From Beaches to Bunkers: A Palestinian's Response
On Tuesday, The Ryersonian made a shocking choice to publish an opinion piece by Michelle Bitran, a fourth-year journalism student, outlining her experience volunteering with the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) over the summer. The article worked to alienate the Palestinian student population at Ryerson with awful nonchalance, leaving me, one of those many silenced Palestinian students, shaken and sick to my stomach. It was a piece that glorified militarism, glossed over the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and even further, ignored the existence of Palestine entirely. Once again, I was told by society that my story does not matter, my people do not matter, and ultimately, that my home does not deserve to exist.
“From Beaches to Bunkers: Volunteering with the IDF” was a piece of sensationalist rhetoric that pushed forward the dominant discourse surrounding the Isreali-Palestinian conflict; a discourse which continues to viciously and systemically silence and bury my people. It is a discourse that suggests violence is necessary to keep defenseless Palestinians in check; occupation and apartheid are crimes to be overlooked; and the deliberate and ongoing ethnic cleansing of my people is to be ignored.
I felt rattled as I read on. The author's indecision over what shoes to wear to match her IDF volunteer uniform made my heart sink. "Is there really any colour that would go well with blood splatter?" I had to ask myself, and immediately, I shuddered at the thought. Was volunteering with an army that historically slaughtered thousands of men, women and children really going to be reduced to fretting over an outfit?
To Ms. Bitran, I would like to share with you a story of true indecision. In 1948, my father was a 15 year old boy faced with an ultimatum. He was living in the village of Safsaf on the outskirts of Safad in Palestine, where he’d been born and raised, just as his father and his father’s father had. The IDF lined up dozens of young men from his village and shot them dead in plain sight of their friends and families. My father’s family was told they could either meet the same fate as these young men, one of which was promised to marry my aunt, or they could run for their lives. Given no real choice, my family ran.
My mother, from the same village, was just a baby at the time of the Safsaf massacre – barely a year old. She was nestled in a rag against my grandmother’s chest as they fled, fearing for their lives. For days, my family walked on foot from Palestine to Lebanon, surviving on rice and milk and a sheer determination to stay alive. They were forced to take their belongings with them, but never once thought they’d permanently be displaced; they clung to the promise of return, hoping this was just a temporary expulsion and that their rights to come back home would be recognized once tensions eased.
To Ms. Bitran, I’d like to inform you that my father and mother have never gone back, and do not have the choice to go back, neither to the beaches of Tel Aviv or to the bloodied rubble that used to be their home. While Israel may very well be your second home, I’d like to inform you that my parents do not have a home to return to. Their homes have been demolished, their schools have been reduced to barely-recognizable remains, and their village of Safsaf has been wiped out and renamed, once to Safsufa, and once again to Kfar Hoshen.
I would like to suggest to you that it is not “bizarre” that the soldiers you met laughed, played cards, and ate snacks, hardly noticing the M-16s beneath their chairs, but it is heartbreaking and callous instead. To be able to forget the power you hold over an entire population of second-class citizens, the violence you’ve produced in the past and you’re able to produce at any given moment, is not bizarre, but a dangerous and unjust privilege.
I would like to suggest to you that the Arabs serving side-by-side with the IDF are not the ones worthy of mention in your article, as they hardly represent the majority of my people who struggle against the occupation, reminded daily by the tanks, guns and men and women in uniforms that their lives could easily become collateral damage.
And finally, I would like to suggest to you that the cold showers and thin mattresses you suffered alongside your soldier friends are hardly worthy of sympathy in comparison to the annihilation of Palestine and its people that has been going on for six decades.
To The Ryersonian, a campus newspaper that has a duty to be free of bias and inclusive of our diverse campus, I condemn you for your choice to publish this article without serious consideration of how it would impact those of us who are already silenced beyond belief.
I end this with only my initials, not because I wish to hide my identity in any way, but because, as a Palestinian Canadian, I don’t have the privilege to write this publicly and still be able to visit my country one day.
