to Pyeongyang?” From the DMZ to the West Bank, an impermeable, militarized wall separates people, longing for the day when we can reunite with loved ones.
Israel’s aim is the complete segregation of Jews and Arabs, in the name of “security,” to protect against “terrorism” – just as the Americans told South Koreans the division was necessary to protect us from communism. But for thousands of years, Christians, Jews, and Muslims lived together peacefully in Palestine. Fundamentally, it’s not religion or the cohabitation of different races, but Israel’s refusal to recognize Palestinian right to the land, that is at the core of the conflict. And the walls between people - the physical wall along the “green line,” the barriers created by checkpoints, as well as the invisible wall that people construct around them to not see things that challenge their fixed viewpoints – only serve to create suspicion and mistrust between the people.
In order to resist, we must insist on sitting down with each other face to face and hearing each others’ stories, to refuse to be segregated, and cross those borders as often as possible until the day we can dismantle them once and for all. “What’s sixty years?” said the taxi driver, “We’ve been on this land for thousands. Sixty years is nothing. We will get it back.” If not in our generation, then the next – we must carry on the torch of resistance with steadfastness until the day we can tear down the wall – in Korea and in Palestine.
This article originally appeared in the September 2010 issue of Nodutdol eNews.
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