I'm Gonna Tell God Everything

Nicholas Fourikis

Description

Under the bleak Israeli occupation, not many would have imagined that love between the oppressed Palestinian women and the carefree Israeli settlers could take root, but it did! Amal was tall, well proportioned, walked like a princess and talked with her eyes. One evening, she was spellbound watching the sunset when Aaron, a dashing Israeli settler approached her. In Hollywood stories, love blossoms between a man and a woman ever so slowly, but in real life, love strikes like a mongoose. Their love affair did not last long because the Israelis stoned Amal to death. Almaz, Amal's sister decided to escape Israel's cast iron clutches, and with the financial help of her friends, studied at the Sorbonne, in Paris, because she believed that only the educated are free, an aphorism the divine Hypatia of Alexandria postulated. After graduating from the Sorbonne, she travelled to Adelaide, in Australia, to gain a perspective on the Middle Eastern muddle from a distance. With Jason, her lover, they storm the Citadel of the Enlightened where Jostein Gaarder, Gideon Levy, Alon Ben-Meir, Noam Chomsky, Judith Butler, Shimon Peres, Yitzhak Rabin, Mahmoud Darwish, Edward Said and Margot WallstrO m reside, to debunk several myths that proclaim the Israelis are God's chosen people who maintain the most ethical armed forces in the world and believe that killing Palestinians is not really a violation of human rights.

Sujets

• Political
• Politics
• Thriller

Informations

• Publié par: First Edition Design Publishing
• Date de parution: 15 octobre 2017
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781506905075
• Langue: English

Extrait

I’mGonna Tell God Everything


Nicholas Fourikis


First Edition Design Publishing
Sarasota, Florida USA
I’mGonna Tell God Everything
Copyright ©2017NicholasFourikis

ISBN 978-1506-905-06-8PRINT
ISBN 978-1506-905-07-5EBOOK

LCCN 2017956244

September 2017

Published andDistributed by
First EditionDesign Publishing, Inc.
P.O. Box 20217,Sarasota, FL 34276-3217
www.firsteditiondesignpublishing.com



ALL RIGHTSRESERVED. No part of this book publication may be reproduced, stored in aretrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means ─ electronic, mechanical, photo-copy, recording, or any other ─ except brief quotation in reviews, without the prior permission of the authoror publisher.


Thisbook is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are writtenfictitiously and any resemblance to actual people living or dead, events andlocales is coincidental
I dedicate thisbook to my mother, who complemented my formal education and blessed me with heremotional intelligence.
Acknowledgements

It is a pleasure toacknowledge the help Gabrielle Morgan have extended to me. I also thank the FirstEdition Design Publishing team for their help during the preparation of themanuscript and the artistic appearance of the book from my inputs.

Dr. Nicholas Fourikis
Adelaide, South Australia
www.nicholasfourikis.com
[e-mail]
“As a people, we [Jews] have been unable to link the creation ofIsrael with the displacement of the Palestinians. We have been unwilling tosee, let alone remember, that finding our place meant the loss of theirs.Perhaps one reason for the ferocity of the conflict today is that Palestiniansare insisting on their voice despite our continued and desperate efforts tosubdue it.”


ProfessorSara Roy, Harvard University
TheSecond Annual Holocaust Memorial Lecture
BaylorUniversity, 2002
Opening Remarks
Whilethe focus of this book is on the Middle East, valuable insights are gained bydevelopments taking place all over the globe. The pious hope is that this bookwill mark the beginning of a new era not stained by the blood of innocentchildren, women and men.
A comprehensiveexamination of the pro-Israeli propaganda is beyond the scope of this book. Forthe purposes of this introduction, however, it suffices to debunk thepropositions that the Israelis are God’s chosen people, their armed forces arethe most ethical armed forces in the world, and that killing Palestinians isnot really a violation of human rights. Such a task is easy because every Tom,Dick and Harriet knows the Gazans live in the largest open-air gaol in theworld; have no army, navy or air force and nowhere to hide while the Israeliarmed forces are equipped with the latest killing machines. This being thecase, the Israeli armed forces savagely murder thousands of Gazans “ as frequently as necessary to degrade enemy militarycapabilities and keep Israel’s rivals off-balance.” These are the wordsof the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, also known as Bibi. So muchfor God’s chosen people who maintain the most ethical armed forces in theworld!
Alas, the Israelisavagery does not end with the frequent bombings of the Gazan open-air prison,because most observers know that God’s chosen people who maintain the mostethical army in the world start bombing the Gazans at 11 am, the time when thesecond shift of the Palestinian schoolchildren starts, thus ensuring that themaximum number of Gazan schoolchildren are killed. So much for themost ethical armed forces in the world!
“Children havebeen shot in other conflicts I have covered,” Chris Hedges wrote for Harper’sMagazine on 11 March 2002. “Death squads gunned them down in El Salvadorand Guatemala; mothers with infants were lined up and massacred in Algeria and Serbsnipers put children in their sight in Sarajevo but I never before watchedsoldiers entice children like mice into a trap and murder them for sport.” Somuch for the most ethical armed forces in the world.
Are we to believethe Israeli armed forces commit murders and devastation without the consent ofthe Israeli political arm? Hardly, but you don’t have to take my word for it.Here is what the Prime Minister of Israel stated:

“Israelmust actively defend all its borders by itself, including the security envelopein the Jordan Valley and West Bank. And, Israel will act to mow the grass asfrequently as necessary to degrade enemy military capabilities and keepIsrael’s rivals off-balance.”

