Gaza 2018 | Darwish: Silence for Gaza / Ahmad Al-Za’tar / Under Siege | Genocide is a mitzvah | Beckett: Apodosis (there they are again, we'll have to start killing them again)

Murdered in Cold Blood ! Palestinian Mohammad Ayoub 13 y/o shot in the head by Israeli sniper at the eastern border of #Gaza today.: image via mohammed mosleh @MohammadMusle16, 17 April 2018

This is not a Nazi concentration camp!! this is #Gaza under the Israeli occupation !! The biggest prison in the world .. Gaza!: image via mohammed mosleh @MohammadMusle16, 17 April 2018

Two killed as more protests, clashes erupt on Gaza border #AFP: image via AFP Photo @AFPphoto, 20 April 2018

Palestinians march near #Gaza's border with #Israel in a major demonstration. APRIL 20, 2018. by Hosam Salem: image via HosamSalem @HosamSalemG, 20 April 2018

#Palestinian #cyclist Alaa Al-Daly, 21, who lost a leg by a bullet fired by #Israeli troops along the #Gaza #border, during a #protest, stands next to his #bicycle holding trophies he has won in competitions, at his home in #Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip. Daly's #dream: image via said khatib @saidkhatib, 20 April 2018

#Palestinian #cyclist Alaa Al-Daly, 21, who lost a leg by a bullet fired by #Israeli troops along the #Gaza #border, during a #protest, at his home in #Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip. Daly's #dream: image via said khatib @saidkhatib, 20 April 2018

Israeli soldiers seen in the distance across from the #Gaza border with #Israel, east of Gaza City. HOSAM SALEM: image via HosamSalem @HosamSalemG, 17 April 2018

A Palestinian woman and man stand behind burning tyres in Khuza'a near the border in southern Gaza Strip [Hosam Salem/Al Jazeera]: image via HosamSalem @HosamSalemG, 16 April 2018

Palestinians pray during demonstration near the border in southern #Gaza Strip. April, 2018. By: Hosam Salem: image via HosamSalem @HosamSalemG, 15 April 2018

A Palestinian woman takes part in demonstration near the border in southern #Gaza Strip. April, 2018. By: Hosam Salem: image via HosamSalem @HosamSalemG, 15 April 2018

A Palestinian protester wears a tyre on his head with an onion (to protect himself from tear gas) dangling from it [Hosam Salem/Al Jazeera] #Gaza : image via HosamSalem @HosamSalemG, 13 April 2018

A #Palestinian girl walks near tents erected in protest near the border with #Israel, east of Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza strip #AFP: image via said khatib @saidkhatib, 15 April 2018

#Palestinian protestors face #Israeli soldiers near the #border fence with #Israel, east of Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza strip #AFP: image via said khatib @saidkhatib, 15 April 2018

Mahmoud Darwish: Silence for Gaza

Palestinians at Rafah crossing await permission to transport people wounded in the ongoing offensive against the Gaza Strip to Egypt for treatment: photo by Eyad Al Baba / APA Images, 12 July 2014

Gaza is far from its relatives and close to its enemies, because whenever Gaza explodes, it becomes an island and it never stops exploding. It scratched the enemy’s face, broke his dreams and stopped his satisfaction with time.

Because in Gaza time is something different.

Because in Gaza time is not a neutral element.

It does not compel people to cool contemplation, but rather to explosion and a collision with reality.

Time there does not take children from childhood to old age, but rather makes them men in their first confrontation with the enemy.

Time in Gaza is not relaxation, but storming the burning noon. Because in Gaza values are different, different, different.

The only value for the occupied is the extent of his resistance to occupation.

That is the only competition there. Gaza has been addicted to knowing this cruel, noble value. It did not learn it from books, hasty school seminars, loud propaganda megaphones, or songs. It learned it through experience alone and through work that is not done for advertisement and image.

