Poetry for Palestine

On 30 March 2012, tens of thousands of Palestinians and their supporters gathered in Jordan at the borders with Palestine, in a show of solidarity and determination not to give up on our rights or land.

Between us and the hills of Palestine in the horizon, stood Jordanian police, army in their armored vehicles creating a separation wall.

Disturbed to have to witness such bizarre configuration, I walked to the soldiers and talked to them. I asked them: “why do you protect the enemy?” some said: ” we are not protecting the enemy, we are protecting you!” I said: ” how can you be protecting us when your guns are pointing at us? why do you point your guns and tanks against us? shouldn’t be facing the other way, if indeed you want to protect us?”

I want is to go back home,

I continued: “I have been in exile for 45 years, my grandmother is now an elderly 87 years-old, and I am still being separated away from her, by those who stole our land. My village is over there, and all I want is to go back home, allow me to pass, why do you prevent me from going home? are you not my brothers? why do you support those who stole our land and forcibly evicted us out from our homes and homeland?”

By then I was surrounded by soldiers and their superiors, and one of them who appeared to be a general came rushing to the scene, then while pointing away, he kept saying:”go back there, go back there, back off, back off”

I repeated to him the stuff I said earlier, and told him that he is my brother, he should be helping me to go home, not stopping me, he embarrassingly said: “insha’Allah, one day insha’Allah, we will be all united and will help you to go home”

The so called “peace treaty” with Jordan puts the Jordanians and their government in a an absurd situation where they find themselves having to protect thieves and murderers, against their oppressed brothers and sisters!

The positive thing about what happened though is to see all these people who came in support of Al-Quds (Jerusalem), the right of return and the Liberation of Palestine. Tens of thousands, young and old as well as representatives from 80 countries. The atmosphere was hopeful, young girls and boys were buzzing with determination, even though some have never seen Palestine before, and many are not even Palestinians. The speakers made it clear in plain unequivocal terms that this is only the first drop of rain, with deluge to follow, they called for FULL Liberation and for prosecuting the criminal occupiers and their supporters.

Together, we chanted for Palestine, for Liberation, for Al-Aqsa, for Freedom and For Return.

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Finally, it appears that years of work, persuasion, temptation, pressure and coercion have yielded its fruits, with the publishing (made it into hyper Zionist hate-site Harry’s Place) of the joined statement by Mr Ali Abunimah and a few others, in which they brazenly called upon Palestinians and their supporters to disavow Gilad Atzmon because of his alleged “anti-semitism”.

Here, I cannot help but wonder, what does Ali Abunimah mean exactly when he invites people to disavow Atzmon?

Can this “disavowal” be understood as a modern secular-leftist substituted for the “good old” Judaic concept of Herem?

Are we not entitled to ask then, if that concept of “disavowal” is by any chance related to the Talmudic concept of excommunication, in which “the Talmud forbids coming within six feet of a person who has been excommunicated“?

Ali Abunimah opens his statement with the declaration: “Granting No Quarter“, calling to deprive the accused of any mercy or forgiveness. Such daring harsh words which mean “not to allow someone any mercy” eerily resemble the sinister Kabbalistic invocation of Pulsa diNura, a “ceremony in which the angels of destruction are invoked to block heavenly forgiveness of the subject’s sins”,

It appears, yet again, that some people are determined to thrust us back into the Dark-Ages. Not only do they exhibit severe intolerance towards those whom they disagree with, but also instead of defending their position and “refuting” such disagreeable ideas with logic, factual information and reason, they resort to fight them with unsubstantiated accusations.

Furthermore, they actively and shamelessly participate in barbaric rabbinic medieval type of behaviour, in which they call for the “disavowal” (modern-secular for excommunication) of those whom they perceive as “heretics” for daring to think outside the box or for being crazy enough to talk about taboos and cross the boundaries of “permissible” debate. Amazingly, even those who refuse to abide by such “rabbinical-style” orders are also sentenced for being guilty by association, so they get the excommunication treatment too!

