(YellowTimes.org) – He wasn't in the mood for dialogue. I understood this even before opening his message, whose subject line couldn't have been clearer: "Burn in hell, fucker," the same line he used to close the diatribe contained therein. I realize I shouldn't have even opened the message, but by now I am used to violent responses to my essays; in some perverse, probably egotistical way, I enjoy reading furious letters sent by Zionist taskmasters.

Having published columns in major American newspapers with my email address in the tagline, I receive a steady outpouring of invective, most of it directed at my unsuspecting parents. One hard drive and much less naiveté later, I learned never to open attachments. (The casual reader might be shocked to know how many viruses reach the inboxes of pro-justice - i.e., pro-Palestinian - columnists.) Yet I cannot resist the temptation to read the messages.

Perhaps I read them because they reaffirm my sense of values and my decision to dedicate my life to activity on behalf of Palestine. Out of curiosity, I replied to the fellow cited above, thanking him for taking the time to write and explaining that there is no need for such vitriol. "Even the most ill-mannered among Palestine's supporters would never write such things," I noted. "I hope all the Palestinians die," he responded.

There is something magnificent in this type of brutal clarity. Reading it brings knowledge that, indeed, anti-colonialists - i.e., anti-Sharonists - are dealing not with a complex political quandary involving two peoples with competing moral claims, but rather with a trenchant example of ethnic cleansing replete with the particular sort of hatred that colonization induces.

Thus the reaffirmation that activists sometimes seek: We know, when we are told to burn in hell by people who couldn't identify us in a crowd of five, that the speaker is doomed to the dogmatism of his ignorance and invokes violence as a defense mechanism that shields him from confronting his complicity in unspeakable horror.

We know that desegregationists were told the same thing. We know that suffragettes were told the same thing. We know that abolitionists were told the same thing. More important, we know that anybody in the world engaged in any form of decolonization - be it sexual, psychological, geographic, economic, environmental - is told the same thing.

And, of course, there is a wonderful irony here: If the religious dogmatism guiding these sentiments turns out to be true, then its adherents are the ones who will burn in hell.

But at play is also something disquieting and heartbreaking. Yes, there is something reaffirming, even comforting, about learning firsthand how colonialism transforms humans into hateful and defensive vanguards of ethnic cleansing, people who embrace extremism as epistemology and refuse to - nay, cannot - accept anything outside their narrowly defined ideology. Walter Rodney suggested years ago that colonialism damages the colonial society more than the colonized. Anybody who has dealt with dedicated American Zionists knows Rodney was right.

Yet the extremism about which I speak isn't actually extreme, at least not in the customary definition of the word. The man who wishes all Palestinians would die is better embraced by American analysts than those who argue in favor of international law (i.e., against Israel's occupation and in support of the right to return). With minor variations, decorated commentators George Will, Charles Krauthammer, William Safire, and scores of others say the same thing. They are, in short, odious folk who both applaud and support the dispossession and destruction of an indigenous people.

Inscribed in their sort of consciousness is a sense of duty larger than the individual or the society itself: a religious duty to fulfill scripture, a social duty to undertake a civilizing mission, a personal duty to transform liturgy to sociology. Historically, as Zionists illustrate, leaders have turned to God when support for the colonial mission is outside the possibility of political narratives. Underlying that strategy is a reliance on biblical achievement to couch or excuse brutal behavior. The biblical aspect of settler colonialism generally is considered to be a function of society's extremist elements. Although the sentiments expressed by, say, Cal Thomas and his ilk certainly can be attributed to religious extremism, I would like to suggest that they are integral to the colonial errand, and that the colonial errand would fail miserably without them.

That is to say, the relegation of religious extremism to the margin underestimates the extent to which the colonial regime - whether or not it purports to be secular - relies on its existence, to say nothing of its underpinnings. Even while Americanism and Zionism ascribe themselves with modern ideals of democratic enlightenment, they draw tacitly from and encourage the articulation of biblical ideals. Ethnic cleansing is not an appropriate human activity unless a deity sanctions such an act. Ethnic cleansing, in other words, cannot be undertaken successfully without extremism, for democracy and enlightenment are the opposite of imperialism and ethnic cleansing. Ethnic cleansing is allowed to occur from within a democratic and enlightened rubric only when democracy and enlightenment are endowed with extremist features that displace the meaning of the terms and inject them with ordinances supposedly outside of human control.

