February 7
GUEST: Manar Wahhab, cofounder and educational director of House of Hope, and seasoned art and music therapist for children experiencing toxic stress and trauma, talks about her work in helping women and children cope with the violence of Israeli occupation.Supporting House of Hope
Manar has the spirit to succeed. She is traveling in America trying to raise money for her school in the West Bank. Help her out if you can; the link is right above.
I wanted the interview to give listeners a sense of how hard life is in occupied Palestine. Manar's message was somewhat different in that she stressed the hope and resilience of the Palestinian People. Are they the same thing?
Maybe the audience is different. Listeners in the U.S. don't know about Palestine, and can't image the privation, oppression and suffering that the Israeli soldiers and settlers bring to this occupied people. Manar's audience is the children of the West Bank. She doesn't want them to give up their identity, or to grow up consumed by hatred of the oppressor. She wants them to have normal lives in the chaos that is apartheid Israel.
What Black family in our country doesn't want a life for their children free from the racism of Jim Crow? That is part of the resistance, to hold onto a sense of dignity and purpose despite the slow ethnic cleansing that is crushing their lives.
Manar's story of hurting her leg while waiting for hours at a checkpoint was the closest she came to questioning the cruelty of the walls and barbed wire surrounding her life. All she wanted to do was go to her Waldorf education class in Jerusalem. She just wanted to learn how to be a better teacher to the kids she obviously cares so much about.
Why does America support this fifty year occupation? Have we no shame for what is being done with our weaponry and our money? Or are we in the end going to beg forgiveness by saying that we didn't know?
