Huwaida Arraf and the Art of History Making
The Palestinian activist who challenged the blockade of Gaza
Location: The Arab American Cultural Center (ACC), Houston
Time: 6:00 PM, Sunday February 27, 2011.
Subject: The Inspiring accounts of today’s Popular Resistance in Palestine.
The Organizer: Palestinians for Peace and Democracy (P4PD)
The Guest Speaker: Huwaida Arraf
The Guest’s profession: History Making
That was the invitation I received by e-mail, except the guest’s profession which I concluded by myself after I listened and talked to her. The Palestinian young lady, who was born in the U.S. to Palestinian immigrants and who graduated from Michigan and Washington universities, accepted the invitation of the P4PD to come to Houston to talk to the Arab community about her unique experience in resisting the aggressive politics of the Israeli occupation with all peaceful means, an experience I like to call “The Art of History Making”. She represents a raw model for the contemporary Arab youth generation who refuses both the social and political injustice in all shapes. That is the generation who made up their mind to change the injustice on the ground and to draw the face of their future by themselves without any mandate.
There is a lot to write about Huwaida Arraf, but that is not what this article is for, as Google has more information about her than I or any individual. That is why I’m limiting what I’m writing about her in this; she is one of the major planners and implementers of all the attempts that took place to break the Israeli coastal blockade against Gaza for the past few years. My main goal behind this article is to point the finger into two subjects connected to her, and Google has no clue about them.
The First Subject
This one is connected personally and directly to her, and I revealed it to the guests during the dinner that was given in her honor by P4PD the night before her presentation and attended by numerous Palestinian and Arab community leaders and intellectuals in Houston. This subject can be briefed as ‘The similarities in the youth years’ between her and another lady who, during her life, became the prime minister of her country.
These similarities, in turn, can be briefed as: Both of their parents immigrated to the U.S., running away from injustice. Each one of them spent her youth years here, where they graduated from high school and college. Then, each one got married to an American man and was enjoying an easy and luxurious life until that day when they discovered and decided that they did not belong here, but where their people needed them most and where they could help and defend them best, locally and world-wide. So they both left every thing in the U.S. behind, but with a time difference close to a century between them, and headed to the same destination, Palestine. The irony of time here is that each stood on opposite sides of the Arab-Israeli conflict. The first lady was our guest that evening, Huwaida Arraf, who returned to her parents’ Homeland a few years ago, whereas the second one was not anyone else than the late Israeli prime minister, Golda Maier.
Believing in the importance of ‘Learning about our enemy’, I recently watched a documentary movie about the life of Golda Maier. Why and how she decided to leave the U.S. with her husband heading to Palestine in 1921 to live a harsh life in one of the Kibutses (What Israel calls a people farm)?
Also how her job was a mix of potato peeling, chicken farming, dish washing and laundry, until her husband could not take any more and returned to the US alone. She refused to return with him, saying “If we do not sacrifice our luxury during this critical time of our history, then our people will not have a future to enjoy luxury”!
I, myself, do not hesitate for a second to hold her responsible for a lot of the terrible things that happened to the Palestinian people in particular, and the Arab people (of the confronting countries) in general. But, at the same time, I have to respect the fact that she sacrificed every thing by moving to Palestine and endangered her life just to serve her people and the cause she believed in. She, for example, did not say ‘Who am I to do that? What can I do by myself? Is it really worth it to sacrifice every thing? My respect to her even increased after the October War of 1973 when she accepted full responsibility in regard to the results of that war, especially their withdrawal from the Suez Canal, not forgetting that her title before the war was “The Mother of Israel”
I recalled this documentary movie when I was listening to Huwaida Arraf at the dinner table, so I could not help it but to stand up and tell the guests that what Huwaida did was not easy, nor ordinary. It was an act that would not come but from people who were born to make History, not to sit and look or watch only. I also added that I, with the poet’s imagination that knows no limits, will not be surprised if I see her in the future as the new prime minister of Free Palestine. And if that happens, then it will mean that the position will go to a person who had a well known history. A history supported by the flotilla of boats in breaking the Gaza blockade, and also standing in front of the guns of the occupation in order to protect the sons of people from being killed, not the other way around!
The Second Subject
It came as an idea I presented to Huwaida, since she is one of the establishers of two human rights’ movements: the International Solidarity and the Free Gaza. I told her that I, with a poet’s unlimited imagination again, wish to see the Tunisian and the Egyptian scenarios’ moving to the Palestinian territories of 1948. To see the Arabs (of those areas) who are also called the Arab-Israelis, along with their supporters from the Israeli ‘Peace Now’ movement and others, marching by the millions in the streets of all the cities, demanding the return of their properties that were taken from them with different means before and after the existence of the state of Israel. They should hold in the air the ownership documents and the keys they still keep, which prove their ownership of those properties.
Let’s imagine that scene again: Millions of people, marching peacefully, declaring the civil disobedience and the general strike and demanding of their properties that the occupation’s forces took and their civil rights that the occupation’s racist policy neglected for more than sixty years.
I wish every one agrees with me that such a scene will be worth watching. At least to see the difference in dealing, with such a crowd, between regimes who don’t hide their dictatorship brutality as Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, etc. and a regime which brags about democracy and freedom as Israel? If that happens on the ground (and I don’t see it impossible after what is going on in the Arab World) then I don’t think it will create a trouble to Israel. Because Israel put itself in trouble when it declared its statehood back in 1948, by removing the Palestinian people from their Homeland and ignoring their legitimate rights. By doing that, Israel put itself in the same row with the rest of the Arab regimes; all of them thought that the trio of ‘Force, Oppression and Ignoring’ could impose the ‘De Facto’, or the reality situation, and could also bring them the ‘Legitimacy’ they never had.
But, as the Arab regimes woke up lately to discover that they were wrong, Israel will soon find out that it is not luckier, and I have no doubt that it (Israel) will wake up one day to discover the same mistake. That is when its opponents and challengers start to show up, not only by tens and from the sea of Gaza, but by millions and from all the Palestinian cities. When Israel knows that those opponents and challengers are not foreigners or terrorists, but Israeli citizens. And that these people don’t want to destroy Israel or throw its people in the sea, not even throw stones at them. These people may give flowers and hugs to the Israeli police and army, and even call them ‘Brothers and Cousins’. But after these protocols and intimate gestures are over, the protesters will say to their ‘Brothers and Cousins’: By the way, we want our rights, houses and lands back.
When that day comes to life, I will look for the face of Huwaida Arraf among the other young Arabs who are making history nowadays.
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By: Tarif Youssef-Agha
Writer & Poet
March 3, 2011
Houston, Texas
http://sites.google.com/site/tarifspoetry