umkahlil

Mohammed Rakouie


Beauty is truth, truth Beauty,
That's all ye know on Earth,
And all ye need to know. John Keats

"A land without a people for a people without a land," the usurpers dissembled.

And Fadwa Toqan retorted:

Never! Not with our red streams flowing forever,
not while the wine of our thorn limbs
fed the thirsty roots,
Arab roots alive
tunneling deep, deep, into the land!

And Mahmoud Darwish joined in;

I come from there and remember,
I was born like everyone is borne, I have a mother
and a house with many windows.

As Golda Meir bellowed:

"There is no such thing as a Palestinian people… It is not as if we came and threw them out and took their country. They didn’t exist."

And Fadi Abu Sada was scared because seqestered in his Bethlehem house he thought that the noise from the firecrackers of the settlers celebrating their independence were bombs destined for his house, and the metaphor is apt...they dance on our graves.

Do these settlers care about the effect of their revelry on the indigenous population? Do they feel remorse for actions of the past and present Zionists?

No!

When the hurricane swirled and spread its deluge of dark evil
onto the good green land
'they' gloated.

They would be wise to heed the words of Dr. Salmon Abu Sitta:

In the years to come, I think the history of the Jews will probably not be marked by their historical role in the fate of Jesus Christ. That was a matter of religious interpretation of an event which took place 2000 years ago.

The history of the Jews will also likely not be marked by the Nazi atrocities in the Second World War. That was a black chapter in European history in which millions of many nationalities died in the heat of the war. It all stopped after the war.

Any reckoning of Jewish history will be indelibly marked by what they have done to the Palestinians. Israel ethnically cleansed the Palestinians, seized their homes and property and obliterated the landscape -- both historical and physical -- that they had inhabited. For more than half a century this has been done during both war and peace, not by individual criminals but systematically by the state. It is still being done. There is no remorse, no atonement. On the contrary, there is more and more of the same. The tragic history of the Jews seems to have contained no lessons. It is as if their own suffering was in vain.

The old will die, and the young will forget, speculated David Ben Gurion.

But Laila Halaby and Rashid Hussein answered,

"Teach the night to forget to bring
dreams showing me my village.

"And teach the wind to forget to carry to me
the aroma of apricots in my fields.

"And teach the sky, too, to forget to rain."

My father closed his eyes.

"Only then, may I forget my country."

And Abdelnasser Rashid echos his elders:

Palestine is my land, and I won’t let you take it – and while you put the world to sleep, I try to wake it.

And Fadwa Toqan elegantly concurs:

When the Tree rises up, the branches
shall flourish green and fresh in the sun
the laughter of the Tree shall leaf
beneath the sun
and birds shall return
Undoubtedly, the birds shall return.
The birds shall return.