Extremism, then, in the sense that something "extreme" is outside the parameters of any group's shared ethos, is little more than an oxymoronic PR ploy in Zionism. In colonial situations, the center defines the extreme in order that the center's own extremist positions can be concealed behind diplomacy and thus validated under the guise of progress or rationality. Its underlying ethics are articulated by those it comes to define as extreme.

What does all this mean? It means that those who write me and wish death on my parents should not be considered maniacs on the fringe of respectable society; they are in fact the clearest manifestation of respectable society. They are 500 years of American genocide laid bare in my inbox. They are 400 years of slavery condensed to four sentences. They are Israeli ethnic cleansing transposed into crude statements, and one cannot help but to compare the viral attachments with settlers.

This is why it is important to abandon the conventions of public discourse that so often leave us ineffectual. We need do little more than seek the truth and speak the truth. To hell with the experts who bristle at our lack of objectivity. And to hell with the academics who deride our intellectual sophistry. Only when they give of themselves to Palestine are they worth hearing. We have no reason to allow anybody to enfeeble us and circumscribe our stories. That has happened for too long. Our truths are all we have, so let us speak them.

If I am to travel to Palestine and collect stories to share with Americans, then it is precisely those stories that I need to tell, rather than transforming them into weak discourse superimposed with American fantasies. I am not interested in speaking in a way that leaves American comfort unchallenged, which is exactly what "objectivity" has often come to mean, as has, no less, much of the American Academy.

And if, in the process, Zionists get angry? So what? Let them. It is not we who dispossessed millions, destroyed homes, bulldozed orchards, shot infants, imprisoned children, occupied civilians, stole billions, and then denied it all. It is not we who installed checkpoints and watchtowers to protect squatting bigots, and then cast ourselves in the role of victim. It is not we who need to justify. We have things other than anger.

Yes, let them get angry, and let them write to us in fits of hate. That anger and hate only reaffirm the potency of our truths and stories. Our marginality is our most important asset, for only in entering the mainstream will we be become our enemy, the extremist.

[Steven Salaita is completing an English doctorate at the University of Oklahoma, with emphasis on Native, Palestinian, and Arab American literatures. A West Virginian with Palestinian and Jordanian parents, he splits his time between the United States and the Middle East.]

Steven Salaita encourages your comments: ssalaita@YellowTimes.org

YellowTimes.org encourages its material to be reproduced, reprinted, or broadcast provided that any such reproduction must identify the original source, http://www.YellowTimes.org . Internet web links to http://www.YellowTimes.org  are appreciated.

(YellowTimes.org) – "It’s utterly impossible for me to build my life on a foundation of chaos, suffering and death. I see the world being slowly transformed into a wilderness, I hear the approaching thunder that, one day, will destroy us too, I feel the suffering of millions. And yet, when I look up at the sky, I somehow feel that everything will change for the better, that this cruelty too shall end, that peace and tranquility will return once more." (Anne Frank)

Some years ago, I visited the home where Anne Frank and her family concealed themselves for fear of Nazi persecution. It was a cool but sunny afternoon in Amsterdam, with tulips swaying gently in the breeze. And apart from the hustle and bustle of tourists ambling down the Prinsengracht to visit the home - a veritable shrine to the innocence of a teenage girl caught up in the madness of war - peace and tranquility had returned once more.

Nine months after being arrested, Anne Frank died of Typhus in March of 1945 at the concentration camp at Bergen-Belsen - she was 15 years old. It's hard to believe that the insanity surrounding her torment happened less than sixty years ago.

It is harder still to believe that this madness continues to this day.

Also almost six decades ago, catastrophic events in 1948 resulted in thousands of Palestinians being wrenched out of their homes, dispossessed and denied the right of returning to their ancestral homes. They must, to paraphrase Anne Frank, have seen their world being slowly transformed into a wilderness; they must have heard the approaching thunder that, one day, would destroy them.

There is a difference, though. Post-Nazi Europe thrives; the Jews have found a homeland. But for the Palestinians, the cruelty has not ended.

Meet today's Anne Frank. Suad Ghazal is seventeen years old and a prisoner in an Israeli prison. Suad was only fifteen years when she was arrested after being accused by an adult female settler of attempted assault. Following her arrest, she was taken to a settlement police post where she was severely beaten by Israeli settlers.

