My Mother Vs. The US Congress
My Mother Vs. The US Congress

Since the mid seventies, one idea that I constantly had on my mind has been to write a book about “My Mother vs. the West.” The idea was triggered in my mind first (and never left me ever since), while I was working as the Head Supervisor of Mathematics Instruction in all the schools of the West Bank (in Palestine) between 1973-78. As I was searching (in books and magazines) for good examples on how math is connected to life, I “discovered” that I had a very real and powerful example in my own home. I discovered that my illiterate mother knows math in a way that was very hard (almost impossible) for me to comprehend, let alone be able to practice. (For details, see my article, “Community Education: To Claim and Transform What Has Been Made Invisible,” in Harvard Educational Review, Vol. 60, No.1, 1990.) In that article, I compared my math (which is basically Western-centered) with my mother’s math, which stems from life and the “cultural soil” she was living in. That was the first time I realized the multiplicity of ways of living, knowing and doing; the multiplicity of meanings of words; the richness in people and their lives; as well as the first time I realized the façade of education and the harmful concepts of progress and development (when they are used to mean moving along a linear path.) Her knowledge was embedded in her practice like salt in food; it is not easy to see it, or separate it, or teach it the way math is taught in schools and universities, i.e., detached from life, context, practice, the cultural soil, and social value.

The second field where I started realizing that my mother had a completely different concept (as embedded also in her practice) from dominant Western ones was in the field of management. After we were expelled from our home in Jerusalem in 1948, we lived in Ramallah, eight people in one room for several years. That’s what we could afford. My mother was managing her business of sewing clothes; managing daily living for eight people; managing life with the little money she was getting from the sewing business (my father had no work at the time, he lost his work in Jerusalem); managing time in order to do all what was needed to be done; managing the little space we had (one room) to function as a sleeping place at night, a working place during the day, and a play place for me and my sisters during certain periods in the day and during winter; and managing the “climate” at home so that there was happiness and love in the family. If management means managing the little resources that a person or a group has, very efficiently and very effectively, then my mother was an exemplary manager. And if wisdom embodies doing a lot with very little, then my mother was a very wise manager. I don’t know of schools of management (which are again mostly Western-centered) that recognize her kind of management, and I don’t know of any management “expert” who can comprehend (let alone manage) the kind of life she was leading (which is shared with the social majorities around the world.)

The third field where I started realizing my mother’s ways of living, doing and knowing are totally different from the dominant Western ways was the field of religion. [For details, see my article, “Reclaiming Our Identity and Redefining Ourselves,” in N. Ateek, M. Ellis, and R. Ruether (editors), Faith and the Intifada: Palestinian Christian Voices. SABEEL, Jerusalem, 1991; or, if you know Arabic, a small booklet I wrote in 1992 entitled “My Mother’s Christianity vs. Western Christianity.” Tamer Institute, Ramallah, Palestine.] For my mother, the slogan “Jesus Lives,” for example, which we see on many churches in the West, is meaningless; it is an ideological statement that misses the point. It is a slogan made up of plastic words that have no life. In contrast, Jesus, for my mother, was living in her actions, in the way she treated others, in her heart. He was not an abstraction but a living force in her daily life. While on the topic of Christianity, and in relation to what is happening in Palestine, it is worth recalling a statement by Jesus, which was said 2000 years ago. When asked by the Pharisees in Jerusalem to silence his disciples because they were causing a lot of trouble in the city, he said, “If these hold their peace, the stones will immediately cry out.” (Luke 19:40) He said it in the same place and under similar conditions, where currently the same stones are crying out against injustice, oppression, the attempt to crush people, and killing children, demolishing homes and uprooting trees (some of which are hundreds of years old). If people are silenced, but these conditions go on, even the stones would cry out. One of the first cases that were recorded in history where a person was ready to die for the cause of truth and humanity, was Jesus himself. The word that Christian Arabs use to describe Jesus is al-fadi, which means, in Arabic, a person who is ready to give up everything, including his/her life, in order to save the lives of others, and to assert the primacy of life, freedom and justice. Al-shaheed (martyr) in Islam carries a similar meaning. When Prophet Muhammad was asked about al-jihad he said, “the best form of al-jihad is saying a word of truth in the face of an unjust ruler.” The scene of a Palestinian youth throwing a stone at a technologically advanced Israeli tank is all what is left for people to say no to injustice, to oppression and to the continuous dehumanization of people.

