Haaretz February 19, 2016
'Call Me a Terrorist, but I'm No Different From Israeli Troops Defending Their
Homeland'
Some thoughts on the true source of incitement against and hatred of Israelis
from a Palestinian who spent 23 years in jail for killing one.
http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-1.704179
Gideon Levy and Alex Levac |
Najah Mohammed Muqbel, a Fatah activist who served 23 years in prison for the
murder of an Israeli, Yaakov Shalom. Credit: Alex Levac
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As we make our way down a narrow, dark alley barely wide enough to walk
through, on the way to the house of mourning, Najah Mohammed Muqbel bends over
to pick up a few spent cartridges. “You see, this is the material that incites
our children,” he says.
In 1990, Muqbel was sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of Yaakov
Shalom in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Ein Karem. Released after 23 years, he
is now a key activist in Fatah, talking on the movement’s behalf in West Bank
schools.
“We do not want to die and we do not send our children to die,” he says, before
we enter the small, cramped home of Omar Madi, a teenager who was killed last
week by Israeli soldiers in the Al-Arroub refugee camp. “No father wants his
child to die. But sometimes our children make decisions that are bigger than
their age.”
Al-Arroub, on the main road between Bethlehem and Hebron, is one of the most
squalid of refugee camps, and one of the most militant. We are also joined
accompanied by Thomas Huelse, an Israeli automotive engineer of German origin
who has “adopted” a family living in the camp. The mother of the family is from
Deir al-Assad, in the Galilee; the father is from Al-Arroub. Their house
overlooks the cemetery, where Omar, the young shahid (martyr for the cause),
was killed. Omar’s home is situated at the other end of the camp, next to the
approach road that the Israel Defense Forces has sealed off with large concrete
blocks, not far from the army guard tower that dominates the landscape.
The bereaved parents, Naama and Yusuf Madi, and their 10 remaining children
huddle in the house. Anguish is etched on the face of the father, a
hardscrabble laborer of 52, employed by the Bethlehem Municipality.
The event occurred last Wednesday, February 10. A few youths threw stones at
soldiers who, as usual, had infiltrated deep into the camp. One bullet struck
Omar. He wasn’t yet 16; he died 10 days before his birthday, his mother tells
us. The last time she saw him was on the roof of their house, when he asked her
to wash his sports shoes, which were muddy. She told him she’d wash them with
the rainwater collected in the tank on the roof, and that he should clean up
afterward. Omar then went to pray in the mosque. And afterward “the story
ended,” in Naama’s words.
Omar Madi's parents.Credit: Alex Levac
Shots were heard in the camp. Her heart told her it was her son, and at
Al-Mizan Hospital in Hebron a short time later she saw his body. The bullet had
entered Omar by way of his right hip and exited through the left one; he was
declared dead shortly afterward by the hospital staff.
Many young people in the camp are wearing black T-shirts with Omar’s photo
emblazoned on them.
“They [the soldiers] murdered him in cold blood,” one of the teen’s brothers
says. “They have no pity for the old or for the young,” their mother adds.
“What reason do the soldiers have to walk around the camp every day,” the dead
boy’s father asks, and then answers himself: “They come so the children will
throw stones at them and then they can kill them.”
This is now a house of rage. It’s not hard to guess what will take root here.
On the day after the killing, when the family had just begun to mourn, soldiers
arrived at the house to arrest one of the other children, claiming he had
thrown stones. The family resisted and the soldiers left.
“It is our right to throw stones at soldiers and we will insist on it,” one of
the brothers says.
The IDF Spokesperson’s Unit stated this week, in reply to a query from Haaretz:
“This incident is being investigated by the Military Police. Upon completion of
the investigation, the findings will be conveyed to the military advocate
general for examination.”
“No child here can differentiate between Israeli, Jew, Zionist, soldier or
civilian. For our children, every Israeli is a Jew and every Jew is a soldier
and every soldier is hostile,” Muqbel tells us in his excellent Hebrew,
acquired during almost a quarter-century in prison.
“I was ‘born’ on Oct. 30, 2013. I am a boy with a mustache, I am 2 years old,”
he says, referring to the date of his release from prison, as part of Israel’s
goodwill gestures to the Palestinians during negotiations led by Secretary of
State John Kerry.