Gaza has no throat. Its pores are the ones that speak in sweat, blood, and fires. Hence the enemy hates it to death and fears it to criminality, and tries to sink it into the sea, the desert, or blood. And hence its relatives and friends love it with a coyness that amounts to jealousy and fear at times, because Gaza is the brutal lesson and the shining example for enemies and friends alike.

Gaza is not the most beautiful city.

Its shore is not bluer than the shores of Arab cities.

Its oranges are not the most beautiful in the Mediterranean basin.

Gaza is not the richest city.

It is not the most elegant or the biggest, but it equals the history of an entire homeland, because it is more ugly, impoverished, miserable, and vicious in the eyes of enemies. Because it is the most capable, among us, of disturbing the enemy’s mood and his comfort. Because it is his nightmare. Because it is mined oranges, children without a childhood, old men without old age and women without desires. Because of all this it is the most beautiful, the purest and richest among us and the one most worthy of love.

We do injustice to Gaza when we look for its poems, so let us not disfigure Gaza’s beauty. What is most beautiful in it is that it is devoid of poetry at a time when we tried to triumph over the enemy with poems, so we believed ourselves and were overjoyed to see the enemy letting us sing. We let him triumph, then when we dried our lips of poems we saw that the enemy had finished building cities, forts and streets. We do injustice to Gaza when we turn it into a myth, because we will hate it when we discover that it is no more than a small poor city that resists.

We do injustice when we wonder: What made it into a myth? If we had dignity, we would break all our mirrors and cry or curse it if we refuse to revolt against ourselves. We do injustice to Gaza if we glorify it, because being enchanted by it will take us to the edge of waiting and Gaza doesn’t come to us. Gaza does not liberate us. Gaza has no horses, airplanes, magic wands, or offices in capital cities. Gaza liberates itself from our attributes and liberates our language from its Gazas at the same time. When we meet it -- in a dream -- perhaps it won’t recognize us, because Gaza was born out of fire, while we were born out of waiting and crying over abandoned homes.

It is true that Gaza has its special circumstances and its own revolutionary traditions. But its secret is not a mystery: Its resistance is popular and firmly joined together and knows what it wants (it wants to expel the enemy out of its clothes). The relationship of resistance to the people is that of skin to bones and not a teacher to students. Resistance in Gaza did not turn into a profession or an institution.

It did not accept anyone’s tutelage and did not leave its fate hinging on anyone’s signature or stamp.

It does not care that much if we know its name, picture, or eloquence. It did not believe that it was material for media. It did not prepare for cameras and did not put smiling paste on its face.

Neither does it want that, nor we.

Hence, Gaza is bad business for merchants and hence it is an incomparable moral treasure for Arabs.

What is beautiful about Gaza is that our voices do not reach it. Nothing distracts it; nothing takes its fist away from the enemy’s face. Not the forms of the Palestinian state we will establish whether on the eastern side of the moon, or the western side of Mars when it is explored. Gaza is devoted to rejection… hunger and rejection, thirst and rejection, displacement and rejection, torture and rejection, siege and rejection, death and rejection.

Enemies might triumph over Gaza (the storming sea might triumph over an island… they might chop down all its trees).

They might break its bones.

They might implant tanks on the insides of its children and women. They might throw it into the sea, sand, or blood.

But it will not repeat lies and say “Yes” to invaders.

It will continue to explode.

It is neither death, nor suicide. It is Gaza’s way of declaring that it deserves to live. It will continue to explode.

It is neither death, nor suicide. It is Gaza’s way of declaring that it deserves to live.

