I carry on today what I started two weeks ago, that is looking into the imperativeness of finding a solution to the Palestinian predicament. This despite the persistence of the brutality of the Israeli administration which still believes it can break Palestinians, oppress them and force them to give up their land or relinquish their will to establish their own free State. In this editorial I present a testimony I came across in video footage by a British woman who tells of how she was advised against having any contact with Arabs in Palestine, and warned of their aggressiveness and hostility, and how this proved wrong when she actually visited Palestine. She insists that Palestinians are good people who hold no grudges against any foreigner visiting their land. Following is what Ms Sue Sibany-King, Slough Foodbank Manager whose destiny forced her to mingle with the Palestinians, said:
“My Name is Sue Sibany-King; Sibany is an Arabic name from Palestine. I’m originally from north London. I now live in the Slough area. But when I was a teenager, I travelled to Israel, being told that it was a desert that had been turned into the land of milk and honey by Jewish immigrants. I got there and was horrified to hear that I should not speak to Arabs, I shouldn’t get in a car with Arabs. They would rape me, murder me, steal my money. And I was shocked because I’d met Arabs in Morocco on a holiday, and they weren’t like that at all. When I got in the second car because we were hitchhiking back in the day, I got exactly the same message as if it was form written, and I started to wonder why they were trying to turn me against another people. On the third time hearing it, I thought I should go investigate and find out what is going on.
“I ended up staying in Palestine. I married a Palestinian Christian. I have two Palestinian daughters that were born in Palestine, and I lived there for 10 years and saw the apartheid as it was then, which is nothing compared to the atrocities and the apartheid that is going on now. And so for all those years, ever since I have been fighting this campaign.
“When we first moved back as a family, my children went to school and were asked where are you from? And they said Palestine, and people said do you mean Pakistan? People had never even heard of Palestine. So, look how far we’ve come, now everybody knows the word Palestine, and I will keep on until my dying breath telling everybody why we need to support Palestine. It’s the longest going injustice of our times.”
Asked by her interviewer if she could summarise in a minute the history of what really happened; Is it Palestinian land? Is it Israeli land? Ms Sibany-King replied:
“If you believe that anyone can claim a land from 2000 years ago, I pity you, because if that’s the case, most of us living in most of the world don’t belong where we actually are, and could all be kicked out. So that isn’t a claim. If you listen to the Orthodox Jews, they also say that they are not supposed to have a land that God didn’t want them there; they’re supposed to be dispersed throughout the whole world. So there’s two reasons why Jews in Palestine was never a reason for them to go there. The whole thing was never about a Jewish homeland. It was always about the colonialist State. And the reason it was needed, as we’ve heard from Joe Biden fairly recently, ‘if there was no Israel, we would have to create one’. It’s because it serves the interests of America and the West: to have somebody there like a 51st State that they can control, which is why they support Israel completely, financially, with arms, and allow them total impunity in every violation of international law.”
For my part, I say that the final say hinges on the legendary determination of the Palestinians, which is awakening the consciences of free peoples around the world.
Watani International
26 January 2024
