From
Warsaw to the West Bank
by Sherri Muzher
March
12, 2002
Women throw hand grenades. Children fight
like soldiers. Occupying soldiers prevent food and medicine from the civilian population.
Buildings and homes are destroyed. Arms are smuggled. A relatively unarmed
civilian population fights one of the most powerful armies in the world.
Welcome
to the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of April, 1943. Under the leadership of Mordecai
Anielewicz, Warsaw Ghetto Jews staged the first urban uprising in Occupied
Europe. Jewish fighters held out
against heavy German attack for 27 days. Their arsenal consisted of nine
rifles, 59 pistols, and several hundred grenades, explosives, and mines.
Clearly,
Jews faced overwhelmingly superior forces. Consider the results of the Nazi’s
military victory: Of the Jews captured, 7,000 were shot, 7,000 were transported
to the death camp of Treblinka, and 15,000 were shipped to Lublin. Among the
Nazis and their collaborators, the losses were 16 dead and 85 wounded.
The
Warsaw Ghetto Uprising was truly a turning point in Jewish and European
history. The significance and symbolism of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising
represented more than just who beat who or how many casualties were inflicted
on either side. Anielewicz wrote to his colleague, Yitzhak Zuckerman, “…what
really matters is that the dream of my life has become true. Jewish
self-defense in the Warsaw ghetto has become a fact. Jewish armed resistance and
retaliation have become a reality. I
have been witness to the magnificent heroic struggle of the Jewish fighters.”
For
Anielewicz and other Jews, the Uprising represented fighting for honor. The
Jews knew the awful fate that the Nazis had in store for them. And they knew
they would lose militarily. But a conflict is not just won on military might,
as the Jews in Warsaw proved.
On
April 19, 1993, the late Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin gave a speech
before the Central Memorial Assembly in Warsaw on the 50th Anniversary of the
Uprising. “They fought from the rooftops of houses and from the sewers, the
cellars and courtyards, behind collapsing walls and rooms engulfed in flames.
They had no chance, yet they were victorious. In human history, the rebels of
the ghetto will be remembered as those who kept alive the embers of honor.
Their honor was the last asset of one thousand years of Polish Jewry, which
were consumed by fire but their honor did not perish.”
Fast
forward nine years. Women pull pins on hand grenades. Children fight like
soldiers. Occupying soldiers prevent food and medicine from the civilian
population. Buildings and homes are destroyed. Arms to resist an army are
allegedly smuggled. A relatively unarmed civilian population fights one of the
most powerful armies in the world.
Welcome
to the West Bank, where one Palestinian recently resorted to using a single
shot Carbine rifle from WWII to attack soldiers. Yes, the arms can be that
elementary. More than 1,100
Palestinians have been killed in this Uprising and nearly 20,000 injured. The
numbers increase each day. The comparisons may be disturbing to some but
realities are realities. And when a human being’s honor is the only thing he or
she has left to lose, it is very likely that many Palestinians will share
Mordecai Anielewicz’s dream, as well as the late Yitzhak Rabin’s pride.
Scenes
of lining up blind-folded Palestinian prisoners with identification numbers on
their bodies should rile the majority of the Israeli population, besides Peace
Now members. Unfortunately, fellow right-wing comrades of the Sharon government
are pressing for even more force in achieving a crushing victory over the
Palestinians. It seems they have forgotten their own history and Jewish heroes,
like Mordecai Anielewicz.
But
Israelis say they are fighting a war against “terror.” Clever, given our
sensitivity to terrorism since 9-11.
But others see it differently. From Secretary of State Colin Powell to
normally silent nations in the European Union,
questions are being raised at the motives of the Israeli government
policy of destroying refugee shanties and killing civilians. Even the Vatican
newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano argued, “[A]t first it seemed
designed to humiliate a people, now it appears designed to destroy them.”
Certainly,
everyday Palestinians themselves will tell you that. A friend from the West
Bank town of Beit Jala put it in the simplest terms as to why Palestinians
remain strong in the face of such adversity. “Everyone expects to die . . .”
True,
the awful gas chambers are missing. But the techniques of resistance and
motivation in both uprisings are similar:
fighting against a powerful force to keep the embers of honor alive.
Sherri
Muzher is a Palestinian-American lawyer, writer and activist based in
Michigan