Latest / Soul Salon with Ayandastood / 28: palestinian liberation, decolonization, resistance poems, & resources

Transcript

28: palestinian liberation, decolonization, resistance poems, & resources · Soul Salon with Ayandastood

0:00
Hello, my loves. My heart is so heavy today. And I know many of yours are as well. And I was thinking,
0:09
what can I do? And in this space, I wanted to do three things. First, I want to share my personal
0:20
connection or feelings on the cause of Palestinian liberation. Second, I want to read you poetry
0:28
in honor of the idea that poetry can pierce through to the heart of, to the feeling of an
0:37
experience. And that is informed by Audrey Lord's essay, poetry is not a luxury. And so I'm going to
0:45
include some clips of Palestinian poets reading their own words. And for the poems where I couldn't
0:53
find clips, I will read it in my own voice. And the third thing I want to do is amplify resources,
1:00
places we can learn, places we can donate for parts of our community who can do that. So those are
1:05
the three things that I want to accomplish in this episode. Share my own connection, share poetry
1:12
and share resources. So starting with my own connection, I am a Black South African. I was born in
1:20
1995, which is one year after South Africa had its first democratically held election. And
1:28
the ANC became the first democratically elected government and ended the apartheid regime in name,
1:37
I will say, because much of the institutions and the frameworks and the setup of apartheid of
1:43
inequality remain. And South Africa is one of the most unequal nations in the world. However,
1:51
that was a huge accomplishment in terms of a liberation struggle. And something that I have noticed
2:00
in my past 10 years living in the US is from that perspective. There is a pervasive idea among many
2:06
people that it was sanctions or the international community that was really the end of apartheid.
2:14
And there is less of a confrontation among especially white people that I've noticed that apartheid
2:22
ended because of an armed struggle. Choose peace rather than confrontation except in cases where we
2:31
cannot proceed, then if the only alternative is violence, we will use violence.
2:42
That they called Nelson Mandela a terrorist and that the organization that ended apartheid,
2:52
the name was Umkonto Aseezwe, born in the early 60s as the ANC's military wing.
3:01
It generally became known as MK, its translation meaning spear of the nation.
3:10
And was essentially the third stage in the anti-apartheid struggle.
3:14
Passive resistance had given rise to a civil disobedience campaign.
3:21
But that all changed when Henrik Fervord's government said it would use maximum force to silence
3:28
any notion of a liberation movement. So in that vein, I would not be here if it weren't for
3:38
a violent liberation struggle. And with that I want to say the following, we can never conflate
3:45
the violence of colonialism with the violence employed as a tool or a mechanism to oppose colonialism.
3:55
To conflate those two things, to compare them, to put them on the same level, to say things like
3:59
there are two sides to this story. It is a complete abomination. They are not the same.
4:07
I want to play you this eight-minute clip from Palestinian-American journalist Dina Takaruri
4:14
because it gives context on the situation and on the disproportionate violence and terror that
4:20
the Israeli state has inflicted on Palestinians. So if you are not looking to learn more context
4:25
on the situation, but instead would rather go to the poems and so on, skip ahead by eight minutes
4:30
and I'll see you there. A lot of the condemnation of the Hamas attack has called it unprovoked,
4:36
but is that accurate? Now the purpose here isn't to condone or justify it. It's to understand
4:43
why it happened because if we don't, then it's more likely that we'll see this happening over
4:47
and over again. While things may have been calm and normal for Israelis until then, for Palestinians,
4:53
daily life was intolerable pain. In fact, for sixteen years Gaza has been under an Israeli siege
4:59
so severe that it's often called the world's largest open-air prison. The Secretary General of the
5:05
United Nations has described Gaza as hell on earth. And way back in 2012, the UN warned that if
5:12
Israel's policies in Gaza didn't change, this tiny strip of land that's one of the most densely
5:17
populated places on earth would become unfit for human living by 2020. It's now 2023.
5:24
And in fact, analysts who had been paying attention were trying to sound the alarm
5:28
that things were getting worse, that the status quo was getting more and more untenable,
5:33
that an explosion was inevitable. The siege began when Hamas took over Gaza in 2007 a year after
5:41
winning the Palestinian Authority elections. You see, Hamas was founded in Gaza in the late 1980s,
5:46
20 years into Israel's occupation of the territory. The group has a military wing, but it's also a
5:52
political party. Its stated goal is to liberate all of Palestine and the return of Palestinian refugees
5:58
exile during Israel's founding in 1948. And it has always said that the only way to achieve that
6:04
goal is to fight. For the 2.3 million Palestinians who live in Gaza, the 16-year siege means that
6:10
Israel controls basically everything about their lives. And it has created a humanitarian catastrophe
6:16
for them. The economy is devastated because Israel limits Gaza's trade with the outside world,
6:21
leaving most of the population unemployed. The health sector has also been in crisis, with
6:26
medicines frequently running out, and patients denied Israeli permits to leave for life-saving
6:30
healthcare. And electricity only lasts a few hours a day because Israel limits the amount of fuel
6:36
let into Gaza. At one point, official documents showed that Israel calculated the number of calories
6:42
allowed into Gaza, just enough to keep people from starving. Nearly half of Gaza's population is
6:49
under 18. That means most of the people living there have never been able to leave Gaza. They've
6:54
never stepped foot in Jerusalem or met a fellow Palestinian from the occupied West Bank. And they've
6:59
survived several major attacks, leaving them with unimaginable trauma. Tens of thousands of
7:05
homes and buildings were targeted and destroyed by Israel during these assaults, which left thousands
7:10
of Palestinians dead. For example, in the summer of 2014 alone, at least 2,100 Palestinians,
7:16
including at least 500 children were killed by Israeli bombardment. In that conflict, 72 Israelis
7:22
were killed 66 of them soldiers. Despite some international criticism, Israel has never faced serious
7:29
calls to end its siege on Gaza. In 2018, tens of thousands of gossips tried to break the siege by
7:36
marching non-violent onto the boundary fence with Israel every Friday for almost two years.
