London’s The Guardian newspaper calls it “an incendiary document written with courage and furious energy… an extraordinary, impassioned cyber-scream.” It’s the Gaza Youth’s Manifesto for Change, written just three weeks ago by a group of cyber-activist students in Gaza — three women and five men — as enraged by Hamas as they are by Israel.
It demands to be read, so here it is, in full:
Fuck Hamas. Fuck Israel. Fuck Fatah. Fuck UN. Fuck UNWRA. Fuck USA! 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 because of this fucking situation we live in; we are like lice between two nails living a nightmare inside a nightmare, no room for hope, no space for freedom.
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 living a shitty life, being kept in jail by Israel, beaten up by Hamas and completely ignored by the rest of the world.
There is a revolution growing inside of us, an immense dissatisfaction and frustration that will destroy us unless we find a way of canalizing this energy into something that can challenge the status quo and give us some kind of hope. The final drop that made our hearts tremble with frustration and hopelessness happened 30rd November, when Hamas’ officers came to Sharek Youth Forum, a leading youth organization (www.sharek.ps) with their guns, lies and aggressiveness, throwing everybody outside, incarcerating some and prohibiting Sharek from working. A few days later, demonstrators in front of Sharek were beaten and some incarcerated. We are really living a nightmare inside a nightmare.It is difficult to find words for the pressure we are under. We barely survived the Operation Cast Lead, where Israel very effectively bombed the shit out of us, destroying thousands of homes and even more lives and dreams. They did not get rid of Hamas, as they intended, but they sure scared us forever and distributed post traumatic stress syndrome to everybody, as there was nowhere to run.
We are youth with heavy hearts. We carry in ourselves a heaviness so immense that it makes it difficult to us to enjoy the sunset. How to enjoy it when dark clouds paint the horizon and bleak memories run past our eyes every time we close them? We smile in order to hide the pain. We laugh in order to forget the war. We hope in order not to commit suicide here and now. During the war we got the unmistakable feeling that Israel wanted to erase us from the face of the earth. During the last years Hamas has been doing all they can to control our thoughts, behaviour and aspirations. We are a generation of young people used to face missiles, carrying what seems to be a impossible mission of living a normal and healthy life, and only barely tolerated by a massive organization that has spread in our society as a malicious cancer disease, causing mayhem and effectively killing all living cells, thoughts and dreams on its way as well as paralyzing people with its terror regime. Not to mention the prison we live in, a prison sustained by a so-called democratic country.
History is repeating itself in its most cruel way and nobody seems to care. We are scared. Here in Gaza we are scared of being incarcerated, interrogated, hit, tortured, bombed, killed. We are afraid of living, because every single step we take has to be considered and well-thought, there are limitations everywhere, we cannot move as we want, say what we want, do what we want, sometimes we even cant think what we want because the occupation has occupied our brains and hearts so terrible that it hurts and it makes us want to shed endless tears of frustration and rage!
We do not want to hate, we do not want to feel all of this feelings, we do not want to be victims anymore. ENOUGH! Enough pain, enough tears, enough suffering, enough control, limitations, unjust justifications, terror, torture, excuses, bombings, sleepless nights, dead civilians, black memories, bleak future, heart aching present, disturbed politics, fanatic politicians, religious bullshit, enough incarceration! WE SAY STOP! This is not the future we want!
We want three things. We want to be free. We want to be able to live a normal life. We want peace. Is that too much to ask? We are a peace movement consistent of young people in Gaza and supporters elsewhere that will not rest until the truth about Gaza is known by everybody in this whole world and in such a degree that no more silent consent or loud indifference will be accepted.
This is the Gazan youth’s manifesto for change!
We will start by destroying the occupation that surrounds ourselves, we will break free from this mental incarceration and regain our dignity and self respect. We will carry our heads high even though we will face resistance. We will work day and night in order to change these miserable conditions we are living under. We will build dreams where we meet walls.
We only hope that you – yes, you reading this statement right now! – can support us. In order to find out how, please write on our Facebook wall (Gaza Youth Breaks Out — GYBO) or contact us directly: freegazayouth@hotmail.com
We want to be free, we want to live, we want peace.
FREE GAZA YOUTH!
You know what this makes me think of? It’ll take a moment to lay the foundation;
I have moved a lot- I’m the antithesis of the Palestinian youth who has never been free to go anywhere. But at the same time, a lot of that moving wasn’t by my own volition, but by the will of others (parents) who were moving. Still- what this did was scatter my moments throughout a large area of the Western United States.
By moments I mean those incidents that change you, that mark a point in time when you changed. That could be my first crush, my first kiss, the first time I saw someone shot, the first time I got beaten. I often think of those moments as ghosts.
The ghost of that moment lurks by the place where it happened. I can’t pass the corner where I lost my virginity without remembering it. I can’t pass the corner where I found a friend after she was raped without remembering it. All those corners are little bits of the past that will always haunt me.
Which gets me to the Gaza youth, who have all the same corners I have. The Gaza youth with all the same incidents I’ve lived through, plus many more that I really can only guess at from my safe distance of freedom. And all of their incidents are pasted onto a “postage stamp” smaller than some of the counties I’ve lived in.
I don’t know if I could live easily in a place where every corner has at least one ghost to haunt me.
Yes, this is part of why I ran the manifesto here on the AT. It’s written with a vivid freshness that goes beyond the usual news reports to give a real feel of what it’s like to live in Gaza right now, so that it resonates with an American who has never been confined this way. As you say, the sense of place, of belonging, is full of ‘corners where…’ — where this happened, that happened. It is full of significance, of moments and places that are like signposts, defining our sense of who we are. The fact that you can recognize yourself in the experience of these students, so different from yours and so incomparably harder, is I think a tribute to the power of their cry — and to your capacity for empathy.
