IMAGINE THIS WAS YOU, WOULD YOU NOT FIGHT WITH EVERY FIBER IN YOU?
Imagine that you are living your mundane life in the year 1948, going about your business. You, a grocer, maybe a subsistence farmer? You farm dates in the arid conditions, you grow olives too, you may even grow vegetables, as your ancestors had done for thousands of years before you.
Then one day some new people came they confiscated your land, they chased you out of your home and took it.
These people had no right to your land, and they certainly had no right to your home, but that did not stop them from taking it and chasing you away into exile.
Imagine that the people who did that to you were not the same skin color as you are, they did not speak your language, but they claim they have a right to your land and home because their God promised them your property.
Worse yet, their religion is not only different than yours; they [adopted] their religion and, as a consequence, laid claim to your property under the guise that God had promised them your land.
Remember, these invaders were never from your part of the world, but they claimed that they have a divine right to your inheritance based on the religion they adopted and took as their own.
How would you feel? What would you do?
Now imagine that 73-years later, if you are still alive, neither you nor your offsprings are allowed to return to your homeland. According to the invaders, you [you have no right of return].
Your homeland, your country, is now swallowed up; it has a different name now.
Where you once farmed, there are houses, factories, and even farms, but you cannot enter; separating you from your birthright is barbed wire, walls, and armed guards,
You are frustrated, so you throw stones, you light tires, and you protest. The younger generation is now more militant, so they build and buy crude bombs, but their bombs are no match for the precision-guided 21st-century missiles that rain down on the tiny bit of hell on which you have been forced to exist,
When you protest, there is more destruction and death, more bullets for your slingshots.
The occupiers pledged to drive you into the sea, and they may well have because you are not even allowed to fish in the waters that crash ashore the tiny strip of land on which you are imprisoned.
The occupier tells you if and when you may fish to feed your family; he even tells you just how far out to see you are allowed.
That is your existence,
That is your life.
.
.
Mike Beckles is a former Police Detective, businessman, freelance writer, black achiever honoree, and creator of the blog mikebeckles.com.