Westbank stories (part 1)

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(1)
They would come here to burn the villages and kill people at anytime, ANYTIME. I've never had a good sleep at night for the last 30 years. Now I have to make my children believe that I would be able to protect them, so that they could sleep well.

Reasons? No, you don't fucking understand. They came here whenever they want, burning 3 villages and left. Nobody would know, nobody would care, it seems that Palestinians deserved to be dead. Here is like the recruit-training center. You should have a look at the eyes of those soldiers. They are merely kids, who were educated to hate and to kill. They destroyed our houses, just like pushing down building blocks, and laughed crazily, horribly, feeling like it's just a game. That's what scared me the most. The government would collapse once it's getting worse and worse. But this kind of hatred, which would be succeeded generation by generation, is unstoppable and unchangeable. It would just become bigger and bigger, until nobody could ignore it and nobody could stop it.

We don't have an army and we are not allowed to have it. We do have a government(or so-called authorization), but they never say "No" to Israel. I really don't know what the fuck they are doing. Negotiation? Only the even ones could sit and talk. Now we are treated as prisoners, animals, how could we negotiate with the Jews? They could come here robbing us food and water, destroying houses and roads, beating and killing people as long as they want. Our policemen don't even have guns. How could we stop tanks with wooden sticks? This is not a war, this is a slaughter. The Jews treat us like the way Nazis treated them. They really fucking learned from the Nazis, didn't they?

Remember, only the strong man could have a seat for negotiation. However peaceful you would like to be, however hating wars you are, your country have to own the military forces. The money is just papers. Diplomatic relationships are bull shits. Whoever wants to help you always wants something from you. Watch Libya, they will be like Iraq and Afghanistan, even worse. If you don't have something that they want, then I think only the media would care about you, the more deaths the longer the news would be on TV.

Jews said that they want to establish a country here, we said that we just want to have a peaceful life, then they moved in and we were kicked out. Jews said that they need to control Arabs for the safety of them and their children, we said that we just want to have a peaceful life with out children, then they removed our weapons and freedom, being unable to fight back. Now Jews say that Palestine is one part of Israel, not a country, we say that we just want to have a complete government and have a peaceful life, then UN rejected Palestine to join. I don't understand why the Jews could have anything they want, but we would never have that only one thing that we want.

We don't want to be terrorists. We don't want to destroy Israel. We just want to have a peaceful life on this land, and our children could grow up safely and healthily. Once I though that is a very simple wish, but I already forget when it was.


(2)
They are the smartest Arab students I've ever met. But because of being under great pressure for such a long time, they couldn't keep quite, couldn't concentrate on something for more than 30 minutes. You would hear their legs trembling while watching the films. That's a symptom of unconsciously extreme anxiety. They don't know what will happen at the next moment, maybe the Israeli soldiers would come and arrest them.

One of the purposes of rebuilding this cinema is to give them different thinking, to ease their pressure, to teach them listening, expressing themselves, interacting and thinking, such abilities which they are supposed to have at their age. We wish they could learn these before they learn hatred from the Israelis. Then they might have more happiness in their daily life.

Possible solutions? well...I'm a very optimistic person. I've been to many places and experienced the way of people from different cultures getting along together. But Palestine...I don't know, truly I don't know. I traveled from Berlin to Jenin, back and forth for 2 years. I really love this place and these people. I wish I could give them more than I can do. But what we could do here is just giving them more smiles, more curiosity, more chances to have different things and different ideas. I really like the paintings from these kids. These paintings even went to exhibitions in Finland and France. I hope next time they could remove the sign of "Palestine". People should enjoy the paintings then know that they are from Palestine, instead of knowing they are from Palestine and then see the paintings.

We all have too many labels, don't we? People like to make things complicated, to the degrees of confusing themselves, then have meaningless arguments with each other. This kind of stupidity caused all these troubles on this land. It's not a matter of different cultures, not a matter of Israel and Palestine, Western countries and Arab countries. It's merely stupidity, hopeless stupidity.

Jews had suffered so much, but learned nothing from the suffering, NOTHING!