The Free, The Fair And The Ugly

We read about the war,

But never take the time,

To comprehend,

That death is a manifest that many men, dread to see,

Driven to the end, pushed to the limit,

The screams inside a mans mind, can never be heard,

Walking into that darkness, like a small child,

Clutching his favourite toy, looking around,

His wide, staring eyes,

Once was blue,

Now forever, will remain black,

After tasting the death, cast down from above,

Thrown back into society, once the job is done,

And you expect him to be the same? ?

After living the life, Of the insane...

---The evil that men do (taken from poemhunter.com)

Irvine 11: A group of simple students at University of California, Irvine caught in the midst of a controversial storm that riveted the attentions of the American-Muslim community.

As summed up by an article in The Associate Press, “A California jury found 10 Muslim students guilty Friday of disrupting the Israeli ambassador's university speech about U.S.-Israel relations, a case that stoked a debate about free speech.

The jury also convicted the students of conspiring to disrupt Ambassador Michael Oren's speech in February 2010 at the University of California, Irvine. They were charged with misdemeanor counts after standing up, one by one, and shouting prepared statements such as "propagating murder is not an expression of free speech."

Oren is a former Israeli Defense Forces soldier who participated in the wars with Lebanon and has now become the spokesperson in charge of re-branding Israel’s image after it was condemned for its actions in 2009′s Gaza massacre, and accused of war crimes and potential crimes against humanity by Justice Richard Goldstone and the UN Human Rights Council.

I have to admit that I dont think that interrupting Oren was the best idea. The students should have first let him finish before they started protesting. Because even if it was lawful for them to be excercising their right to free speech, it was also plain rude. Yes, I am aware that rudeness is not such a big deal nowadays but thanks to Islamophobia and the negative image of Muslims, we dont have the luxury to express ourselves that way. Instead it is incumbent upon us to display the best form of behavious even while protesting

That was my view before I read about Shaheen Nassar

A young Palestinain-American studying at the university, Nassar had come to realize that silence was not an option. Orignally from Gaza, Nassar's family had been forced to leave their homeland in 1948 due to Israel's policies. Then during the Gaza War (also known as Operation Cast Lead) in 2008, Nassar's own cousins were killed.

I wonder what it must have been like for Nassar to watch the man who had been a part of endorsing the same massacre that took the lives of his cousins and made them faceless victims, justify his actions? What must the young student have endured hearing Oren talk about the same policies that had forced his family from their homeland?

If it had been me, what would I have done?

I cannot answer that quesion. Maybe it is easy for me to say that Nassar should have waited for the end of the speech but I have not been through what he has. The 10 other students who protested after him must have felt it their duty to show their support where they felt justice was being denied because lets not forget that Michael Oren was advocating for a state which is condemned more by The UN humans right council than any other state in the world (fact).

If it had been Oren in Nassar's place what would he have done? Or the judge who sentenced the Irvine 11 to probation? Would they not have felt their duty to resist especially as citizens of the land that prides itself on free speech? Unless and until the judge, Oren, the jury or anyone else can answer these questions no one has the right to judge these students. In such a situation, what is 'fair'? Who gets to define justice now? When such a complicated and controversial array of history, the struggle for freedom and the demand and expectation of 'free and fair' judgement collides, it gets ugly.

Martin Luther King Jr once said, “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent over things that matter'. Nassar's family mattered to him as would anyone else's family have done to them. He had two choices; to hear the justifications about the murder of his loved ones or to speak out against it. He chose the latter. He paid the price. As did 10 others. How many others will have to do the same if we keep on remaining silent?