7:42
They were met with gunfire. For weeks, Israeli soldiers shot at those attempted to get close,
7:47
resulting in hundreds of deaths and thousands of injuries, including medics and journalists.
7:52
Even before Hamas took control of Gaza, Israel had subjected the territory to a closure since the
7:57
1990s. This meant that Palestinians could rarely enter or exit Gaza unless they had a rare Israeli
8:03
permit. This policy is part of a larger Israeli military occupation of Gaza and the West Bank that's
8:09
now lasted more than half a century. Multiple human rights groups around the world have found that
8:14
Israel actually runs a system of apartheid with separate laws for Israelis and Palestinians.
8:20
Ultimately, this means that Israel is a state that based on ethnicity denies citizenship and
8:25
rights to the millions of people over which it rules, i.e. the Palestinians. Under international
8:30
law, Israel's occupation, which is now in its 56th year, is illegal, and apartheid is a crime
8:36
against humanity. Meanwhile, the occupied West Bank is ruled by Hamas' political rival, the
8:41
Palestinian Authority, which rejects confrontation with Israel hoping to end the occupation through
8:46
US-led peace talks. But since those peace talks began 30 years ago, Israel has only expanded its
8:52
illegal settlements on Palestinian land, and the occupation has become more entrenched. Time and time
8:57
again, Palestinians have seen that negotiations, peaceful marches, and other nonviolent means of
9:02
protests have not gotten them any closer to achieving freedom and rights. In the meantime, the overall
9:08
situation for Palestinians living under Israel's occupation has steadily gotten worse.
9:13
The current Netanyahu government, the most right-wing and anti-Arab in Israel's history,
9:18
includes leaders who have openly called for the renewed ethnic cleansing of Palestinians,
9:23
and the destruction of entire Palestinian towns. In 2023 alone, they've incited several
9:29
attacks on Palestinian villages in the West Bank, attacks that even Israeli observers referred
9:35
to as pogroms, referring to the anti-Semitic rampages suffered by Jews in Eastern Europe.
9:41
Armed Israeli settlers smashed homes, burned cars, and set fire to fields. When Palestinians try
9:47
to defend their property, Israeli forces shot at them, both with live fire and rubber-coated
9:52
bullets, as well as tear gas. Israeli politicians and settlers have also repeatedly entered the
9:57
Al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem, the third-holious site in Islam, where Israeli forces have attacked
10:02
Palestinian worshippers. By the way, they've been open about their attempts to destroy the mosque
10:08
and build a new Jewish temple atop it. And the number of Palestinians killed by Israeli soldiers
10:13
and settlers in the West Bank hit a 20-year high in 2023. The scale of the Hamas attack was
10:20
unprecedented in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. While dist and misinformation has spread widely
10:26
in the aftermath about precisely what happened, there's no doubt that Israeli civilians were targeted.
10:31
It's important to remember that Israel has one of the best-equipped militaries in the world and
10:36
the backing of many Western governments. That's why it's always been able to inflict far more death
10:41
on Palestinians than vice versa. This has been the case ever since the state was founded in 1948,
10:47
when it used that force to expel most Palestinians from their homes in what became Israel. In fact,
10:52
around two-thirds of people who live in Gaza are refugees or their descendants. Many of them come
10:57
from towns and villages just across the boundary fence. Some of those villages, now with Hebrew names
11:03
and Israeli residents, were among the areas where Hamas fighters entered and attacked. Back in Gaza,
11:08
things look apocalyptic. Israel's defense minister has ordered fuel, electricity, and even water
11:15
to be cut off, saying his government is dealing with, quote, human beasts. The only power plant in Gaza
11:21
has officially run out of fuel, leaving 2.3 million people with no electricity and in the dark.
11:26
With fighter jets, artillery, and warships under his command, it's expected that the already
11:31
massive Palestinian death toll is only going to climb. Also, keep in mind that Gaza's under a
11:36
blockade, which means when the bombs drop, Palestinians are trapped there with nowhere to flee and no
11:42
bomb shelters to go to. Israel had previously launched large-scale wars against Hamas and Gaza in
11:48
2008, 2012, 2014, and 2021, with the stated goal of stopping Hamas. But while these wars inflicted
11:56
catastrophic damage on Gaza's civilian population and infrastructure, they clearly did not stop Hamas.
