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News from the Front: They came for your brother



Printed on Wednesday, February 19, 2003 @ 14:31:37 EST   ( )

Susan Barclay

International Solidarity Movement

(Recently. at a children?s activity in Nablus. someone asked a room full of children how many had someone from their family in prison. Over half the children in the room raised their hand.)

Military forces come in the night, each and every night, to take our men, our fathers, brothers, partners, uncles and cousins. They are taken with M-16s, without charge, in front of our teary wet, angry eyes in the middle of deeply dark nights. Soldiers bang at our doors or simply blow them off with dynamite, enter our houses, and fire live rounds of ammunition over the heads of our sleeping children at 2 or 3 in the morning. The soldiers search the houses, turn everything upside down, rip, break, and damage furniture and any expensive equipment, steal our money, jewelry and cell phones, hit our mothers, beat our fathers, make our brothers strip, and leave in possession of yet another male from our community.

?Sami was arrested last night,? my uncle Hussein said. I swallow hard, search for words in the heavy silence and see his face. Thoughts of Sami and my last conversation with him begin to play in my mind. ?What is there to look forward to? More tanks, more death, more lost friends, longer prison terms, unemployment, closed schools, humiliation, military operations, violations and restrictions?? he quietly asked me.

Sami was nineteen years old. Israeli soldiers came for him in the night at his father?s home on February 12, 2003. Four men from the Khalili family were taken in two days.

Ibrahime, 17 years old, arrested two nights ago (February 14, 2003). I awoke to a phone call at 4:20 a.m. and a mother crying, repeating her words in an obvious state of shock. ?They took him, Ibrahime. They ransacked the house, broke many things..they took him, Ibrahime,? she said in a cracked, broken-hearted voice that echoed in my head for over an hour as I tried to go back to sleep, turning over again and again the whys and hows of this land, of this human-made hell.

I see the Abu Zhour family the next morning in Balata. The youngest daughter, who had two days earlier been gregarious and friendly, is utterly silent. Their rooms have been torn apart, everything is in complete and utter shambles, clothes are everywhere, covered with a glitter of shards of broken glass from the mirror, crushed tapes, shredded papers, broken toothbrushes and school notebooks.

Israeli soldiers came a little after 3 a.m. and entered the house with force, searching room to room, leaving with a 17-year-old boy: Ibrahime. A boy was hasn?t even finished high school. Tears welled up in my eyes when I saw the contents of a small bag that the soldiers had thrown in disarray in the corner of the boys? room: clothes, coffee, and socks for Mohammed, the mother explained, another son already in prison (Taken in November 2002). I cannot tell you how many families have a similar bag prepared in their homes, waiting, because the reality is that the democratic State of Israel regularly prohibits even the Red Cross from visiting the prisons.

Mohammed Khilfe was arrested one week ago while Internationals were sleeping at his home. Israeli soldiers arrived in the middle of the night, searched the upstairs, take Boshar as a human shield to come to Mohammed?s door downstairs and enter the house en masse. They forcefully remove Mohammed from the house after putting his mother on the phone with the Israeli secret police, who casually explained that they were going to take Mohammed and that she had better take care of her little 14-year-old or they'd come for him, too. I call five minutes after the soldiers have gone and the mother can't even speak. She repeats his name again and again and passes the phone to someone else.

Husam Shakshir was taken on February 12th at 3 a.m. Soldiers entered their home in the Old City and menaced everyone with M-16s. They were physically aggressive towards the mother and father and pushed the gentle, nearly 70-year-old man who walks with a cane forcefully to the ground. Israeli soldiers left with their son after searching the entire house.

It happens every single night. A brother, father or son disappears in the dark of night, at a checkpoint, on a trip to the market, or getting a haircut. Arrest after arrest after arrest for no reason or for any reason. It means beating or torture. Months of imprisonment without charge, and/or because of evidence presented to a judge by the Israeli secret police in private. The Israeli Army is taking everyone, politically active or not, young and old, rich and poor, students, farmers, bakers and carpenters -- taking man after man away night after night.

It seems as if each day, everything gets harder - it is harder to lose more family and friends, harder to find reasons, harder to believe they'll come back home soon, and certainly harder to accept. It may be because every man is one more brother gone in my eyes.

My oldest brother, Michael, is 31. He is a graduate student and has two kids and a wonderful partner. He is not politically active, has no criminal record, loves hanging out with friends and adores his children, like most of the men here. He has a great sense of humor, is highly creative, and deeply supportive of his family and wife.

I imagine Michael, Liz, Owen and Dylan waking to U.S. Marines in the middle of the night who have broken down their door and barged into their home, shooting real bullets, yelling orders at everyone, telling my brother to ?shut up!? and jamming an M-16 in his gut when he speaks up in outrage. They wreak havoc from what was sound sleep and sacred safety, terrorize their children and rob them in an instant of much more than physical possessions.

I can see my cousins beginning to scream and cry and Liz and Mike cut so deeply by the feeling of powerlessness as they watch their children?s security vanish. Their home has been pillaged, their rights trampled on, their humanity denied, and then, without even a moment to exchange a word or a kiss, my brother, Michael, is taken from his home, blindfolded, handcuffed, and dragged away. Liz picks up the trembling boys in front of her and moves them toward the window when the door is slammed shut. His little boys and wife watch, still terrified, as he disappears amid M-16s and shadows, taken by a military jeep far, far away.

You think about beatings, physical force, the various stories you?ve heard about torture and cruelty and interrogations. You wonder about the weather, is he cold? You have no idea where he is, for how long, in what conditions or with whom. Disappeared. Stolen. Right in front of you and your children. No charge, no reason. To your hundreds of questions, there will be no answer.

The world will watch and remain silent, say that you likely deserved it, call your partner a criminal or a terrorist, assume that if he was taken, there must be a reason, and then move on to business as usual and the morning traffic jam.

Same old story, just another Palestinian gunman imprisoned.

No, I said. "They came for your brother last night."

YellowTimes.org believes the general accuracy of the preceding report, but cannot guarantee it. We print information received from sources on the front lines of this particular conflict. Copyright for this item belongs to the original author. YellowTimes.org encourages this material to be reproduced, reprinted, or broadcast provided that any such reproduction identifies the original source, along with a web link to YellowTimes.org.


 

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