Palestinian life is hard, discriminatory in Israel

Matthew, how can you scold the Palestinians like that (in your Wednesday letter to the editor)? Have you ever been to Palestine? I have been there and let me tell you, it’s half of what the media projects. The media fails to cast the Palestinian side.

The only times the Palestinian side is cast is in small documentaries on ABC. Even that sometimes doesn’t reach the public eye. The Israelis mistreat the Palestinians.

Yes, I said the Israelis mistreat Palestinians much like the United States discrimination in the 1960s of the blacks. Let me tell you what it is like over there.

I have been to Israel five times and all in the summer: 1986, 1987(the year the intifada started in September), 1996, 1998 and 2001. In 1986 and 1987, I was too young to understand the politics. I did not understand the politics until 1996 when I was 16 years old.

My family lived and still lives in a village four miles north of Jerusalem, the Israeli side. They have blue I.D.s so they can travel without restriction. But when I was there, it was different.

Ramallah, the Palestine’s version of New York, is in the Occupied Land. Just going to and back from there was a nightmare. There were two checkpoints (of course under Israeli control): one outside the occupied land (near my village) and one three miles in to the occupied land.

I had an American passport, so I was not treated badly, but the Palestinians who had the green I.D.s (denoting residents of the occupied lands), were treated like crap. On Friday, the holiest day of the week, Palestinians (I am talking about 50 to 80-year-old people) were not allowed to pray.

As another example, my grandmother, who was 60 at the time, went to Ramallah with the family to shop for the house. She forgot her I.D.

The guards made my grandmother (remember, she was 60) wait in the mid-afternoon heat (about 95 degrees Fahrenheit, like high noon in the movies), until my uncle could return with her I.D.Tell me, would you treat an old lady like that? Things like this happen regularly over there. This is what leads to Palestinian uprisings.

Another example happened at the Dome of Rock this past summer, which is the third holiest mosque in Islam. I could not pray there on Friday. Men only 40 years and older could, but any other day I was permitted. Even that was hell; I was given 20 questions testing my faith by Israeli guards. I understand why they put them there, but why start restricting the flow to a holy site like that?

Everyone can thank Mr. Ariel Sharon (You know the guy who has war crimes. The same guy who is responsible for going into a Palestinian village and massacring almost all the people there.) who went to the Dome of the Rock and said that it all belongs to Israelis for Friday Prayer.

How would you feel if someone went to a holy site and said it belongs to someone else on Sabbath or on Sunday Mass? The Israelis make the same remarks or actions to aggravate the Palestinians.

As I wrote earlier, the media publishes one side of the story and never the other half. There are so many things, if only you knew the injustice going on there.

Just to tell you of another thing. My family has land over there. For them to build on their own land, it takes about 10 to 15 years to get a permit (might be off a couple of years), but for an Israeli, like an American, it is given without hesitation.