12:02
A military solution has not worked. Israeli journalist Gideon Levy just wrote in Harat,
12:08
Israel can't imprison 2 million gozans without paying a cruel price. And Levy is on to something.
12:14
What's missing in all of this context is the root cause of it all, a deeply violent apartheid
12:19
system, and an occupation that robs Palestinians of their land, freedom, and rights to self-determination.
12:25
Meanwhile, the world does a little to push Israel to end this system. And instead,
12:29
often provides it with the aid and cover to maintain it instead.
12:34
Stealing people's land, oppressing them, humiliating them, terrorizing them every single day,
12:40
at every scale of terror when you think of the checkpoints in Palestine. They may last minutes or
12:46
they may last hours robbing people of time, battering them, humiliating them, depriving them of
12:55
resources, depriving them of freedom of movement on their own homelands.
13:01
I am against violence in and of itself the idea of violence. But I'm against the root of violence.
13:09
If you're against something, it makes sense to be against it at its root.
13:14
And the root of violence is colonialism, is supremacy. We cannot have freedom until we end
13:22
every single form of supremacy. And what we see is unless we have an absolute commitment to
13:29
ending supremacy, all we will see is more and more replicas, more and more manifestations of
13:36
the same root problem, which is one people with all the resources and all the backing,
13:41
exploiting and colonizing another. So I'm never going to celebrate violence enacted upon people.
13:49
But at the same time, I'm never going to conflate the struggle to liberate a people, which the
13:55
colonizer has made so impossible that violence becomes one of the only mechanisms that makes people
14:01
notice. The other thing I want to really oppose is the dehumanization of Palestinians,
14:08
the way that they are spoken about and the complete disregard for Palestinian life.
14:13
The fact that when for 70 years, Palestinians have been bombed, have been abused, terrorized,
14:21
have literally been traumatized. They can't even call it PTSD because it's not post,
14:25
have been a constant, in a constant state of trauma that that has not even been flickered and
14:33
eyelid at. I don't even know the saying battered and eyelid at an eyelash. I don't know the words.
14:39
And so we rarely get a glimpse just like white supremacy of whose life is seen as really mattering.
14:46
So the idea of the Israeli military state and the violence that it enacted upon Palestinians,
14:54
it's unacceptable and it's inhumane, it is genocidal, it is ethnic cleansing.
15:00
And yet it feels so dangerous to admit that. So it's deeply painful to see 70 years
15:09
of complete terrorism against Palestinians by the Israeli occupation forces or defense forces
15:17
and the complete disregard of Palestinian life. It's the same textbook thing that happens again
15:25
and again, which is the dehumanization of a people because you wanted the land that that people
15:30
were on. And forcibly removing people from their lands, traumatizing them again and again,
15:37
putting them into open air prisons. That is the true, that is the root. It's like you can't,
15:44
you see a thorny flower and you say, oh my god, look at that terrible flower. You have to be against
15:49
the root in my mind. And you can be against both, but there has to be a hierarchy of what you are
15:56
principally condemning. And the principle thing I believe I must condemn is colonial violence,
16:03
is settler colonialism, is genocide, is ethnic cleansing, is a part date. From that root,
16:11
violence will flow. It's a natural conclusion of terrorizing people is that they will find a way
16:19
to fight back. And it is in their right to fight back because you've given them no other option,
16:25
but to be placed in the dehumanizing position where they must enact violence on people
16:30
in order to defend the literal land that they were already on. That is the dehumanization to put
16:35
people in a position where they have where they have to fight to the death for their own liberation.
16:41
And that is the cause of people have to be willing to die. No one should have to be willing to die
16:46
in order to be free, in order to experience the fullness of what their land and their lives
16:53
had to offer them and their people and their communities. And even the way that the violence is
16:59
spoken about, like Palestinians are not seen as grandparents and children and mothers,
17:04
it's just like animals. It's so dehumanizing. And that's exactly what they did in South Africa.
17:10
We were not seen as black people. We were not seen as human. We were seen as subhuman,
17:17
as animal, as beasts, as people to be exploited, belittled, diminished. There is a really powerful
17:25
paper that I read today that I've been meaning to read for a very long time and it's called
17:30
decolonization is not a metaphor. You might have seen these words on your social media feeds.
17:37
If you really let these words sit with you, you will feel their power.
17:42
Because decolonization is not a metaphor, means that it's not a framework to understand or speak
17:51
about or assess or analyze something. It's not a theory to discuss and to critique and to put forth.
18:02
It's a practice. It's not a metaphor. It's a process. And what this paper discusses
18:11
is that it is necessarily a deeply unsettling process. That a lot of academics and theorists and
18:20
liberals want to ignore the actual demands of true decolonization, which are inherently very,
18:30
very unsettling. In the sense that number one, it will make a lot of people feel unsettled.
