Samira Meyercord is a dear friend of mine. She is a Palestinian survivor, who has endured the perils of Israeli occupation from humiliating searches at checkpoints to the horror of seeing her homeland seized and destroyed. More than once, she has been forced to make the enemy’s occupation work for them, at the very steep price of seeing the land she knows and loves destroyed. Samira now lives with her husband in California.
When she was asked for her place of birth on a recent passport renewal, Samira listed “Palestine”, which caused a flurry of response in the US State Department. “Just say it’s ‘Israel’”, she was advised. Samira refused. “It was Palestine then, and it’s Palestine now”, she insisted about her Beit Jala (West Bank) home. After consulting with official after official, and hours and hours of her time, Samira got her way. Samira’s place of birth is officially listed as Palestine. Long live Palestine, long live Samira!
The deafening silence of theAmerican
media and the international community while Israel is exacting a cruel and
unprecedented punishment against Palestinian civilians is nothing short of
moral cowardice.
During the recent reoccupation of
the West Bank and under the guise of self-defense, Israel is systematically
destroying thePalestinian cities, their infrastructure,their schools and
universities, their cultural centers, their mosques and churches, their
hospitals and pharmacies and their economy.
In addition, it continues to impose curfews against 700,000 civilians
and to shoot anyone, including women and children,who dares to venture out.
The latest irony is that Israel has
the audacity to accuse thePalestinians of teaching their children to hate Jews,
forgetting that its brutal occupation has single-handedly succeeded in
accomplishing that job.
In addition to stripping the
Palestinians of their land. Israel wants to strip them of their humanity in
order to justify their destruction.
Samira Meyercord
Published in
Contra Costa Times 7/21/02