Nora Lester Murad - The View From My Window in Palestine

Do today’s concurrent actions by Central Americans and Palestinians show a historic convergence of protest?

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Freedom is claimed not granted

Do today’s concurrent actions by Central Americans and Palestinians show a historic convergence of protest?

This article originally appeared in Transformation: Where Love Meets Social Justice

 

NY protest in support of asylum seekers’ rights

A photograph of Maria Virginia Duarte sits on my desk, and as I watch the coverage of the migrant caravan approaching the US border I think about her again. Maria arrived in the United States without documents from El Salvador in in the early 1970s. She became part of my family, and when I had my first daughter Maria dipped her finger in a cup of coffee and put it in my baby’s mouth (apparently in El Salvador that’s considered good for babies).

In 1986, Maria was one of the almost three million “illegal aliens” granted amnesty by Ronald Reagan, and she no longer needed to live in hiding. When she and her sister decided to visit El Salvador for the first time since they had escaped, I went with them. I met their relatives on both sides of the brutal civil war that took the lives of 75,000 people between 1980 and 1992. I took rickety buses on narrow, unpaved mountain roads to visit relatives who had no water, sewage or electricity. I was in the marketplace when in the blink of an eye, all the young boys disappeared into shops and houses just minutes before government forces marched around the corner to “recruit” child soldiers.

Nearly four decades later, Central Americans continue to risk their lives to escape conditions caused in great part by US foreign policy, only to find themselves unwelcome in the oft-touted “land of immigrants.” But something feels different this time around. Individuals and families are marching together. It is not “merely” thousands of scared people risking their lives to stay alive, as we have seen in the exodus from Syria. It is also a protest of sorts, a refusal to comply, and it’s being met not only with humanitarian aid, but with political solidarity.

It might just be me, influenced by 35 years of being married into a Palestinian family including 13 years living under Israeli military occupation, but no matter how they are portrayed in the media, the Central American caravan and Gaza’s Great Return March feel to me like a convergence. Regular people taking brave steps, inspiring others to join, and building community while claiming freedom.

Today’s protests stand firmly on generations of resistance. They are parts of movements, cultivated over decades out of smaller attempts and in response to increasing repression that has made clear to people that freedom is claimed not granted. And our claims for freedom must be global.

Of course there are many differences in the situations of the Palestinians in Gaza and the Central Americans on the caravan, but there are also a surprising number of similarities. The Central Americans are running away from their homelands to find refuge in the United States. They are challenging the borders that prevent them from living in safety with respect for their human rights. The Palestinians in Gaza are running towards their homeland and challenging the blockade of a “border” that illegally prevents two million people from returning to their homeland (1.3 million of whom are documented refugees).

The Central Americans are seeking the legal status of asylum, which is part of refugee law, while in Gaza, legally-recognized refugees are denied their right of return. In both cases, the US and Israel distort the law in an attempt to claim that the relevant protections don’t apply.

For example, the US government portrays Central Americans not as asylum seekers but as migrants – people who choose to move “not because of a direct threat to life or freedom, but in order to find work, for education, family reunion, or other personal reasons,” as the UN puts it (p. 17). This enables the authorities to evoke their rights as sovereign states to deny entry into their borders and say that caravan participants should apply using existing immigration procedures or face deportation. In fact, Trump has repeatedly called them “invaders,” subject to a security rather than a humanitarian response.

This is nearly identical to Israel’s portrayal of the Gaza protesters. They are deemed a security risk to Israel, criminal, and not subject to any rights and protections – certainly not the right to return to their homeland, the right to protest for their human rights, or the right to international protection from a belligerent occupying power.

In fact, according to UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency,

“State responsibility starts with addressing root causes of forced displacement. Strengthening the rule of law and providing citizens with security, justice, and equal opportunities are crucial to breaking the cycles of violence, abuse and discrimination that can lead to displacement (p. 34).”

Yet in both cases, the US and its allies have not fulfilled their obligations to prevent displacement. Instead, they have invested in funding conflicts and then erecting obstacles to rights-claiming by those who are displaced as a result. Israel constructed an Apartheid Wall that has been deemed illegal; Trump is trying to construct a similar wall along the US-Mexico border, even citing the Israeli wall as a model.

One mechanism used in both cases is the outsourcing of foreign policy enforcement, often paid for with foreign aid. Israel outsources enforcement to the Palestinian Authority (paid for by international donors), while the US has outsourced enforcement to Mexico, again paid for with aid.

In both cases, governments and multilateral organizations are complicit in the violation of human rights. The most obvious example is the Gaza Reconstruction Mechanism (GRM), ostensibly created to facilitate the reconstruction of Gaza after the 2014 Israeli attack by putting the United Nations in charge of vetting materials and beneficiaries using Israeli-approved criteria.

