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| Volume XIV, Fall 2007, Number 2 |
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ABSTRACT
Speech at a Demonstration in Tel Aviv Commemorating 40 Years of Occupation.
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| Nurit Peled-Elhanan |
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Ms. Peled-Elhanan, an Israeli peace activist, is a laureate of the Sakharov
Prize of the European Parliament for Human Rights and Freedom of
Thought. The following speech was given on June 9, 2007, and originally
published in Occupation Magazine, June 13, 2007 (translated by Mark
Marshall).
Good evening. It is a great honour for me to stand on this stage beside my
friend and brother Bassam Aramin, a man of the Palestinian peace camp, one
of the founders of the Combatants for Peace movement of which two of my
sons, Alik and Guy, are members. Only last week, on Tuesday in Anata and on
Thursday in Tulkarem, the Combatants for Peace movement succeeded in organizing two
massive gatherings and recruited 10,000 Palestinians to their goal — a joint nonviolent
struggle against the occupation through close cooperation between Israelis and Palestinians.
If not for the racist laws of the State of Israel, all those thousands of people could
be with us here this evening to prove once and for all that we have a partner.
Bassam and I are both victims of the cruel occupation that has been corrupting this
country for 40 years now. The two of us came this evening to lament the fate of this place
that has buried our two daughters — Smadar, “the bud of the fruit” [Hebrew], and Abir,
“the perfume of the flower” [Arabic] — who were murdered at an interval of ten years,
ten years during which this country has filled [up]with the blood of children, and the
underground kingdom of children on which we tread day by day and hour by hour has
grown to overflowing. |
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