A few weeks ago, me & some of my peers from my school participated in a summit that was organised here in The Hague, Netherlands.
The whole thing started off as this...
We were in our social studies class & our teacher asked the pupils who would like to attend a summit where we would speak to some Palestinian children. Well, before I go on I should probably enlighten you on the fact that my class consists of 14 children. 6 children are from Turkey, 5 are from Marrokko, 2 are from Suriname & I am from the Netherlands Antilles.
Well, most of the kids from Turkey & Marrokko were quite interested, they figured they could speak Arabic with the kids etc etc. So naturally it looked like a nice deal to them. Alas, the teacher said the summit would be held in English & it'd be required to have a discussion in English on what we can do for the Palestinian children & try and find any kind of solution.
Hehe, as soon as the word English was mentioned all the hands went down. Even my teacher had to chuckle. Anyways, given I'm comfortable with English more than I am with Dutch or Arabic (because I don't even speak the latter) I rose my hand. The teacher then mentioned there was a dinner at night, hehe...a friend of mine immediately rose his hand. Oh well, perhaps his intentions weren't the best but atleast I someone familiar going along with me.
Anyways, we would be able to use the credits for quite a few subjects at school so it seemed like quite a nice deal to me, go to some summit, bullshit a bit, have some good food, go home, write a summary & voila, we're done with it all.
Normally I start at 12 P.M. & end at 3 P.M. on fridays. On this paticuliar friday I had to get up at like 7 A.M. to make it on time to the place where the summit was being held. Hmm, not much of a friday morning I must say. There I lay at 7 orso in my bed thinking why in heavens name I got myself into this whole thing. What's the point? They'll probably talk alot & the whole thing will be extremely boring, is this what I signed up for? For a few credits? Bah, what a wastage of a day. Naturally, you can't blame me for thinking this way, it's 7 freaking A.M.!
(As you've noticed, I'm not a morning person.)Anyways, I got ready & everything & set out to catch the tram. On the tram I met some of the people that attend my school, not from my class, just other classes. Anyways, we were all kind of confused what we were getting ourselves into...we hadn't received much information, we just knew there would be some people from Palestine talking to us. Hmm, wonder what they have to tell us.
Once we got there we were served some coffee & we received strokes of paper with different colours. Most of us (from our school) traded with other people from other schools (who were also attending, I think there were like 10-12 schools present) & managed to get all the red strokes. Hehehe, evil us.
Alright, at around 9.15 A.M. we were led into an auditorium and we were told that we were going to see a video made by an amateur movie maker. The story was about an old lady named Arna & her fight against the oppression in Palestine. There were checkpoints all over Palestine, checkpoints of the Israeli military. Some checkpoints would make you take off all your clothes for searches etc etc.
Anyways, the movie began with this old lady & a bunch of other people rallying across the road. They were asking all the people in the cars to honk their horns against the Israeli checkpoints & the Israeli presence in Palestine.
Then the narrator (the movie maker who happened to be the son of Arna) told us about his mom winning a Nobel Peace Prize & taking the award money ($50.000 Dollars if I'm not mistaken) to build a rehearsal hall for drama.
Hmm, quite generous I thought. I'd probably use $50.000 to buy myself a car orso.
Anyways, a group of children came regularly to do drama in the rehearsal hall. I remember one kid's story, this kid's house was blown to pieces when an Isreali rocket hit one of the houses next to this kids house & the explosion ruined his own house. This kid lost his parents & his two sisters. The footage cut to the next day (since the bombing happened at night) with the kid sitting in the midst of all the rubble with his head in his arms sobbing.
Wow I thought...and here I thought we had it tough. Pff, what a prissy ass pussy I am.
Anyways, the movie continued to show us how the children used to forget all their sorrows & just had fun as regular kids. We saw them smile, laugh, just pull silly stunts any normal, michievious teenager would pull.
We got to know the children's interests & what they'd like to be in the future. One of the kids, Yusef, told us on camera he'd like to be a doctor so that he could stop all the pain his country was going through. You really felt a connection with these kids, these kids were just like you and me, very normal, with simple goals in life...with a dream.
Suddenly the narrator cut to the present, he told us Yusef was killed in a suicide bombing.
Woah, what the fuck? That's a shocker to say the least, in one shot I see a normal looking kid with innocense written all over him & next shot I hear this guy blew himself to pieces? What the fuck went wrong here? What would drive someone to want to blow himself up?
We got the answer to that question, what would drive someone to kill themself? Apparently around the age of 18 Yusef was walking around on the roads when suddenly a school blew up. There was chaos all over the place, children running, people panicking...& Yusef running into the building. We weren't sure what Yusef was doing in the building....a few minutes later we saw Yusef walk out with a little girls body, this girl couldn't have been older then 10 years old.
Woah, another shocker. Sometimes somethings just make you stop and think, all I could think of at the time was the word "damn".
From that day on Yusef was never the same say his friends & family. A few years later he got up one morning & told his mom he was going out to look for a job. The mother would normally tell him to go do some household shopping etc, this morning she didn't. Before leaving the house he just looked at his mother & said he loved her alot. This came as a surprise to his mother since he had a look of pain & hurtfulness in his eyes. She thought he was just feeling depressed & let him go after giving him a hug.
That afternoon she put on the television & tuned in to watch the news. On the news she saw pictures of Yusef & friends of Yusef.
Yusef had driven into Israel with a bunch of his friends & walked to a local market place & detonated himself. He not only killed himself but also took alot of lives around him. His friends were shot in crossfire between them & the police.
Now you can understand that all these images & stories made quite an impression on me.
We were then told that Arna, the person who was fighting for these Palestinian children was originally from Israel. Wow, another bomb-blast...why in heavens name was an Israeli woman fighting for Palestinians? She just felt these kids were wronged.
We were told that Arna died at the age of 86 because of cancer, for almost all her life she fought against the oppression.
At the beginning of the story we met like 10 orso children. Of the 10 children 2 are alive. Yusef & 3 others were killed in that one incident and 4 others were killed during a fight against the military of Isreal.
Wow, when we hear of all these suicide bombers, do we think why this person has chosen such a course of action? This person must have his family, he must have people around him that love him, he must have his goals...yet he chose this path. How fed up of his life must that man have been to end his life in such a chaotic way? Naturally it isn't the correct thing to do because he killed numerous people around him but I mean...the story behind his actions are a thing on their own.
After the movie we had our lunch break. After the lunch break we were introduced to a bunch of kids who had flown in from Palestine. They told us about their lives, their ambitions & their goals. I couldn't help imagining one of these people ending their life just as Yusef had done.
We had a discussion on what we could do to make people aware & our school has agreed to play the movie in The Art Theatre here in The Hague. We can help the Palestinian youth of today if we're all aware of what's going on around us. Most of the time we're lost in our own world giving a fuck about no one besides ourselves. The youth of today is the future of tomorrow. We, the teenagers of today will have the power in the world of tomorrow. We will make important decisions that will affect these people's lives. If we're aware, we can make better decisions.
I hope you all took the time to read all of this. I hope you guys have become a bit more skeptical about stuff you're shown on TV. The next time you hear about a suicide bomber, think about what must've driven this person to do such a thing.
Again, I'm not saying what they do is correct, just think about what drove this person to commit this crime.
Here is the site of the people that visited us in The Netherlands.
P.Y.A.L.A.R.A.
