Samah Sabawi – God Forsaken
By Guest Post • Apr 11th, 2009 at 22:32 • Category: Counter-terrorism, No thanks!, Features, Israel, Music, Poetry, Events, Newswire, Palestine, Religion, Resistance, Somoud: Arab Voices of Resistance, War, Zionism
A grain of earth
A drop of oil
A flag on a hill of holy soil
A cross…a star…a crescent moon…
Is it worth ending a life too soon?
What sacred verses can explain
Sniper fire…
And white phosphorus rain?
What Holy Scripture gave the command
“Thou shall wipe out their villages
And scorch their land”
And after the massacre
Did they lament?
Did they seek forgiveness?
Did they repent?
Did they try to sanctify their burdened souls
While besieging a people behind their walls
Or did they wear with pride their murderous skills:
A pregnant woman with a caption “1 SHOT 2 KILLS”
No rest for the less sacred, no safety, no light
No benediction no prayer no end in sight
No bread, no medicine no shelter no salvation
No angels can survive this holy Occupation
TELL ME THIS:
What is the life of a Palestinian worth,
In your God forsaken earth?
Samah Sabawi is a writer/playwright and poet who advocates for Human Rights and Social Justice. Ms. Sabawi was former Executive Director of the National Council on Canada-Arab relations (NCCAR) and is currently on the board of directors of NCCAR as well as the Canadian Palestinian Congress. She designs and facilitates educational workshops for Canadian diplomats, civil servants, military personnel as well as for high school students on the politics, culture and history of the Arab World. Ms. Sabawi is also involved in the theater. She has written and produced two plays: Cries from the Land and Three Wishes both dealing with the plight of the Palestinian people. Her opeds and poetry are published in both print and electronic media.
أرض الله المنسية
شعر: سماح سبعاوي
ترجمة: أديب قعوار
*
الحياة ما قيمتها؟
ذرة من ترابها؟
قطرة من نفطها؟
بيرق على تلة فوق قداسة ترابها؟
صليب… نجم… هلال قمرها؟…
هل تستحق انهاء حياة قبل أوانها؟
الآيات المقدسة ما تفسيراتها؟!
أنيران قناص من أعدائها؟
أم مطر فسفوري أبيض ينهمر على رؤوس بنيها؟
المجرم العبراني قال: عليكم مسح قراها
وجرف تراب أرضها
ولا تبقوا على من لا يزال به نفس من أهلها!!!
وبعد المجزرة… هل صحى مقترفوها؟
هل طلبوا المغفرة من ضحاياها؟
هل تابوا عن مثلها؟
هل راموا المغفرة لأرواحهم المثقلة بآثامها؟
بينما تحاصرون شعباً خلف أسوار قهرها؟
أو هل ارتدوا بفخر اجرام مهاراتها؟
اغتيال امرآة حامل تحت يافطة "طلقة واحدة قتيلين" عنوانها؟
لا راحة للأقل قداسة، لا سلامة، لا نور ذو بريق
لا ابتهال، لا صلاة لا نهاية في أخر الطريق
لا خبز، لا علاج، لا ملجأ ولا رفيق
أي ملائكة تتمكن من البقاء في ظل جور الرقيق؟!
أجبني،
ما قيمة الحياة القلسطينية
في أرض الله المنسية؟
Abbandonato da dio
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A wonderful, powerful poem sister.
So touching, o moving and so right. It is we the people, the victims who have to put much value to life so the killers and murderers think thousand times before they pull the trigger. It is we who have to make the cost of life so high for the killers and murderers and make sure they will never ever get away with murder. Life becomes cheap when the murderer gets away with murder. We need to organize, document, track and bring to justice members of the IDF and Jewish settlers who commit murder. We must not leave it to the world community to do the job for us. I do not see why the life of an American Israeli Jew is worth $120 millions when the lives of 1,500 Palestinians do not deserve a formal board of inquiry. We are the one who make our lives so cheap.
That picture has haunted me ever since I first saw it a while back, but combined with the heartfelt poem it has made me cry . What also breaks my heart is that it's just one tradgedy of so many, except this one was caught on camera. And what saddens me even more, is that until we capture every single murder on film the murderers are getting away with it. Everyone has a duty to document, photograph and tell people the truth inside Palestine. Justice is the key to peace.
