It Will Take More Than a Wall To Silence Us

[ProgressiveMuslim]

My friend and fellow organizer Mohammad Othman, a 34-year-old Palestinian human rights advocate, was detained by Israel on September 22 while returning home from meetings with Norwegian government officials. I suspect he was not surprised. A few months earlier, Israeli soldiers at a checkpoint within the West Bank had taken him aside and threatened him with arrest. "We're going to arrest you," one said, "but it's difficult with you because all you do is talk."

As a grassroots leader, this chills me to the bone. Like Mohammad, my colleagues and I spend a great deal of time talking - talking and thinking about how nonviolent peace activists can halt Israel's relentless expansion into our agricultural land. If talking is a crime, if urging the international community to hold Israel accountable for theft of our land is a crime, then we all are vulnerable.

Law, which on paper protects the rights of the occupied, seems powerless to stop Israel in practice.

For the last month, Israel has inveighed against the UN's Goldstone report, which meticulously documents Israeli war crimes during its assault on Gaza. The "new" U.S. of Barack Obama has unfortunately reverted to looking very much like the Bush administration by backing down on demands that Israel freeze construction of its illegal settlements and its vigorous effort to kill the Goldstone report. Brutalized Palestinian civilians in Gaza would be forced to swallow a bitter pill in forgoing the protections offered by international law and the slim satisfaction of a measure of justice.


Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jamal-juma/it-will-take-more-than-a_b_337167.html