To get a glimpse of how tough life is in a country under foreign military occupation, do read Faiza’s blog today.
One exciting prospect: her son Khalid posted there that he, Faiza, and another of her sons, Raed, are all planning to come to the US to do a speaking tour. They’re looking for sponsorship. If you’re interested, contact Khalid.
But Faiza’s main post there is so poignant and powerful. The version up today is in English. I urge you to read it.
Long story short. Faiza decided a while back to try to create a really good social-affairs project–namely to market products made by poor Iraqis. So she got involved with a locally-based women’s NGO. In this post, she and other members of the NGO are invited to a meeting with a visiting potnential donor. It’s inside the Green Zone! Full of trepidation, she goes to it…
Read her account of what it felt like entering the Green Zone, and what happened there…
But that’s not all. Then she goes home, and her husband Azzam is not happy that she went to the G.Z. meeting. They have a discussion on how much it’s worth compromising with your (anti-occupation) principles in order to proceed with a very worthwhile project…
Every single resident of occupied Gaza, the West Bank, or Golan–who have spent 37 years now living under foreign military occupation–knows how intractable, difficult, and just plain stressful those kinds of decisions can be. (Decisions that are, of course, forced onto members of the indigenous society by the perpetuation of the foreign military occupation.)
Along the way, Faiza reflects on the ghastly, hateful, anti-Islamic nature of the people who kidnaped her friends, the two Italian peace activists…
Oh and this, reflecting on her argument with Azzam:
- I thought to my self, the parable says: Behind every great man there is a woman who supports him. I said to myself: and in front of every intelligent, ambitious woman there is a man who opposes her… her father, brother, or husband… one time propelled by love, another by fear for her…. That is the reason for the shortage of distinguished women in our lives…. How many a woman who had intelligence, abilities, and ambitions was aborted and killed, because she is a woman.
With whom do we discuss these questions??? With women?? Or men???
Faiza– I’d say, try to discuss it with both if you can! You are so great to have aired this really important issue on your blog– so you see, you have already started the discussion!
Anyway, the rest of you, go read the whole of her great, super-anguished post there. Faiza, you rock!
It seems Raed won
In Sunni tribal societies, the family honor is located [snip…~HC] In Sunni Islam rape is a weapon of warfare as an extension of the politics of the objectification of women. Both usages are intended to control property concepts which include women and children. So it is not just husbands, brothers and fathers. The whole tribe participates. Findow
Wow, that woman is fantastic, Helena. Thanks for the link.
Do we have to be subjected to this incoherent, vulgar, ignorant, bigotted orientalist claptrap from that “Findow” character?
No, Shirin, you do not. (I have edited F’s post a little, to cut out some vulgarity, but left enough of it to show the orientalism at work there.)
Findow, consider yourself warned (again). Please keep it clean and decent. Next time: instant and repeated IP banning will occur.
Ah, so. “Pluralism:…the variety of views and atitudes…to supress freedom of inquiry and the rightbto dissent is basically a foreign importation in Jewish life…” Robert Gordis Statement of Principles of Conservative Judaism. 1988 Page 15.
Findow the vulgar
Findow– the whole blogosphere is open to you, and you can enter it with your own blog whenever you want! I urge you to do so.
However, this small portion of it is something that I bear all the costs and responsibilities of, and can therefore exercize proprietorial rights over. I choose to create and maintain this space to be somewhere where people from a limitless range of backgrounds and a very broad though not limitless range of views can engage in thoughtful, respectful interaction.
The main limits I choose to place on the expression of views are that the views carried on these Comments boards not be hateful, inciteful, or vulgar. I realize that those are fairly fuzzy definitions. But the use by males of the names of sexual organs is something that many or most females in the world consider makes a space (discursive or actual) feel hostile. The use of unexamined group stereotypes in describing the practices of members of racial, religious, or ethnic groups does the same for members of those groups, and others…
So Findow my friend, feel free to go exercize your full First Amendment rights wherever you want in the blogosphere. But if you stake any claim to my archiving space here on JWN, please respect my rules. Otherwise…
Helena, “Findow” is a troll. I have seen him on other sites under other names. He may actually be “Orientalist”, but basically he’s just trying to get a rise.
Forgive me for not understanding how to note a ‘trackback’, but….I did quote part of a post from ‘A Family in Baghdad’ on my own blog.
If you watch a ramdom sample of American news-like TV (which is bad for you heart, BTW, but now and then you just have to look), you can already sense, already sniff the acrid whiff of utterly shameless ass-covering (sorry, but that’s what it’s called): ‘Well, these pesky Iraqis aren’t very greatful to us for liberating them, are they?’ Naturally, it’s the broadcasters and politicians who cheer-led the war in the first place, and not just the rabid….so nauseating.