Iman’s constant cravings… » “You are originally Arab”

“You are originally Arab”

Under: Around The World, Palestine, Uncategorized @ 11:20 am on Thursday, 07.20.06

This is an email I just received from a friend of mine who moved to Jordan last year. Her true story is just one example of israel’s many racist policies.

“You are originally Arab” the Israeli soldier told me you are not permitted to enter…These were the last words I heard uttered out of the soldiers mouth before boarding the bus back to the Jordan Border, King Hussein Bridge.

Every year my family and I get ready for our annual family vacation to Palestine, this was a pilgrimage I have enjoyed since I was a baby. I was born and raised in Chicago, my parents do not hold Palestinian Id’s because they left Palestine around 1967 to Jordan where they were granted Jordanian citizenship. I too carry a Jordanian citizenship along with my 7 brothers and sisters, we have carried these since we were born; but never did we run into a problem when traveling to Palestine, not once were we asked if we carried other passports.
Upon reaching the Allenby border crossing we were greeted very coldly by the Israeli soldiers, but the tourists on our bus who didn’t possess the distinct Arab features were greeted with arms wide open.

Once the soldier took our family’s passports within 15 minutes he came back only to tell us that my family along with hundreds of other Americans of Arab descent weren’t allowed in because we are originally Arab and hold Jordanian passports; he then told us maybe we should visit the Israeli Consulate to see if we can receive a permission visa to enter. Permission Visa?? HA! Millions of Arabs have gone to the Israeli consulate to get visas to enter their home lands and were denied, I am no different?

It is clear that my American passport is not recognized by the State of Israel, it is clear that the American Embassy will not lift a finger to help me nor my family enter Palestine (we all remember how the American government let alone the American Embassy of Tel Aviv, did nothing to help capture the Israeli solders who murdered my dear friend Rachel Corrie).

I couldn’t help fighting the tears back I knew I would never enter my beloved Palestine, never to see the smiling faces of the struggling Palestinian people of Ramallah, Nablus, and Bethlehem areas. Never to see the churches and mosques of Jerusalem that stood side by side in defiance of the Israeli occupation of its people, nor have coffee with my Israeli friends in Tel Aviv and West Jerusalem; it was all over. As the soldier handed us back our American passports I looked at it with disgust, no longer is it of any use to me now, this used to be my weapon, this used to be my armor and shield, now I am left vulnerable to Israel’s racist policy against all Arabs.

Ladies and Gentleman I have become an Arab, an Arab with no rights to her homeland.

12 Comments »

Ola

07.21.06 @ 3:58 am

That gave me goose bumps! Thanks for sharing Iman, we need more and more of these stories

sarit

07.21.06 @ 6:30 am

There is a security alert here. In case you hadn’t heard, Hezbollah is trying to annihilate Jewish communities in the north (although it is indiscriminately killing Arabs as well); Hamas has been killing Israelis in the south for months; two suicide bombers were captured in the last week, and today there are over 22 alerts as to other suicide bombers moving into the area to slaughter civilians.

Maybe when Arabs like you quit fomenting hate for people like me and my family, you can come back. Until then, go away–I’d rather be safe than burying my children because some soldier was careless enough to let Arab hate-mongers in.

Hamzeh N.

07.24.06 @ 8:47 am

..because some soldier was careless enough to let Arab hate-mongers i

Israeli Textbooks and Children’s Literature Promote Hate and Racism:

http://www.washington-report.org/backissues/0999/9909019.html

I guess Arabs are not the only hate-mongers in this region; looks like Israel is too. And above all of that, it wants to start another war (after convincing the US to start the war on Iraq), so we can also call Israel a warmongering state too.

The suicide bombs? All justified according to Israel’s logic of self defense. According to Israel’s logic of self defense the targetting of innocent civilians is justified if your enemy even attacks a legitimate military target, not civilians.

Rihab

07.24.06 @ 9:47 am

Maybe when Arabs like you quit fomenting hate for people like me and my family, you can come back. Until then, go away–I’d rather be safe than burying my children because some soldier was careless enough to let Arab hate-mongers in.

