Last week, I wrote about the Israeli peace activist Dr. Nurit Peled-Elhanan (I spelled it wrong in the previous article). The responses of the readers were mostly positive, and so I have succeeded in achieving what I wanted, which is introducing the Arab readers to Israeli and Jewish peace advocates, because the majority of the news, if not all of the news, is limited to the Israeli government and the Israel lobby in Washington. Al-Hayat published some responses from the readers, and I responded to some of those who directly sent their letters to me. My colleague Kamal Abdul Qadir, who almost misses nothing online, chose to send the article to nearly six thousand additional addresses, thereby increasing the debate on the subject at hand. There were those who objected, and there are always those who object regardless of the subject. For instance, a reader proposed that Dr. Nurit return to her original country if she really supports the Palestinians. This is wrong because if there will be two states side by side, or one state for Palestinians and Jews, we want our neighbors to be people like Dr. Nurit Peled-Elhanan, and not like Avigdor Lieberman who may return to Moldova. The matter deserves going over the responses. Dr. Nurit Peled-Elhanan sent me an e-mail message in French because it is a second language for the Lebanese, as she mentioned. While I was reading the letter carefully, she sent me another e-mail message in English after she found out that I live in London. She said that she made the speech that I mentioned in the European Parliament five years ago, and sent me two other speeches. The first was made on the anniversary of 40 years of the occupation, i.e. it is three years old, and the second was made last January on the first anniversary of the war on Gaza. The speech on the occupation was delivered at the European Parliament's meeting on Human Rights and the Freedom of Thought. Dr. Nurit Peled-Elhanan was accompanied by Bassam Aramin, the founder of Combatants for Peace whom she described as "my friend and brother". He too had lost his daughter, just like she lost hers. She said, “Bassam and I are both victims of the cruel occupation that has been corrupting this country for forty years now. The two of us came this evening to lament the fate of this place that has buried our two daughters – Smadar – the bud of the fruit and Abir – the perfume of the flower…” In the article on the Gaza war, she complained that some Jewish children are learning to kill non-Jews, either through their rabbis, or through the soldiers who always take pride in what their hands perpetrate. She described the values of Israeli society as being corrupt, protested the expulsion of Palestinians from their homes in Sheikh Jarrah, a neighborhood in Jerusalem, and criticized the assassination of Palestinians in front of their children on mere suspicions of being engaged in violence, while Jewish terrorists receive leniency from the Israeli justice system. After that, Dr. Nurit Peled-Elhanan spoke about her inability and the inability of others who protest every month, every week and after each massacre, and that they can only be bereaved while failing to do anything else. However, she continued and insisted on rejecting these practices, and said no to evil, deception, trafficking in human beings and racism which is spreading like wildfire, and which does not stop at the checkpoints such as Erez and Qalania, but also affects all facets of life in Israel. What Dr. Nurit said in the three speeches that I went over leaves nothing to add. If a Palestinian mother was to be bereaved by the death of her child at the hands of the occupation, she cannot add anything more to the views of the Israeli peace advocate. Dr. Yossi Amitai, Head of Middle East Studies at Ben Gurion University in Beersheba, sent me an e-mail in Arabic in commentary on the subject that included new information that I must go over. Like me, he said that she deserves all appreciation for her courage in turning a painful personal tragedy into strength and determination to fight the occupation shoulder to shoulder with her Palestinian sisters. Dr. Amitai added that Nurit is the daughter of General Matti Peled, who was one of the Israeli commanders in the 1967 war, and became after the end of his military service a renowned professor of Arab literature, and one of the leaders of the Israeli peace camp with Uri Avnery. He also had many meetings with Dr. Issam Sartawi and even Abu Ammar in Tunisia. Dr. Amitai added that the family name is Elhanan, as I had misspelled it in Arabic. He also said that she is not a doctor, but a Professor in the Department of Education at the University of Jerusalem. In 1978, she translated the autobiography of Abu Iyad (Palestine without an identity) from its original version in French into Arabic. Peace can be reached as soon as tomorrow with Jews and Israelis like these. [email protected]