In November 2000, the US Congress passed a resolution blaming Palestinian mothers for the situation in the Middle East! One doesn’t know whether to laugh or be sad and angry. Just imagine a parliament in a foreign country passes a resolution blaming American mothers for the violence in the US, because an outside power is bombing American towns and cities? And, moreover, passing such a resolution without any member of that parliament ever been in the US, and without ever living in an American home! It would sound ridiculous anywhere, about any parliament taking such a resolution, except of course the US Congress taking such a resolution concerning Palestinian mothers! It is scary. Whom does the Congress represent? On what basis does it build its decisions and resolutions? Is this a manifestation of “darkness at noon” and the “dictatorship of money,” which is probably the most dangerous form of dictatorship (because it is mainly invisible and is increasingly practiced around the world)? And if the congress does this in relation to the Palestinians, doesn’t it also do it in other matters? There wasn’t a single major newspaper or major TV network in the US that raised the issue of how ridiculous for such an issue to be raised in the Congress in the first place. And not a single mass media network pointed out that Palestinian children are being killed in Bethlehem, Ramallah, Nablus, Gaza, Hebron, and Khan Younes – and not in Tel Aviv! Palestinian children are killed by Israeli soldiers coming from Tel Aviv to Bethlehem, Ramallah, Nablus, Gaza … as well as by Jewish settlers coming from New York and stealing Palestinian lands around Palestinian cities, settling on them, and shooting from them at people. [See for example Jimmy Carter’s article “For Israel, Land or Peace” in the Washington Post, Nov. 26, page B07]. I called my sister (who lives in Ramallah by herself) to ask about her because of the shelling. She said, “Every time I hear the shelling starting [from the two settlements around Ramallah], I go to bed so that in case a shell falls on the house, I die without realizing it.” What she said reminded me when I was 5 years old (in 1946), when my parents would wake me and my sisters up in our home in Jerusalem, and make us stand under the door frame which they thought would be the safest place if a shell fell down on the house from the close by Jewish settlement Mikor Haim. Fifty four years passed by without a real change in the situation of the Palestinians. And 54 years later, the same distortions, accusations, explanations and lies still abound. The resolution that was passed by the Congress reminded me also of how, when Hertzl (the founder of Zionism) was told “but there is a flourishing community in Palestine,” he replied (without visiting Palestine and without knowing any Palestinian, just like the members of congress): “we will push them gently across the borders.” Something similar was said by Ben Gurion: “the old will die and the young will forget.” Fifty years later, we still hear the same arguments and the same falsifications, but this time from the US congress! May be the Israelis are very educated, but definitely very poor learners. This confirms a basic conviction that grew within me during the 40 years of working in education: education and learning (more often than not) have nothing in common. One basic distinction is related to values: the main values in education are winning and control, and the main values in learning are living in harmony with others and with nature, and nurturing others and being nurtured by them.

The resolution, which was passed by the Congress, does not condemn my mother or other Palestinian mothers. If anything, it ridicules the members who voted for it. It says that – unlike my mother – they can be bought. It says that my mother in her grave is making sense: Israel needs the US congress to cover up what it has done to her and other Palestinian mothers, and to justify its crimes against children. Instead of looking at what it is doing, and having the courage to start from there, Israel is continuing to hide truths, and thus continuing to cause more suffering for both the Jews and for Palestinians. It is postponing a real solution from emerging.

My mother died in 1984. Between 1967 and 1984, she was living in Ramallah, only 15 minutes by car from the house (in Jerusalem) that she and her sisters worked for 20 years to build, and which we were expelled from in 1948. Every time we tried to take her to see it, she would start crying and sobbing on the way there, that we always ended up taking her back without seeing it. She just couldn’t see it. It was too painful for her. She died without seeing it (ever since 1948). If she hears the congress in her grave, she most probably would laugh thinking it is a joke. But, more probably, she would feel sad for the state of the world. She would worry about humanity, which she embodied so wonderfully in her life. Her humanity is still alive and manifested in, among other things, the relationship my sisters and I have, and the relationship we have with other people. That is mainly her doing and the doing of other Palestinian mothers’ -- whom the congress attacked without shame. In the name of all Palestinian mothers, I invite all members of the US congress to go and live for a week with Palestinian families and observe for themselves how Palestinian mothers live, and what is happening inside Palestinian homes and what is happening to them from the outside – by the very money approved by the congress itself.

The struggle in today’s world is not between East and West, nor between South and North. The struggle as manifested by “my Mother vs. the Congress” is a struggle between the strength inherent in human beings, cultures and the freedom of the spirit vs. the power of tanks, banks and other structures of control. It is a struggle between the social majorities in the world and the structures that attempt to crush them. The Amerindians saw this very clearly from the moment they got in touch with the Europeans. A Western Shoshone man, for example, asked: “Has the white man programmed the universe for destruction?” In other words, “there is no equation in dollars for the loss of a way of life;” in the case under discussion here, the loss of my mother’s way of life. No one knows which way the world will take. Obviously, the tanks, the banks and all the values that go along with them, have the capacity to destroy, not only the social majorities of the world, but also nature and life on Earth. Those who care should do what we can to reverse these trends. There is too much at stake to remain silent and indifferent.


Munir Fasheh
Director, Arab Education Forum
(1 January, 2001)