By Rabbi Ben Kamin
SAN DIEGO –In Gaza, a group of young people who really “get it” have expressed their guttural frustration with life as they know it—caught, ensnared, and deprived of hope by the labyrinth of political interest from all sides that have wiped out their youth. These brave and freedom-starved youngsters have as little regard for the Hamas landlords as they do for Israel. They just want to be allowed to live and what they want is normal.
As an Israeli-born American Jew who despises Palestinian extortion and condemns that element of Israeli society that is as extreme as it is blind, I find the pleading words of the Sharek Youth movement in Gaza to be trenchant and meaningful. Nobody wins when young people aspiring to help other young people grow educationally and socially are snuffed out of their dreams.
They just want to be allowed to live and what they want is normal.
Not everyone who lives in the sanity-forsaken region of Gaza is a bloody terrorist nor wants to be coerced by the extremist faction that rules the area—just as most Israeli citizens are fed up with the right-wing stranglehold on their future and would welcome peace with the Palestinians.
Human Rights Watch, which has often taken Israel to task, rightly or wrongly, has issued a statement soundly condemning the Hamas authorities for shutting down the work of Sharek:
“Let Sharek Re-open Its Doors: Hamas authorities in Gaza should allow an organization that helps children and youth to reopen and penalize officials who have harassed its workers. On November 30, 2010, Hamas authorities arbitrarily closed all of the Gaza offices of the group Sharek Youth Forum, which provides psychosocial and vocational support and operates summer camps and other programs for 60,000 Gaza children and youth.”
Yet no statement resonates with such pain and passion as what the youngsters of Sharek have themselves declared:
“We, the youth in Gaza, are so fed up with Israel, Hamas, the occupation, the violations of human rights and the indifference of the international community! We want to scream and break this wall of silence, injustice and indifference like the Israeli F16’s breaking the wall of sound; scream with all the power in our souls in order to release this immense frustration that consumes us….
We are sick of being caught in this political struggle; sick of coal dark nights with airplanes circling above our homes; sick of innocent farmers getting shot in the buffer zone because they are taking care of their lands; sick of bearded guys walking around with their guns abusing their power, beating up or incarcerating young people demonstrating for what they believe in; sick of the wall of shame that separates us from the rest of our country and keeps us imprisoned in a stamp-sized piece of land; sick of being portrayed as terrorists, homemade fanatics with explosives in our pockets and evil in our eyes; sick of the indifference we meet from the international community, the so-called experts in expressing concerns and drafting resolutions but cowards in enforcing anything they agree on; we are sick and tired of… being kept in jail by Israel, beaten up by Hamas and completely ignored by the rest of the world.”
You don’t have to be a Jew, a Muslim, or a Christian to be affected by this entreaty. You just have to be human.
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Rabbi Kamin is a freelance writer based in San Diego