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On 3 July 2008, I received this email:
Dear Friends,
Tomorrow is Independence Day in the USA, a day celebrated with family, friends, hot dogs and baked beans, and lots of red, white, and blue! It is a day that we “implants” into the Americas remember our forefathers and foremothers and their armed struggle to free themselves from the heavy yoke of oppression, from taxation without representation, from tyranny and despotism.
America became “The Home of the Brave and the Land of the Free” and yet we Americans tend to disallow these rights to others who seek the same freedoms using the same methods.
And what of the Native Americans, the “Amer-Indians”, the many tribes of indigenous people who were shoved off their land and forced into refugee camps we euphemistically refer to as “reservations”, those who were shot and killed if they refused give up the land on which they had lived for thousands of years? Do they celebrate this day or do they remember their loss?
Every year the U.S. consulate’s office in Jerusalem holds a big July 4th party for all their friends and associates, U.S. citizens registered with the consulates office, and colleagues with whom they work. It is supposed to be by “invitation only”.
I have been registered at the consulate’s office for many years, have several Palestinian friends who work there, but have never received an official invitation as others registered have. (I chalk this up to bureaucratic incompetence rather than take is as a personal slight.)
The lack of an invitation has never stopped me from attending, however. If you hold up your US passport at the security entrance and tell them you forgot your invitation, they will let you in. (So much for security!)
The party includes entertainment by a U.S. Marine Band, a barbershop quartet, and lots of good ole American food, like hamburgers and hot dogs, MacDonalds french-fries, and Ben and Jerry’s Ice Cream. For those of us who don’t have access to “western” things like that, we “relish the relish”, so to speak.
Last year I boycotted the party as did other colleagues since one of the sponsors of the event was Caterpillar, the company whose equipment is used for the construction of the Separation Wall and for the destruction of thousands of homes and hundreds of thousands of olive trees. We refer to these bulldozers as “weapons of mass destruction.”
I doubt that my absence from the consulate party has had or will have any impact on the celebrations or the moral order of the planners, (especially since I wasn’t invited in the first place!) but I really can’t justify our government’s continued support of a company that is so violent in their use of equipment, coupled with the consulate office’s continued effort to bury their collective heads in the sand and refuse to acknowledge the obvious.
They employ Palestinian staff. They know what is going on. How do they get away with such blatant affronts?
Because no one stops them! No one speaks out! Would we be celebrating tomorrow if our forefathers had not spoken up, nay, shouted, and rebelled against the injustices?
As we prepare to celebrate our independence, let us remember all those who were forced to pay the price for that independence.
Let us also remember those who are still struggling around the world to shake off the cloak of oppression in order to stand up free and proud on a land they can call their own, to govern as they see fit without interference from those who may think their way is better.
Let us pray for the recognition of every human being as a child of God, with rights to live with dignity and freedom.
Ms. A in Israel and Palestine
We hold these truths to be self-evident: That all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights; that, among these, are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness; that, to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; and, whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it. -July 4, 1776. The Declaration of Independence
May 14, 1948. The Declaration of the establishment of Israel:
"On the day of the termination of the British mandate and on the strength of the United Nations General Assembly declare The State of Israel will be based on freedom, justice and peace as envisaged by the prophets of Israel: it will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion it will guarantee freedom of religion [and] conscience and will be faithful to the Charter of the United Nations."
