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The Timeless Spirit
A basic fact about life and about
people, in all places and at all times, which the Palestinians embodied and
have manifested during the 20th century, and continue to do so as we
enter the 21st, is that the human spirit is undefeatable. This timeless
spirit is very rarely talked about. It stands in contradiction with the
logic which is increasingly invading societies around the world, the logic of
winning, control, and profit. This logic is an accompaniment of the
industrial-consumption mode of living. The dominant forms of education,
development, progress and the mass media (all of which try to put people on the
same track, thus killing diversity) have been the main means for spreading this
logic and this mode of living.
Humanity can be suppressed in some
places at certain times but, as long as there is injustice, it will always be
boiling underneath the surface, and it will erupt by various peoples, taking
various forms, depending mainly on the living culture of the people.
Injustice cannot last. Just like a volcano where boiling energy has to
come out, and like an earthquake where a fault has to be corrected and the
earth has to rest, humanity will erupt and shake somewhere, somehow, until
justice is regained. There is no way to suppress it completely.
Throughout the 20th century,
Palestinians have been one of the main “human volcanoes,” and Palestine has
been one of the places where humanity kept erupting, throwing out rich “lava”
around. We have embodied hope, faith and creativity as well as inspired
them in many others.
We were under occupation for most of
the 20th century. We still are. Though full of pain,
suffering and injustice, our story has been one of the most incredible stories
of all times. Many forces have collaborated against us in order to quell
our spirit, but never succeeded. “God” was brought in, and history was
falsified, in order to justify and legitimize the injustices and crimes against
us. Britain built several structures in the region to make sure that
Palestine would not backfire. Ben Gurion and John Foster Dulles predicted
that “the elders will die and the young will forget.” Golda Meir, among
others, declared that we did not exist. There is no other people that the
US vetoed as many UN resolutions, asserting that people’s rights, as much as
the Palestinians. No other people as much as us has witnessed as many
politicians, scholars, journalists, and new evangelists been lined up and
enlisted to declare that we are sub-human or that we are wrong. The vast
majority of Palestinians have been uprooted from their lands and homes and
scattered around the world. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians have
been killed since 1948, many have had their bones crushed, their bodies
deformed and tortured, their homes and villages destroyed, their trees
uprooted, their children killed, their youth imprisoned, and their elderly died
in pain with their memories. Nothing succeeded. Palestinians’
spirit – and heads – have remained high. This is actually a manifestation
of the greatness of humanity. People are incredible and
unpredictable. We are, of course, not the only ones who embody and
manifest this spirit, but in the 20th century, we have been a main group.
Many peoples have embodied this spirit throughout history. American Indians,
probably more than any other, have embodied this spirit and this greatness
during five full centuries. Eduardo Grillo Fernandes, an American Indian
from the Peruvian Andes, uses the word “plague” to describe the European
invasion of his continent 500 years ago. That plague wiped out the vast
majority of people and tried to wipe out their cultures but, unlike the spirit
of the indigenous peoples and their cultures, that plague cannot regenerate
itself. Grillo says that what we need is to absorb this “sickness” the
same way a healthy body does: in a way that makes the body more immune to the
sickness in the future. The American Indian “human volcano” has been
regenerating itself in many regions, including the Andes region and Mexico, and
it has erupted recently in the Zapatista movement in the Chiapas region in
Mexico. The approach they follow is not one of complaining nor feeling
victimized nor fighting the plague but, rather, to spend their energies on
healing their bodies, minds and souls from the plague, and regaining balance
and harmony in their lives. By so doing, they hope that their oppressors
will also heal themselves gradually from the arrogance and blindness with which
they currently live. The South Africans, the Irish and the Chechneyans
are among other groups who have manifested this spirit. The Jews
themselves embodied and manifested this spirit in earlier times.
This spirit can only flourish when it
is the genuine, authentic and free expression of the majority of people, each
manifesting it in her/his own way, place and time. It can only flourish
when there is no charismatic leader and no strong organization, both of which
usually rob people of their responsibility and real participation.
It can flourish when the initiative is taken at the personal level but, at the
same time, manifests a collective will. (The last elections in Iran
manifested this combination of personal initiative and collective will.)
This timeless spirit is manifested when each person becomes like a spring which
joins thousands of other springs, naturally, to form a human river that brings
in with it new life and new hope. Such a natural process, as I mentioned
earlier, usually suffers under planned organization; it loses its spirit.
