Siblings Accuse Teen Who Cleans Room Of ‘Normalization’

“Any contention that the parental entities somehow have a claim to this territory is simply a falsification of history and serves to legitimize the occupation.”

Raanana, May 19 – A local high-schooler has been ostracized by her brother and sister for tacitly endorsing their parents’ demands that the children of the family take care of themselves and contribute to the family’s collective welfare.

Ohr Dagan, 17, faces shunning and hostility from her fourteen-year-old brother Nir and 12-year-old sister Shahar, after removing the dirty laundry from the floor of her bedroom Sunday afternoon. The two siblings contend that their older sister’s activities serve to cement the unfair control that their parents exert, and that no behavior of any sort that condones such oppression may be tolerated.

Since then, Nir and Shahar have threatened Ohr with retribution, and have repeatedly denounced her engagement in any behavior that smacks of normalizing their parents’ illegal occupation of their children’s lives, even those activities that would directly benefit the siblings. The anti-normalization faction of the Dagan children argues that sacrificing some comforts is crucial of they are to succeed in generating pressure on their parents to get out of their lives.

Parents Yaron and Tamar, both 40, consistently impose demands and oppressive rules on their children, such as curfews, refraining from destroying the house, and respecting each member of the household. The children bristle under the parental dictatorship, and have resolved to boycott their father and mother so as not to distract from the need to overthrow the imposed rule.

“We did not ask to be placed under this repressive regime,” said Nir. “The international community must act to help us throw off this profoundly undemocratic yoke. The children of this proud family, native to this home, refuse to permit any among us to undermine our cause by normalizing relations with our oppressors.” He added that the Dagan children had lived in the home on HaGalil Street for as long as any of them could remember, and that they therefore have a prior claim to the home that the parents had simply usurped.

“Any contention that the parental entities somehow have a claim to this territory is simply a falsification of history and serves to legitimize the occupation,” explained Shahar. “Ohr – or anyone else – had better reconsider before effectively giving support to the enemy in this existential conflict,” she added, presumably in warning to eight-year-old Maya.

Nir and Shahar have not completely addressed important questions such as how they will survive economically without a stable relationship with Yaron and Tamar, given the children’s lack of economic independence. An unstated understanding has taken hold by which the children continue to perform their chores and receive their weekly allowance in return, given the critical status of those funds. Additionally, the children still accept foodstuffs, electricity, and other basic services directly from Yaron and Tamar; the children and their supporters from outside the home explain they have an inherent right to such goods and services, and it is simply more expedient to receive it from the parents and not international aid agencies.

“The acceptance of food, clothing, utilities, and, inter alia, transportation, must in no way be construed as an endorsement of the existing arrangement, which is inherently oppressive and illegal,” said Omar Barghouti, a spokesman for the Boycott Dagan Society (BDS), which seeks to apply international pressure to isolate the parents and force concessions.

“Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a business meeting with Yaron Dagan. Big real estate deal.”