I've noticed sometimes people put this picture with a Palestinian issue not that they don't have a million of such pictures but for the sake of correcting the misconception, the mother and kid are Lebanese and were hurt during the attack on Lebanon in 2006 when the van they were running away in was hit. I remember that very well because the local TV station did an interview with the kid. I don’t remember their names but it happened at the end of July 2006.
Great poem, I'm saying this with a stab in my heart, a Palestinian life is worthless to many.
The boy's name is Ali (something) and it is part of the archives of photos I have. I hadn't used it yet, but to me, the image of a mother and child grieving reminded me much of the passion of christ, where mother and child were both worried about the well-being of the other and struck with the deepest sorrow. I probably should have chosen a particularly Palestinian photo, but this photo has been in my mind for a long time.
I agree with Sami very much…. it is important to make the lives worth something to those who take them. But, how to actually do this?? If for instance the Israelis never answered for lives that are American or British, who they killed, I find it difficult to believe that there is any way to put a tag they have to respect on lives that are closer to home and less protected.
Yes I understand, Mary.
True, the Israelis find no life worthy except their own, just look at the activists they killed. The obstacle is the Israeli mentality, they simply think they are better than anyone else and if you punish them justly they think they are being victimized. Their mentality needs to change and by the looks of the last elections they keep getting worse.
Take care
I'm putting the Hebrew and Arabic and English versions
on my Facebook profile…
I read this just now and felt very emotional. How can one not
read this and weep…
Thank you,
Paul
1
Why Boycott Israel
By Paul Grenville
“In the past the world knew how to fight criminal policies. The boycott on South Africa
was effective, but Israel is handled with kid gloves: its trade relations are flourishing,
academic and cultural cooperation continue and intensify with diplomatic support.
This international backing must stop. That is the only way to stop the insatiable
Israeli violence.
We are calling on the world to stop Israeli violence and not allow the continuation of
the brutal occupation. We call on the world to condemn and not become an
accomplice in Israel’s crimes.”
The above is part of a document signed by leading Israeli artists, writers and
intellectuals and ordinary citizens during the war on Gaza and published on January
7th 2009. It is not the first (see http://www.matzpun.org.) Matzpun is the Hebrew word for
conscience. This IS a matter of conscience. If you knowingly buy Israeli goods you
are complicit with the war crimes of the Israeli state. If you unknowingly buy Israeli
goods now is the time to inform yourself, now is the time to stop. Not buying Israeli
goods is ethical shopping.
Palestinian organizations have been calling for the boycott of Israeli goods for years.
We should finally listen. The war on Gaza was not fought against an army, but
against the civilian population with the most modern, deadly and in some cases
illegal weapons. 1434 civilians died and over 5,000 were injured. Over 300 children
died.
Gaza does not have an army. Gaza does not have an airforce. Gaza is an
overcrowded strip of land bordering Egypt, contains nearly one and a half million
Palestinians, many of whom are the descendants of those who fled southwards in
1948, driven out by the Jewish militias, an illegal act of ethnic cleansing,
accompanied by massacres of unarmed civilians in Tantura, Deir Yassin and other
villages, over 400 of which were then razed to the ground.
Israel has not changed its nature in the intervening years since its foundation in
1948. Schools, hospitals and police stations in Gaza were repeatedly targeted by the
Israeli Air Force in January. Israeli soldiers confronted and killed unarmed civilians in
their houses. Shells containing white phosphorous, an illegal weapon which burns
human flesh down to the bone, were dropped on a UN school. A UN compound
containing provisions and supplies for Palestinians, which repeatedly contacted the
Israeli army beforehand, was shelled and set on fire. These are war crimes. Illegal
2
Dense Inert Metal Explosives (DIME for short) weapons were used in Gaza. These
weapons shred the body and sheer off limbs leaving a stump that does not bleed.
They are illegal. What is more, the killing goes on since the ceasefire. Gaza is now a
killing field.
Gazan civilians cannot leave their cage. Gaza has been blockaded for three years.
The blockade is illegal in International Law. The Palestinians of Gaza are
malnourished for want of food. They continue to die for want of access to hospital
treatment. Over 99% of Gazan children examined by psychiatrist Dr Khalid Dahlan
have suffered trauma. Gaza is not allowed to trade. Gazan fisherman are not
allowed to fish. The remains of the Gazan economy have been destroyed by the
Israeli bombing. Antiquated sewerage systems have been smashed by the bombing.
The water is not safe to drink. What is the word that describes Israel's treatment of
Gaza? If you are in any doubt check out this article by a Jewish Israeli historian, Ilan
Pappé, at http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article6374.shtml If you knowingly buy
Israeli goods you are supporting this. Who can defend this? What am I talking about
here? Ask yourself.
