Gotta record this. Reading 'Son of Hamas' on my day off. Interspersed with devastating testimonies from Breaking the Silence - mostly IDF soldiers telling about how they witnessed abuse or themselves abused Palestinians. It appears from their financial transparency pdf and this link that they receive a good bit of funding from Open Societies Foundation of George Soros. That's some serious support of free speech aimed at uncovering sobering truth.
I'm taking a break, by the way, from 'Sequel' by Rachel Maddow.
Compared to the Maddow book, 'Son of Hamas' by Mosab Hassan Yousef and Ron Brackin, is much more fast paced and emotional. It is Yousef's autobiography of Palestinian childhood, imprisonment in Israel, and now I'm in the period where he is 'working' for Shin Bet which basically means he's getting paid to go to college and meet secretly with his Israeli handler.
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| Mars just met Saturn yesterday. You can see the pair setting on right side of chart. |
Quick cut to astro stuff. This my blog so we gotta gaze upward for a moment.
Jupiter is closing in on its meetup with Uranus. That's happening in the last 3rd of Taurus and it's a pretty big deal since these two outer planets last met in 2010/11. But the arresting pair that's got my attention right now is Mars and Saturn. I'm seriously digging into war, statehood and all sorts of national conflict.
This biography of the oldest son of one of the founders of Hamas is taking me to the depths of the Israeli Palestinian war. He mentions historic moments like the Camp David Summit, but from a perspective I've not yet encountered. He throws very few dates around, but plenty of gut wrenching stories of torture and abuse on both sides.
His dad is a flawed sweetheart, a true hero trapped in a very bad place. Yousef is a very confused young man wondering who he can trust, feeling very lost, but guided by his father's abiding kindness. I repeat, the kindness of Yousef's father is flawed; no matter how strongly Venus shines, Mars is always still present in heaven.
I've just come to the part where Arafat has succeeded in igniting riots after Sharon's uneventful visit to the Al Aqsa Mosque. By the way, I did not know Sharon's visit was a staged message to voters that he would not tolerate the Palestinains bulldozing archeological sites of Jewish Temples; there apparently had been video footage in the news, during the preceding weeks, of archeologists shaking their heads in disbelief at the bulldozers hauling away mounds filled with who knows how many ancient artifacts to a land fill.1
Yousef had driven his father to the mosque. Arafat had called him the night before requesting his help as a Hamas leader in bringing the Palestinians out to protest. When they couldn't get a crowd up at the mosque his father dutifully went to Ramallah to help bring people out into the streets. Yousef expressed outrage at his father for doing Arafat's bidding and then drove off to go camping near Galilee with his friends.
He had no idea about the riots unfolding until he got a call from his Shin Bet handler.
"Where are you?"
"I'm in Galilee camping with some friends."
"Galilee! What?" Loai started to laugh. "You are really unbelievable," he said. "The whole West Bank is upside down and you're out having fun with your Christian friends."
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I've watched a few videos with this guy, Mosab Hassan Yousef. He exudes intense, brooding anger and self confidence. He speaks against people adopting false identities.
I'm mostly thinking about the corrosive influence of war, of Mars, of the ugly reality of the constant battle for survival that we all face every day. But some survive incredibly brutal fights and come out ready to tell the rest of us what they have learned.
The moment I got that relief of laughter, when Yousef's Shin Bet handler was laughing at the absurdity right beside this very explosive, deadly sobering situation -at that moment the deadly sobering pair of Mars and Saturn were setting in the Leo duad of Pisces.
1. From Son of Hamas Yousef and Brackin Page 130 "Sharon's visit was designed to send a silent but clear message to Israeli voters: "I'll put a stop to this unnecessary destruction." In planning the trip, Sharon's people had received assurance from Palestinian security chief Jibril Rajoub that his visit would not be a problem as long as he did not set foot in a mosque.
"He came, he looked around, and he left. He said nothing. He never entered the mosque. It all seemed like a big nonevent to me. On the way back to Ramallah, I asked my father what the big deal had been.
"What happened?" I said, "You didn't start an intifada."
"Not yet," he answered. "But I have called some activists in the Islamic student movement and asked them to meet me here for a protest."
"Nothing happened in Jerusalem, so now you want to demonstrate in Ramallah? That's crazy," I told him.
"We have to do what we have to do. Al-Aqsa is our mosque and Sharon had no business being there."
I wondered if he was trying to convince me or himself."