Sami Awad is a Palestinian Christian active in the nonviolence movement. He is the Executive Director of Holy Land Trust in Bethlehem. His story is told in the film 'Little Town of Bethlehem.'
Historic decision of highly terrorized Palestinians to seek statehood, after wasting years in Israel’s bogus “peace talks”, directly through the UN approval in the face of Zionist crimes and its deadly reluctance to surrender sovereignty has been endorsed also by the Arab League at its meeting held in Doha recently for the Palestinian move. These developments acquire great significance in the context of Obama’s double game as global dictator and proxy mediator in Mideast peace. Obama’s u-turn on freeze of illegal colonies inside Palestine has exposed not just Obama weakness but also hypocrisy of American diplomacy.
Israel has proliferated the Palestinian territories with illegal colonies and as a result the number of illegal Jewish settlers has been on the rise. The Doha meeting had been convened in the wake of major Middle East policy speeches in Washington by Obama and Israeli fascist leader Netanyahu. Abbas has reiterated his determination to seek UN recognition in September unless Israel began negotiations on a substantial basis. Abbas had told the meeting that PLO option is still negotiation, but it seems that because of conditions imposed by Israeli Netanyahu, they have no choice but to use the UN to get recognition of our state. "We are serious in our decision to use the UN, it is not manoeuvring”. Jordanian Foreign Minister Nasser Judeh said that Israel will not gain security by clinging to territory beyond the 1967 West Bank frontier. "It is peace that will bring Israel security, not increasing the width of Israel or finding a military solution to defending its illusionary borders."
In view of the fanatic attitude mixed with fascist attacks by the Zionist leadership, Palestinian leaders have decided to obtain the UN approval for the establishment of Palestine in September. The Arab League at a meeting on 28th May in Doha attended by Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas has decided to seek full UN membership for a Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital. Arabs support the PLO appeal to the UN asking that Palestine, within the 1967 borders, becomes a full-fledged state of the international organization.
The 1967 borders refer to Israel's frontiers as they stood on the eve of the 1967 Middle East war in which, after occupying Palestine lands forcefully, it also captured the Gaza Strip from Egypt and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, from Jordan. In a keynote policy speech on 19 May, US President Barack Obama issued a clear call for Israel and the Palestinians to use the borders existing before the 1967 Six Day War, with land swaps, as the basis for talks. Netanyahu rejected President Obama's proposal outright, saying the Jewish state would be "indefensible" if it returned to the 1967 borders, which would exclude dozens of Jewish settlements. Abbas described the idea as "a foundation with which we can deal positively". Though he made it clear that an appeal to the UN for full membership for Palestine would be a mistake, Obama also expressed his exclamation what would Israel do when UN grants Palestine membership and status. The veto members of the UNSC could black any resolution and USA or UK could do so on Palestine case as freely as they kill Muslims in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan and Libya and elsewhere.
For decades the Palestinians are under Israeli brute occupation and genocides. The notorious UNSC , promoting imperialism and shielding NATO crimes in Islamic world sports a blind eye to Israeli crimes as well. The Palestinian leadership began peace talks with Israel nearly two decades ago with the aim of founding a state in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip to exist alongside Israel. For want of sincere involvement by Obama regime in Mideast peace, the US-led “peace talks” between an arrogant Israel and the defenseless Palestinians have been stalled for months, broken down last September in a dispute over continued Jewish settlement building in the occupied West Bank.
The Palestinians currently have the status of UN observers without voting rights. UN General Assembly president Joseph D said that a Palestinian state would need the support of all five veto-wielding members of the UNSC to be recognised. USA-UK terror twins could use their veto to bully their ally Abbas only to promote Zionism in Mideast. The Palestinian Authority (PA) headed by Abbas is dependent on financial support from international donors including the USA and the EU. It also relies on customs duties collected on its behalf by Israel, which triggered a financial crisis for the PA earlier this month when the Israeli government temporarily withheld the funds following a reconciliation deal between the rival Fatah and Hamas groups.
Backing of Arab League for Palestine state though the UN is a positive development in Mideast. The notorious Mossad-CIA agents trying to twist the Obama arm is attempting to get Obama vote against Palestine; Western fascist regimes that had imposed the Zionist regime in Mideast to kill Palestinians in the first place might not want make Israel look politically isolated. Abbas stressed that the Palestinians do not want to isolate Israel or to delegitimize it. On the contrary,he added that they want to co-exist with it. Constant subjugation,persecution, genocides by Zionist criminals have forced the Hamas leaders to profess to end even Judaism on earth by removing Israel from Mideast. But the idea maybe provocative but not practical since Israel is a spoiled terror baby imposed in Mideast by USA-UK terror wins and has the backing of all western terrocracies..
If Arab nations as well as all Muslim nations unite like the western terrocracies have done under UNSC-NATO organizations, the enemy of Islam and looters of resources of Islamic world could be dealt with firmly. Unfortunately, as it is known, the Arab league promotes their collective business interests in the West and have conveniently sidelined the Palestinian issue, letting the Israel grow into a modern fascist regime, killing defenseless Palestinians by fanatically calling them "terrorists". Even on the notorious UNSC-NATO terror attacks on sovereign Libya in Mideast, the League has taken a pro-western stand making Libya destabilized. That is Arab monkey mentality. Arab nations should share, along with Israelis and their western sponsors, the responsibility for continued sufferings of Palestinians. They should stop boot polishing western bosses.