Suad was then incarcerated in Ramle prison, where her agony continued unabated.

Those who have seen World War II movies will be familiar with Nazi- and Japanese-style isolation cells, where "less desirable" prisoners were kept to break their morale. In Ramle, "the isolation cells are two meters square with an open toilet," reports the Geneva-based human rights group Defense for Children International/Palestine Section (DCI/PS). In April 2001, Suad was repeatedly placed in such cells for varying lengths of time, totally devastated and alone.

... the minute I was alone I knew I was going to cry my eyes out. I slid to the floor in my nightgown and began by saying my prayers, very fervently. Then I drew my knees to my chest, lay my head on my arms and cried, all huddled up on the bare floor. A loud sob brought me back down to earth... (Anne Frank)

Meet a second Anne Frank: fourteen year-old Sanaa Amer. Overlook, if you can, that "her arms and legs were tied to her bed continuously for 8-hours a day over two consecutive days."

Sanaa and her sister were convicted of "intent" to stab an Israeli settler in Hebron. An Israeli military court tried and sentenced the child to a twelve months imprisonment term - a sentence that DCI/PS calls "shocking as it did not take into account her age or the fact that she did not carry out any violent act whatsoever."

Sanaa, too, was sent to Ramle. Soon after, reports the DCI, in response to the deteriorating situation in prison, "the female Palestinian political detainees launched a hunger strike at the end of June. The prison administration … attacked the detainees with tear gas and heavy batons. The prisoners were taken to isolation and beaten."

"During the attack, Sanaa Amer was beaten with batons on her arms and legs. Her arms were tied behind her back and she was kicked by police in her stomach, inducing her to cough up blood."

Was it for Suad and Sanaa that Anne penned these lines? "I've reached the point where I hardly care whether I live or die. The world will keep on turning without me, and I can't do anything to change events anyway."

But Suad and Sanaa are not alone. DCI reports that approximately 600 Palestinian children have been arrested by the Israeli occupation authorities since the beginning of the second Intifada in September 2000, of whom around 160 remain incarcerated.

From Jerusalem alone, more than 100 Palestinian children under the age of eighteen have been arrested since September, reports the Jerusalem Center for Social and Economic Rights (JCSER). "Many of them were arrested during demonstrations for throwing stones. These minors are jailed for an average of four to six months and held in custody at least until his or her trial finishes. Furthermore, children have been placed in cells with those who have been detained for criminal offences. Child detainees have been subjected to different kinds of torture like beating, scalding with hot water."

The DCI reports that in flagrant contravention of international law, "over the last ten months, 12 Palestinian child political prisoners have been imprisoned with Israeli juvenile criminal prisoners in the Ofar section of Telmond. Such a practice has led to beatings, harassment, theft of personal belongings, cutting with razors and even attempted rape of Palestinian children."

Al-Ahram weekly quotes from a report issued by the Israeli human rights group, B'Tselem. The report exposes "the systematic torture and abuse of Palestinian minors detained at the police station in Gush Etzion, near the West Bank town of Bethlehem. … Police arrested Palestinian children in their homes in the middle of the night and took them to the police station in Gush Etzion, where police interrogators tortured them until the morning to obtain confessions and information about other minors."

The report continues: "Methods of torture described in the report included forcing the juvenile detainees to stand in painful positions for prolonged periods; beating them severely for hours at a time with various objects; splashing cold water on the detainees in the facility's courtyard in wintry conditions; pushing their heads into the toilet bowl and flushing the toilet; making death threats and cursing and degrading them."

Meet Ahmad Ziad Hijazi, a Jerusalem resident and imminent threat-extraordinare to the IDF for all of his tender fifteen years. He, too, threw stones at tanks and armored cars. Ahmad suffers from asthma and "since his arrest," reports the JCSER, "has spent about 40 days in isolation. It was only recently that he was transferred to a child prison. The conditions in prison worsened his health condition enormously. Today, he needs treatment three times a day."

I'll just let matters take their course … and hope that everything will be all right in the end. (Anne Frank)

Article 37 of the 1989 UN Convention on the Rights of the Child reads: "No child shall be subjected to torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment..."