Go away?? Go away from where?? Her country? Her land?? Maybe you should go away back to where your family migrated from and don’t give me that crap about it belonging to your ancestors 1000years ago because that’s all it is - a load of complete and utter crap. The land has always belonged to the Palestinians (or the Canaanites as known by YOUR faith), and whether or not God promised it to you is up for debate given that only the 14mln or so Jews (out of 6 billion people) in the world believe in that fantasy contract.

Iman

07.24.06 @ 10:04 am

Ola, this is unfortuantely true …many people have been turned away from their own home country, own land…yet you have people like Sarit here who is most probably from Russia or God knows where, has no connection to the land what-so-ever is blabbing about hate, bombings and feeling safe…

Sarit, I am not sure whether to laugh or feel completely disgusted here … laugh at your twisted logic or feel completely disgusted because you actually believe such logic.

I’d like to quote one of my favorite poets (whose poetry by the way was once suggested to be included in a new multicultural literature curriculum for israeli high school students, but of course that didn’t pass stating that israeli students are not ready for it…of course they’re not, because it is the truth)
It is time for you to be gone
Live wherever you like, but do not live among us
It is time for you to be gone
Die wherever you like, but do not die among us
For we have work to do in our land

donotmakefunofmyname

07.24.06 @ 1:51 pm

Sarit,
Can you explain this?
http://wakeupfromyourslumber.blogspot.com/2006/07/israeli-children-sign-their-missiles_18.html

Zionists are the source of hate and Evil.
Do not play DUMB. Enough whining, it aint going to fly anymore.

musketeer

07.28.06 @ 6:29 pm

It is my understanding that, as a historical document, some of those old Bible books indicate that Abraham is the father of both Arabs and Jews, and both have equal claim to the land. Is this not the case?

sarit

07.30.06 @ 5:52 am

The usual twisted Arab hate stuff–Jews have lived here since the start of time. NO ONE spoke Arabic. You’re NOT Canaanites–you’re Arabs, invaders, conquerors and oppressors from that Peninsula to the south. You could live here too but you wouldn’t do that in 1948 alongside a Jewish state–with you, it’s Arab supremacy, Arab rule, Arab oppression of everyone non-Arab and non-Moslem. Talk to the Copts, Kurds or Assyrians.

We don’t want to be your dhimmis. We have a state of our own due to the UN partition (your counterparts in Pakistan are still smarting over the fact that they don’t rule-by-conquest all of India any more) and had you agreed to live in the Palestine created by the partition, you’d be a state also. Until you stop trying to drive us out by terror and murder, there won’t be peace.

Rihab–yes, go back–to America where she was born.She’s an American and a Jordanian, NOT a Palestinian. If by your logic some Jews don’t have a right to live in Israel because their families were made refugees and driven out, and Arab-think says they can’t return, then by that same logic an Arab girl born in Chicago isn’t a Palestinian and has no right to call it ‘her country.’

Hamzeh–try to quote a source that isn’t in Arab pockets. Everyone in America knows that the WRMEA is a Saudi-paid-for-pro-Arab lobby manned by the retired Arabists of the anti-Israel faction of the US State Department. Apart from the well-documented hate in the PA and other Arab societies textbooks, all anyone needs to do is turn on Arab television or watch the Arabs dancing in the street when Jews are killed.

Imam–”It is time for you to be gone
Live wherever you like, but do not live among us
It is time for you to be gone
Die wherever you like, but do not die among us
For we have work to do in our land ”

Thanks for the quote–see ‘Arab hate’ above, proof of. By the way, it’s OUR land. Go get your own–you have the whole middle east to live in. Oh, I forgot–your brethren don’t want you either….they stuck you all in camps, didn’t they? And they won’t let you live amongst them.

Donotmakefunofmyname–sure I can explain it–they’ve just spent two weeks being bombarded by Nasrallah’s killers, living in shelters, listening to their homes being blown into smithereens, hearing the sirens, the bombs. They’re simply returning the sentiment. I’ll take that ONE picture and put it up agains the hundreds of pictures of Palestinian kids dressed up in suicide belts and screaming “Kill the Jews” as a statement of comparative culture–the picture of Jewish girls stands alone and is an aberation caused by Hezbollah’s bombardment; genocidal play acting is a way of life in the hate-infested streets of Arabia.

