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The story of the six Palestinian political prisoners should inspire hope and action, rather than plunge us into despair.
For four days, the Palestinians in Palestine and the Palestinians in exile have been ecstatic. With extraordinary creativity and determination, six brave Palestinian political prisoners dig a way out of Israel’s highest security prison.
Presumably, they did this with a spoon because they had no other tools. Of course, they did not have the heavy machinery normally required to accomplish this feat. The entrance of the tunnel was extremely narrow, making everyone wonder how the six adults passed.
I immediately remembered these lines in Mahmoud Darwish’s poem:
The earth is approaching us
Push us through the last paragraph
Then we tore off our limbs and passed through.
In fact, when two of them-Yaqoub Qadri and Mahmoud Abdullah al-Arida-were photographed on the fifth day, the images they posted showed that they had reduced a tremendous amount of weight and could probably pass through the opening. This is the art of imitating life-they tear off a part of their body to lead to freedom.
The next day, Zakariah Zubeidi and Mohammad al-Arida were captured. Ayham Kamamji and Munadil Infaat are still free, fighting for their lives, and persevering as much as possible.
The Israeli police took pictures of the men handcuffed by them and distributed the pictures with their most painful expressions. Someone immediately processed the faces of Yaqoub and Mahmoud with Photoshop, and the edited photos quickly became popular.
Many people criticized the changes to these photos. They argued that we must face their pain and failure, as if we were too stupid to understand what this moment means to them.
I believe that the person who edits the photo has made a huge contribution to our society, and I hope he or she will do the same with the photos of Zakaria and Mohammad. The Israeli authorities disseminated these painful photos for a reason.
They want to reflect their heavy burden in the hearts of all of us and let failure and frustration begin as it seems to be doing. They want our deflation to be as big or bigger as our initial celebration.
They want to erase the knowledge from our minds: six unarmed, thin men, perhaps only a spoon, fundamentally shaken the colonial Zionist plan. What frightens them is that we can think together about the depth of hope and determination that drives these six heroes to accomplish things that everyone thinks is impossible.
Because if we really think deeply about the primitive impulse to freedom and the infinite hope in the hearts of every revolutionary and soldier, we may find our own personal and collective strength.
We may begin to understand that nothing is impossible, and freedom is within our reach. We may start to organize a collective system to protect the remaining two-Ayham and Munadil-to keep them free and alive, and to encourage more resistance and resistance.
We may step forward and get rid of the illegal regime of Mahmoud Abbas’s treachery and build a revolutionary leadership willing to protect our own people, rather than those who occupy, rob and oppress the Palestinians.
Our brave political prisoners know the risks they take. This is what the revolutionaries did. They would rather fight than surrender. No matter what happens now, everything they have done is irreversible. Their attack on “Israel” cannot be ignored. They sacrificed a lot and gave us all hope. How dare we succumb to depression and a sense of failure now?
It is not failure or frustration that motivates them to dig a huge tunnel endlessly without adequate tools. This is certainly not a belief in Israel’s carefully cultivated view of omnipotence.
To commemorate them, what we can at least do is pass the torch of hope and the impulse for liberation, which is undoubtedly the core of their heroism. We can consolidate our lives of contempt and refusal to be exiled or captive forever. We can understand that nothing is impossible, including ending this cruel Zionist regime. In the face of the horror we know that heroic political prisoners are now facing, we have no right to be depressed or fail at this time. We can be sure that this is not what they are trying to inspire us.
The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.
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