Religion, Nationalism, and Terror

Standing on a street with some Palestinian friends, I noticed an elderly Palestinian walking down the street, leading his donkey. A small child no more than three or four years old, clearly his grandson, was with him. Some Israeli soldiers standing nearby went up to the old man and stopped him. One soldier ambled over to the donkey and pried open its mouth. “Old man,” he asked, “why are your donkey’s teeth so yellow? Why aren’t they white? Don’t you brush your donkey’s teeth?” The old Palestinian was mortified, the little boy visibly upset. The soldier repeated his question, yelling this time, while the other soldiers laughed. The child began to cry and the old man just stood there silently, humiliated. This scene repeated itself while a crowd gathered. The soldier then ordered the old man to stand behind the donkey and demanded that he kiss the animal’s behind. At first, the old man refused but as the soldier screamed at him and his grandson became hysterical, he bent down and did it. The soldiers laughed and walked away. They had achieved their goal: to humiliate him and those around him. We all stood there in silence, ashamed to look at each other, hearing nothing but the uncontrollable sobs of the little boy. The old man did not move for what seemed a very long time. He just stood there, demeaned and destroyed.

Sara Roy, “Living with the Holocaust: The Journey of a Child of Holocaust Survivors,”

Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol XXXII, No. 1, Autumn 2002, Issue 125, p. 9.

On a summer day in 1944, my mother was herded from a cattle car along with the rest of its human cargo, which had been transported from Belgrade to the concentration camp at Bergen-Belsen. She saw a group of German women, some on foot, some on bicycles, slow down as the strange procession went by and watch with indifferent curiosity on their faces. For me, these women became a loathsome symbol of watching from the sidelines, and at an early age I decided that my place was not with the bystanders.

Amira Hass, Drinking the Sea at Gaza: Days and Nights in a Land Under Siege (New York: Metropolitan Books, Henry Holt and Company, 1999), 7.

Munson, Between Pipes and Esposito, ISIM Newsletter, July 2002

Harb and Leenders, Hizbullah, Terrorism, and the Politics of Perception, TWQ, 2005

Norton, Hizballah of Lebanon: Extremist Ideals vs. Mundane Politics, CFR, 1999