Commemorating Palestinian Land Day in Jordan

The following is a guest post by Tighe Barry, a member of the peace group Code Pink. 
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On March 30, 2012, hundreds of demonstrations took place across the globe in commemoration of Palestinian Land Day. This important day in the history of the Palestinian people is a sorrowful reminder of the six Palestinians who were killed by Israeli forces in 1976 while protesting the continued confiscation of their land.
Generation after generation, Palestinians continue to call for an end to the brutal Israeli military occupation and the right to return to their lands. The continued ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from Jerusalem has resulted in a massive outcry and demonstrations worldwide.

Today people from around the world came together in a massive orchestrated effort known as the Global March to Jerusalem (GM2J), timed to coincide with Land Day. Marches took place in Palestine, Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt, Italy, Korea, all over the United States, and in many more locations. A peaceful movement, the Global March to Jerusalem is a people-powered action designed to assert the importance of Jerusalem politically, culturally, and religiously to the Palestinian people and humanity as a whole.
I had the privilege of participating in one of those protests in Amman, Jordan.This issue is of particular concern in Jordan because it has the world’s largest concentration of Palestinian refugees. Nearly 65 percent of the country’s population are of Palestinian origin.

Throughout the day, throngs of Jordanian Palestinians were joined by tens of thousands of Jordanian supporters, as well as those from around the world. Many came from as far away as Malaysia, Indonesia, Canada, Europe and the United States. We all came together, tens of thousands, on a dusty plain on the furthest end of the Jordan Valley overlooking occupied Palestine. We were a sea of peaceful protesters calling for a free Jerusalem for all and for a return of stolen Palestinian land.
Although we could all see the occupied territories, the Israelis would not let us cross the border. Hundreds of Jordanian police and military personnel, along with dozens of tanks and police cars, made sure the crowd stayed about a mile away. So close yet so far.

Groups of youth, not satisfied with being kept away from the border, tried to test the limits. They moved back and forth along the police lines, trying to find a way through. But the authorities would have none of it, and after many rounds of police pushing back and protesters running, the civil disobedience ended in peaceful chanting, singing and dancing.

The explosion of color in an otherwise amber hued surrounding was amazing. Waves of undulating flags, keffiyehs, balloons and kites filled the area. Many handmade signs claiming the injustices of 60 years of occupation abounded. Face painting was the mode of the day for the young children and teens. All this provided an almost celebratory background to an otherwise mournful event commemorating the ongoing suffering in the Palestinian people.

Palestinian dignitaries gave powerful speeches, and the organizers called on representatives from around the world to share their thoughts. The representatives from South Africa conjured up memories of the racist Apartheid system that Israel is mirroring today. Those from India spoke of the Ghandian peaceful protests to overthrow British rule, calling on the world to recognize this same form of civil disobedience, including the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement being used by the Palestinian civil society today.

But the speech that would spoke directly to me was the American, Michael Rabb. He reminded us about the similarities between the Palestinian struggle and the civil rights movement of the 60’s in our own country. He spoke of Martin Luther King, Mississippi and the long struggle to free a people who had long been promised justice only to be denied equal rights for over a hundred years.

As a representative from the United States, I gave interviews to the press and denounced the $3 billion dollars that the U.S. government sends to Israel every year to prop up its repressive military, while here at home our sick lack healthcare and our youth can’t afford a college education.

This is a day I will never forget. I was touched by the extraordinary power of a people in resistance for so many decades. One day, they will cross this border and enter a Free Jerusalem and a Free Palestine. I hope I can walk with them.

Code Pink and Global Exchange Co-founder Medea Benjamin holding a teargas canister in Bahrain, Feb 2012

The following is a guest post by Tighe Barry who is a member of the peace group CodePink.org.  Tighe Barry was part of an observer delegation in Bahrain with the peace group Code Pink.

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As part of an observer delegation in Bahrain with the peace group Code Pink, I visited the village of Bani Jamrah with local Bahraini human rights activists.