In my own research (pp.59-66) I found that the GRM potentially legalizes the perpetuation of a wrongful act (the blockade of Gaza), and potentially enables the perpetuation of violations by Israel, while the United Nations did not follow a correct process in becoming a legal party to the GRM agreement and inaccurately portrayed its role as a mere facilitator. In addition, the UN and other parties failed to fulfill their legal obligation of due diligence to ensure that the GRM agreement did not violate human rights, and the agreement appears unbalanced in assigning rights and responsibilities in Israel’s favor, while obligations are borne by the United Nations and the Palestinian Authority. Finally, the GRM potentially compromises the humanitarian principles of neutrality, impartiality, humanity and independence (for example, by allowing Israel a veto power over aid beneficiaries).

It doesn’t take much digging to find shameful failure of international organizations to protect the rights of Central Americans too. A recent article in an official United Nations news source reported that the “Secretary-General António Guterres was urging all parties to abide by international law, including the principle of ‘full respect for countries’ rights to manage their own borders.’” The failure to prioritize the protection of displaced Central Americans, Palestinians, Syrians, Rohingya, Afghanis, South Sudanese, Somalis and so many more demonstrates that an ongoing battle between human rights and states rights is at play – an existential fight to realize (or crush) the aspirational potential of international law and global governance.

When the declaration of a “humanitarian situation” becomes justification for military build up, checkpoints, and collection of personal information that threatens security (which is found in both these cases), people increasingly recognize this as a rhetorical slight-of-hand. When Donald Trump says that Central American migrants who throw stones would be shot, a policy almost identical to Netanyahu’s stance against Palestinian rock throwers, people see what they are up against: This cadre of power-mongers intend to criminalize communities that seek to protect human beings from the unconstrained power of militarized states.

But people like Maria Duarte and my friends in Gaza have no intention of giving up, nor of succumbing to the cowardly strategy of divide-and-conquer. Like the generations of activists on whose achievements we stand today, we will respond by recognizing the parallels and similarities in our struggles and in our aspirations for a safe place to live with dignity and call home.

 

Nora Lester Murad’s new book is “Rest in My Shade, a poem about roots,” co-authored with Danna Masad and published by Interlink Books with support from the Palestine Museum US. More information at https://www.restinmyshade.com.

 

 

BIO: Nora Lester Murad is a writer and activist. She is co-founder of the Dalia Association, Palestine’s first community foundation, and Aid Watch Palestine, a community-driven aid accountability initiative. She blogs at The View From My Window in Palestine and can be reached at @NoraInPalestine.

 

 

“Rest in My Shade” – finally a real book

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This beautiful hardback gift book, co-authored by Danna Masad and I, has been years in the making. Now, with the invaluable support of the Palestine Museum US, the book will be released by Interlink Publishers by mid-November – in time for the holiday buying season.

Can you help spread the word?

** Share our Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/RestinMyShade/
with all your friends and ask them to share it too; every day or two we’ll post new content, including biographies of the artists and other fun facts. Check out (and share!) the book’s webpage at www.restinmyshade.com. We also have an Instagram at rest_in_my_shade, that needs more activity.

** Please send names and contact info for bookstores, galleries and museums that you think might want to sell the book (if you’re not able to suggest they carry the book, the publisher will follow up). Please send names of organizations that might want to host an event about displacement at which the book can be featured. If there are publications or journalists who you think might cover a story related to the book, please send their contact information to me (the publisher will follow up).

** And here’s exciting information! For every person who pre-orders Rest in My Shade (from a bookstore, the publisher, Amazon or from us directly) prior to the official release, we will donate a copy of the book to an organization that serves or advocates for refugees and displaced people. They only need to send us an email at info [at] restinmyshade.com and say they pre-ordered.

** Any other ideas about how Rest in My Shade can be used as a tool in classrooms, interfaith groups, advocacy, media work, fundraising, etc. are very welcome!

As we watch the continued events in Gaza (where two of our artists live), and the human suffering of displaced people all over the world, it’s more important than ever to reach new audiences with the message that home is a human right.

More Important Than Becoming a Writer…

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Fire Burning Under Water, Maysanne T. Murad (2018)

These days, I delete all emails related to writing and publishing. I work fast to avoid being intrigued by subject lines. With each click I feel a millisecond of clarity (nothing is more important than family), but the swishing sound of the trash emptying makes my chest tighten with something like grief: I have lost the joy of writing, at least for now. All I write these days are emails about treatment modalities and appeal letters to insurance companies.

Not long ago, however, I forced myself to read a blog post about book promotion because, while I do not have the energy to care much, my first book will be released in a few months; and I owe it to those who supported me to try to make the book successful.

With my guard down, I lost myself in the practical minutia of soliciting book reviews when I came across a sentence that started: “I am OCD, so I research every opportunity….” The casual reference to OCD upset me terribly. I wrote immediately to the writer of the article: “OCD is not being detail-oriented or hard working. It is a debilitating mental illness caused by a brain dysfunction.” Neither the writer of the post nor the blogger who hosted it wanted to write a retraction or clarification (although the offending sentence was removed from the online version). I understand completely. Being a regular person with imperfections can interfere with the trajectory of a writer’s “success.”

But the fact remains: There is such a thing as being “paranoid” (with a lower case p), that is  not at all the same as being “Paranoid” (with a capital P). People suffering from mental illness and their families are harmed when we don’t recognize the difference. Even though every mental illness is different and every person’s experience of mental illness is unique, I know this much from my own personal experience.

