Arab Izzah Harb – Dignity (from Palestine to New York City)
By Guest Post • Oct 5th, 2009 at 16:39 • Category: Arabian Coffee House, Music, Poetry, Events, Newswire, Palestine
(art: Arab Woman by Shepard Fairey)Dignity, my sisters and brothers demand it, so hand it to them now.
Soldiers with big guns pointed at our little ones
At our women and men again and again.
They shout and they berate, humiliate and hate
At Al Aqsa and Allenby Gate
While the old stand and wait.
“You’re dirty! Drink your piss! Dance to this!”
And they shoot at the feet a sickening beat.
They shout and they berate, humiliate and hate
Our dignity they negate
With no food on our plate.
My sister got it bad in Bethlehem
But down here in Brooklyn we got mayhem
Tied to men who would flay them
Violence and humiliation
Hatred and degradation
There ain’t no salvation
Like sheep to the slaughter
Men do this to their daughter
To their sister or girlfriend or mother or some other
Monsters with no soul
The day they will to control
Destroying one half of a whole
“No harm done, she ain’t nobody’s mother”
But she’s somebody’s daughter
And the dignity they taught her
Got shattered and tattered and blood has been splattered
And tears that bring no compassion
But only a fashion of hate.
My sister, your blood is like mine
Bitter as wine, torn too soon from the vine
And trampled underfoot
Like you are dirt or soot
Pulled up from the root
With those hateful eyes that tell you and me
We ain’t got no dignity.
Men who seek pleasure from our pain
They revel in this gain, their minds are insane
Gone like dirt down the drain
Bounding back to them is their sick pleasure
They will pay – measure for measure
For having defiled our great treasure
They push you down to your knees
They force you to say “please” with your fear they tease
Men whose souls are in the gutter
Every word they utter, every command they sputter
Only to Allah will we submit
These perverts will be hit with the truth that THEY’RE shit.
They hit you and they bound you
They harass and they hound you
Prison walls that surround you
It shows the depth of their fear
They know the day is near
When the world will stop and hear
It don’t matter who they think they might be
The facts are there to see
You will regain your dignity
They can cry and shout that their secret is out
The morals they proclaim will come down like acid rain
Burning their skull to the brain
Now they feel the pain of the lie of the life that they live
And the sisters in Brooklyn, London, Paris and Berlin
Their men just as deep in sin, these losers won’t win
All that control they thought was in their hands
All that power to make a sister bend to their demands
Will smash down like Moses’s tablets when the truth lands
While they shout to the wind their commands.
My sisters home in Falastin, just like us women in Brooklyn
Our revolution will begin and we can only win
No stone unturned
We have suffered and learned
Those who spit fire will be burned.
Arab Izzah Harb is a Palestinian-American hip hop writer. In her own words, "with a name like mine, I was born for Jihad or hip-hop".
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Arab Izzah Harb, you sure tell it like it is! My mother used to say, "You never know a man till you see him alone with his woman or his children!", and she was so right. The "inner IDF soldier" hides away not only in the ghettoes, sisters, but also in the universities, libraries and concert halls. Who can say what sadism lurks behind the facade of the respectable judge, doctor, or the man of culture who passes us in the street? We only know there is a percentage of dysfunctional men who get pleasure from giving pain to women or to children, degrading and humiliating them, and making them cry. Polanski is only the tip of the iceberg, but the brutes are all around us, their bedrooms like scenes from Abu Ghraib, their hypocracy etched forever on their souls.