Organization and authority are needed to respond to necessities in life, but
they are detrimental to the sustainability of the human spirit. The human
spirit can be sustained only when people feel the liberty within themselves to
think and act autonomously and move collectively, just like drops of water in a
river. Inspiring, rather than authoritative, leadership is what usually
accompanies this spirit. Such leadership necessarily embodies wisdom.
The human spirit manifests itself in
small, simple and caring acts, such as saying no to injustice, even if one
knows that that may lead him/ her to be crucified or killed. We witnessed
this greatness and spirit, for example, in the faces and actions of women whose
homes were demolished in the Gaza Strip, and they stayed in the places of their
homes and started cooking and feeding their children and caring for the elderly
and helping each other. Some of these women had their homes destroyed for
the fourth time in their lives: in 1948, 1956, 1967/68, and now in 2001.
We witness this greatness in the ability of people to survive under the
harshest conditions: Palestinian towns and villages are currently isolated from
each other and surrounded by foreign army and settlers from all sides.
(Just imagine the towns of Medford, Newton, Arlington, Weston, Somerville, etc
around Boston being all isolated from each other, surrounded by an army of
soldiers and settlers shooting at random, terrorizing people, for an extended
period of time! Would they be able to survive the way Palestinians have been
able to?) It is hard to realize the extent and depth at which current
attempts are designed to tear Palestinians and our communities other than by
being there. We also witnessed the timeless human spirit in the defiance
of people against attempts to intimidate them by F-16 and other gigantic modern
means of destruction. We witnessed the significance of this spirit in the
reactions of the biggest power in history, in its response to a small and
helpless group of people who refuse to be dehumanized. We watched, for
example, how easily and shamelessly the majority of the US Congress was
enlisted to decide with total ignorance (no one was ever in a Palestinian home,
although they are welcome to come) that Palestinian mothers are to be
blamed! And we watched, as another example, how the head of the CIA
himself was dragged to Ramallah to twist Arafat’s arm to convince people in the
Gaza Strip to accept the fact that it is alright for 5000 Jews from New York
and Boston to steal and live on 40% of the Strip’s land and use most of the
water; i.e. to convince people to accept injustice and give up their
humanity. These responses show how serious those in power take assertions
of the human spirit. [I have written elsewhere about manifestations of
this spirit during the first intifada. See, for example, my
article “Community education is to reclaim and transform what has been made
invisible.” Harvard Educational Review, Vol. 60 No. 1 February
1990.] Obviously, it is not the military threat that the centers of power
fear (none of the above groups will ever have any significant power.)
Rather, it is their inspiring spirit and their ways of living that are the
target of crushing plans. It is this spirit (whether in Palestine,
Mexico, Iran, Chechnya, Ireland or South Africa) that people everywhere ought
to celebrate. This does not mean that the Palestinians or Zapatistas
cannot be physically crushed, but that if that happens, the spirit they embody
will erupt again, as 500 years of the American Indians’ history, and 100 years
of Palestinian history, show.
What keeps this human flame
glowing? What sustains the human spirit in peoples and communities?
Definitely, it is not modern institutions, it is not experts on revolutionary
change, it is not the universal declaration of human rights, it is not world
organizations and big budgets, it is not civil society (as preached by
academics and experts), it is not professionals and development plans, and it
is not people with long and impressive CVs. Rather, it is real people;
people who may have none of the modern symbols, but who still have humanity
beating in their hearts; people who embody love, faith and hope, and who are
ready to put the effort needed to understand and heal. It is what is
rooted in people as men, women and children, and what is rooted in their
cultural soils. In the case of the Palestinians, part of what is rooted
in our cultural soil is the family, the neighborhood, the community, our ways
of living and learning, and Islam and Eastern Christianity -- that is,
everything that education, development and world organizations ignore,
belittle, or try to suppress.
I will choose al-jame’ (the
mosque), as one part of what constitutes our cultural soil, to elaborate
on. During the first intifada, I witnessed something that never
ceased to be inspiring and fascinating to me up till this day. There are
two words in Arabic for mosque: al-masjed and al-Jame’. The
first word, al-masjed, literally means a place of prayer which, in
Islam, could be anywhere. The second word, al-Jame’, literally
means a place for assembly. This is the role which I experienced in the
West Bank and the Gaza Strip during the first intifada. I visited
many places during that period, including al-Mazra’ah, Ya’bad, al-Yamoon and
al-Jalazoon. Mosques became places where people met to discuss what was
going on and what needed to be done; where physicians tended to the wounded;
where food was distributed to the needy, where news (via minarets) were
“broadcasted” to the surrounding inhabitants. Israel forbade all social
forms of gathering, but could not succeed completely in mainly four areas: the
family, the neighborhood, small groups of friends, and al-jame’.