My 14-year old has Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) and our lives revolve around it, are controlled by it, and are hurt by it in deep and inexplicable ways. There is no facet of her life or mine that is untouched by her OCD.  Still, she is not OCD. She is a person with an illness, not the illness itself.  Not making the distinction between the person and illness – explicitly and repeatedly – does harm. Therapists even suggest that kids name their OCD to remember that they are not their illness. My daughter’s OCD is named Jarrad. When my daughter has intrusive thoughts (constant, negative, terrifying thoughts that are completely involuntary), I remind her: ‘That is not you. That is Jarrad trying to trick you into doing compulsions. You must believe that you have the power to tell him to shut up.’”

I have read that most people who suffer from OCD know very well that their thoughts and behaviors are irrational (unlike sufferers of some other mental illnesses), and because they are ashamed, they often go through extreme measures to hide their symptoms. People close to them may think they are quirky or weird, but often don’t realize there is a problem until it interferes with daily living. At that point, OCD behaviors may be dismissed as a “phase.” They may be labeled as disobedient (“Why do you insist on always making us late?”) or considered weak (“Why can’t you just ignore those thoughts if you know they are irrational?”) For all these reasons, it is common for suffers of OCD not to talk about their illness and not get the help they need.

No one tells a person with a chronic, incurable, painful heart condition that they should “get over it,” but they often say just that to a person with a chronic, incurable, painful brain condition like OCD. No one would write, “I’m Congestive Heart Failure” when explaining that they can’t catch their breath at the top of a flight of stairs, but they don’t think twice about saying, “I’m OCD” when casually describing their tendency to aspire to perfection.

In fact, the whole family suffers when a loved one has mental illness. Since Jarrad pushed his way into our lives, more and more of my daughter’s time – and mine – is stolen by her anxiety and my need to either prevent it or respond to it. When she is compelled to remake her bed ten times so that someone at school won’t die or when she walks in a certain pattern up and down every aisle of a department store to prevent a bomb from falling, I get angry, overwhelmed and feel hopeless. I need and deserve the help of a community (and a mental health system!) that understands that my daughter didn’t choose to be sick. She’s not sick because I’m a bad mother. And she isn’t OCD! She is a complex, worthwhile, lovable, smart, funny, creative and fantastic person.

Sadly, it is common for people to belittle her suffering by saying, “Oh yeah, I have OCD too,” or “Take advantage of your OCD to do well in school,” or when they tell me that I’m lucky that my daughter has OCD because their kids don’t keep their bedrooms clean the way my daughter does. Or they say, “She looks just fine to me!” as if they know what’s inside her brain. She often thinks that no one will ever understand her. She isolates herself looking for safety. Her healing gets harder.

I don’t know what it feels like to have OCD (as my daughter reminds me several times a day), but I do know what it’s like to love someone who does. I know what it’s like to spend every waking moment trying to get us through each day without a crisis, organizing our lives around what I think she can or can’t handle, and then changing plans at the last minute if she’s had a particularly bad nightmare or if a particular smell has triggered a breakdown. I know what its like to reorganize my priorities so that health is more important than just about everything else I ever cared about.

Somewhere inside of me, there is still a passion for writing. But right now, I can’t concentrate enough to read the stack of novels next to my bed, much less to write my own. Instead, I read about OCD, about trauma, about therapeutic doses and co-morbidity. When I talk about what we’re going through I learn that nearly every single one of us is somehow touched by mental illness. So why did so many people ask, “Are you sure you want to write about your experience and share it with the whole world?” Why wouldn’t I? We have absolutely nothing to be ashamed of (and yes, my daughter did encourage me to publish this piece).

Nora Lester Murad is not a mental health expert. She is the mother of three amazing daughters, one of whom has OCD and related brain dysfunctions. She participates in a family support group run by the National Alliance on Mental Illness – New York (NAMI-NYC) and believes fervently in their efforts to end stigma. Her first book will be released in a few months but the sense of accomplishment she expected totally eludes her. Simply put: Some things are more important than writing and publishing right now.

Philanthropy to Israel and Palestine – it’s time to change the framing

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*UPDATE* This article is now free to the public!  https://www.alliancemagazine.org/analysis/philanthropy-to-israel-and-palestine-its-time-to-change-the-framing/

What an honor it was to be asked by Alliance Magazine, a preeminent publication in the field of global philanthropy, to become a “Philanthropy Thinker.” I will contribute an analytical piece annually.

My first piece (just published) was on a topic near and dear to my heart: how philanthropy to Israel and Palestine are framed. In it, I try to argue that the framing of Israeli diaspora philanthropy and Palestinian diaspora philanthropy as two parallel, unrelated, and benign trends is false and harmful.

If you’re a subscriber, you can find the full article here (and if you live in Palestine or a country in the Global South, you can subscribe for free). For the rest, please consider subscribing to Alliance. If you can’t, my article will no longer have a paywall around mid-October and you’ll be able to access it freely.

The comments are already lively, and I hope you’ll join in.

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