Hell

Hassan is 53 years old and lives and works in Hell.  That’s the description given by one of my traveling companions, a BBC Internet Journalist, on this excursion deep into the heart of the West Bank, Palestine.

“What is your life like?” Hassan was asked.

“My life is like death,” was his whispered reply.

Hassan works in the charcoal trade.  Every day he stands atop a pile of burning straw and fruit tree wood and tends the fire that turns the sweet wood into charcoal that is then shipped into the markets of Israel and the Occupied Territories to be used to grill the favored meat of the region – lamb, chicken and veal. This charcoal is highly valued here, and is used by restaurants, as well as street chefs and backyard barbequing dads.

To produce this charcoal, Hassan, and hundreds like him, are killing themselves.  The cancer rate among the people of this region, the villages of Ya ‘bad, is 25% higher than other villages in the area.  Among those who work around the sites where the charcoal is made, the cancer rate has to be much higher.  Hassan will die younger than he should, and that’s the price he pays to feed his family.  His life is death, so that he can help his wife and daughters live!  It is a high price to pay, but Hassan pays it because he feels he has no other choice.  Unemployment in the villages of Ya ‘bad is at 35 to 40%.

Ya ‘bad is close to Jenin, which is the Biblical site of Dothan, the place where Joseph’s brothers sold him into slavery.  Ironic, I think, as Hassan and thousands like him live in a kind of slavery to the Israeli Occupation.  They cannot travel freely.  They do not have choices in the kind of work they can do.  They do whatever they can to feed their families, and to have some kind of work that gives them the dignity of earning their own bread, something most Palestinian men, like most all men, and women too of course, long to do – earn your own bread, feed your own family.  Only the “work shy” want handouts, and most of the Palestinians I have met are not “work shy.”

This occupation must end.  It must.  For the sake of men like Hassan, but more than that for the next generation who deserve better choices than their parents and grandparents are given – this occupation must end.  During the summer months, children as young as 10 and 12 come to the charcoal pits to earn a few shekels to bring back to their families.

This occupation must end.  It must.  For the sake of those who use the charcoal that Hassan gives his life to produce, or who eat the meat cooked over these death-shadowed coals – this occupation must end.  It is tainted meat we eat, and no Rabbi’s kosher blessings can make pure that which is made impure by reason of oppression.

Tonight, at 45 minutes before sunset, the celebrations of Yom Kippur will begin.  Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, is the highest of the Jewish holy days.  Tons of lamb, and other meats, will be cooked over charcoal from the pits of Ya ‘bad.  The meat will taste sweet in the mouths of those who eat, but it will be a silent testament against the unjust treatment of those enslaved by the ongoing occupation of the Palestinian people – and it will not satisfy the hunger for God so evident in so many of Israel’s young.

Only an end to the occupation will begin a true Day of Atonement for all the people of this region.