BenjaminNetanyahu,
The Jerusalem Post , 13August 2014

Theoperative sentence here is to mow the grass . Can we really equatePalestinian lives to grass? Bibi does, but no one has the right to equatePalestinians lives to grass. Palestinians are humans and have the same rightsas the Israelis. Bibi obviously does not care to acknowledge that Palestinianshave any rights, and that defines him.
Is thisan unfortunate Netanyahu quote? No! It is not; it simply reflects a classicIsraeli mindset as repugnant as the voice of Rafael Eitan, the former IsraeliArmy Chief, who stated on 13 April 1983:

“We declare openlythat the Arabs have no right to settle on even one centimetre of Eretz, Israel.Force is all they do or ever will understand. We shall use the ultimate forceuntil the Palestinians come crawling to us on all fours.”
Rafael Eitan,
Former IsraeliArmy Chief

He alsoadded:

“When we havesettled the land, all the Arabs will be able to do about it will be to scurryaround like drugged cockroaches in a bottle. ”
Rafael Eitan,
Former IsraeliArmy Chief, April 14, 1983

In thatenvironment not many expect love to blossom between Amal, a young Palestiniangirl and Aaron a handsome Israeli settler, but it happened. The same environmentnurtures several poets headed by Mahmoud Darwish, the recipient of manyInternational awards, and Edward Said the quintessential Renaissance man.
Almaz, Amal’ssister, decides to leave the oppressive environment of Palestine and study atthe Sorbonne with the support of her family’s friends because she believes onlythe educated are free , Hypatia’s memorable aphorism. And aftergraduation she travels to Adelaide in order to gain a clear perspective on theMiddle East issues from a distance. In the City of Churches she falls in lovewith Jason and together they storm the Citadel of the Enlightened to make senseof the Middle East puzzle.
Themajor aim of this book is to not only expose the reader to the maligned Israelivoices and their hideous crimes but also to chronicle the voices of Israelisand Palestinians living within and without Israel / Palestine who respect thehumanistic beliefs we in the West dearly cherish.
Whileit is impossible to expose the reader to all humanistic voices, arepresentative sample of these voices is celebrated in this book. Gideon Levyand Dr Mitri Raheb shared the prestigious Olof Palme Prize in 2015 for theirwork against violence in the region; most readers will recognise the voice ofGideon, who campaigns for his country’s withdrawal from the Palestinianterritories. The voices of the other luminaries included in this book are of:Jostein Gaarder, my favourite Norwegian living legend; the renowned Professor EmeritusNoam Chomsky at MIT and Professor Sara Roy at Harvard University; YitzhakRabin, the former Israeli Prime Minister and Nobel Laureate; theyoung Palestinian poet Dareen Tatour and Tawfiq Zayyad (Ziad) the mostsuccessful Palestinian poet-activist, a long-time mayor of Nazareth, and memberof the Knesset—the Israeli Parliament. How could anyone ever forget thisPalestinian firebrand who told his fellow members of the Knesset, “I’velearned Hebrew in your gaols!”
Thelist is long, but Professors Eva Illouz and Judith Butler makesubstantial contributions towards understanding the Israeli psyche, whileMiko Peled, the son of the Israeli general MattityahuPeled debunks several Israeli misconceptions in as many internationalfora and sheds light on the seemingly endless Middle East conflict. Lastly, I haveincluded the voice of the American Professor Alon Ben-Meir in the chorus ofclear-headed, modern-day gifted thinkers who spent time considering the MiddleEast politico-social nightmare.
Webriefly mentioned Mahmoud Darwish in passing but Mahmoud and Edward Said, are thetwo celebrated Palestinians who remained rootless cosmopolitans. MahmoudDarwish (1941–2008) expressed the feelings of all oppressed peoples using thelanguage we all understand, when he wrote:

A person can only be born in one place.
However, he may die several times elsewhere:
In the exiles and prisons, and in a homeland
Transformed by the occupation
And oppression into a nightmare.

Wearingthe gown of a historian, Edward Said (1935-2003), the other fellow Palestinianluminary, asked:

“How long are wegoing to deny that the cries of the people of Gaza…are directly connected tothe policies of the Israeli government and not to the cries of the victims ofNazism?”

Andadded:

“You cannotcontinue to victimize someone else just because you yourself were a victimonce—there has to be a limit.”

As muchas I love to see Arabs and Jews live side by side in Terra Sancta, I amrealistic enough not to expect that my dream will be realised anytime soon. Iam, however, more than certain that one day the voices of the men and women Ihonour in this book will prevail and the world will celebrate the accommodationof Jews and Arabs in Terra Sancta. Unity in diversity , is an aphorism I passionatelybelieve in.

Dr. NicholasFourikis
Author of Hypatia’sFeud
[e-mail]
Adelaide, SouthAustralia
March, 2017
Chapter One
Almazand I were having a jolly chinwag at CIBO’s, a stone’s throw away from the sea.My cappuccino was nothing to tweet about, but I didn’t mind because I was under Almaz’s spell. She was Palestinian, graduated from the Normale andhad an endearing French accent. I could swear the light breeze f