SOLIDARITY

Last week I had the honour to meet two founding members of the International Solidarity Movement, Huwaida Arraf and Adam Shapiro. ISM was founded as an international response to the Intifada to invite people from all over the world to witness and to challenge peacefully the Israeli occupation of Gaza and the West Bank (www.palsolidarity.org). These are the people who stand still with outstretched arms in front of Israeli army tanks in the Occupied Territories to prevent the tanks from passing though the occupied land to destroy houses, orchards, wreak devastation wherever they go, and kill, exterminate the Palestinian population.

In the film ‘Visit Palestine’, which depicts a short time period in the life of an ISM activist, Caiomhe Butterly, she is shown resisting in the above described manner an IOF army tank in Jenin, West bank, together with other ISM members (see below excerpt: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aX0Y75b6XeA). I get goose pimples just thinking about it.

What is it that brings people to defy the possibility of death in order to take a stand; to stand with fellow human beings, Palestinians? In my view, these people are real heroes. One of these ISM heroes was Rachel Corrie, a young American woman. She stood in front of an IOF army bulldozer to prevent it from destroying the family home of a Palestinian in Gaza, when the bulldozer just rolled over her, crushing and killing her (http://rachelcorriefoundation.org/site/about-rachel-corrie/). Despite Rachel’s death, the volunteers kept coming from everywhere in the world to serve as ISM members in the Occupied Territories.

In the words of Rachel Corrie: “We should be inspired by people … who show that human beings can be kind, brave, generous, beautiful, strong – even in the most difficult circumstances.”

In “Visit Palestine”, Caiomhe Butterly says: “When you are surrounded by violence it is a very human reaction to try to struggle for people to be allowed basic human rights. One has a responsibility to stand by - not necessarily to stand up - not be removed from the people you are trying to protect, to try to minimize the brutality they suffer on a day-to-day basis in any way that you can, but to stand with them to coexist, to live, to breath, to exult in their strength, and to try and comfort them in the times like the times we are living through now, in which people are suffering.”



This is solidarity: to stand side-by-side with our fellow brothers and sisters in defiance of the dehumanizing treatment from aggressors; to stand firm peacefully in the face of the violence and brutality of the occupation; to stand in solidarity in whatever way we can with our fellow human beings in Palestine, and any other place or time people, human beings, are supressed and subjected to dehumanizing treatment.