Gimlé

I’ve been way too busy in the last few days. Hence the scarcity of writing. I promise to make up for that in the next few days.

In the meantime:

People may or may not realise that Iceland is a small society but it is a culture that values living in foreign countries as a way to learn something about life and yourself. And it’s not always in the easy countries, like Denmark.

An e-mail has been making the rounds in my family. It is from an acquaintance of my sisters who is living in Ramallah and—

Well, it is a bit dramatic but I felt that it deserved some exposure, so I translated it into English.

I’m publishing it here anonymously (unless she e-mails me to tell me otherwise, or to ask me to take it down). The main reason being that I’m sure that she would get hate-mail or worse.

I’m not going to take a side here. Let’s just say that if I got an e-mail describing the situation from the other side I would not hesitate one second to post it here on the website.

Baldur Bjarnason.
Clifton, Bristol.

It is midnight in Palestine.

The longer that I stay here, the more I get to know people—people who have experienced things so distant from us… You’ve followed events in the media but when you’re actually here I feel that I’m really understanding (and not) the tragedies are taking place…

It surprises some, when I’m asked how things are here and I say that the situation is probably better than elsewhere in Palestine…that we don’t have soldiers in tanks all over the city… But that I say it’s better does not mean it’s good…

Imagine Reykjavik surrounded by military checkpoints… that you who live in Kopavogur [five minutes away from Reykjavik] cannot go to visit your relatives in Reykjavik.

… that in the summer before last you and your family had to wait at home for thirty days with little to no food. And that watching television isn’t a recreation because the only thing you see are pictures of people, children that you even know, dead or wounded, because somebody has decided that there should be a curfew.

…that when you go to university you need to go through checkpoints where guns are pointed at you all over the place. That you need to prove who you are with your ID, and don’t be shocked if the soldiers humiliate you in every way.

…you need to go to the store. You with your two month baby and your husband are stopped, it is dark outside and the soldiers tell your husband to come out and walk with them around the corner… there they get him undressed and force him to lie on the ground for 3-4 hours… the wife and baby waiting in the car knowing nothing… and then they let him go, laughing…

…that soldiers raid a home of a mother with her children… the soldiers take a nine year old child into the bathroom, spray cold water over the kid, aim guns at the child’s head because they want to know where the father is… something the child doesn’t know… the soldiers leave and say that they will soon return and do it all again… the child can’t talk or go to the toilet for a long time afterwards.

All these things have happened, directly and indirectly to the people that I’m living with here in Ramallah… this we may not see in the television but it is awful!

The situation is bad, everywhere in Palestine… and that will not change until these human rights violations, murders and horrors cease!

Though it may sound incredible, a single person, like me can do a lot for the Palestinian people, that I can feel. We out in the larger world give them hope with our support, and we can give them our support in many ways. I realise that this letter may be dramatic but this is simply the reality and to write is the only thing I can do… because sadness caught up with me tonight.

Free Palestine!