Medea Benjamin, founder of Code Pink organization. (WAFA Images)

By Lana Hijazi

RAMALLAH, February1, 2018 (WAFA) - Medea Benjamin was arrested, beaten and suffered from a dislocation in her shoulder because of her support for the Palestinian cause.

Benjamin founded Code Pink organization, whose name came from the colors the American government used to indicate the level of danger after the 9/11 attack.

The organization’s program call for support of the Palestinian cause from one side, and cessation to US wars on the other. Its members were repeatedly assaulted due to their positions and protests in support of their goals.

Rejecting of the protests in which Benjamin participated was not ed to her country or those who oppose her views, rather from her own home. Benjamin grew up in New York to pro-Israel Jewish parents. Her family rejected her positions from the Israeli occupation, which was the reason for un-ending quarrel among them.

Benjamin’s pro-Palestinian stance started 50 years ago, when she was only 16 years old. She had heard about the agricultural settlements in Palestine, the Kibbutz, and she liked the idea at the beginning and wanted to join one of them to work within a commune and participate with other Jewish youths to “make the desert bloom,” which was the propaganda slogan at the time of the Jewish organizations.

After she arrived at the Kibbutz, she felt the prejudice and racism against the country’s indigenous population, the Palestinians. She refused to be part of that non- humanitarian movement. As she grew up and became well known in Washington streets by wearing pink cloths as a symbol of resistance to all who do not respect human beings and discriminate against them.

Code Pink members follow distinguished methods to protest against Israeli occupation. Once they wear cardboards with drawings of settlements as they walk the city streets declaring that they took over the area to build their settlements in way to simulate what settlers do in the West Bank. In other times women members wear bathrobes and go to American stores that sell Israeli makeup products and proceed to take them off shelves and throw them in waste baskets.

AIPAC, one of the Zionist lobbies that pressure the US Congress for the interest of Israel, was also a subject of protests by the organization.

Benjamin, 65, is now on a visit to the West Bank, challenging Israeli government verdicts banning supporters of the Israel boycott movement from entering the occupied Palestinian territories.

Even this time, she was detained and then released after joining a protest against settlements in Hebron. She doesn’t care about all this because she believes she is doing the right thing, especially when she compares what she undergoes to what Palestinian people are enduring.

Benjamin is a woman who made men and women wear pink to reject tyranny. She created an environment for free voice and proved -through her actions-before her words what supports her belief. No one can ever refer to her as “ordinary.”



C.K./M.K.