Wednesday, September 06, 2006
Alternative to Hopelessness
In his memoir Strangers in the House, Palestinian human rights attorney Raja Shehadeh describes through his family's personal ordeals since the Zionist invasion of 1948, the increasingly sadistic daily violence, humiliations, harassment, and brutal disregard for human rights systematically conducted by the Israeli state against the indigenous population. Reinforcing what we've written previously about Zionism projecting the earlier Jewish pogrom and Holocaust traumas onto the Palestinian people, author Shehadeh recounts the futility of peaceful negotiation over coexistence exemplified by his statesman father, as well as the suicidal yet noble heroism of armed struggle against genocide.
Shehadeh's answer to the seemingly hopeless future for his people in facing down a superpower and its protege is to document and expose the largely hidden ethnic cleansing policies and conduct to the world and its civil institutions. Admittedly only a small part of the overall liberation struggle against US and Israeli hegemony, Shehadeh offers an alternative to hopelessness, perhaps his greatest contribution to the children of Palestine.
Shehadeh's answer to the seemingly hopeless future for his people in facing down a superpower and its protege is to document and expose the largely hidden ethnic cleansing policies and conduct to the world and its civil institutions. Admittedly only a small part of the overall liberation struggle against US and Israeli hegemony, Shehadeh offers an alternative to hopelessness, perhaps his greatest contribution to the children of Palestine.