A native of the camp, Muqbel now wears a tie and has a Jeep at his disposal
thanks to his work for Fatah. He described his approach to the present
situation at length, and it’s worth listening to.
“We used to think that the killing of children was a ‘mistake.’ Now,” he
explained, “we believe that there is an IDF policy to kill children, to execute
our children. After all, a child’s body shows that he is a child. The soldier
knows he is a child. If you think that this is a message that will help you,
you are wrong. These children are a new generation of hatred. Not incitement,
not Abu Mazen [i.e., Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas], not Hamas – the true
source of incitement is the behavior of the Israeli soldier and whoever gives
him his orders.
“Once,” Muqbel continued, “your way of thinking was that our old people would
die and the young ones would forget. I am telling you in all seriousness: We,
the old ones, will die, but the next generation believes [in the cause] more
than we do. It’s a generation that does not listen to any leader. Believe me or
don’t believe me: The parents have no hand in the matter. The real lesson the
child learns is this refugee camp. Did you see the entrance to Al-Arroub? It’s
open for one hour and closed for two. And what are the soldiers doing inside
the camp? Would you stop a child from throwing stones at them? It is you who
are making them throw stones and afterward be killed.
“What did the person who jumped from the 80th floor of the Twin Towers think to
himself? What pushed him to jump and die? The hope that maybe he would live,
despite everything. If you understand that, you will not ask what makes the
children try to assassinate Israelis. Our weapons are dirty, because we don’t
have smart ones. A stone, a knife ... If we had smart weapons like you, we
would aim them at your army bases. It’s not easy for a person to kill or murder
a human being. I know, it supposedly happens only in the jungle, between
animals.
“Maybe you were a soldier in the past. Maybe you killed. Why don’t you see me
as a soldier, in exactly the same way you see your soldier as a hero who is
guarding the homeland? Look at me. Say ‘terrorist,’ ‘murderer,’ ‘criminal’ –
it’s of no interest to me. We are the soldiers of our people. When I got
married, I was asked what I would say to the mother of the person I had killed,
with me celebrating and him underground. I allowed myself to say that there is
no difference between a bereaved Palestinian mother and a bereaved Israeli
mother, and it is their right to be angry. But every war has a price and it is
paid by the ordinary people. Not by the leaders. Pain has no answer and pain
has no price. I paid 23 years of my life. How can you put a value on that?
“The feeling that allows me to accept myself is that I did something for my
people. But what will you say to the mother of one of our children who was
killed? Why do you always ask us about our killing? I am the one who killed
Yaakov Shalom. By my act, I cried out that I exist. I was 24, and that was my
response to Ami Popper, who murdered seven Palestinian workers. I knew it would
not bring about the liberation of the homeland, but I believed that I had to
take action. To make the Israelis and the world look at me. Maybe it was a
mistake, maybe we didn’t gain anything. I’ve seen children who were killed for
hoisting a [Palestinian] flag. Today those flags are sold in stores and their
importer is an Israeli, a Zionist, maybe even a demobilized soldier. You have
to understand, there’s no going back.
“Even though we are now weak, our strength lies in our weakness, and your
strength in your Dimona [i.e., nuclear] project. But we will come back to life.
We know that the way is long and the war will continue. But neither a fence nor
a tank nor a plane, neither the Arrow nor Iron Dome will be able to withstand
the will of a people to live with dignity. I give talks as a volunteer in
schools and I teach our children love of the homeland and how it can be
realized. I teach them that an uprising is not only with weapons, it is also
with the pen, with a poem, with music, with a play – a weapon is the last
thing.
“The only resource the Palestinians have is people. We have no other resources.
Accordingly, we have to forge a people who will have values, who will know how
to love the homeland and preserve it, who will understand that weapons are only
a small part of this. This morning, on the way to taking my daughter to my
mother, I saw cartridges all over the road. That is the instrument of
incitement, and it is everywhere. Your children are not familiar with this. All
you have is the pepper spray that mothers carry in their purses, and the knives
that young people take to clubs.
“Netanyahu wants to put cardboard over the eyes of Israelis, so you will see
reality only through the holes he makes in it. In war there are victims, but
what is happening now is executions. There is a famous photograph from the
second intifada of an Israeli soldier confronting a child with a stone and not
shooting him. There was a time when you took pride in that picture.”
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Gideon Levy
Haaretz Correspondent