I would like to remind Mr Ali Abunimah and the few individuals who signed his statement, that in our Islamic heritage, Arabic tradition and Palestinian culture that they claims to defend and protect, such concept of excommunication , Herem, Pulsa diNura, and exclusion from mercy and forgiveness, are non-existent.

I would like to remind them also that such foreign concept they are trying forcibly to shove down our throats and introduce to our culture under the pretext of “fighting racism”, does not only stand in stark contradiction with the very core ethos of the culture they claim to be defending, but it reflects severe reasoning impotence as well as intellectual incompetence.

Indeed, our culture has suffered heavy blows under the repeated attacks of the past centuries, which caused some disorientation in its vision and practice in our era, however, facts remain;

In our inherited culture, we do not disavow, ostracize or excommunicate, we invite for debate

In our inherited culture, we do not burn books we disagree with, we refute with reason and facts.

In our culture, we do not forbid independent thinking, we encourage إجتهاد Ijtihad.

In our culture, we do not forbid deep critical thinking or unfamiliar creative ideas, we call it تفكر (thinking), تدبر (reflecting), تعقل (using the brain), تأمل (meditation).

In our culture, we do not say “grant no quarters”, we say “ارحموا من في الارض يرحمكم من في السماء”, have mercy on those on earth, the One in Heaven will have mercy on you.

In our culture we oppose double standard, we call it hypocrisy; one cannot pretend to oppose one type of racism (anti-Jewish racism) yet sneakingly participate in the concealment of Jewish anti-gentile racism by blocking information, aborting any debate about it and by silencing and shunning those who attempt to expose it.

In our culture, we refuse to act as lackeys of our oppressors, as they sharpen their knives, we refuse to be ones who lay down on the floor while guiding them where and how to slaughter.

In our culture, we refuse to be fooled by sugar coated vacuous promises, NOT all the shiny teeth we see are necessarily smiles.

In our culture, we say selling your land equates selling your dignity and selling your honour.

The brain continues to buzz with burning questions:

Why is it that Ali Abunimah, his mentors and those who approve of his statement are keen to prevent Palestinians and their supporters from examining and analysing the ideology, the motivation and the method of operation of our occupiers?

Do they not realize that by censoring the investigation of motives and modus operandi of the crimes, they implicitly and invariably imply that there is no crimes, i.e they facilitate the normalization and the whitewashing of the crimes?

What is it that makes them so desperate to conceal from our eyes, and to stop us from discussing the disturbing reality and to ignore the ugly fact that 70% of “Israeli” Jews believe that they are the “chosen”?

Are they so naïve as to pretend that if we rub shoulders with a few Post-Zionism activists or Cultural Zionists, singing Kumbaya and hugging each other, we would melt the heart of our oppressors, and we would see them kneeling down, shedding their chosen-ness, arrogance and supremacy and asking for forgiveness, and lo and behold, all of a sudden the paradigm of our world would shift, all our problems as Palestinians would be magically solved, when the “chosen” would embrace us as equals?

Do they not comprehend the catastrophic implications of their embracing of the idea of equating oppressors with oppressed, while knowing that the oppressor suffers from the “chosen” superiority complex, which leaves them at best feeling intellectually and morally exceptional and at worst believing that gentiles are only created to serve the Jews and be their slaves?

Do they not see how severely deluded when they kid themselves with the fantasy of equality between victims and criminals, of which the criminals are ideologically inflated with concepts of superiority, paranoid with phantomic pains of exceptional suffering, entrenched in a society of militarism and intoxicated with the illusion of invincibility?

Furthermore, why is it that Ali Abunimah and his mentors want to prevent us from looking at, analysing and understanding the level of influence exerted by the Jewish-Zionist lobby, how it is organized and how does it function to acquires such high levels of control and malignant influence?

Why is it that he along with others, are taking part in a campaign that want to divert our attention from looking at issues we can no longer ignore such as the racist fanatical laws implemented hysterically to accelerate the Judaization of Palestine, including the disturbing reality of the extensive level of support of the Jewish state “Israel” by the global Jewish communities?