18:37
And number two, it's literally unsettling in that so many people in the world in the West
18:44
are living on stolen land. They may not have been the one to steal it, but they are living on
18:48
indigenous land. So it is unsettling in that if we really are to decolonize, there would no longer
18:54
be settlers on that land. The land would all be repatriated to indigenous people. And yet when
19:01
people really sit with what that would mean, it's deeply unsettling. And they say that it is
19:06
necessarily so. And so many people are not willing to sit with the fact that the actual process of
19:12
decolonizing or of re-indigionizing, as I learned from a conversation I had with Trinity,
19:18
if you're listening to this, it was an incredible conversation where she taught me that when we say
19:23
decolonize, we're still centering the colonizer, yet when we say re-indigionize, we're speaking
19:30
about centering the indigenous person who has been rubbed from their land, from their language,
19:37
from their peace, from their well-being. You know, we were well before the colonizers came. We
19:42
often don't talk about how health was so centered in a much more indigenous way before the
19:52
colonizers came and brought so many diseases and traumas and violence. So the idea that decolonization
20:02
is not a metaphor, it teaches us that if we really are committed to decolonization, we have to
20:08
sit with the fact that as France finances, it is always a violent process. And even I, as I say
20:14
those words, I'm unsettled. Of course I am. That's deeply unsettling. Like no one is just like,
20:19
woo-hoo, but at the root of it, if that is the goal, to remove the colonial empire, the structure,
20:25
the imperialist structure that exists, that exists in Puerto Rico, that exists in Haiti, Palestine,
20:32
in so many parts of the world, then sitting with that unsettling feeling is actually more truthful.
20:40
With that idea of feeling, I want to go into part two of this conversation, which is on poetry.
20:46
There's a wonderful essay by Audrey Lord called Poetry is Not a Luxury. And I want to read you a
20:52
paragraph from that essay from Audrey Lord. Poetry is not a luxury. It is a vital necessity of our
21:01
existence. It forms the quality of the light within which we predicate our hopes and dreams
21:08
towards survival and change. First, made into language, then into idea, then into more tangible
21:17
action. Poetry is the way we help give name to the nameless, so it can be thought.
21:25
The farthest horizons of our hopes and fears are cobbled by our poems carved from the rock
21:32
experiences of our daily lives. As they become known to and accepted by us, our feelings and the
21:42
honest exploration of them become sanctuaries and spawning grounds for the most radical and daring
21:51
of ideas. The white father told us, I think therefore I am the black mother within each of us,
22:01
the poet whispers in our dreams. I feel therefore I can be free. For within living structures
22:13
defined by profit, by linear power, by institutional dehumanization, our feelings were not meant
22:22
to survive. I think that is so powerful and what that teaches us is we need to center feeling.
22:31
And actually that ties so wonderfully to the idea of re-indigenization. That the colonizer came and
22:38
said, we are the thinking ones, we are the rational ones. And we could say, well, what did the
22:43
indigenous people say? And there's an essentialization of indigenarity. They said many things,
22:50
their ways of thinking of seeing what you raised. And also so were their way of feeling, our way of
22:56
feeling. And so poetry is not a luxury. It is a necessity. And she's not defining poetry only in
23:03
the strictest sense of it, but anything she says that reveals distills, experience through language.
23:13
I want to listen to this poem with you. And the poem is by Canadian Palestinian poet Rafith
23:20
Ziadah. Before we start this poem, please note that it does involve brief mention of the
23:27
R word. So if you would rather not hear that, please give forward by four minutes until the end of the
23:33
poem. I wrote this poem when we were doing a direct action at my university. And there were
23:42
Palestinian citizens and Israeli soldiers and young. And I'm very petty about these things. So I
23:48
said, I will only be a Palestinian. I refused to be a settler or a soldier. So I was lying on the
23:53
ground. And this guy came and kicked me in the guts and said, you deserve to be raped before
23:58
you have your terrorist children. At the time I said nothing, but then I wrote this poem for this young
24:03
gentleman. It's mahalian. I speak my Arab tongue before they occupy my language as well.
24:17
Allow me to speak my mother tongue before they colonize her memory as well. I am an Arab woman of
24:29
color and we come in all shades of anger. All my grandfather ever wanted to do was wake up at
24:38
dawn and watch my grandmother kneel and pray in a village hidden between Yafa and Haifa. My mother
24:45
was born under an olive tree on a soil they say is no longer mine, but I will cross their barriers,
24:51
their checkpoints, their dam apartheid walls, and return to my homeland. I am an Arab woman of color
24:59
and we come in all shades of anger. And did you hear my sister screaming yesterday as she gave
25:05
birth at a checkpoint with Israeli soldiers looking between her legs for their next demographic
25:11
threat called her baby girl Jeanine. And did you hear Amni Mona screaming behind their prison
25:16
bars as they tear gased herself? We are returning to fall asleep. I am an Arab woman of color and
25:23
we come in all shades of anger, but you tell me this womb inside of me will only bring you your
25:29
next terrorist, beard wearing, gun waving, towel head, sand nigger. You tell me I sent my children out
25:37
to die, but those are your copters, your f-16s in our skies. And let's talk about this terrorism
25:44
business for a second. Wasn't it the CIA that killed the land de Andlamumba? And who trained
25:49
a summer in the first place? My grandparents didn't run around like clowns with white capes
25:56
and white hoods on their heads lynching black people. I am an Arab woman of color and we come
26:06
in all shades of anger. So who's that brown woman screaming in a demonstration? Sorry, should I
26:14
not scream? I forgot to be your every orientalist dream. Jeannie in a bottle, belly dancer,
26:20
param girl, soft spoken, Arab woman, yes master, no master. Thank you for the peanut butter sandwich
26:28
is raining down on us from your f-16s master. Yes, my liberators are here to kill my children and
26:34
call them collateral damage. I am an Arab woman of color and we come in all shades of anger.
