How Long will Palestinians go on being Scapegoats for the West’s Atrocities in WWII?

Seattle, Wa. (Special to Informed Comment; Featured) – If an Arab writer would create a Palestinian version of Schindler’s List, and if an Arab, or a filmmaker sympathetic to Arabs, would create the movie, I wonder what the story would look like. I wonder what the writer would write. I wonder what the filmmaker would create.

How much do we know about Gaza when it is described as an open-air prison?

How much do we know about the genocide in Gaza perpetrated by Netanyahu?

Maybe we don’t know anything. We have no idea about the pain Jews suffered throughout the years. And we have no idea about the pain Palestinians suffer now. But we can relate to each pain when we compare the pain we suffer.

Let’s talk about two kinds of pain: physical and psychological.

When it comes to physical pain I think about toothache, headache, cancer surgery, and amputation. I think exile, witnessing murder, depression, and dealing with rape’s aftermath are psychological pains.

Did Jews recover from the pain they suffered during the holocaust?

Can we expect Palestinians, or Arabs for that matter, to recover from the genocide in Gaza?

CNN: “Blogger leaves haunting words in final video from Gaza”

The best line I’ve read so far is written by Adam Shatz in the London Review of Books:

“As for the people of Gaza, not only are they being forced to pay for Hamas’s actions: they [Gazans] are being forced, once again, to pay for Hitler’s crimes.”

What is the solution then?

As a peace journalist and peace activist, I still don’t know how to address atrocity. I have experienced atrocity myself. I know that both physical and psychological pain is so great that I don’t know how to talk about it. After years of therapy, nightmares, sweaty dreams, sleepless nights, and feeling shame, and guilt, I still think that Nonviolence is the key to winning a genocide, a holocaust … to defeating atrocities and heartlessness.

I understand that it is easier to talk about nonviolence than to do it. I know. But, there is no better alternative. I know because I’m talking from experience.

Sara Jamshidi