A word on Palestine
Read my essay on Israel Palestine below the button, or the original on Facebook.
In this episode, Damascena shares her experience living in Palestine, and tries to paint a human face, on life in The Occupied Territories.
This is my experience, and the things I’ve picked up along the way through my experience. However, it’s not the only experience, nor the only perspective. There are places you can hear other voices. I encourage you to listen to others, and include a multitude of perspectives. The whole issue is made up of an amalgamation of stories from various “sides”.
*As I am attempting to make distinctions in this episode between Palestinians and Hamas, the same should be noted for the word “Israelis”. Unless I specify otherwise, I am speaking about the government and defense forces. Not everyday civilians.
Back at the last Eclipses in the Spring, when Venus was in the Throat Chakra, I began a podcast, that was in service to my full expression. I had spent the year prior studying full expression with my teacher, and realized how much this is a lifelong practice. And that I’d need to give myself a pace to practice regularly.
The podcast is not edited. It’s just free form episodes, wandering, stream of consciousness, video/audio diary entries about my life, my thoughts, and my experiences.
I thought about potentially doing a “live”. But right now, it feels like it’s going to be a lot of sensation to hold on Facebook. Plus, The algorithm is suppressing content like this, and I really want to be sensitive about just indiscriminately popping up in people’s feeds.
So I made a podcast episode.
A word about the episode…
There will be some bias in sharing my experience. Of course there is. That’s natural when we aren’t striving for news content but rather telling human stories. They will always come from our own lens.
I think the best place to publish something like this is on my own platform.
The episode is really geared towards people who don’t have a stake and are simply curious about this dimension of life.
I ask, for those who find this issue activating, that you use discernment before listening. Not because I said something inflammatory.
But because my own experience when tensions rise is that I don’t always have the spaciousness and inner resources to hold other people’s experiences, especially when they are so different from my own. And that’s what this is, my experience. I want to be clear about that upfront. I’m not asking anyone to hold this for me. I can hold this myself.
I simply ask anyone who chooses to listen, that if/when you do, you feel confident that you can hold yourself.
I want to keep generating compassion. And likewise, I don’t want my devotion to compassion to mean I don’t speak when I feel moved too. Compassionately.
Below is a resource in which a Palestinian Journalist tours the City of Hebron with an ex-IDF soldier. This gives one an idea of what living under occupation is like, and the mindset, of Israeli Setters.
My attempt is to simply bring a human face to Palestinian daily life in the Occupied West Bank. That’s why I’ve chosen to include this video.
Two Myths I’d Like to Debunk
I’m wondering if you will bear with me as I correct a newer piece of propaganda floating around that I find incredibly hurtful, and frankly, very easy to dispute.
It is a minor history lesson.
*in the last decade with the rise of social media, I’ve run this idea that there was no Palestine or Palestinians more and more.
There are two myths. The first one says; that prior to 1948, or the beginning of this clash between the Jews and Palestinians... That Palestinians weren’t a distinct group of people. The idea is, with this, we can simply go to neighboring Arab Countries and that would solve the problem. Only as an American, I don’t want to simply go to live in Canada.
And the other myth is that the land was empty when the Jewish migrants hoping to establish Israel arrived.
Let me start by saying that every credible historian who has looked at this says this is purely a myth being perpetuated to invalidate the credible claim Palestinians have to their ancestral homelands. I mention this in the beginning so you know this isn’t my “opinion”. What follows is the result of scrutinizing facts.
So let’s begin with the claim that there is there was no cohesive national identity as Palestinians. And, that the Arab population was a result not of an indigenous population, but of migration to the area.
This isn’t true.
Palestine lived under Ottoman rule and were citizens of the Ottoman Empire Through WWI, when the Arabs states Allied with Britain against the Ottoman Empire. In return for their help, Britain was supposed to hand over several pieces of land previously ruled by the Ottoman to the Arabs, but they reneged on their word.
France and Britain split the area between themselves.
In census data, from both the Ottoman Empire and the British Mandate for Palestine, the majority of the population was born there.
The population comprised roughly 88 percent Muslims, 9 percent Christians, and 3 percent Jews.
All lived together in peace.
Prior to 1948, Palestine consisted of several large cities, but mainly rural areas and small villages. Just like Ohio, we have large cities, villages, and lots of rural area in between. However, the population throughout the area was contiguous.
You simply cannot overlay a western paradigm to an area that hadn’t been westernized. Nationalism is an idea born in Europe.
Palestine was a tribal, and semi nomadic culture (nomadic in the sense they traveled up and down the coast, not across the continent). Made up of farmers and mercantilists who primarily lived in villages.
They administrated themselves locally.
Because of the relative peace in their land for the years prior to Britain coming in, they had no need for a Nationalist Movement. Life simply wasn’t lived out on that scale.
It was Britain, after a joint skirmish between the Arabs and Jews against their colonial rule, who intentionally began to promote a nationalist feeling between the three religious groups because it made them easier to rule when they saw the themselves as distinct from each others.
However, even without British meddling, it is documented in the 1834 Peasants Revolt, that as a self identified Nation, Palestinians collectively resisted fighting for the Empire.
This was long before the Zionist movement began.
On the claim that the land was empty; in the Nakba, the Jewish led massacre and expulsion of over 700,000 Arabs, that began PRIOR to the Arab Israeli war of 1948, there were at least 1 million Palestinian people living on the land.
That clearly points an indigenous population, a population from which current day Palestinians now descend.
With the rise of social media, this alternative history is being perpetuated to delegitimize our people and our distinct national history.
It’s so easy to find non-biased sources who reveal this idea is clearly false.
Lastly, I’d like to say that land has been called Palestine and variations of Palestine, for hundreds of years.
I don’t know what one would call people who hail from the Land of Palestine other than Palestinians.
This map was published in 1890
