Ali Hammuda – Message to Students of the Solidarity Camps
AI: Summary ©
The speaker shares stories of his grandfather's horrors during the Haganah movement, including the selection of male and female visitors and the use of deadly drugs. The Haganah movement was forced to be executed by the British, and the Buffalo River was used as a bait. The speaker emphasizes the need for students to act with patience and time to achieve their goals, and to share stories of their experiences. The Haganah movement was a movement for change, and students need to address their own experiences and address the need for students to act with patience and time to achieve their goals.AI: Transcript ©
On one bright morning,
on a July
in 1948,
my
grandfather,
Muhammad
Ali Hamouda,
found himself waking up to
abrupt
sounds
of gunfire.
Roused from his sleep,
he made his way to see what was
happening,
and what came to unfold
and what came to light was that it
was now the time for his city
to experience
its share of ethnic cleansing,
which would sweep through the whole of Palestine.
Allow me, my brothers and sisters, on this
afternoon to share with you the story
of my grandfather,
my father, and our family
not to center the light on us as
individuals,
but to elaborate
upon a Palestinian statement that we often share.
The statement that says
every
Palestinian
has a story of a Nakba, a catastrophe
to share.
My paternal side of the family
come from a city known as Madinatulid
or the city of Lod in Arabic in
Palestine.
And we hail from the specific area
which is on the particular land
occupied and established by the Ben Gurion Airport,
which used to be known as the airport
of Lyd before even that had its name
changed.
My grandfather grew up in the city of
Lyd or Lod before
making his way and traveling to the city
of Yatha or Jaffa in English, again there
in Palestine,
much of the oranges that you buy from
Sainsbury's and ASDA, check the label, of course,
will be from that particular city known as
the city of Yaffa.
My grandfather
carried out his initial education there in Yaffa,
and it was through the
his interactions with the marketplaces,
the bustling marketplaces of Yaffa and the narrow
alleys of the city of Yaffa
that he met and fell in love with
a woman
who would, of course, be my grandmother.
They lived in Yaffa not knowing that their
lives were about to change upside down forever,
separated from their land in Palestine
because of events that they would not be
able
to pause or to halt.
In 1937,
the Peel
Partition
Committee was established in order to carve a
path
and to execute what we know today as
the Balfour
declaration,
in spite of the indigenous Palestinians
living there and at their expense, rendering them
overnight
as a minority of second class citizens.
By around the mid forties, it became clear
that the global powers were moving
towards this direction, and nothing can be done
to stop it, though Palestinians
detry.
And by this time, you had the formation
of Zionist militias like the Haganah group
and the Irgun
and, of course, the Ilahi group. 1946,
things became very violent
with now the Zionist militias growing impatient, wanting
to begin their mass, ethnic cleansing of the
ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians
and to tell the British, who were controlling
Palestine via their mandate, to leave once and
for all.
1946
was the bombing of the King David Hotel,
and what was becoming clear now was that
the Haganah
and the other Zionist
militias
were carrying out executions,
lynchings,
booby trappings,
assault,
door to door looting,
and the ethnic cleansing of communities.
And by the time we reach now
1948,
specifically on 14th
May of that year,
the British mandate had come to an end.
And now not just the British personnel who
were the target, but the Palestinian civilians,
it was now the time for my grandfather
and my grandmother
and their children to experience the full wrath
of the Zionist entity.
My grandfather would often tell us the details
of what happened to them.
Details so precise in nature, down to the
very names of the areas, the alleys, the
numbers,
very similar to the information then shared by
Ilham Pappe in his book, The Ethnic Cleansing
of Palestine. Though my grandfather,
he never read the book of Ilan Pappe.
They came into the city of Yatha.
My grandfather said they took
every young man,
every individual above the age of 22 years
old, they rounded them up.
And I was there with my dad,
my great grandfather.
And they took us they took us to
the Dehmej Mosque in the city center,
and they lined us up in our tens,
in our dozens,
and they began to execute them one after
the other.
He said I was spared
because they I they assumed I was 22
years old. I was in my
early twenties still.
And they had a cruel tradition of the
Haganah back then that they would spare
1 male figure from each family,
not out of mercy or compassion, but so
that he may
shepherd
the remainders of his family and take them
out of Palestine.
He told us about how they came into
houses door after door,
literally pulling out the women and the children
and the men from their homes. In that
Masjid,
there were 176
bodies that were recovered, including the body of
my great grandfather.
Of what?
426 men and women and children who were
executed on that day alone.
By the end of it, in just a
few days' time,
50,000
men, women, and children from my city of
Lyd would begin their exodus to the West
Bank.