Unlike foreign “plastic” structures and bodies, such as schools, universities,
clubs, associations, and NGOs (which were easily closed down), these four
indigenous rooted “structures,” along with people, became alive and
active. Being part of the cultural soil of people and knitted into the
social fabric of society, they couldn’t be closed down or totally
paralyzed. It was during that period that I realized for the first time
in my life a basic difference between the mosque and the church. In fact,
the mosque probably resembles the early Christian gatherings, but that spirit
seems to have been lost in the process of the institutionalization of
Christianity. [There are of course exceptions such as the role some
churches played in Central and South America in the 1960s and 1970s.] I
was living in Ramallah during the first intifada, where many churches
exist; none of them became the open and dynamic space which mosques immediately
acquired. The secret, I believe, is in the concept and in the
design. As an Arab Christian and as an educator, I have been fascinated
and inspired by this realization of al-Jame’. I have been asking
myself ever since how a similar space can be created in churches, schools and
universities. One basic difference that I see is that churches are
basically denominational. There is membership where people belong to a
church, and there are seats where people sit and listen. In other words,
control is a built-in ingredient in the structure and design of the
church. In contrast, al-jame’ as I experienced it during that
period was an open space, which welcomed everyone. There are no seats and
no membership. All we had to do is take off our shoes and be respectful
of others, in the sense of not disturbing them. In addition to Palestine,
I visited mosques in Damascus, Cairo, Amman, and al-Qarawiyyeen mosque
in Fez, Morocco. I watched people sitting on the floor against a column;
or sitting with others discussing various topics; or praying; or reading; or
sitting and just contemplating and reflecting; or (as I saw in Fez) several
groups of children sitting on the floor, each group around an adult,
interacting freely with one another and with the adult. I couldn’t help
but ask myself: when did the shredding arrangement, called classrooms full of
rowed seats, became the norm? How could our grandparents be seduced to
exchange that flexible interactive space (which I witnessed in Fez) for
something that tears the social fabric of a learning group? It would be
very inspiring and useful for us to look at what took place in Cordoba a
thousand years ago, for example, and recapture that city’s spirit of
invigorating learning space and environment.
This realization of the mosque
brought up in my mind a more realistic and dynamic meaning of culture. Al-jame’
as I described it above is a manifestation of culture, not as something of the
past or something in contrast to modernity, but as something very alive in
people and their lives. The soil of the earth which we use for planting,
and the water we drink, don’t become obsolete just because they were used for
thousands of years. I felt the same way about al-jame’ during the
first intifada. The way I witnessed how alive it was made me feel
that we have to rethink, and probably unlearn, much of what we have been
conditioned to believe in through our education. Just like the soil of
earth, the soil of culture does not become obsolete unless we harden it or
ignore it. As long as culture generates and regenerates life, it is
meaningless to talk about culture/ tradition vs. modernity (as is customary in
academia).
The necessity and inevitability of
Oslo grew exactly from the need to suppress the timeless spirit as it was
manifested during the first intifada. Through Oslo, however, they
were able to suppress the spirit for few years, but since injustice not only
continued but also gained new depth and new forms, it was inevitable that that
human timeless spirit would erupt again. And it will continue to do so as
long as injustice continues.
Using such words as success and
failure to describe a person, a community, an act or a phenomenon is totally
meaningless in the context of talking about the timeless spirit. Some may look
at the Palestinian situation and see failure. Others may look at it and
see it as one of the manifestations of the human spirit in today’s world, as an
assertion of humanity under highly organized plans to crush us. When we
talk about the human spirit, we look for what is nurturing for the human soul,
heart and mind. We look at whether a person, a family, or a community is
nurturing or not, and of being open to be nurtured or not. A living or
healthy body is not one which has nothing wrong with it, but one which rushes
naturally to do what needs to be done when something goes wrong with a certain
part of it. In this sense, the Palestinian body is one of the main bodies
that manifested health in the 20th century. A healthy body
starts the healing process, without waiting for permission, without conducting
a feasibility study, without being given guarantees that things would
work. A healthy community is the same. It just does what is
humanly dictated and what needs to be done. In short, to talk about the
human spirit is to talk about the ability to generate oneself. In this
sense, Palestine is like a real flower; it may wither away sometimes and seem
to die, but only to regenerate itself through the seeds it scatters around,
which flourish everywhere.
This was the spirit of the intifada.