26:42
So let me just tell you, this woman side of me will only bring you your next rebel. She'll have
26:49
a rock in one hand and a Palestinian flag in the other. I am an Arab woman of color. Beware,
26:57
beware, my anger. Wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, that is so powerful. I know I use that word a lot
27:19
but wow, I get chills listening to it every single time. Arab women of color come in all shades
27:27
of anger. That idea of shades of anger and the double standards and then also the US's
27:38
complicity, not even complicity, the US's direct role in the arming of the state of Israel,
27:45
of the militarization of Israel and that idea of the womb giving birth to the rebel.
27:52
Palestinian resistance again, people are only going to condemn the rebel. They're not going to
27:59
condemn what they are rebelling against. Why am I the terrorist she's saying as a Palestinian when
28:05
it is your ancestors as a white American who are the KKK who lynched black people committed genocide
28:12
against indigenous people who have no moral high ground and yet can turn around and say that
28:18
my child or my womb will give birth to a terrorist. I want to read you a poem by Mahmoud Darwish who
28:27
is one of the most highly regarded, adored Palestinian poets. He was an incredibly important and
28:33
prolific poet and this is his bio. It says Mahmoud Darwish was a Palestinian poet and author
28:39
who is regarded as Palestine's national poet. He won numerous awards for his work. Darwish used
28:45
Palestine as a metaphor for the loss of Eden, birth and resurrection and the anguish of disposition
28:51
and exile. Oh my word, it's like I planned this but I really didn't. It's so wild how they say that
28:58
Darwish used Palestine as a metaphor for the anguish of disposition and exile. It's not a metaphor,
29:04
it quite literally is the thing itself and so again we have the idea of decolonization is not
29:09
a metaphor. So they're saying that it's like Palestine is symbolic of but it's not a symbol,
29:14
it's not some a referential device. It's literally the actual experience of anguish, of disposition,
29:22
of exile and so that's really ironic because Darwish was made to be an internal refugee in his
29:28
own native land of Palestine and so I think that's really important when we think of forced removal
29:33
when we think of terrorization, settler colonialism I feel like it's a really beautiful poem that I
29:39
hope you enjoy. It says they fitted his mouth with chains and tied his hands to the rock of the dead.
29:49
They said you're a murderer. They took his food, his clothes and his banners and threw him into the
30:01
well of the dead. They said you're a thief. They threw him out of every port and took away his
30:12
young beloved and then they said you're a refugee. So I think this poem is doing so much in the
30:24
structure of it, this progression. They condemned him to die, tied his hands to the rock of the dead,
30:30
terrorized this man, oppressed him, chained him, then said you're a murderer. They stole his
30:36
belongings, then said you're a thief. They threw him out of every port, they threw him out okay,
30:44
implying that he was there, they removed him and took away his young beloved and then they said
30:53
you're a refugee. The reason why this is so powerful is the structure and then they said it's
30:58
telling us there's a whole history behind the word refugee when it comes to Palestinians and then
31:04
they said that was the final step, it's not the first step. So they terrorized these people,
31:11
they labeled them as terrorists, they stole from Palestinians, they labeled them as thieves,
31:16
they removed them from the place that they were and then they labeled them refugee and so there's
31:21
so much work that this word refugee is doing and it is almost a stand-in for these other words.