Things are not much better in the Palestinian West Bank, illegally occupied for 41
years by the Israeli army. Unemployment is 70% among the 3.1 million Palestinians
there. Over 40% of the best Palestinian land on the West Bank has been illegally
confiscated for illegal Jewish settlements. The illegal Jewish settlers bear arms and
harrass and kill Palestinians constantly. 500,000 of them now live on illegally
confiscated Palestinian land. The Israeli settlements pipe their sewage directly onto
Palestinian farmland. No Palestinian is allowed to bear arms, unless he is working
for the Israel state. There is no legal recourse for the Palestinians, either for the
killings or for the land confiscations. A wall snakes across Palestinian land, isolating
Palestinian towns like Qalqiliya, now entirely surrounded by a 25 foot wall, cutting off
Palestinian villagers from their own olive groves and farmland. 600 checkpoints on
the West Bank staffed by bored, frustrated youths of the Israeli Defence Forces,
monitor and control all Palestinian movements. People are delayed for hours at
checkpoints on the whim of the Israeli army, and women have given birth at a
checkpoint and lost their babies. Over 11,000 Palestinians are in Israeli jails, many
for years without charge. Many of them are under 18. 18,000 Palestinian homes
have been illegally demolished on the West Bank since 1967.
Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians in Gaza and West bank is far worse than
Apartheid ever was. South African blacks were part of the Apartheid economy, not a
surplus population with levels of unemployment running at 70% in the West Bank
and over 80% in Gaza before the war. There was no question of ethnically cleansing
the South African blacks from their homeland. Palestinians are not welcome or safe
in Gaza and the West Bank, and increasingly they are not welcome as citizens of
Israel. Arbitrary mass arrests greeted the largest ever peaceful Israeli demonstration
of 150,000 people in the Galilean village of Sakhnin. Peaceful Palestinian protests in
Hebron on the West Bank were greeted with mass arrests and live ammunition
(http://palsolidarity.org/2009/01/3783). Who can defend this? Who would tolerate it
here? What is this democracy that the EU states embrace with open arms?
We saw the deafening silence of the international power elite, on both sides of the
Atlantic, during the illegal war on Gaza. The international boycott of South Africa,
coupled with the resistance of the ANC, was pivotal in bringing De Klerk to the
negotiating table and ending the formal existence of Apartheid in South Africa. Israel
is an even more oppressive case of colonial rule of a subject population, in which the
UK has been complicit from the beginning.
I believe that a mass international boycott campaign can bring pressure to bear on
the Israeli state to seek a resolution of the conflict with the native Palestinians that is
based on the minimum requirements of justice and the International Consensus as
represented by the United Nations annual vote on the resolution of the conflict, and
the rulings of the International Court of Justice in the Hague, not the US Road Map
to nowhere. This is the absolute minimum, and can only become an agenda for
resolution of the conflict if made a demand of an international mass boycott
movement.
Who cannot support this? Do not be complicit! Supporting the boycott in whatever
form you can affirms your own dignity and morality in the face of illegality and
immorality, and sends out a clear message both to the Israeli regime and our own
rulers.
Here are some resources for further investigation:
http://boycottisraelnow.com/about.htm. A campaign started by Muslims
http://www.bigcampaign.org
http://www.bdsmovement.net/?q=node/42 Jason Kunin, a Toronto Jew, on Why Boycott
Israel?
http://www.freegaza.org/en/home/658-a-call-from-within-signed-by-israeli-citizens
http://www.ifamericansknew.org/cur_sit/gazafactsheet.html Understanding the Crisis in
Gaza.
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=123835447
7394. The Jerusalem Post. Boycott campaigns do make a difference.
http://palestinevideo.blogspot.com/2009/03/apartheid-from-south-africa-to-israel-3.html.
Ronnie Kasrils, a South African Jew, on why Israeli treatment of the Palestinians is far worse
than Apartheid.
Zionist propaganda = what? Anyone who does not agree with you?
O homem deveria, antes de mais nada, perceber com o espírito.
Ver com os olhos da alma. Somente assim aprenderia a dar retorno ao coração e perceberia que somos espíritos em busca de aprendizado e que a nossa evolução não depende da violência humana.
Quanto tempo falta para que a ignorância humana dê vez a evolução conjunta?
Vamos tentar evoluir?
Rita Fernandez