Lena Bloch
2 min readApr 13, 2024

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Human beings differ from animals in that they do not value biological survival above all. Those humans who do, degrade down lower than animals, because animals have no choice and no priorities. Humans do. For real humans, dignity and honor are above biological survival - and even above one's own dignity is the dignity and honor of the spouse, children, parents, friend, nation, Motherland. This has been true human essence for millennia, no matter what religion or no religion at all. Ghassan Kanafani said it well:

https://medium.com/@lenabloch/ghassan-kanafani-on-palestinian-liberation-9f322bc53a11

"G.K. — People usually are fighting for something, and they stop fighting for something. So you can’t even tell me why should they stop? Talk about stopping fighting — why?

R.C. “Talk about to stop fighting to stop the death, the misery, the destruction, the pain”.

G.K. — The misery, the destruction and the death and the pain of whom?

R.C. “Of Palestinians, of Israelis, of Arabs?”

G.K. — Of Palestinian people who are uprooted, living in the camps, living in starvation, killed for 20 years (… 80+ years as of today — L.B.) and forbidden to even use the name “Palestinians”?

R.C. “BETTER THAT WAY THAN DEAD, THOUGH”.

G.K. — Maybe to YOU, but to us — it’s not. To us, to liberate our country, to have dignity, to have respect, to have our mere human rights — is something as essential as life itself."

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He was willing to give his own life for the sake of dignity of his people.

My country gave 26 million lives for the sake of liberating the world from German Nazism.

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Lena Bloch
Lena Bloch

Written by Lena Bloch

Background in psychology of learning, literature, philosophy, math.

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