Rod Cox has initiated a cultural and educational exchange of children’s pictures between Gazan schoolchildren and schoolchildren in the U.K. Health authorities in Gaza say it is really important for children’s mental health that they maintain positive contact with the rest of the world and that this project will help them.
For more info: http://rodcoxandgaza.blogspot.com/
Art by Ben Heine
DAYDREAM
Some say I’m only dreaming, putting meaning in peace meetings
That I believe in all these things that no one else is seeing.
and I feel my heart beating when I hear the voices pleading
scream in bitter agony like a two year old who’s teething
All these fantasies unhealthy like eating empty calories
And it’s hard to see possibilities when planes bomb factories,
Destroy economies and all the hopes inside of me.
All this shit is killing me like clogged pulmonary arteries
And I can’t separate myself from it, see this struggle’s a part of me.
So that explains the pain I’m feeling, why it’s so hard to breathe
And as I step in puddles of blood, my eyes grow watery
Subtly wipe the tears away, and request you to pardon me
‘Cause these constant calamities have made me complicit and compliant
Find myself falling to my knees when I used to stand defiant
It might be a thousand years before all these guns become silent
So I’ll stick to these dreams as a means to free me from the violence
It started before they reported disorder in 1948
Before they cornered three quarters of my people and forced’em to evacuate.
It’s evil.
How one people promised the land of a second people to a third people,
Spurned people to give birth to an absurd people,
a preferred people who transfer people.
Rape and murder people,
ignore world consensus and commit human rights offenses
then hide the evidence, building security fences
claiming self defense while massacring the defenseless.
So I’m patiently waiting for the creation of a sovereign nation
cuz a two-state negotiations is useless if it won’t end the occupation,
So I’m basically wasting my breath on deaf and dumb populations
the situation mishandled, so dismantled like Russian space stations
And I see them change the information to control the debate.
Say my peace is a dream, but it seems I’m the only one who’s awake.
I’m sorry if I’m mistaken, though this situation’s got my knees shakin
I can’t accept the feeling that this whole fuckin’ time.
I was only dreaming.
oj
It’s amazing how closely the Irish struggle and the Palestinian struggle parallel each other. Occupying force, internal disputes, and a tie to the land that spans generations. The pen/gun image is so prominent in both uprisings – the poem below brings out the likeness so vividly. Replace “potato” with “fig” or “olive” and this poem could easily be about Palestine. It’s strange how the similarity has come to the forefront only recently do to George Mitchell’s appointment and that we haven’t seen more Irish flags at Palestinian protests.
oj
Digging - Seamus Heaney
Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests; snug as a gun.
Under my window, a clean rasping sound
When the spade sinks into gravelly ground:
My father, digging. I look down
Till his straining rump among the flowerbeds
Bends low, comes up twenty years away
Stooping in rhythm through potato drills
Where he was digging.
The coarse boot nestled on the lug, the shaft
Against the inside knee was levered firmly.
He rooted out tall tops, buried the bright edge deep
To scatter new potatoes that we picked,
Loving their cool hardness in our hands.
By God, the old man could handle a spade.
Just like his old man.
My grandfather cut more turf in a day
Than any other man on Toner’s bog.
Once I carried him milk in a bottle
Corked sloppily with paper. He straightened up
To drink it, then fell to right away
Nicking and slicing neatly, heaving sods
Over his shoulder, going down and down
For the good turf. Digging.
The cold smell of potato mould, the squelch and slap
Of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge
Through living roots awaken in my head.
But I’ve no spade to follow men like them.
Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests.
I’ll dig with it.
Sometimes the pain is just too much to take, and all I can do is sit here as the tears wash my face.
This is an Associated Press piece that the Israeli Haaretz decided to publish. The American press on the other hand conveniently bypassed it…
Kaufman, a frequent critic of Israel who was raised as an Orthodox Jew, commented on the claim that large numbers of the Palestinian victims were militants. “I suppose the Jews fighting for their lives in the Warsaw ghetto could have been dismissed as militants,” he said.
Kaufman urged the British government to impose an arms embargo on Israel.
