Sunday, January 24, 2010

Dissent - One Wo/man Against Many

21 years ago, in Tiananmen square in China, in 1989, one man stood before 4 tanks, shopping bag in hand, preventing the soldiers from moving forward. In a time that was back at that time, he could have easily been killed as had been 3000 or more like him. Yet, thanks to a moment of insanity, both for this man and for the soldiers that did not kill him, he survived. And though we do not know who he is, we know this photograph.


Now comes the video version, only this time it's a girl and this time it's set in the perennial conflict zone, Palestine. The girl is Palestini and the soldiers, Israeli. Both, in their own weird way, kind. She's kind for obvious reasons and the soldiers kind because all it takes is one flicker of their finger to silence her, and yet they don't do it.

Having been in slightly similar situation, actually not similar at all since no one was shooting, i can only tell you that it requires a crazy amount of guts to do this. And no, this is not bravado of the foolish. The girl is not displaying that madess that we call bravado where in that insane moment where for really no particular reason you don't care what happens to you. The girl knows what she is doing, she's calculative. And yet she does what she does. That is bravery and heroism, when you know the risks involved very well, yet you believe in something so much that you risk yourself.

This video did not have enough hits, so thought I'd post it so you could see and pass it on. It deserves 6 billion hits. Whoever she is, may Nature grant her more bravery. And may she grant you and me the wisdom to do the same when the need arises (even when no one is shooting a video, especially then) and also the intelligence to find and figure out how the Palestinians are suffering and why they die and why the modified sling shot has become their weapon of choice against extremely sophisticated guns and why it is a bloody sin on your part to call every Muslim a 'terrorist' if you do so right now?

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