Fariha’s Reviews > Journal of an Ordinary Grief > Status Update

When oppression is legalized, its very legality becomes worse than the thing itself, because in this case the oppression would not simply be a question of how a ruler or an authority behaves but the path itself followed by a society and one of the deep-rooted elements of its composition.

An Arab writer satirized the practice of the Israeli authorities in ascribing to their actions & good intentions the human development that takes place in the natural course of events: “When Israel was established my daughter was one year old. Now she is twenty. Did she then grow up and reach maturity as a result of Israeli efforts? This comment brilliantly records the Israeli way of keeping track of human progress.

—If you kill them, we will walk in their funerals. But if this cannot be done quickly, we will find ourselves in a dilemma and must interfere for the sake of reconciliation.

Liquidation? We do not think so. This is an internal matter. Our relations are good. For the sake of sovereignty and mutual concern for national independence, we do not interfere. Liquidation? Why use this expression? We call this “independence.”
Who is responsible? It is not one person, or an agency within a regime. It is the official Arab environment.

Students asked anxiously, “What’s the difference between conquerors who come from outside and oppressors who emerge from within?” They differed on many points, but they agreed on this, that conquerors bring dispersion and exile while oppressors finish off anyone who survives the grip of the conquerors.

They granted safe passage to the common enemy because the equation had now changed: the security of the enemy had become one with the security of the regimes. They gave the enemy breathing space, and set about defending his security and borders, which were now tightening their grip on the necks of their capitals. The defense of the Sublime Port entails defending the sleep and comfort of the conquerors.

How naïve you would be to put yourself and your fire under siege with such a limited and primitive dream: the absolute homeland! Do not ask who gave the earth this narrow expanse.
All those who discovered freedom before you swore at it and longed for the days when they were searching for it. What is a state but a police force and taxes? Are you spilling all this blood merely for the sake of policing and new taxes?

This is my only freedom. Why then do you object to my killing myself, O experts in collective killing? You who transform children into charcoal. You kill, therefore you live. And I kill myself, therefore I live. As of now, I will allow no one to kill me except myself. Do you know who I am? UNRWA milk does not turn into milk in the veins, it turns into dynamite.

I have been your hostage for twenty-five years, and despair released me. What will bring hope back except the declaration of my despair? And what will release me from bondage except my ability to kill myself? Let the world go to its bedroom. I am a safety valve for the world. This is the role that you have defined for me, and it is not up to you to determine the form of my objection to gratuitous death.

“world public opinion” must be understood metaphorically as long as the expression refers to media owned by individuals whose ideology and interests are linked. Why then should we accord it all this reverence? If our actions are subject to the requirements of “world public opinion” as expressed in the official media, then it is time for us to realize that we enjoy our bondage and our loss,