“My grandmother was ill in bed when the Nazis came to her home town…. A German soldier shot her dead in her bed. My grandmother did not die to provide cover for Israeli soldiers murdering Palestinian grandmothers in Gaza,” the MP said.
Latest by Israeli reporter Gideon Levy…
History has seen innumerable brutal wars take countless lives. But the horrifying proportion of this war, a third of the dead being children, has not been seen in recent memory. God does not show mercy on the children at Gaza’s nursery schools, and neither does the Israel Defense Forces. (Haaretz)
The Israeli Attacks on Attacks
An interactive guide to the conflict day by day…
Haaretz.com– Twight Zone/ Trumpeting for War
note:
“Granted, on the English Al-Jazeera channel, an excellent and balanced station whose Gazan reporter Ayman Mohyeldin deserves a Pulitzer, the horror was more horrifying and the despair less comfortable.”
can you remember the last time *anyone* in the US praised al-jazeera for *anything*?
-najam
Since the media hasn’t given adequate coverage of the protests going on WORLDWIDE against the brutal warfare of the Israeli military against the people of Gaza, I decided to create this slideshow.
GAZA DOES NOT STAND ALONE END THE OCCUPATION END THE BLOODSHED
Video can also be accessed here:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8433081200074369396
This afternoon, over 4,000 gathered in New York City to pay our tribute of respect to those 284 massacred yesterday in Gaza and the 4781 previous Palestinians who lost their lives in the struggle for dignity by the “shining beacon of democracy in the Middle East.” They entered a stage of history, and as they were privileged to act on this mortal stage, they played their parts. Now the curtain has fallen, and they moved through the exit. And the drama of their earthly life has come to a close. They are now committed back to that eternity from which they came.
And yet they died nobly. They are the martyred heroes of a crusade for freedom and human dignity. And so this afternoon, in a real sense, they have said something to each of us in their death. They have said something to everyone who has remained silent behind the safe security of ignorance. They have said something to every politician who has fed his constituents with the rotting flesh of lies and the spoiled meat of racism. They have said something to a federal government that has compromised with the undemocratic practices of a racist state and the blatant hypocrisy of right-wing Republicans. They have said something to every Arab who has passively accepted the evil system of Zionism and who has stood on the sidelines in a mighty struggle for justice. They have said to all of us, Jew and Arab, Muslim and Christian, that we must substitute fear with focus, hatred with hope. They have said that we must be concerned not only with who murdered them, but about the system, the way of life, and the philosophy which produced the murderers. Their deaths have reminded us that we must work passionately, and unrelentingly for the realization of our dream.
And so they did not die in vain. God has a way of wringing good out of even the most purest of evil. And history has proven again and again that unmerited suffering is redemptive. The blood of these people may well serve as a redemptive force that will bring new light to this dark hour. The spilled blood may not cause the whole citizenry of the US to transform the “negative extremes of a dark past into the positive extremes of a bright future.” But these tragic events may cause the citizens of America to come to terms with its conscience.
But not without our help. Not without our voices.
And so I am here to say to all those who assembled here in New York City and nationwide, that in spite of the darkness before us, we will not despair. We will not lose faith. We believe that even the most misguided among them will learn to respect the dignity and the worth of all humanity.
Life is hard. It has its bleak and difficult moments. Like a river, it has its drought and its floods. Like the cycle of the seasons, it has the soothing warmth of summer and the piercing winds of winter. And if one will hold on, he will discover that he does not walk alone. We do not walk alone. We walk with Gaza, and we will lift them from the fatigue of despair to the buoyancy of hope. In the chanting and the shouting we will not forget that the deaths are real. We are not only mobs of hate that most perceive us to be, but of sadness and loss as well. Here, most of us go home to houses. They do not. We go home to families. They go home to emptiness. That is a reality people need to embrace. And we will show them what they’ve ignored for so long.
From the river to the sea, from the narrow alleys of refugee camps to the massive valleys of our homeland, we will return.
We will be free.
God Bless Gaza. God Bless Palestine.
OJ
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