How can they fantasize that an occupation entity whose ideological foundations are supremacist to the core, with chosen-ness, exceptionalism, specialness, and uniqueness of suffering would suddenly concede to view the un-chosen gentile as equal?

How could they propose to us a solution that would finalize the Zionist project by thinking that loosening the military grip while legitimizing and increasing a civilian/ political/ financial/ educational/ cultural supremacist grip, is good of Palestinians?

Why would any sane Palestinian want to trap his people into placidly and foolishly accepting the finalization of the Zionist project by embracing Post-Zionism with all its supremacists racist attitudes, under the delusion that it might weigh better in the scale of morality than militant Zionism?

“Never forgive, never forget” seems to be “acceptable” and “reasonable” when it is repeated by people of Jewish background, but the gentile-others who suffered and still suffering at the hands of Jewish-Zionist, are labelled as racist anti-Semites if they refuse to lovingly embrace their abusers and pre-forgive their rapists before they even stop their crimes, and before seeing any signs or intention to change of their cruelty, criminality, behaviour and racist attitude.

The death-trap solution presented to us by Ali Abunimah and his cohorts in which they “hope” and “promise” us with a “community founded on justice, where all are free, all are equal and all are welcome“, omitting to mention that such dust in the eyes is not a solution but mere delusion:
Equating abused and abuser is No justice;
Absolving and rewarding criminals is No freedom;
Fantasizing to be accepted as equal with supremacist is No hope;
Claiming “all are free”, when only some have the monopoly of everything is No promise.

Abunimah, continues to further deceive his people, the victims, when he lays the claim that as a prerequisite to having “self-determination”, Palestinians are implicitly asked not only to pre-forgive and grant their oppressors total and unconditional amnesty before they even stop their crimes, but also they are suppose to defend the sensitivities and shield from attacks, the present occupiers and those who support them.
Moreover, the victims of decades of racism are supposed to secure the future of the supremacist victimizers, and to reassure and guarantee the abusers that their crimes don’t matter, no matter what they do, they will always be accepted as equal (though as “chosen” they will be a little bit more equal than others), and their freedom (to continue their oppression, theft, crimes and mischief) will always be granted.

Furthermore, abusing the sincerity and magnitude of Palestinian hospitality, playing with the warmth and tenderness of their emotions and under the deceitful banner of “all are welcome“, Abunimah, the self-claimed “owner of Palestine”, the self-appointed Future-Immigration-Minister, hopes to facilitate the continuous invasion of the supremacist “chosen” occupiers! How amazing! How just! How very generous! How pathetic!

After a century of aggravation, any Palestinian who propagates the fantasy that “Israeli-Jews”, with their artificially-created, ideologically racist, inherently fascist settler society would one day embrace as equals, the Palestinians -whom they brutalised for decades and still do, is at best Naïvely deluded or at worst a traitor, and in both cases he/she would be furnishing their “successful careers” with tiny bodies of little babies slaughtered at the alter of lunatic supremacism, they would be climbing over the bodies of thousands of martyrs, trashing the sacrifices of his own people.

Contrary to the understanding and lopsided logic of Mr Ali Abunimah and his cohorts, discussing and criticising the ideologies, the politics, the aims, and the motivations of some Jewish Zionists or anti-Zionist persons or groups, is NOT anti-Semitic. Such criticism does not occur “simply because they are Jews“:

We criticise their obfuscation of truth, by acting as filterers of information, attempting to prevent people from learning about issues, vital to understanding the Palestinian catastrophe;

We criticise the hysterical manner in which they react against people who attempt to examine and understand the global and powerful Jewish-Zionist networks and lobby, their unrelenting support of “Israel” and it’s ramification on Palestine and the Palestinian cause;

We criticise their hypocrisy in the way they frantically accuse people of racism simply because we expose and oppose one of the ugliest forms of racism, while they turn a blind eye to what we came to know as Jewish racism (no motion is presented to PSC to oppose that kind of racism);

We criticise their irrational performance, appointing themselves as “Thought Police” and “Political Commissars”, Forbidding people from reading what THEY deem unsuitable, or associating with those who THEY condemn to be excommunicated;