Rihab

07.30.06 @ 12:29 pm

Rihab–yes, go back–to America where she was born.She’s an American and a Jordanian, NOT a Palestinian. If by your logic some Jews don’t have a right to live in Israel because their families were made refugees and driven out, and Arab-think says they can’t return, then by that same logic an Arab girl born in Chicago isn’t a Palestinian and has no right to call it ‘her country.’

She was born in Ramallah, Palestine not Chicago, USA.

They are the Caananites, history says they are, yes Arabs from the Arabian peninsula came in conquered and lived with the Canaanites but that doesn’t mean that the Palestinians/Canaanites evaporated into thin air. They are living on the land that they’ve lived on since forever and they knew no other home but Palestine! Where do you want them to go?? Do you want them to live on Mars?? Do they have HOMES that they CHOSE TO LEAVE that they can go back to??? Palestinians have no other home and they’ve known no other home unlike the Jewish Russians, Ukranians, Moroccans, Egyptians, French, Germans, and Ethiopians!! How on earth can Jews be encompassed under that many racial groups and ethnicities and yet have the nerve to claim that they originate from Palestine. Yes, some of you might, but over the course of 1000 plus years you’ve migrated so much that you can’t claim that land anymore. It’d be like the Greeks telling the Turks to get out of Turkey because it used to be part of Greece, that wouldn’t make sense if it happened and therefore Israel’s entire existence makes no sense!!

sarit

07.30.06 @ 1:33 pm

Rihab–nonsense! Read any document on population and statistics from the Ottoman Empire and you will find it was an empire without internal borders. The people you now call “Palestinian” were not ‘Canaanites” (know anyone who speaks Canaanite and worships Canaanite idols these days?). There were indigenous peoples here, including the Jews (source of the name is Judea, one of the territories of the tribe of Judah of the House of Israel) but not “Arabs” in the sense of Arabic-speaking peoples.The “Palestinians” are a people whose origins include indigenous Arabs of the Ottoman Empire who lived along the litoral but also those who moved in from Egypt, Iraq, Syria etc. There is a village in the Galilee peopled entirely by Arabs who moved there under Ottoman rule from Algeria—so your lame attempt to prove Arabs are the ‘natives’ and Jews are “Europeans” is laughable.

And point of fact, is that the Greeks DID tell the Turks to get out of Greece, despite the Ottoman Turks claiming it was part of their Moslem empire for centuries. Like the Greeks, we are asserting our rights to live in our aboriginal homeland as free people, not subject to Arab imperialistic ambitions.

And finally, she says herself she was ‘born and raised in Chicago”–see the post above. That makes her an American by birth and citizenship and Jordanian by citizenship. If SHE has a right to live in Palestine, as a returning Palestinian, then Jews have the right to live in Israel as returnees as well.

Iman

07.31.06 @ 1:07 am

Sarit, how about this? plain and simple: You give me the address of your God so that I can send him an appeal to find me a land like he found you one! And by the way, that’s Iman - with an N :cool:

sarit

08.2.06 @ 9:58 am

Iman, sorry about the misspell–

I don’t want you to leave; I want you to stop trying to drive me away.

We’ve had multiple wars. Each time the Palestinians get screwed. It’s time to stop, Hamas and Hezbollah notwithstanding. A Palestinian state next door to Israel could be the perfect middle eastern Switzerland/Luxemburg intellectual center, tax-free zone and banking power. But not while all the energy of the Palestinians is wasted on war.

Besides, Gaza has (reputedly) some of the world’s best beaches–can you imagine 5 star hotels to host the winter hordes from Norway and England? How about a high speed train to link Cairo to Baghdad (there is a bridge or tunnel proposal to cross Israel). How about the Port of Gaza being THE transport hub to transship cargo from the Med to the Red Sea?

Beats war any day.

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“You are originally Arab”

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