31:29
They're equating being a refugee, being a thief, being a murderer and being Palestinian and yet
31:34
Palestinians are actually none of those things. The true murderer is the state that ties your hands
31:40
to the rock of the dead. The true thief is the one that steals your food, your clothes, your banners,
31:45
with this siege, steals your power, steals your water, steals your livelihood, steals your life
31:51
force from you. So I think that's a really exceptional poem and something that I read while researching
31:58
this episode is the idea of what may get lost in translation and this is something that I really
32:04
had not thought about because I've read some of these poems and you don't really think about,
32:10
I mean let me not say you, I didn't really think about how language would factor into this story
32:16
but I want to read you this quick excerpt from Palestinian writer and poet Fadi Jouda
32:24
and this is what he says and I think this is so interesting, he says, I love Palestine in English
32:32
but in my heart Palestine is Arabic and Palestine in Arabic does not need to explain itself
32:41
despite setbacks, disasters revolving conspiracies against it, Palestine in Arabic is self-possessed
32:51
it is exterior to English yet born internationalist and shall remain so
32:57
neither thinking it is the center of the world nor surrendering to the imperial center
33:03
as the primary source of its future liberation, Palestine in Arabic is where the overwhelming sacrifice
33:12
is made, Palestine in Arabic dreams lives in and with more than 1500 years of literary and intellectual
33:22
traditions belongs to 10,000 years before that history does not end for Palestine in Arabic
33:34
wow so Palestine in Arabic has an endless history as in you could trace it back to the most
33:42
ancient but when you think of Palestine in English it has to always explain itself it is not self-possessed
33:50
it has to always be elaborated upon even when you defend Palestine you have to say but I'm not
33:59
anti-Semitic so in Arabic what he's implying is it self-possessed it possesses itself there is no need
34:06
to explain where it is what it is why it is because it is Palestine in Arabic and obviously I don't
34:16
speak Arabic but I think this is such an important and interesting understanding that even as we
34:20
read these poems or even as we try to understand the cause of Palestinians that we need to understand
34:26
that language is playing a mitigating role or mediating role because a language has a belief system
34:32
a value system whose language is it why do we speak it you know why did the colonizer insist
34:38
on imposing their languages on the people that they aim to subjugate because a language is more
34:43
than a way of communication a language is a way of thinking of feeling a language is a form of
34:48
control a language has boundaries a language has places it will not go and importantly there are
34:56
bridges that we can form between languages but as anyone who speaks more than one language knows
35:02
you cannot fully capture what is in one language and transmutes it into the other because you would
35:08
be missing the value system that comes along the traditions the culture that comes along the way
35:14
of seeing being thinking feeling understanding that comes along with that language I want to play
35:20
one more poem by Rafif Ziyada and it's named Hadeel
35:29
Hadeel is nine Hadeel is nine now sorry my apologies Hadeel was nine
35:37
just this morning Hadeel was nine an official said official said they regret her death
35:46
israeli official said they regret her death but terrorism must stop rockets must stop resistance
35:52
must stop or they will continue they will continue they will continue they will continue to
35:56
bum razze until we give up the bit of dignity we have left until we elect who they want sign what
36:03
they want and die die die die in silence the way they want you see israeli security is absolute
36:11
it's written in blood and bulldozers and the art of women spokespersons because death is softer
36:19
coming from a woman death they tell me is more polite and elegant coming from a woman
36:27
but who who will tell Hadeel's mother busy baking bread and zatter that the dubs the dubs will not fly
36:35
over razze again the dubs the dubs will not fly over razze again the dubs will not fly over razze again
36:41
Hadeel is gone and her brother Ahmed lost his sight the dubs the dubs will not fly over razze again
36:51
Hadeel every prayer I remember every prayer I remember and half remember won't bring you back
36:59
every prayer I remember every prayer I look inside of me to remember won't bring you back as
37:05
you wrap yourself in stories of Palestine hide under a bed waiting for the next soldier to knock
37:11
down your door to cast us out of a history we carry on our backs Hadeel Hadeel Hadeel who
37:22
which of you will tell Hadeel that nothing changed the day she died next meeting next train next
37:30
meeting next train not a pause not a tear is this worth a press release is this worth a press release
37:37
just another Palestinian gone is this worth a press release solidarity from afar like a sick joke
37:43
a bad story to tell a child and they tell me they keep telling me don't cry for martyrs don't
37:49
cry for martyrs don't cry for martyrs carry on the fight carry on the fight carry on the fight carry
37:55
on the fight carry on the fight but for Hadeel for Hadeel give me just one moment of silence
38:03
no just give me one moment of sincere resistance sincere resistance so you can hold on to the
38:14
bit of dignity you have left for Hadeel
38:25
one moment of silence no she says one moment of genuine resistance for Hadeel for Hadeel
38:47
I wonder what that would look like to some of us what would one moment of genuine resistance
38:53
look like the answer for me is in part this episode because I had another one lined up but I couldn't
39:02
in good conscience and I'm not saying this is enough I'm not saying this makes me anything I'm just
39:08
saying when I ask myself that question that's this is what I came up with it also speaks to how
39:15
the carry on the fight carry on the fight carry on the fight it's not just a mantra it's the speaker
39:21
trying to rattle themselves up trying to give themselves the energy the life resources to keep
39:27
going and I think we forget that no liberation fighter or activist whatever their strategies may be
39:34
in a different they would not choose that role if they had their way they would be nothing to
39:39
liberate and fight against and so it's often a very very draining position to be put into that
39:46
requires everything of you and I think often we dehumanize all of the people who have
39:52
fought for freedom like we valorize them you know where many different liberation fighters if