It is an adventure into humanity when humanity is under all kinds of attempts
to subjugate it to the rules and needs of consumption and profit. There
is no meaning to describe the intifada as successful or not. If we
do that, then we have to conclude that according to modern standards, measures
and ways of thinking, the biggest failure in history was Jesus. He lasted
for only 3 years, and then was crucified and his friends and the believers were
scattered and followed everywhere. But, it is ridiculous to describe
Jesus and what he did as successful or not. He did what was in harmony
with his commitment to life and to people. That’s why he has been one of
the most inspiring people of all times. People cannot cease to feel
hopeful and inspired by reading his story. Like him, people who embody
the human spirit are ready to die rather than sell their humanity, not for any
price or any gains. He asked what would benefit man if he gains the whole
world but loses himself. He stood in front of Pilate with his head up,
pitying those who thought they could rob him of his commitment to the
disinherited, to the scapegoated, and to children. That is the spirit of
“Allahu Akbar,” the eternal call against arrogance, against any one who thinks
he is greater than others: God is greater. The call basically says that
there is no one who is small in the eyes of God. This is the secret as to
why the spirit of religions has been able to regenerate itself throughout
history.
Part of the human spirit is to dare
remain simple, and aware of what nature has endowed on us; not to fall into the
trap of thinking that nothing can be done without powerful organizations,
experts, professionals, and big plans and big budgets. That is, not to
fall into the trap that we cannot learn without schools, drink without taps,
heal without hospitals, get information without mass media, solve conflicts
without courts, move without cars, and enter heaven without clergy. In
other words, the human spirit means to liberate oneself from the hegemony of
professionals, institutions and current dominant forms of development and
progress.
The Palestinian situation, no doubt,
is full of pain and suffering but, at the same time, it calls for hope and
celebration. If we fail to see the crucial importance of the existence of
people who are ready to do all they can to assert their humanity, humanity will
deteriorate into creatures who are drugged by education, the mass media, banks,
insurance companies, TV sets, and shopping malls. There is every reason
to celebrate people who still carry the flame and manifest the human spirit in
the world today. Not to give up one’s humanity, for any price, is
certainly an occasion for celebration.
I would like, thus, to propose that
we, Palestinians and Arabs, choose a day, say December 9, which is an important
date in Palestinian history, to commemorate and celebrate this timeless human
spirit. [Others may choose other dates to celebrate the human spirit
which they manifest. The Zapatistas, for example, may choose January 1,
which is an important date in their history. Later, we may all decide to
choose one common day to celebrate this spirit.] What I mean is
celebrating in a way that deepens the harmony and balance within ourselves, in
our lives, and with our surroundings. It means to avoid being lazy and
taking the easy path of imitating and following. It means to put the
effort needed to affirm our ways of living, to protect the diversity in human
existence, and to reconstruct the various parts that have been torn apart by
the various forms of the plague. I mentioned the open space of al-jame’
and the spirit of Jesus, as two characteristic features in our culture, that
are crucial in this process of healing and reconstructing. Others can
point out to other features and aspects of our lives and our cultures (such as
the way peasants converse with nature, the way friendship nurtures young
people, and the way Palestinians relate to Jerusalem). By celebrating,
then, I mean coming together and sharing various characteristic features of our
culture; features that are crucial to nurturing, healing, learning and
living. We need to reconstruct – together – our lives again according to
what we really are and what we really have. We can do this by each one of
us living creatively. The plague comes at different times in different
clothing, under different names and titles, usually in sweet and attractive
covers. Healing ourselves from it, in all its forms, is the way into the
future. To illustrate, Cairo, which in Arabic (al-Qahira)
literally means the conqueror of invaders, has been facing (like most cities
around the world) a plague, an invader, of a new kind: cars! This plague
carries with it all the symbols of progress and development. The real
question then is: “Will Cairo be able to survive this new invader?”
Anyone who has not lost his/her senses can easily see the effect of this
invader/ plague on almost every aspect of life in Cairo: on buildings
(including the pyramids), on people, on how the city is dissected into many
pieces, on the communal spirit, on the air, the water, the soil, and on the
Nile – the lifeline, not only of Cairo, but of Egypt. There is no easy
recipe for dealing with this plague, but sooner or later, it has to be dealt
with. And, by dealing with it, other things will start falling in place.
On that day, December 9, we celebrate
the fact that we don’t only see the darkness that is overcoming the world but
also see the light that is living and alive inside us, as persons, as
communities and as cultures. The harm and suffering can be turned around
and produce creative acts as well as erupt creative energies in us, in our
attempts to heal and build. Hopefully, Jews will remember their history
and join Palestinians and others in this much-needed healing/ building process
in the world today.
Munir Fasheh
Director, Arab Education Forum
July 25, 2001
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