How many languages can you speak? It doesn’t matter, because in the end, there are no words, no words that can describe the endless horror we have been witnessing in Gaza first-hand but not first-hand, physically present but not physically present, witnesses but absent…some of the many wonders of technology. You see the elderly man that could very well have been your father, you see him so closely you could describe the colour of the blindfold over his eyes, the vacant expression of unspeakable terror on his face, how far into the sand the israelis buried him- but you can’t touch his hands that are bound, you can’t even tell him it’ll be okay, help is coming, not to worry. Or the terrified pregnant woman gunned down by israeli bulldozers. Or the child- one of thousands- blown to bits by a bomb the israelis decided to drop on him. Or the white tents, rows and rows, colder than a freezer, whilst you and I put on an extra layer of warm clothing.
The tanks exist. The bombs exist. The bulldozers and handcuffs exist. They must exist, to obliterate and erase what shouldn’t exist: the elderly man, the pregnant woman, any woman or man or child that is Palestinian- these. These, the israelis say, have no right to exist. These should be erased.
The Palestinians have a word for this. Nakba. Catastrophe. Nakba when zionist militias between 1947 and 1949 stole more than 78% of historic Palestine, massacring, murdering and dispossessing the indigenous Palestinian population, and making at least 750,000 Palestinians refugees beyond the borders of the state so that they could create their own settler-colonialist state over the bodies and blood. May 15, 1948? The israelis celebrate it as their independence day. Nakba?
Palestinian poet Remi Kanazi can explain better, since his grandmother was one of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians israel expelled from Palestine in 1948.
He wrote a poem in honor of her memory.
He called it Nakba:
she was scared
seven months pregnant
guns pointed at temples
tears dropping
stomach cusped
back bent
dirt pathways
leading to
dispossession
rocking boats
waves crashing
people rushing
falling over each other
packing into small spaces
like memories
her home
mandated
occupied
cleansed
conquered
terrorizers
sat on hills
sniping children
neighbors fled
on April 10
word came
of massacre
didn’t fight
didn’t flee
shells and bombs
bursting in air
like anthems
prayed for the dead
with priests and imams
prayed for the living
looking over shoulders
for the Irgun and Haganah
she’s a warrior
raised life
planted trees
painted fruit
cared for the road
as if it was her garden
orphaned twice
after birth
from Palestine
whispered Yaffa
till final breath
never knew essence
until she found
emptiness
48 ways to flee
and she found Beirut
bullet holes in buildings
reminder of home
but not home
years later
daughters sat
on hills in the South
dreaming of breaking
water never touched
thinking of their mother
that warrior
how battles still
raged here and abroad
orchards flourished
propagandists called
them barren
land expropriated
for Europeans
thirsting for
territory
colonist
non-native
not from here
plant flags, call it home
rename cities and villages
uprooting graveyards
wiping/clearing/cleansing
memory that this
is not theirs
passed away
August 22, 2009
frail hands shook
lip trembled
didn’t want to die
but suffered decades
she spoke in Arabic
broken English
wounded words
and murmurs
her eyes closed
but every so often
they blinked brilliance
memories that could not
be erased, uprooted
or cleansed
she had not forgotten
we have not forgotten
we will not forget
veins like roots
of olive trees
we will return
that is not a threat
not a wish
a hope
or a dream
but a promise
Understand this. The Nakba never stopped. The systematic ethnic cleansing. This attempt to erase. To uproot. To imprison. To strip. No address. No identity. No voice. No dreams. No breath. No life.
Understand this. This ongoing Nakba couldn’t have happened without the Balfour Declaration, signed off by this country in 1917. Standing side by side every single israeli atrocity and crime is this country. Ethnic cleansing, genocide, torture, amputation, starvation.
Always making sure israel doesn’t run out of weapons.
What is violence, then?
Are you scared of foreigners who dare to raise their voices and get upset and angry? Are you petrified by the masked man speaking Arabic? Are you horrified they won’t, just won’t, behave like lambs, why they simply refuse to quietly just get on with being imprisoned and tortured and massacred?
When really? You should be terrified of the men and women dressed in suits speaking posh English, these mass murderers in our government and political parties, addicted to Palestinian bloodshed because it’s funding their careers and speaks to their colonial mentality.
So you and I need to get one thing straight. If we are deciding for Palestinians how they should behave as they go through occupation and ethnic cleansing and genocide, if we are talking at them or over them, we are participating in the ongoing Nakba against them.
Our role is simple. As people in this country, and as human beings in this world, we must use every avenue and every tool to fight against and dismantle the system propping up israel. Whether it’s the political parties, the disgusting propaganda of the mainstream media, BAE systems and the filthy arms industry- Elbit, the largest israeli military manufacturer, is being targeted by the amazing Palestine Action- whether it’s boycotting or mass demonstrations, as the Palestinian intellectual and activist martyr Basil Al-A’raj said, we are all on the frontlines. We must not fail in our duty.
More than words, more than ideas, we need action.
I’ll end with the words of Abdaljawad Omar, a Palestinian lecturer based in Ramallah, in the West Bank- the West Bank which is currently experiencing an extension of the genocide in Gaza. In his essay ‘Crosshairs’ he says,
‘To live in the crosshairs is to grow accustomed to being “undesirable” and “untouchable” except through the deadly kisses of bombs and bullets sprayed from a distance. Indeed, to resist is to assert the preeminence of the present, to prioritize the immediacy of the here and now. Thus, if one questions whether resistance is a form of madness, the answer is yes, it is indeed mad to resist the supremacy of math and machine. Yet, there is no idiocy in a touch of madness, for it is the only way to affirm existence.’
The Nakba will end. The Palestinian refugees will return. Palestine will be free. This isn’t a threat, it is a promise. And we cannot rest until that promise is fulfilled.