39:59
they had their way that's not how they would be spending their lives they'd be spending their
40:03
lives not having to have a regime to oppose carry on the fight carry on the fight carry on the fight
40:13
reminds us that decolonization is not a metaphor
40:21
the next poem I want to read is called the Shaling Ended and it is by Palestinian poet Najwan
40:28
Darwish it says no one will know you tomorrow the Shaling Ended only to start again within you
40:39
the buildings fell the horizon burned only for flames to rage inside you flames that will devour
40:48
even stone the murdered are sunk in sleep but sleep will never find you awake forever awake until
40:58
they crumble these massive rocks said to be the tears of retired gods forgiveness has ended and
41:07
mercy is bleeding outside of time no one knows you now and no one will know you tomorrow you
41:15
like the trees were planted in place while the shells were falling
41:27
I want to go into the first two stanzas of this poem because I think they speak so well to trauma
41:34
the shaling ended so the shaling of bombs only to start again within you
41:41
do you have a powerful that is even as external attacks may end only to again start internally the
41:50
trauma the pain the nightmares all of the violence starts again
41:57
I have a friend who's from Rwanda and he says that he grew up in the Rwanda genocide and he
42:05
said that even to this day he still feels like at night he can hear the terror
42:16
the shaling ended only to start again within you and I think also when we think of generational
42:23
generational violence we see how the shaling will continue and continue and continue
42:32
the buildings fell the horizon burned and we've seen the images only for flames to rage inside
42:40
you flames that will devour even stone and this comes back to the idea that of course there is
42:46
an anger that is internalized on the deepest level that Arab women of color come in different
42:53
shades of anger and when you see acts you see that they are acting from that rage of the flames
43:02
that came to burn inside as flames were imposed and are imposed from the outside flames that will
43:12
devour even stone the murdered are sunk in sleep but sleep will never find you and so even as you
43:21
are alive you're condemned to a kind of death because you are awake forever awake until they crumble
43:29
these massive rocks said to be tears of retired gods so I think this idea that even when you are
43:35
escaped by death death will still visit itself on you because the murdered are sunk in sleep
43:43
so that's juxtaposing both the idea of the trauma of dying but also the rest of it
43:51
and yet rest is only for the dead sleep will never find you you will be awake forever
43:58
forgiveness has ended and mercy is bleeding outside of time so I think this is the idea that
44:04
it's moved so past forgiveness now as what I'm interpreting this as I always say this is one
44:09
interpretation that I wish we could all interpret together and I wish especially a Palestinian
44:15
person could interpret this poem because I have not had that experience and so I would love to hear
44:19
their perspective I'm just doing my best but it says that no one knows you now and no one will
44:25
know you tomorrow I think that speaks to erasure nameless faceless no one knows you now and no
44:32
one will know you tomorrow you are condemned to be unknown you like the trees were planted in place
44:41
while the shells were falling so I think that is so powerful and I hope that it moved you as much
44:47
as it moved me there is one last poem that I want to read to you and I think it really ends on
44:54
a powerful note that implicates all of us and the poem is named my sixteen year old mother
45:00
by atlam brasharat who is a Palestinian poet and writer my sixteen year old mother is the title
45:10
what is my eighty something mother doing under these conditions she watches the situation behind
45:18
the glass once the rain stops she goes out in her plastic slippers with her shawl around her
45:25
shoulders and her dress belted at the waist like a sixteen year old chasing the rain the leaves
45:31
and plastic bags filled with air that the wind will burst her ten blue fingers making a beautiful
45:39
dance in the drizzle what is my ninety something father doing under these conditions he is under
45:49
the covers wondering what is the use of getting out of bed in these conditions if I cannot be a young
45:55
man in his twenties if I don't sweep the water away from the well and let it pass through the
46:01
crevices to water the wounds and the thirsty plants what can I do under these conditions I forge a
46:12
word to hammer into the ground of my loneliness so the winds don't blow away the tent of life above
46:19
my head and I think of my sixteen year old mother who is still playing outside I call out to her
46:28
come back home daughter and I think of my twenty something father who tary's to tend his wounds so
46:35
I embrace him stitch what wounds you can list blood flow from your palms you are still young life lies
46:45
before you and I think of you what are you doing under these conditions you will calmly answer in
46:57
a tone that disturbs one's sleep nothing I am doing nothing
47:15
so so powerful there's one stanza that I just want to tap into again
47:21
she's asking about how different people are reacting to these conditions of living under Israeli
47:30
occupation living the trauma of living as a Palestinian in occupied Palestine and I love how she's
47:43
the structure of it is what is my eighty something mother doing under these conditions what is my
47:48
ninety something father doing under these conditions what what can I do under these conditions either
47:54
author either poet and then I think of you what are you doing under these conditions so it's really
47:59
wonderful it also speaks to stolen youth and how even you know there's a lot of conversation around
48:08
oh no all the Palestinian children are being killed and that's so true but it's also a little bit
48:13
dehumanizing what about the Palestinian adults what about the grandparents even the language
48:18
around women and children like it's also tragic that men are being killed and it of course it
48:23
raises non-binary Palestinians and so it's like why do they need to be children for us to value
48:29
their life I totally agree that it's inhumane and awful and that the children facing such horror
48:35
in Gaza in Palestine it is such a demonstration of just how evil and how sinister and
48:42
oppressive and terrorizing this system is and yet I love how this poem speaks to the pain and
48:48
also the way of making sense of my eighty something mother my ninety something father myself and
48:55