That was a a very dangerous journey in
of itself,
where people were traveling in one of the
hottest months there in Palestine without water,
without food, without sustenance.
Many people
who passed away because of starvation and thirst
just along the way.
Now my grandfather, as a young man in
his early twenties, finds himself a shepherd of
his newly widowed
mother
and his newly orphaned
children or siblings,
and now they are making their way on
what they call the
snake line
towards the West Bank in Ramallah.
At the time, Ramallah was under the administration
of the Jordanians. Things were not settled.
And in just a few years time, my
grandfather, now having finding himself as a refugee
in his own home,
is uprooted again from the West Bank, him
and his family, and they are forcibly displaced
to Gaza in Al Burayj
refugee camp. A
refugee now
and displaced
for the second time since 1948
within his own homeland.
My grandfather was an educated man. He was
a man of words. He was a linguist.
He was a headteacher.
He was a poet. He was a calligraphist.
Interested in education, he played a key role
in establishing the very first fully functional educational
system there in Gaza and established the Islamic
University
of Gaza, which was bombed just a few
months ago in 2023,
leveled to the ground by the Zionists.
There in Gaza, as he established himself, he
was summoned
by the Kuwaiti government
who had just received its independence.
It was a nascent young state that was
now
standing on its feet. They wanted educators. The
Palestinians being educated people. He was summoned to
make his way to Kuwait and to begin
to teach
and to establish the infrastructure of schools.
He made his way to Kuwait. He became
a head teacher.
He became a mufetish, an inspector.
After a few years, it was the
instability of the Gulf War, and once again,
he has displaced him and his family. And
this is where I was born in Kuwait.
We make our way to the UK as
refugees now for the 3rd or 4th time
in just a few years.
Each time, however,
the displacement
pushing us farther and farther
away from Palestine.
Then in the UK, we were condemned to
a fate of just observing what is happening
there in Palestine with our hands
raised to Allah, to God Almighty, praying that
He gives what is best.
His conversations were always about Palestine. His yearnings
were about Palestine.
His speech with the young and the old,
his poetry called Tarikun Nasr,
the book titled The Pathway to Victory, is
about Palestine.
Every time he speaks, his voice rivets with
pain and is thickened with emotion, and every
time his words are impunctuated with tears,
the pain of being separated from Palestine never
left him.
Then in May
2021,
following another onslaught on Gaza,
43 members of my grandmother's family now who
were huddled in one building
were hit by an Israeli bomb. Every one
of them was killed.
And my grandmother's family,
Al Qawlaq family, officially was wiped away from
the Palestinian
registry. They no longer exist.
On one particular day, I will never forget
the 11th December
2,011,
we receive a phone call. Grandfather is not
feeling well.
He's been rushed to hospital,
and so we make our way to see
if what we can do for him, but
they needed to operate immediately. He had suffered
from aneurysm, the bursting of a major artery
in his stomach. He was passing away. They
needed to operate immediately.
He said to them, let me see my
son. Let me speak to my grandchildren. They
said, you need to go under anesthetic right
now.
We arrived to the hospital
and his soul had beaten us to Allah
Subhanahu wa ta'ala and he passed away rahimahullah.
We
said to the surgeon,
how was he before he passed away?
What were his final words?
The surgeon, an Indian, a fine man who
operated on my grandfather, he said,
your grandfather,
as he was sleeping under the veil of
anesthesia
and as his voice was trailing into silence,
he whispered and he said to me, doctor,
take a seat next to me if you
will.
Let me tell you about Palestine.
Moving back to what is more important,
putting the lens now with this backdrop on
you,
after having elaborated upon the concept that says
every Palestinian has a story like this to
share, This was merely a demonstration for yourselves.
Moving back to what is more important and
that is yourselves, my brothers and sisters, as
students, I am aware
that you have exams.
I am aware that at 1:30 this afternoon,
you have an exam to attend.
But I would like to tell you,
there is yet another exam that you are
enduring at this very second
lawn in Cardiff University,
an exam that you are passing,
an exam that you have already passed.
This is the examination of morality,
the examination
of justice,
the examination of having a human
conscience in a depraved world of ours today.
For the course of 60 years or so,
students have demonstrated
how every exam that is imposed upon them
by way of foreign policy
put onto the public each and every time,
they are passing every one of the examinations
of morality
presented to them.
Whether we begin in the early sixties
with the black civil rights era movement,
It was the students who were mobilizing,
the students who were raising their voices against
segregation on the basis of color and ethnicity
and race.
It was through their sit ins,
through their encampments,
through their boycotting,
through their calling for the freedom rides
that eventually there was a turning point
in the conscience of the country, and it
was the end of institutional
racism.
It was a student
led movement.
