End the Occupation Now!

We caught the bus in front of the Wayfarer’s Cooperative, a small cooperative in MT Airy that specializes in groceries. It was June 10, 2007. It was a pleasant day filled with warmth and sunshine. The bus was headed to Washington D.C. It was a march to end the occupation of Palestine. Israel has been there for forty years. To me, a man of African American descent, the six day war seems as if it were yesterday. The Palestinians lost so quickly. Egypt; Jordan and Syria went down to defeat. At the time it seemed fair and Israel was justified in defending her borders. It was just a war and Israel had surprisingly won. No one, at that time understood the gravity of what had been happening in Palestine. No one understood how much aid Britain and the U.S. had given the Israeli Army. It didn’t seem like genocide at first. We didn’t know that much about Zionism. We didn’t know it meant racism; colonialism and genocide. We didn’t know that the Palestinians were to lose their land. As the scene unfolded what really occurred became crystal clear. This Six Day War was nothing more than a fascist blitzkrieg designed to eradicate and exterminate the Palestinian people and other peoples of Arab descent.

                On the bus there was a University of Penn student; a retired Episcopal priest; and a man who worked for Books Through Bars, a non –profit agency that distributes books to prison inmates. They wanted to see one end to the forced removal; racism and genocide Israel forced upon Palestine. In short, they wanted to see the end of the occupation of Palestine.

                There was also a film entitled, Iron Wall, by Mohammed Alatar. It is a documentary about the Israeli occupation of Palestine. In the film Israel was shown in a different light. Judaism had a strange twist. The state of Israel maimed; bruised; beat humiliated and killed Palestinians in and effort to move them from the land. There were Jewish streets where only Jews could go and no Arabs were allowed. There were Jewish highways where only Jews could drive and no Arab were allowed to drive. There were houses that only Jews could live. Through the forcible eviction of Palestinians and the planned settlement of the West Bank, Israel began a slow but steady program of eradication of the Palestinian state. They chopped down their olive trees and removed the Palestinians from their homes and farms. They bulldozed their villages and homes. They, the Israeli Army, attacked; pushed and kicked Palestinians off of their own land. Armed groups of Israeli civilians complete the work of harassment and brutalization where the Army left off. Like the night riders and the KKK groups of the U.S. these groups reign terror upon the innocent and often defenseless Palestinians.  Israel has elected to build a wall around the settlements that penetrate the state of Palestine virtually cutting the state of Palestine into pieces. They have decided to build more settlements and place the Palestinians into Apartheid areas.

                The sun shinned, on the grass, in front of the capitol, where we assembled.  We listened to the impassioned speeches given by Judith Leblanc and others. Each demanded an end to the occupation. Each one promised hope to a tired yet courageous people. Each one inspired the people to march protest and fight back. We marched to the Washington Monument where as working class citizens we embraced our Palestinian peoples and vowed to give new meaning and new life in the struggle for peace and the struggle for Palestine.