then you the reader I love how she says when she asks what she can do under these conditions she
49:02
says I forge a word to hammer into the ground of my loneliness so the winds don't blow away the
49:10
tent of life above my head I think that is so wonderful it's like when the world is ending all the
49:16
time what do you do what can I do and she turns to poetry she forges a word to hammer into the
49:23
ground of her loneliness so the ground of her loneliness is kind of this piece of land or piece of
49:28
soil which again ties the idea of the Palestinian cause being so tied to land and being forcibly
49:35
removed from land the idea of the olive tree in that original poem is a symbol of Palestinian
49:41
resistance and Palestinian return and so she does this so the winds don't blow away the tent of life
49:47
it's so that poetry is not a luxury that this is a complete necessity a complete life force
49:56
in such a deadening situation and then finally that last dance is so powerful and I think of you
50:02
what are you doing under these conditions you will calmly answer in a tone that disturbs one
50:08
sleep the juxtaposition here the tension here between the calmness of the tone and the disturbance
50:14
of how can you be so cold so unfeeling so calm in such a horrific situation the idea of complete
50:22
indifference nothing I am doing nothing you will answer calmly in a tone that disturbs one sleep
50:31
and it's so interesting because this is in the context of disturbance the disturbance of bombs
50:37
of shaling the disturbance of violence and yet it's the calmness of the indifference that disturbs
50:43
one sleep on the point of what are we doing I wanted to move to part three the final part of this
50:54
episode which is amplify resources and places that we can learn and donate so the first is
51:01
decolonizepalestine.com this is an incredible resource and it has information on Palestine it has
51:09
a whole section where debunks popular myths about Palestine and about Israel and I think it's a
51:15
really really well thought out resource I've been spending time on it today and there's so much
51:20
to learn there's also reading lists with books and there's so much to learn on this resource so
51:25
for anyone who's craving knowledge I think this is a wonderful resource I think having a database
51:31
of myths is such a clever and powerful form of informational resistance so it has the myth that
51:39
Palestinian sabotage the peace process the myth that the two-state solution is the only way forward
51:45
the myth that Israel holds itself responsible for its human rights violations the myth that Israel
51:51
is a democracy and so on and so forth if you do enjoy that resource you can also go on that website
51:58
and support their patreon for those of you who have the means to do so let's keep this really
52:04
critical resource going on the topic of support there are a number of organizations on the ground
52:11
who are supporting Palestinian lives especially as some of the hospitals and really important
52:17
resources for Palestinians have been bombed by Israel so with that these are the five resources
52:24
that I wanted to amplify and it says what you can do beyond reading the news about Gaza donate
52:31
there is medical aid for Palestinians which is on the ground in Gaza where they are working to
52:36
start hospitals with essential drugs disposable and other health care supplies that is at map.org.uk
52:43
there is Palestine Children's Relief Fund which is the primary humanitarian organization in
52:48
Palestine they deliver crucial life-saving medical relief and humanitarian aid on the ground
52:54
where we can go to pcrf.net there is the World Food Program which has been distributing fresh bread
53:00
canned food and ready to eat food to those who sought refuge in United Nations Relief and
53:05
works agency shelters in Gaza which is wfp.org there's doctors without borders which is providing
53:11
support to hospitals and health facilities in Gaza and there is UNRWA which is providing medical
53:18
support trauma relief and food assistance on the ground in Gaza at UNRWAUSA.org and so I will put
53:26
these in the show notes for you to have and I'm sending you all the love today I hope that you
53:32
enjoyed this episode and I can only I always think that there'll always be more to say there'll
53:37
always be something that I left out or something that I could have said in a different way or a
53:40
better way but this is what I have to offer to the collective in service of Palestinian liberation
53:47
as a Black South African who is a direct beneficiary of the liberation efforts some of which were
53:53
violent that ended the apartheid regime because the idea that we can resist colonial and
54:02
oppressive forces without violence is unfortunately not rooted in reality I wish we lived in a
54:08
world without was possible that's what I want to emphasize I wish we lived in a world where there
54:12
was no colonialism number one number two if there was that there were peaceful ways that you could
54:16
end colonialism we have never lived in such a world there is no liberation movement that has
54:22
succeeded without using violence and I really really wish that wasn't true and I don't
54:28
celebrate violence or it's like it's so wild that you're like framed as this radical terrorists
54:35
for saying that we want to see the end of a literal like military occupation of a people where
54:42
their time their life their energy their well-being their literal safety is threatened every single
54:50
minute of every single day the colonizer does not wish to know have they ever wished to end violence
54:57
they only wish to have a monopoly on it we want to see a world where life matters and one person's
55:04
life or death is not taken as inherently so much more important and all human life is truly
55:12
celebrated and safeguarded and no force can oppose and threaten and terrorize and humiliate
55:20
any other people okay I love you also much and I'm sending all the love and all the light and I hope
55:25
that you have as peaceful of an existence as you can have at this time and that you don't look
55:32
away you look towards I want to end with this quote from a documentary which I'll link to in the
55:38
show notes called oceans of injustice where she argues that even as we try to confront what is
55:44
happening and what has happened for 70 plus years to Palestinians we can only dip our toe into
55:49
the ocean of pain the ocean of trauma that's been inflicted on Palestinian lives and she says the
55:56
following look into their eyes hear their voices understand their story look at what was stolen
56:11
what their fears are look at what pressure and humiliation they are made to drown in
56:17
every day don't close your eyes don't turn away look