We are not your “other” anything
Posted Jul 22, 2014

We are not your “other” anything

by Omid Safi


No, sir.
we are not your “other” anything.

On January 29, 1795 the United States Naturalization Act, declared citizenship the domain of “free white persons.”

Was I your “other” then?

In 1917, the arrogant Balfour declaration of the British colonial powers declared the intention to create a Jewish homeland in Palestine. As for those of us who had been living on the land for a thousand years, you spoke of us as merely the “non-Jews” whose rights—you said—were not to be trampled upon.

Was I your “other” then?

And today, when the Israeli army, carrying state-sponsored terrorism, kills over 583 Palestinians, 76% of them civilians, about 100 children, injuring a thousand, the morally bankrupt corporate media has the audacity to declare that “70 others” died today.

We ain’t your “other.”

We were never your other.

We are:
Fully human being, created in the sight of God,
Lived on this land for a thousand years,
Planted our olive trees
Expelled from our homeland in 1948,
Under siege in Gaza.

We are:
Palestinian,
human.

You can put us under siege, and shoot at us from the air and the land and the sea.

And you, walking in the bloody footsteps of colonial powers, dare to speak of us as “others” killed?

At least this morally bankrupt corporate media can mention our death
In small fonts
On the margins.

As for the Nobel-Peace Prize winning President in the White House,

We say:
your stunned silence is not very reassuring.

With our last dying breath, we will breathe:
we were never,
ever,
your “other.”

Our tradition,
Your tradition
Teach:
to take one human life is
to take the life of humanity.

It is in the Qur’an (5:32),

And the Talmud (Mishnah Sanhedrin).

Read it sometime.
The part too about “Thou shall not kill.”

In rendering us
“other”
occupying us,
killing us,

it is not just our human life your are trampling—

It is your own humanity.

Stop!

The life you save
Saves your own humanity.


#Palestine #Gaza #FreePalestine #Gazaunderattack


SOURCE: Omid Safi’s Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/ostadjaan?ref=hl