The Rights of the Child! What rights do brutal regimes like the Third Reich grant children like Anne Frank? What rights do tortuous regimes like Sharon's permit the children of Palestine?

Writing in the Israeli paper Ha'aretz, Joseph Algazy tells of the 80 Palestinian youths imprisoned at Telmond, most of them15 and 16 years old. "They were arrested because of their participation in protest activities of the Al-Aqsa Intifada. The youths, members of their families, their attorneys and DCI, have complained in the past that jailed Palestinian minors have been beaten and humiliated during their detention and interrogation, have been tortured physically and mentally, have had confessions extorted from them, and have been sentenced by military courts to long periods of imprisonment and payment of fines."

The Ha'aretz article recalls the harrowing statements made under oath to the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel, by some of the minors prisoners at Telmond. They deposed "about the types of violence used against them when they were arrested in their homes, usually in the middle of the night; about the beatings they received during their interrogation at police headquarters or in military prison facilities, in order to extort confessions that would incriminate them and others; about being kept in isolation for long periods of time, in cells without bathrooms; and about being held in the Telmond prison with criminals who abused and attacked them."

The article also quotes the Palestine Red Crescent, according to which "154 Palestinian minors (under 18) were killed in the period between September 29, 2000 and June 17, 2001; of these, 26 were children under the age of 12, including infants. The number of minors injured is estimated in the thousands."

It’s utterly impossible for me to build my life on a foundation of chaos, suffering and death. (Anne Frank)

But there are no exterminations, you say? Ask of the parents of Abu Mutawi.

Last Tuesday evening, June 11, Abu Mutawi, a 9-year-old Palestinian child was shot dead when IDF forces opened fire on a residential area in Gaza. The child was struck by an Israeli bullet in the chest in the proximity of his home. The Israeli army had no comment.

Also last Tuesday, a ten year-old Palestinian girl, Wissam Muhamed, was wounded when an Israeli settler ran over her Tuesday, reports the Palestinian News Agency, WAFA. The Israeli settler is an inhabitant of the illegal settlement of Dutan. No arrests have yet been made.

In a letter to George Bush in February this year, a number of Palestinian school children had this to ask of the U.S. President: "Like all children in the world, we just want to live a normal and peaceful childhood, to be able to reach school safely, and to be able to sleep at night in comfort when even our parents' comforting does not free us from the horror we live on a daily basis, the images of funerals, humiliating checkpoints, and injured friends, and the fear of the sounds of shelling and gun ships - Are we asking for too much?"

Maybe at least one ten year-old child in Rafah was asking for too much.

Jennifer Loewenstein, a prolific writer who also works for the Mezan Center for Human Rights in Gaza City, recalls events in April this year of how "Israeli soldiers shot dead a ten year old boy in Rafah for having the audacity to play too close to the border. The children of Rafah make good target practice for those planning their nighttime raids into the refugee camps there and elsewhere throughout the Strip."

Golda Meir, the former Israeli Prime minister, once said: "There will be peace in the Middle East only when the Arabs love their children more than they hate Israel." What the "gentle" Prime Minister of Israel failed to understand was that it is not that the Palestinian mothers' love their children less, it is their incarceration, their torture, their deaths that they despise.

It is the criminal hijack of the future of entire generations of Palestinians by successive Israeli governments.

Like "Huriya Beni Odeh from the village of Jiftlik [who] had a miscarriage because of delays at an Israel Defense Forces roadblock, when she was on her way from her home to the hospital in Jericho," per a DCI report.

Or like another little ten year-old girl, Osa'ama Hamdan with her warm brown eyes and gentle locks of hair, "who died of complications of pneumonia after her parents were prevented [by IDF forces] from taking her to the hospital in Nablus."

And yet, when she looked up at the sky, she must somehow have felt that everything will change for the better, that this cruelty too shall end, that peace and tranquility will return once more.

[Yusuf Agha is a historian who also dabbles in Information Technology. He reads extensively and has an interest in the visual and performing arts. He has resided in the United States for over two decades, loves its people and the land, but is still trying to figure out whom the government represents.]

Yusuf Agha encourages your comments: yagha@YellowTimes.org

YellowTimes.org encourages its material to be reproduced, reprinted, or broadcast provided that any such reproduction must identify the original source, http://www.YellowTimes.org . Internet web links to http://www.YellowTimes.org  are appreciated.