In one of the many horrific cases we heard, a 17-year-old boy Hasan, his friend and his 8-year-old brother left their home to go to the grocery store. As they were entering the store they noticed some other youngsters running. Fearing the police would be following them, they decided to wait in the store. The 8 year old hid behind a refrigerator. The police entered the store with face masks on. They grabbed the older boys, pulling them out of the store and into the street.

Once outside the shop the police began to beat them with their sticks and hit them on the head, shouting obscenities and accusations. The police were accusing them of having been involved with throwing Molotov cocktails, asking over and over “Where are the Molotov cocktails?”

The four policemen, all masked and wearing regulation police uniforms, took turns beating the boys while one was instructed to keep watch to make sure no one was video taping. They seemed to be very concerned that there be no witnesses. Quickly, they forced the boys into the waiting police car. Inside the police vehicle was another youth about 18 who appeared to be “Muhabharat,” or plain-clothes police thugs associated with many dictatorships in the Middle East.

As the car sped off, the boys were told to keep their heads down “or we will kill you.” Soon they arrived at an open lot away from possible onlookers. As the two boys were being pulled from the car, the policeman who seemed to be in the charge shouted, “Make them lie down.” Once they were face down on the ground, the policemen took out their knives and stabbed both boys in the left buttock, leaving a gaping wound. The police thugs continued their “questioning”, using profanity to scare their victims. They threatened the boys that they would go to jail for 45 days for “investigation” and that they would never go back to school or get work.

When the thugs realized that they had no choice but to leave these victims, since they had no knowledge of the Molotovs, they searched them to see what they could steal. They took the boys’ mobile phones and asked them to hand over whatever money they had. When they discovered that the boys only had 500fils (about $1.50US), they kicked one of them in the raw wound, laughing as they left them bleeding.

“Who are these masked police and why would they do such things to children?”, you might ask. The boys said they were Syrian immigrants, part of a mostly foreign police force imported by the government and paid to inflict pain on the local people to dissuade them from protesting for their rights.

I asked if the police checked their hands, or smelled their clothes to detect the presence of petrol, since they were accusing the boys of carrying Molotov cocktails. Hussan, laying uncomfortably on his stomach, still in his bloody pants, answered, “No, they made no investigation. These police don’t investigate, they only accuse and punish. We had no contact with petrol, we are students.”

In the corner of the room was Husan’s aunt, holding a little baby that looked very sickly, the red hue of its skin almost burnt looking and its tiny eyes sore and red. I was straining now in my inquiry, like having to push words out my throat. “How old is your child?”, I asked. “Eight months old”, she replied. I knew about the nightly raids in this community, as I happen to be staying less than 200 meters from there and can see the light show each night as hundreds of teargas canisters are shot into this tight grip of middle class houses.

“How do you stop the teargas from getting in the house and affecting your baby?”, I inquired in a pained voice. I, myself, although not in village, feel the effects of the massive clouds of poison that pour over the entire area at night.

“Well, sir, wet towels, we place them each night under the doors,” she answers, as she lights down on the couch near a large flat screen television. “But, sadly, sir, this does not stop the gas. The baby suffers. I try to cover her face with a cloth but she does not like it and cries at the gas and the cloth at the same.”

“One way to stop the gas is to put plastic over the air conditioning unit,” she continued, “but the policemen always cut off the plastic and the gas seeps back inside quickly.”

They showed me a homemade video of those white-helmeted terrorists, using the very same issued knife that they used to cripple the boys, systematically, methodically removing the plastic that was placed to prevent the venomous gas from entering the house. Once removed, they can now shoot the gas, knowing that it will enter the house and poison all inside, especially the kids.

And so it goes in the Kingdom of Bahrain. So it goes in a world so addicted to oil, money and power that children can be stabbed, kidnapped, tortured, terrorized and gassed with nary a word from the outside world.

Are we, in America, so addicted to oil and beholden to powerful Saudis that we will block our ears to the cries of these Bahraini children? Or will we help them grow up in a world where they can know the joy and security that we all want for ourselves? The choice is ours.