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CounterPunch
October
3, 2002
Report from
a Mad World
by DEB REICH
I am a mother and my children are hungry. I lay
awake last night till dawn, trying to figure out how to put bread
on the table for my kids, and I will lie awake again tonight
for the same reason. All my plans, all my dreams for my family
are in ruins. Mine is the real voice of Palestinian and Israeli
women.
I am a father whose livelihood has been
taken away while more polished and fortunate men sit in safety
somewhere else and discuss strategy or theology and sign documents
with a silver pen. My pride is gone, because my children see
what is happening and want to believe that I have the power to
change it, but tomorrow it will be the same all over again. Secretly,
inside, I'm bitter and betrayed and confused. Mine is the real
voice of Israeli and Palestinian men.
I am a young woman who has been cheated
of a good education and I'm subjected, from the moment I venture
to show my face outside my front door, to the casual brutality
of strangers in a society gone mad. Who will give me back the
life I could have had, filled with laughter and useful work and
a proud young man who could look me in the eye and make promises
about our future together? Mine is the real voice of young Palestinian
and Israeli womanhood.
I am a young man who has been stripped
of his humanity and sent out to prove his manhood in an endless,
pointless game of mutual destruction, which is all the education
anyone seems to be able to offer me just at present, and in my
deepest and most secret heart, I wonder if it would have been
better never to have been born in the first place, but in the
meantime, with my tanks or my rocks or my rifle or my explosives
or my bare hands, I will show that guy over there that I'm better
at this stupid game than he is! So come on everyone, let's get
them, kill them, show them who's a man around here and how dare
they try to do that to us! We will never be vanquished! Mine
is the real voice of young Palestinian and Israeli manhood.
I am a child and I'm worried. My mother
cries secretly at night and my father is ashamed of something
he cannot talk about. My sisters are afraid and my brothers are
acting brave to cover up how frightened and confused they are.
My grandmother needs a doctor and my grandfather sits and stares
at the wall. I am only a child and I don't know for sure what
is real and what is not, but I know that I'm scared all the time,
so I guess mine is the real voice of Israeli and Palestinian
children.
I am dead. I died with and without a
weapon in my hands, I died inside a tank and shot by a tank,
I died fighting and I died picking olives and I died riding on
a bus and I died next to my greenhouse and I died at the door
of my own house and I died eating pizza and I died suddenly by
the side of an evil road that some people ride on and some people
shoot at and some people guard and some people claim is sacred
and some people made a profit from building in the first place
over the graves of living trees torn up by their roots, and at
this point I know only one thing for sure: I am dead, and for
me it's too late. I am the real voice of the Palestinian and
Israeli casualties, martyrs, victims, and heroes.
I am a wounded and crippled survivor
of this mayhem. I cannot speak.
I am a prisoner. I am not permitted to
speak to anyone.
I am a foreign worker about to be deported.
I have no say.
I am yesterday's dissident waiting for
tomorrow's miracle. I have already said it all.
I am still in the womb, waiting to be
born, but I wonder if an abortion might not be preferable. I
am to inherit the future toward which you are marching. I am
the Israeli and Palestinian unborn, and I have a message for
you from all of us, with one voice:
Can't you people do any better than this?
Put away your weapons. Stop ruining everything and start building
something. Stop blaming each other and get to work! What are
you waiting for?
Deb Reich,
a writer and translator, lives in the mad world of Israel/Palestine.
She can be reached at debmail@netvision.net.il
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October 2,
2002
Carol Wolman,
MD
Is the
President Nuts?
Diagnosing Dubya
Jeffrey St.
Clair
Something
Rotten in Klamath
Linda S. Heard
Might Sharon
Nuke Iraq?
Joanne Mariner
When
the Judge Says:
"I Botched It"
Peter P. Mahoney
A Vietnam
Vet Makes the
Case Against War on Iraq
Mark Engler
From the
Quarantine
Agaisnt Greed
Uri Avnery
Manufacturing
Anti-Semites
Jennifer Berkshire
Converging Against Capitalism
October 1,
2002
Benjamin Shepard
On the
Road Again:
IMF/World Bank Protest
Reveal a Revived
Movement for Global Justice
Dr. Susan
Block
Cockfight
at the
Baghdad Corral
Krystal Kyer
Growing Union Opposition
to War
Ron Jacobs
Born Without a Spine
Scott Loughrey
Mysteries
of 9/11
Jeremy Brecher
Collective
Security is Working
Brenda Norrell
Troy
Black Feather on
the American Flag
Sam Bahour
Wake Up
and Smell
the Occupation
Richard Harth
Contrary
to Reason:
Adieu, Hitchens, Adieu
Carol Norris
Rumsfeld
the Surrealist:
Things Related and Not
Ben Tripp
Lists Upon
Lists
September
30, 2002
Rep. Barbara
Lee
Alternatives
to War
Kurt Nimmo
Iraq: The
Vision
of the Velociraptors
Zeynep Toufe
"We
Own the World, We Ignore the Children"
Dave Marsh
The Troubador's
Highway
Tariq Ali
Taking
It to London's Streets
Neve Gordon
Bush's
War of Self-Adulation
September
25 / 29, 2002
Alexander
Cockburn
The
Dogs of War,
the Bears of Wall Street
Ben Tripp
Hunting with George
Jeffrey St.
Clair
Haywire: Boeing's New Navy Fighter Fails Bomb Tests
Joanne Mariner
Naming Genocide
James T. Philips
Riding to Maine
Anis Shivani
Life of a Bum
David Vest
Too True North
Jacob Levich
Case of the Missing Terrorist
William MacDougall
British Immigration Tests
Edward Hammond
Pentagon Develops Illegal Chemical Weapons Capability
Molly Secours
Bush's "I" Words:
Intervention & Impeachment
Edward Lazarus
Civil Liberties After 9/11
Lee Sustar
Employers Attack
Anthony Gancarski
Ledeen's Mad World
Krystal Kyer
Bush the Magician
David Wiggins
West Point Grad:
Bush Threatens World Peace
September
24, 2002
Chet Batsmack,
American
The American
Century
Paul de Rooij
Smear Mongers
George Szamuely
International
Kangaroo Courts
Jack Wheeler
Janet Reno: America's Saddam?
Linda S. Heard
Portrait
of Uncle Sam
Gary Leupp
Random
Thoughts on Anti-Americanism
Wayne Madsen
Germany
Leads the Way
William Hughes
George
Will: War Pimp
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