Freedom is not cheap. Palestinian youth are at a disadvantage through no fault of their own but a sad series historical events. World community should take a more active role to help alleviate this misery of Gaza youth.
Freedom certainly isn’t cheap, but it’s easily squandered.
So- how does one go about getting the world community to take a more active role? Letters to our Senators here? Letters to Israel and Hamas (what’s their address, anyhow)?
It seems like reading and commenting on blogs & forums might do a little, but also feels like preaching to the choir.
Maybe I could go to Gaza and start building a house? I could do that… (well, I’d like to, if I had the money and connections) but would it mean anything for some American atheist to help build a house? Might be a nice symbol though. Probably already happening? Would they even let me in?…
A few thoughts come to my mind. First, while no comfort to this particular group. I think about the suffering and lack of freedoms in many places around the world. I think back to the Holocaust, the genocide in Darfur, Somalia, Thailand and many other places around the world.
I’m also reminded of something I read around 15 years ago in a document entitled the Prosperity of Humankind, in which it talks about “leaders” making decisions for all of us with little to no input from those most affected. Not only does is happen in Israel and Palestine, but many would argue it also happens here in the US.
We need to recognize that we are all one mankind. “The earth is one country and mankind its citizens.” The decisions we make should be for the benefit of all, not just one country. While those of you who are agnostic or atheist might see this life as all that there is, at the same time most of us hate to see the suffering of others. We need to recognize that what harms one, harms us all. If we compare mankind to teh human body, each of us is part of that body of mankind. We do, I believe, have a responsibility to all the inhabitants of the planet.
We are all going to have different ideas of how to accomplish those ideals, but the trick is not to be so arrogant as to believe that any one of us (or group or us) has the Truth. We need to consult and seek out the best ideas. Select an idea and then all support the idea, even if we disagree with it. Let the idea succeed or fail on its own. If the opposition immediately seeks to undermine a decision, therre is very little chance it can succeed.
As to what to do for the Gaza Youth, other than getting directly involved, whcih some have the ability and means to do, for many of us, it is continuing to pressure our representatives to take stands based on character, not based on whether we can hold onto our positions of power.
We have, IMHO, a lamentably defective system that exists in our country at this time. We must seek to eliminate partisan politics and seek a system that is focused on what is best for all peoples of the world. If we help the rest of the world to help themselves, and if we stop fighting over land, which is ultimately our graves, and recognize that we are all brothers and sisters regardless of race, creed, nationality, etc. Only then can we achieve peace throughout the world. We won’t eliminate problems, but we can work together to solve them as they arise. Up until now, it seems it takes a catastrophe to for us to come together.
“The well-being of mankind,” Bahá’u’lláh wrote more than a century ago, “its peace and
security, are unattainable unless and until its unity is firmly established.”
Ah Bahá’u’lláh, and he created yet another religion..didn’t we have too many of them already?
Jews-Christians-Muslims-Hindus and all theistic religions are the same, they are actually rather limited attempts to explain reality as the people living then saw it but people are stupid enough to follow them even today. Of all these religions Islam has the most advantages primarily because it is young and hence more nimble.
We are now in a better position and so must evolve our own new religion, preferably one in which there is no god, son of god, or prophet a religion of curiosity, of science, of scientific method and inquiry.
At least we can conduct experiments and see for ourselves what is accurate description of reality.
The problem lies in the concept of a nation or nation state if you do away with boundaries than all that remains are humans, going a tad further if you take
away the stupid religions all that separates people are their physical traits, which of course we can’t change but slowly most people accept and adapt to it.
You are complaining about humanity yet you lament the state in your country, are you able to see beyond the narrow concept of a country or nation.
Go ahead write on their Facebook wall, but that is just a load of bs, social networking will get them out of there, well they can always try. This is just propaganda, yes they are being bombed and they are persecuted but yet they can set up a Facebook page and ask for support..are they asking for funds yet if not that may follow or people may just volunteer the money.
Yes go ahead you can call me callous, cruel, godless or just plain stupid.
It IS true that the problem we have in Gaza, Kosovo, Bosnia etc are but manifestations of how we see each other as different. The perception of difference,by itself, would not be as much a problem but for the tendency of one to extrapolate it into something that is seen as a threat to their religion, nation and self. Things that make us stand out will always exist. While it is quite unpractical to expect an Utopian world where everyone is equal, the present conflicts do demand a more lasting solution. The only solution that comes close to achieving this “Education in tolerance”. This might not happen in one lifetime. But we surely should encourage our children to see all points of view of everything they encounter. To take educated decisions – always. To understand that since no one else can think and feel exactly like their selves, it should be acceptable and natural that “these others” arrive at different perspectives to the same situation – be it ideological, theological or existential. My vote goes not for Gaza, Palestine or Israel, but for Humanity. ONLY HUMANITY.
After reading this I am hopeful about the middle east for the first time. I takes the generation of living in this situation to add clearity and simplicity to solve this Gordian knot.
The tragity that is still taking place in humanity today seems like somehow we can solve these situations with all the knowledge & human suffering our species has gone through down through the ages. What a species God or Fate has created.
If the Jews had not suffered so much under Hitler there would not be this recoil in the Middle East.
Somehow the Palestinians are the victums of what Hitler did to the Jews.
Unfortunately I see no soluations.
Why must Humanity keep suffering?
That is not entirely correct. While many Jews came to Palestine after WW2, Jews started immigrating to Palestine well before WWII to escape the Russian pogroms and anti-Semitism in the Arabic world.
Skillman study some history and stop telling tales