History of American conspiracy goes much beyond the Sept-11 terror gimmicks to control global resources. Ex CIA intelligence officer turned whistleblower and activist, Michael Scheuer, has launched a blistering attack on the US parasitic political-media establishment, over its handing of the so called war on terror, asserting that the entire rationale behind it is based on outright lies and deception. The fascist western media nuts living a parasitic life pattern promotes NATO terrorism. Without lies and crimes colonist and imperialist powers simply cannot exist.
Of course, Palestinians are on their way to gain UN support for an independent Palestine nation, free from Zionist aggressions and genocides and promoting regional and world peace. After making all negotiations fall futile, Israel now fears the maneuvering will leave them looking vulnerable on the diplomatic front. Israel says that peace talks and an agreement are the only way for the Palestinians to achieve their goal of nationhood but it drags on the peace talks by bogus claims and intermittent aggressions in Palestine, killing innocent people. Arab League Secretary General Amr Moussa, a possible candidate for the Egyptian presidency said that Netanyahu had presented nothing but a series of "no's" in his speech to the US Congress.
Israeli terrorist regime survives owing to western support for its crimes. The Palestinians know that Netanyahu's vague ideas for peace had put more obstacles in the path of an already moribund peace process. Israel is deadly anti-peace but USA is also deadly imperialist, supporting Zionist suppressive techniques and crimes against humanity
How could a person living under military occupation, experiencing first-hand suffering and humiliation, even think about loving the enemy, let alone urge family, friends and neighbors to do the same? This challenging message came from a young rabbi named Jesus in his "Sermon on the Mount."
Of course, Jesus could have suggested we make peace with our enemies or negotiate peace agreements or peacefully resolve conflict; those statements would have been as shocking to the suffering Jews of that time. Instead, he entreated them to go further: to "love" them. This was the word he chose -- a command to all those who seek to follow him.
I studied history to better understand what life in my homeland was like under Roman occupation. The Jewish people had been displaced and lost their property. Many had been tortured, enslaved and imprisoned. Numerous had died at the hands of their oppressors. Sadly, many Jewish religious and political leaders even compromised and corrupted themselves by their Roman superiors.
In a way, my own history seems to parallel what happened more than 2,000 years ago. Like those hearing Jesus' words for the first time, I too have grown up living under military occupation. I have witnessed suffering and the loss it brings. As a Palestinian, I could share countless stories of brutality and abuse. I could explain how fear and grief can quickly turn into anger and resentment.
However, it may surprise some in the West that I am an Arab who was born into an evangelical Christian family. I expect that my family's "conversion" to Christianity happened thousands of years ago on the day of Pentecost, not through mission work. As a boy growing up in Bethlehem, I went to church every Sunday and to Sunday school every Friday, fully immersed in a faith-based culture no different than a Christian family in Bethlehem, Pa., or Palestine, Texas.
As I was learning Bible stories, my day-to-day reality and experiences were teaching me to become bitter and hateful of Israeli soldiers and all they represented. I knew this was not what my faith, schooling or my family had instructed, but these were the life lessons I was learning. Everything changed for me in the early 1980s when my uncle returned from the United States to establish the Palestinian Center for the Study of Nonviolence in Bethlehem. Now I found a place to address my resentment and vent my anger. I began participating in many nonviolent activities to protest the Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands -- from planting olive trees in threatened areas to participating in children's street festivals with balloons colored like the Palestinian flag. When the Israeli government deported my uncle for his nonviolence efforts, I committed myself to engaging in this important work. I was 16 at the time.
For more than 20 years, I have been studying, practicing and teaching nonviolence both inside and outside of Palestine. I started Holy Land Trust in 1998 to promote the idea that nonviolence can be a path toward peace and a greater humanity in this land we all call Holy. Our organization is made up of Palestinians -- both Christians and Muslims -- who work together to develop awareness campaigns, provide training, organize demonstrations, etc. Our efforts often receive the support of internationals, including a growing number of Israeli Jews.
So while I had grown up knowing about the Sermon on the Mount, living it creates a different meaning and purpose. The first step in loving the enemy is to love and honor myself as a person loved by God, to break free from the fear and hatred within me, and to no longer claim victimization and seek pity as a result of the oppressive forces around me. This takes creating a deep distinction between those who stand before me and their behaviors and recognizing that every human being is created in the image of God. It requires acknowledging that conditions, traditions, experiences, traumas and assumptions can shape who we have become but are not who we truly are and, more importantly, who we can be. It's understanding that our core common identity is in our humanity and not in political, ideological or even religious associations.
As a follower of Jesus, I am compelled to promote a process of healing and liberation for those being oppressed as well as for their oppressors. Loving the enemy means you ultimately eliminate the label of "enemy" and engage in loving action to help them recognize and acknowledge your humanity. This is how to love your enemy, to really love them.
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Sami Awad is a Palestinian Christian active in the nonviolence movement. He is the Executive Director of Holy Land Trust in Bethlehem. His story is told in the film 'Little Town of Bethlehem.'
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