"I went over, thanked her for coming in and asked if she was Palestinian. She said 'No, I'm American.' I said, 'Thank you for supporting us,' Suddenly, she started crying. I said, 'What's the matter?' She said, 'I'm 35 years old and I never knew the struggle the Palestinians are going through until now. Why wasn't I told?'
"So people are opening their eyes," Sakakini said. "People are seeing what is happening and they can't ignore it anymore."
Sakakini, who wears a wrist band that says "Free Palestine," runs the restaurant with his wife Simone. They have two children, both in college. So far they haven't encountered any problems. "But they told me they don't want to look at any of the pictures of destruction in Gaza. It gets to them," he said.
Johnny, 50, came to the United States alone before his parents arrived and at one point worked at a Subway restaurant in downtown Bridgeport. Later he opened his own place.
He recounted the difficulty of growing up in the occupied West Bank. While Israel technically does not have sovereignty over this area they control many aspects of life there. In particular, the military has checkpoints at many locations. Palestinians have to go through those checkpoints, show their ID and answer questions before they can go on. In some cases, people are subjected to strip searches.
When Johnny and his friends were growing up and going to school, Israeli soldiers would frequently harass them.
Sakakini said he was jostled by soldiers one time coming home from school. Another time he saw a soldier slam a boy with the butt of his rifle.
"When you live under military occupation it is not a piece of cake," he said. "They control your water, they control your electricity, they control where you can walk where you cannot walk, they control the schools, when they open when they close, they control when you can open shops. They can put you up against the wall for 20 hours and you can't move and God forbid you make a move they'll shoot you or they'll say 'you're trying to resist' and they'll charge you."
Sakakini said being in Palestine under Israeli occupation was like being in "a concentration camp".
The bitterness felt by Palestinians for living under military control sparks random violence, such as kids throwing stones at soldiers. Some kids have been shot and killed for doing this.
"People don't understand international law gives you the right to fight occupation," said Johnny. "So if you think shooting kids who are throwing stones is the right thing, something is wrong with the whole picture. You know this whole thing did not start with October 7. This has been boiling since 1948."
(In 1948, the UN created Israel out of the old Palestine controlled by the British. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were forced to leave their homes and many were killed. Palestinians call that period the "Nakba", meaning catastrophe.)
"Imagine five generations of Palestinians who've been living under occupation," Johnny said.
Under the UN Partition Plan, Israel received 56 percent of the land from the British Mandate. A second state was envisioned for the Palestinians but no agreement was reached on setting it up.
In the 75 years since then, there has still been no agreement on a second state and now much of the land that Palestinians nominally have, has been chipped away at as the Israeli government has allowed Jewish settlers to take over Palestinian areas to build homes. Now, according to critics of Israel, that nation has full control over about 80% of what was the British Mandate and have occupying forces in the remaining Palestinian areas in the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem.
Next Page 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