Moving into the sixties
mid seventies,
during the cruel and unjust American war on
Vietnam,
once again, it was the students who mobilized,
the students who behaved as teachers,
the students who spoke,
and they called for boycotts and sanctions, and
they raised awareness.
And the historians will point at a very
specific event during that time as students protested
the Vietnam War.
In Ohio,
Kent State University,
May 1970,
when 4 students were shot and killed and
9 were injured.
Historians
pinpoint
that event as being a turning
point in the public opinion in favor of
the anti war movement or anti war sentiment
against Vietnam. It was student led.
No one can belittle what you are doing
this afternoon and throughout these next couple of
days, weeks, and months.
Fast forwarding
to the late seventies
eighties,
when we speak about apartheid South Africa, who
was the one mobilizing?
Who was the one recruiting?
Who were the ones,
sacrificing?
They were the students again
calling for sanctions and calling for divestment,
calling for boycotts against apartheid
racist South Africa.
And with patience and with time,
we reached 1988,
and 156
universities by then had agreed to cut all
ties with the racist
regime of South Africa back then,
which then toppled the entire regime.
So this is your legacy,
and we expect nothing less
from men and women, truly educated
men and women like yourselves.
And fast forwarding
to the 21st century, fast forwarding
to 2023,
2024,
in the live genocide that you and I
are witnessing there in Gaza, once again, it
is the students who are taking the lead.
What began as a humble movement there in
Columbia University has now become a global conversation
that has punctuated
every talk at every level of the hierarchy
with student encampments here in the UK, alhamdulillah,
by the grace of God Almighty,
up and down the country no less than
30 of them doing what you are doing
here today.
And in America,
every one of the states of America, save
4,
there are students in camping for the exact
same cause
as
yours.
And just as their voices were heard back
then,
your voices will be heard today.
Policy change
and social system transformation
happens particularly here in the west usually in
one of 2 ways.
Usually, it is a top down approach
or a bottom up approach.
The top down approach is when you have
the wealthy donors,
the ruling elite,
lobby groups,
and other influential people
who will give their recommendations
and their demands
to the policymakers
beneath them
through their institutions that they have.
With the passage of time, this then becomes
law,
which is then executed by the executive branches
of society
and then passed down to the media who
lap it up more often than not,
and then they push it out to society
being the mouthpieces
of those above.
This is the top down approach for change.
As for the latter, the bottom up approach.
This is when people like yourselves
start from the grass, literally from the lawn,
When they start from the meadows of their
universities,
from the ground,
from the streets,
from the protests,
from their universities,
from their online platforms.
They start from the bottom and they work
their way up,
raising their voices against a cruel and unjust
status quo,
which creates
a disturbance at the level of government
and those who are in positions of power
and certainly the deep state as well.
Your movement as students is situated in this
latter movement from the ground up,
and, unfortunately,
history tells us
that bottom up up appraisals, bottom up change
will usually be met by violent crackdowns that
at times brutal as well. And we have
seen this,
but this should not dissuade you.
And foolish is the one who argues
that these encampments are not bearing fruit.
It is only media outlets
and sometimes people from our own brethren who
lack the maturity
and the experience
and the integrity
and reading into history
to understand
the significance of what it means when students
mobilize.
How can we say that these encampments are
not bearing fruit? Look around you, east and
west. Turn your eyes there to Spain, and
you see the University of Barcelona because of
the students cutting all ties with the Israeli
entity.
Or you turn your eyes to Belgium.
Who would have thought the University of Gwent
has cut all ties
with several research
institutions
belonging to the Israeli
entity.
Or you turn your eyes to Ireland,
closer to home,
when you have Trinity College, Cambridge University's
wealthiest college,
and Ireland's most
prestigious
campus
declaring that they will divest from all arms
companies
pertaining and related to the Israeli entity. Is
this not success that is worthy of pause?
Or you turn to the United States of
America
where you have Evergreen State University or College
saying that it will divest from any of
the holdings pertaining or connected to the Israeli
entity,
And at least 5 universities in the US
that have voluntarily
dismantled their incumbents because
their demands
have been met and heard by the university.
Is this not a success?
Is this not a fruit
When professor Norman Finkelstein, a Jewish professor who
you know,
he says that
genocide
Joe Biden
only
suspended the arm sales to Israel
because of pressure
by the students.
Yes. It may be symbolic.
Yes. It may be temporary, but it is
also unprecedented.
He said this is because of the pressure
applied by the students. The fruits have already
presented themselves to us
whether by way of what I have just
shared with you
or the endowments projects of universities
that have always been a sleepy,
shady, quiet aspect
of university operation.
Who is funding these endowments?
And what are these endowments funding?
