By Jafar M Ramini

This morning I woke up to yet another heavy dose of poison served courtesy of the Israeli Defence Force. Their brave, American-trained and equipped soldiers have raided Jenin and the surrounding villages of Ya'bad, Arraba, Kafreet, Kafrai, Fahma, Jaba', Ajja, Kabatya and Maythalon in an arrogant of force and intimidation.

Jenin, my town of birth, has always been a thorn in the side of any invader. We resisted the British with tenacity and now we are resisting the Zionist, apartheid occupiers of our land and paying with our blood.
Not only they build settlements to surround and strangle Jenin with the hardest type of settlers they can muster, but they cut our water supplies and they demolish our homes and uproot our trees on a regular basis. Do you remember when they cut the water supply of Jenin, just two months ago in the heat of summer during the holy month of Ramadan when everyone was fasting?
Even the Freedom Theatre in Jenin and its founder, Julian Mer Khamis were not spared the brutality of the Israeli Defence Forces. They murdered Julian in daylight and in cold blood with utter disregard to humanity and utter disdain for human life.

I am a Jenini, I resisted invaders and oppression all my life and I shall continue to do so to the end of my days. The stream of messages I receive on my lap-top every waking moment of the day from my countrymen from Jenin, Ramallah, Bethlehem, Tulkarim, Nablus, Silwan, Hebron and, most of all, Gaza are heart wrenching and a desperate call for help. The flood of abuse and brutality that our occupiers mete out to our brothers and sisters every day is relentless and hardening all the time. Arraba and Ya'bad have a special place in my heart. Arraba is where my eldest sister 'elsit', Nihad Al-Ramini was a head mistress of the secondary girls school for over forty years. She brought up generations upon generations of well-rounded, well-educated God loving Palestinian girls which she used to call and still calls 'banati'. Those of you of a certain age and memory may remember, during the seventies, when our occupiers sprayed the playgrounds of Arraba's Girls School with a certain kind of chemical that rendered the girls unconscious. When Elsit Nihad complained she was treated very harshly. Ya'bad next door is where our in-laws, Al-Ahmads are from.

Those two villages housed the olive press and the cheese making facilities that we used to visit during my childhood days, back in the fifties. They, along with all the villages our occupiers are so determined to destroy hold memories for me. I have a footprint and a fingerprint on every tree, every meadow and every street. I have a proud and still standing, though damaged, family home in Jenin that goes back over 100 years. That home continues to bear the name of my late father above the gate. I still have the key.

The racist, Zionist, apartheid occupiers of our land can bomb us, can uproot our trees, can burn our meadows, can destroy our crops, can demolish our homes, can desecrate our holy places. One thugs in Tel Aviv and the illegal settlements will never achieve. We will never be bowed, we will never abandon our land, we will never give up the fight. We are proud Palestinians. We would rather die standing up than live on our knees.