We criticise their primitive and tribal behaviour, insisting to protect the interest of Jewish communities despite the irrefutable fact, these communities are by a good majority supportive of “Israel”;

We criticise their insidious protection of the future interest of Jewish-Israeli genocidal occupiers, which is no doubt contrary to International Law and of course contrary to Palestinian interest;

We criticise their pushy dominance on the solidarity movement, and their insistence to steer it and to define its aims and objectives rather than leaving that mainly to Palestinians on whose behalf the campaign was created;

We criticise their irritating arrogance by insisting to impose their definition of words and concepts (like anti-Semitism and Holocaust-denier) leaving no room for other intellectuals to put their case or views;

We criticise their detrimental and harmful agenda, (divergent from the Palestinian agenda) on the Palestinian movement and on the shaping of the future of Palestine;

The fact remains that many of those whom they accuse of “anti-Semitism” are themselves Jews or have Jewish ancestry like Richard Falk, John J. Mearsheimer, Gilad Atzmon, Paul Eisen, Jonathan Azaziah, OR Semites themselves like: Samir Abed-Rabbo, Ramzy Baroud, Nahida Izaat, Sammi Ibrahim, sameh Habib and Jonathan Azaziah.

So, when they come whining and shouting “anti-Semites”, “anti-Semites” whenever confronted with truthful, genuine and scrupulous criticism is not only childish and wasteful, but –and time will tell, is also counterproductive if not destructive, and will only yield more trivialization of the word they have misused and abused so much, namely “anti-Semitism”.

For us who engage in that type of intellectual criticism, the fact that those -whose agenda and actions we criticise, are Jewish is irrelevant, it is absolutely not the issue, they could be of any racial or religious background. What we criticise is THEIR POLITICS and THEIR AGENDA which we redeem more geared to further the interests of Jewish “Israelis” and organizations and communities supporting them, rather than Palestinians, hence it is harmful to Palestine.

The fact that THEY are Jews or define themselves as Jews is extraneous, except in the detail that they USE this reality as a pretext to attack and defame activists and intellectuals who disagree with them and who dare to criticise their agenda. They USE this to excommunicate activists and intellectuals who care deeply about Palestine and whose prime objective is the LIBERATION of Palestine, and whose main concern is the protection of interest of the long-oppressed Palestinians.

Finally, some questions to ponder upon, for those who signed the “disavowal” statement and those who agree with it:

Is it anti-Semitic to examine racist ideologies and expose it?

Is it racist to disagree with the politics of some groups when their involvement in politics is based on tribalism?

Is it immoral when a person finds him/herself unable to love his/her torturer and tormentor?

Is it moral to force a person to love and live with the killer of his child?

Is it moral to force a person to marry her rapist?

Is it obligatory that all people must love all the Jews all the time, simply because they are Jews?

Is it racist to dislike some Jews for their bad actions and attitude?

Is this sentence by Gill Kaffash anti-Semitic and racist: “If a Zionist is a Jew, it is anti-Semitic to mention it; if an anti-Zionist is a Jew, it is mandatory to point it out.”?

I hereby denounce and reject in total the adaptation of rabbinical schemes of control within our Palestinian midst and mindset, in which medieval methods of thought terrorism and oppression are exercised; including the “granting of no mercy or forgiveness” against curious free-thinking dissenters, and the use of exclusion of intellectuals from the folds of the “tribe”, as means of punishment for their “sins and crimes”.

I denounce and reject in total any proposal of a “solution” that would trap my people in a status quo scenario, in which the occupiers remove their attire and keep their essence, shed their skin and hold on to their racist supremacist core, declare the end of Zionism (which already has fulfilled its goals), only to continue business as usual.

I shall leave it at that.

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I have just finished reading the heartfelt plea of Paul Eisen inviting his fellow Jews to abandon their “supremacist inclinations” (which I content is a result of long-term ideological indoctrination with concepts such “chosen-ness” in which 67% of “Israeli” Jews believe) and to embark on a journey of self-reflection, and to ask themselves some tough questions for once, rather than continuing to blame the entire world and accusing the entire humanity of harbouring intrinsic, inexplicable and incurable feelings of “hatred towards Jews”, which erupts randomly and violently around the globe for no particular reason.