Where is our money as students going?
This has now taken center stage for the
first time. People are asking the right questions,
Bifat Lillah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala.
Awareness has been raised
in an unprecedented
way. Now the young and old are talking.
The word genocide has become mainstream,
and the world is experiencing
a shift. There is a brand new
world order unfolding
before your very eyes.
And at the epicenter of that shift
are the universities.
And at the epicenter of the universities
are yourselves
as students.
So no one should doubt the fruits that
these incumbents
are bearing.
And we put our hands side by side
with one another, and we stand in solidarity
till we see the full course of this
movement.
Brothers and sisters,
I conclude, and I share with you one
final message, and that is
it is very obvious that from time to
time,
there are the first and the last of
people to arrive at a scene of brutality.
There are always those who come first at
the stances of justice
and those who arrive last. History has told
us that more often than not, the people
of the ruling class, the ruling elite, the
politicians,
the media, the lobbies, they are usually the
last to arrive at a stance of morality
and justice.
And nothing demonstrates this more, perhaps,
than a Gallup poll that was that happened
shortly after the killing of the students at
Kent State University that I shared with you
earlier.
To see the sentiment of the American society,
which found that 58%
of those polled
believed that those students who were killed brought
death upon themselves. They deserved it. That's how
they saw it.
But now half a century onwards,
we lament this situation.
Society looks back at what happened
against the anti war campaigners, and they are
filled with regret about how they were mistreated.
The Suffragettes Movement, who were sexually harassed, harmed,
imprisoned, punished, called spinsters.
Society looks back now with the eye of
regret and say, why did we treat them
so cruelly we stood on the wrong side
of history?
Some of you remember the protest against the
Iraq war. You were there. We were laughed
at, mocked, and certainly ignored.
Now, they look back and they say,
why did their calls fall on deaf ears?
They were right and we were wrong. They
are always the last to arrive at the
stances of justice and morality.
Now we fast forward to what is happening
there in Gaza, and I guarantee, and mark
my word,
society will look back at what you are
doing as students and they will lament the
fact that they were not standing here supporting
you. They will regret it.
They will regret CNN's comparison of these student
encampments
to the persecution of Jews in Europe 1930.
They will regret making that comparison.
They will regret saying that every person who
takes part in these encampments is an anti
Jew or an anti Semite. They will regret
saying that when they discover it was never
true.
They will regret
putting the faces of students
on the sides of buses
and circling the encampa the campus
to shame them and to ruin their careers
and to label them as antisemites deceitfully and
treacherous. They will regret that,
And they will regret what they did at
UCLA University in America when masked Zionists came
onto the campus. You saw it with sticks
and they they beat up the encampus black
and blue,
and they brought rats into their encampments,
and they poured alcohol over the Muslims,
and they fired fireworks at them, and they
blasted the sounds of crying babies
to taunt them,
to remind them of what the IDF do
in Gaza. When they blast the sounds of
crying babies to lure the Palestinians
and then kill them,
They will regret
allowing this to happen as the LAPD watched
it idly doing nothing.
They will regret allowing actual Nazis
to march on a campus 7 years ago,
if you remember. And they killed a woman,
a protester,
using more force on us
than they did on those actual Nazis.
They will regret this, but when it's too
late,
and at that time, the only ones whose
conscience will be clear will be yours.
When the dust settles and the tear gas
disappears
and the mockery subsides, they will sit puzzled
in the filth of the crimes that were
entirely avoidable,
and they will
regret not sitting here on this lawn with
you, championing the causes of justice. So there
are those who are the last
the the the last to arrive, and there
are those who are the first to arrive
at the stances of justice and morality. And
more often than not, it is the students
who are the first to arrive.
So remember this,
that if the media and your university treat
you harshly today,
history will be kind to you tomorrow,
And if they are calling you naive, inexperienced,
passionate students today,
they will call you teachers tomorrow.
And if today you are made to be
a victim
before Allah Almighty on the plane of resurrection,
you shall be made into a witness.
Remember that our unique encampment is entirely unique
because we're not memorializing something of the past
of many generations.
We are remembering
and protesting
a crime of the highest order
that is unfolding before our very eyes at
this hour, at this minute, at this second,
And we will not stop our protest,
nor will we dismantle
our encampment.
And we take inspiration from the Palestinians
who say,
we shall remain here, they sing.
Just as firm as their camps are there
in Rafah. And in all of Gaza, our
camps will be just as firm. And as
long as they remain, we will remain.
And they are very afraid of these encampments
be because they know that the liberation
of the Palestinian people means the liberation of
the entire of humanity. However,
the sleeping giant has finally
awakened and the giant has decided to never
fall asleep again.
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