Who are the witnesses to the slow destruction of Palestine? We are witnesses to the killing of its young men, and women. We are witnesses to the destruction of its infrastructure, and the injection of intense psychological trauma, fear and terror that inevitably impacts societies negatively. We are the witnesses to attempts to destroy a gene pool of “others” who like an undesirable species will slowly be starved to death, or left to die from diseases that originate in poverty, and end in death, or serious physical and mental impairments and disabilities, no water, and no food.
We are witnesses to the killing of a nation of people, who reached an “interim” status, “almost human,” and then ceased to exist. They went away, they disappeared, their spirits broken, their futures, dark, their hatred, strong, their love, abstract. We cried in our sleep, “Should it die?” Then a raven appeared, “They have survived!” He squawked, and we thanked heaven for its clear skies, and God for his Mercy. Then we realized, in our drunken state, that the assault is not over, it moves now to part two, the silent war. The war of attrition continues, its aim, to kill the people quietly. A wasted effort that God will defeat, but not until the witnesses give their testimony that indeed it was the governments of the world that came together to kill Palestine, through the hesitancy of some, while others are mislead. The arrogance of some men who would be gods, except they lack either virtue or power, and they have created nothing.
Part two of the war of attrition will be textbook. Keep out the people who bring healing, or hope, the teachers, the movements, the preachers, the water bearers, the relief workers, until the work is done. Embitter the people, make them turn against one another in their rage at god and humanity, and remove the women, send them into the streets to beg, and steal the innocence of the children with violence, crime, and desperation. Make hearts black with fear, hatred, anger, hopelessness, and thoughts of revenge; it is all provocation. The people must resist its seduction, and place their hopes in God, resolved upon salvation, which is survival in this world, immortality in another.
God will save Palestine. God will save these people, and through them the world. We will, God willing, survive part two of this assault of concerted evil, which like a snake’s venom poisons the world. Having gone unchallenged, it became a deadly disease that seeps into and kills the souls and leaves the people starving to fill the blackened hole where hearts once beat, craving more money, more pleasure, more fun, more diversion, more distraction, while in another part of the world, the people sit and wonder, staring at the sky, petitioning and asking: “Why?”
Fate answered, tired and frustrated, overburdened by man’s ignorance of the power of his choice and by the nature of man’s plea. Fate said: ” Ask the first witnesses, the men who foretold the plight of man, Adam, Abraham and Noah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Elijah. Ask Joseph, and Jesus, and Moses and Job, ask Muhammad.” And the people, looked down in shame, unaware of their inheritance and said, “For certain, we cannot see, since the secrets of the fate of men are unknown except to God, and the prophets. The path upon which man’s evil flows is hidden, except to the pure heart, and who has remained unsoiled?” Then fate made its own plea, “Oh God,” it said, “forgive me, for they have believed in me, and have forgotten Thee.”
The writer is the Founder and President of the National Association of Muslim American Women.
