The Dominion of Death

December 1, 2001

The Dominion of Death

Nurit Peled-Elhanan

Dylan Thomas wrote a war poem entitled "And Death Shall Have No
Dominion." In Israel, it does. Here death governs: the government of
Israel rules over a dominion of death. So the most astonishing thing
about yesterday's terrorist attack in Jerusalem and all similar attacks
is that Israelis are astonished.

Israeli propaganda and indoctrination manage to keep coverage of these
attacks detached from any Israeli reality. The story in the Israeli (and
American) media is one of Arab murderers and Israeli victims, whose only
sin was that they asked for seven days of grace.

But anyone who can remember back not even one year but just one week or
several hours knows the story is different, that each attack is a link
in a chain of horrific bloody events that extends back 34 years and has
but one cause: a brutal occupation. An occupation that humiliates,
starves, denies jobs, demolishes homes, destroys crops, murders
children, imprisons minors without trial under appalling conditions,
lets babies die at checkpoints and spreads lies.

Last week, after the assassination of Abu Hanoud, a journalist from
Yediot Ahronot asked me whether I felt "relief." Hadn't I been
frightened that "a murderer like that was roaming free"? No, I did not
feel relief, I told her, and I will feel no relief as long as the
murderers of Palestinian children continue to roam free. The murders of
those children, like the murder of a suspect without trial or the murder
of a ten-year-old boy yesterday, shortly before the attack, guarantee
that no Israeli child can walk to school safely. Every Israeli child
will pay for the deaths of the five children in Gaza and the others in
Jenin, Ramallah, Hebron.

The Palestinians have learned from Israel that every victim must be
avenged tenfold, a hundredfold. They have said repeatedly that until
there is peace in Ramallah and Jenin there will be no peace in Jerusalem
and Tel Aviv. So it is not up to the Palestinians to keep seven days of
quiet but up to the Israeli Occupation Force.

On Friday it was reported that politicians from both sides had reached
a deal in Jerusalem to allow the reopening of the casino upon which
their own livelihood depends. They did it without American intervention,
without high-level committees, with just the assistance of lawyers and
business people, who promised the parties what was required. What this
shows is that the conflict is not between the leaders: when an issue
affects them directly (unlike the deaths of children) they are quick to
find a solution.

It strengthens my belief that all of us, Israelis and Palestinians, are
victims of politicians who gamble the lives of our children on games of
honour and prestige. To them, children are worth less than roulette
chips.

But these attacks serve the interests of Israeli policy - policy
designed to make us forget that the war today is about protecting the
settlements and the continuation of the occupation, policy that

drives young Palestinians to commit suicide and take Israeli children
with them, animated by Samson's invocation "let me die with the
Philistines," policy contrived to make us believe that "they want Tel
Aviv and Jaffa too" and "there is no one to talk to," even as they
liquidate all those who might have been able to talk.

Now that we know our leaders are capable of peace when there is an
economic motive, we must demand that they make peace when lesser things,
like the lives of our children, are at stake. Until all the parents of
Israel and Palestine rise up against the politicians and demand they
curb their lust for conquest and bloodshed, the underground realm of
buried children will continue to grow. Since the beginning of time,
mothers have cried out in a clear voice for life and against death.
Today, we must rise up against the transformation of our children into
murderers and murdered, raise our children not to support evil
machinations, and force the politicians - who say, with Abner and Joab,
"Let the young men arise and play before us" - to make way for those who
can sit at the negotiating table and agree to a true and just peace, who
are prepared to engage in dialogue not with the aim of tricking and
manipulating the other side, not to humiliate the other and force him to
his knees, but to reach a solution that considers the other, a solution
free of racism and

lies. Otherwise death shall continue to have dominion over us.

I suggest that parents who have not yet lost their children look
beneath their feet and heed the voices rising from the kingdom of death,
upon which they step day by day and hour by hour, for only there does
everyone understand that there is no difference between one life and
another, that it matters little what is the colour of your skin or the
colour of your ID, or which flag flies over which hill and which
direction you face when you pray.

In the kingdom of death Israeli children lie beside Palestinian
children, soldiers of the occupying army beside suicide bombers, and no
one remembers who was David and who was Goliath, for they have faced the
sober truth and realized that they were cheated and lied to, that
politicians without feeling or conscience gambled away their lives as
they continue to gamble with the lives of us all. We have given them the
power, through democratic elections, to turn our home into an arena of
neverending murder. Only if we stop them can we return to a normal life
in this place, and then death will have no dominion.

Nurit Peled-Elhanan

Yediot Ahronot, Dec 1, 2001

Dr. Nurit Peled-Elhanan is a long-time Israeli peace activist and recent
winner of a peace award from the European Parliament. Nurit was the
mother of Smadar Elhanan, 13 years old when she was killed by a suicide
bomber in Jerusalem in September 1997

Translated by Edeet Ravel, Montreal.