These are hard and bitter days for us, and it has been 35 long years. The hand of our oppressor has never rested more heavily on us than today, and it seems that the days to come will be sterner. A man of truth can find very few pleasant words to speak. Where do we go from here to find freedom as a people, as a nation?
For we are a nation indeed, made so by the State of Israel in the same way that their fathers were made so by the injustice and cruelty of Pharaoh. And just as modern Israel was made a nation in the Warsaw Ghetto by the Nazis, they made us a nation at Jenin, whose defenders played the man for our people against one of the mightiest military machines on earth.
Certainly the only road to liberty for anyone is truth. We clearly see in Ariel Sharon that no amount of violence, substituting for the truth he must learn about himself, will ever set him or his people free. If that's true for him, it's true for anyone. It's true for us.
Jihad, the war of God against injustice, means first to fight against the injustice within ourselves. To do otherwise is hypocrisy. As Issa put it, first remove the log from your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother's eye. Jihad means to fight the battles of the Lord, not to please ourselves by taking our own vengeance, as Abigail reminded Daoud the king of Israel in the days that he was pursued by Shaul in the wilderness. We, pursued today by Shaul Mofaz and his kind, must learn the ways of Daoud, that we may be saved from our enemies as he was from his.
Malcolm X, leader of black people in America, knew well the oppression of a self-righteous racist regime. He rightly said, "Only guilt admitted accepts truth." Therefore, only guilt admitted leads to freedom. And so, even though the guilt of Israel is doubtless greater, let us take Malcolm's advice and consider our own ways, admitting our own guilt, and how we have subverted our own cause. In this, Ariel Sharon and the Gush Emunim settlers can teach us: let's consider how stupid they are, and learn not to be stupid like them anymore.
Are they wise to reach for complete dominion over us, evidently meaning to drive us out altogether? Why then do some of us aim to drive them altogether out of this land? Are we doing ourselves a favor when we make them feel about us the way their behavior makes us feel about them? If it's dumb for them to say we should move to Jordan, is it smart for us to tell them to leave their home? For indeed, it is their home!
If it's wrong for them to shoot our children and pregnant women, can it be right for us to blow up their children in pizza parlors? We may not know yet what to do, but let's start by not doing what we know on our own skins is unjust! If we can't think of anything better, do we accept that excuse from Ariel Sharon?
I do not say that we should not resist our adversary. In Wadi Haramiyeh, a single soldier of Palestine killed 10 men of the occupying army at a checkpoint the day after they had fired on a pregnant woman on the way to the hospital and murdered her husband. Truly, justice was done. After Jenin, the invaders hesitate to rape Gaza. It is one thing to shoot unarmed children on sand dunes at Khan Younis while the world is not watching; it is another to do battle in the streets and alleys with soldiers of Palestine defending their homes as the Jews once defended themselves in Warsaw against the Nazis. We need not follow the dishonorable example of our oppressors.
Indeed we are not strong. We do need help. But where shall we go? Will the United States of America ever behave with justice. Not likely! Being rich and powerful themselves, they hate and fear the poor and feel at home with their own kind all over the world. Their hearts will never be with us. And besides, if this region finds real peace, Israel will no longer need to depend on America for the tools of oppression. Israel will no longer need to be an American satellite, and real peace will deprive America of its excuse to exercise hegemony in the region. Real peace with justice is the last thing America wants here; its ideal is constant tension without full scale war. From the rest of the world we may get sympathy, but how many true friends have we ever been able to count on?
There is One, the hope of the dispossessed in all ages, the God of Truth. Even He seems to have forsaken us. But have we not forsaken Him, justifying ourselves to the faithless world, instead of humbling ourselves before Him?
He seemed once to have abandoned Jeremiah the prophet, who demanded of Him with better cause than any of us, "Why is my pain perpetual, and my wound incurable, refusing to be healed? Will you be to me like an unreliable stream, failing waters?"
How did God answer Jeremiah? "If you return, then I will bring you back. You shall stand before Me. If you take out the precious from the vile, you shall be as My mouth. Let them return to you, but you must not return to them. And I will make you to this people a fortified bronze wall; and they shall fight against you, but they shall not prevail against you, for I am with you to save you and deliver you. I will deliver you from the hand of the wicked, and I will redeem you from the grip of the terrible."
Let us then fight the good fight the God of Truth has called us to.
Let us indeed take what is precious from the vile things we have relied
on all too much. Let us take the advice of Suleiman the son of Daoud:
confess our sins and find mercy, rather than covering them with self-justifications.
Let us learn to do justice even to the unjust, as God does, taking care
not to behave any longer as they do.