Eisen’s genuine plea inspired me to myself to rethink and reflect.

It has been said that we are not bodies with souls, but rather souls which are given physical bodies temporarily, through which we can come to learn and expand if we choose to.

We make our journeys through life independently yet our paths cross, and our experiences are interconnected by communication, exchange of feelings, actions, reactions and interactions.

All our options remain open, if we comprehend the simple reality of our humble existence: we humans (Jews or non) are NOT the “masters of the universe”, we are NOT Gods, neither are we “Gods in the making” for that matter, and from this elementary perspective, our human reality appears humble.

So, by simply accepting that viewpoints appear different when approached from different angles, and by keeping our hearts and minds open to the fallibility and the limitation of our own singular conclusions, then our various understanding of the same information is facilitated, better comprehension emerges when viewed from different sides. Thus correct, just and innovative path toward understanding the mysterious “other”, and towards the realization of infantility of ideas like superiority of self or inferiority of “others” become self-evident, which in turn enables us to explore ways of solving discord without the “need” to destroy the “other”.

Accepting the fact that we stand on equal footing in our quest for answers, and that non of us has more claim to truth than the other by virtue of “birth”, and as we climb up the mountain of self discovery leaving our ego behind, we learn to see multiple perspectives , we grow spiritually and our horizon expands. By realizing how microscopic, thus vulnerable we are in relation to the infinite, and by accepting the relativity of our perspective and the deficiency of our restricted paradigm, we come to our senses and allow the very feelings of modesty and humbleness which are basic prerequisites for individual compassion and the emergence of sustainable, cohesive societies

However, IF we choose NOT to take that inner path of self-discovery, self-check and self-realization, if we deprive ourselves the ability to see the others’ view point, we restrict our views into a one-point linear-perspective, which in turn results in a stunted growth condition.

As it has been emphasized by many insightful prophets and inspired teachers, arrogance is one of the most poisonous traits in human character. It is one of the most dangerous obstacles that blocks our ability to learn and expand.

An arrogant soul, person or group would struggle to accept that there might be a perspective that differs from his/ her own, thus their ability to learn is significantly reduced, so they keep doing the same mistakes over and over and over again… quite sad really, when we think about it.

Unfortunately, no one can help people with such attitude except themselves, because their overgrown ego and their uncontrollable arrogance would always stand in the way, separating them from the rest of humanity. By their refusal to accept the multiplicity of perspectives, they fail to comprehend that outside their own little bubble things might be viewed differently. So when an exchange of opinions occurs or when they are invited to do some self-reflection, instead of appreciating the sincerity of heart in which the advice is given, they perceive such differences of opinion and criticism as an existential threat.

The problem remains, as long as arrogance is kept unchecked, or fostered to become a prominent feature in our souls, we won’t be able to accept the concept of the fallibility of our opinion, the vulnerability of our existence, the limitation of our comprehension and the imperfection of our beings.Therefore, self-reflection and looking at the self with a critical eye becomes almost an impossibility, which in turn disables us from learning and spiraling upwards, and like a child who keeps putting his finger in the fire and getting burned each time, and as long as we fail to make the link between acts and consequences, we would get stuck in a never-ending perpetual vicious circle of mistakes and pain, and so it goes . . .

The problem remains as long as arrogance is kept unchecked, or even fostered to become a prominent feature in our souls, thus rendering us incapable to accept the concept of the fallibility of our opinion, the vulnerability of our existence, the limitation of our comprehension and the imperfection of our beings. Therefore, critical introspection rendered impossible, we remain incapable to learn and to spiral upwards, and remain like a child who keeps putting his finger in the fire and getting burned each time. Whomever fails ore refuses to recognize the direct link between acts and consequences, is stuck in a never-ending perpetual vicious circle of mistakes, destruction, and pain… and so it goes .

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