Mahmoud Darwish (1941-2008): Silence for Gaza, English version by Sinan Antoon, from Hayrat al-`A’id (The Returnee’s Perplexity), Riyad al-Rayyis, 2007

Gaza from the Hill Muntar. Image Description from historic lecture booklet: "This picture is taken two miles southwest of Gaza on the Hill Muntar. Gaza was the southern-most and strongest of five Royal Cities of Philistines. It has been made famous by the exploits of Samson. Tradition points out a place on the southwest side of town toward the left of the picture as the place where stood the gates of the Philistine city which Samson carried off (Judges 13). It is claimed by some that this is the hill whither Samson carried the gates. Gaza is about 100 feet high and stands in the midst of orchards. There is an abundance of figs, dates and olives. The soil is irrigated by well water and yields abundantly. Gaza is very closely connected with Old Testament history, being mentioned in almost every book. It was a town even before the call of Abraham, and now is the largest city close to the seacoast in Palestine. In the conquest of Joshua the territory of Gaza is mentioned as one which he was not able to subdue (Josh. 15:47). But it apparently continued through the times of Samuel, Saul, and David to be a Philistine city.": photographer unknown, c. 1910 (Oregon State University Special Collections and Archives)

Kids in Gaza. Photographed near Jabaliya Refugee Camp. Drinking water is limited in the Strip, and I am not sure how clean this water was: photo by Shabtai Gold, July 2005; image by velvetart, 6 September 2005

Palestinian children keeping warm during winter with "hatab" fire in Gaza refugee camp, Jerash, Jordan. In the Gaza refugee camp where most homes lack indoor plumbing and heating, the time-honored Arab tradition of gathering around a "hatab" fire is frequently practiced during the winter season. The youth who often complain of being cramped up in their small homes, are particularly fond of making outdoor fires with scrap wood and shrubs located throughout the camp: photo by Einkarem1948, 18 January 2009

Children playing near overground sewage in Gaza refugee camp, Jerash, Jordan. Suffering and deprivation is apparent throughout the Gaza refugee camp where the vast majority of families live on less than $40 USD per month. The putrid odor from overground sewage, coupled with the dusty deserts surrounding the refugee camp make living a daily challenge for residents of the camp. Sewage and waste water accumulates in the overground sewage systems shown above. These sewage "lines" in the camp collect from holes in the floors of the homes or dumped directly into ditches that run beneath each home in the camp. Despite being plagued by severe poverty, residents of this refugee camp are regularly forced to pay Jordanian authorities exorbitant amounts to have the excreta/sewage pumped out of their homes into special septic tanks. The Gaza refugee camp in Jerash, Jordan is home to 24,000-34,000 Palestinian refugees who fled from Gaza, Palestine in 1948 and 1967. Unlike Palestinian refugees from other districts of Palestine, the Palestinians in the Gaza refugee camp are considered persona non grata in Jordan (i.e. they are denied an identity, not granted identification papers and, therefore, denied the right to work and travel freely throughout the country). Most Jordanians and Palestinians living in the capital of Amman remain unaware of the Palestinians in the Gaza refugee camp, prompting many experts to describe these refugees as the "Forgotten Ones": photo by Einkarem1948, 18 January 2009

Typical homes in Gaza refugee camp, Jerash, Jordan: photo by Einkarem1948, 18 January 2009

Narrow alley in the Gaza refugee camp: photo by Einkarem1948, 10 June 2009

Narrow alleys in the Gaza refugee camp: photo by Einkarem1948, 10 June 2009

Narrow alleys, corrugated roofs in the Gaza refugee camp: photo by Einkarem1948, 10 June 2009

I am the bullets, the oranges and the memory: Mahmoud Darwish: Ahmad Al-Za’tar

Smoke from Israeli strikes rises over Gaza City, in the Gaza Strip. A police spokesman said Israeli aircraft have hit dozens of targets in the Gaza Strip, including the home of the late leader of Hamas' military wing, several mosques and a football stadium: photo by AP, 22 July 2014

Mahmoud Darwish: Ahmad Al-Za’tar

For two hands, of stone and of thyme
I dedicate this song. For Ahmad, forgotten between two butterflies
The clouds are gone and have left me homeless, and
The mountains have flung their mantles and concealed me
From the oozing old wound to the contours of the land I descend, and
The year marked the separation of the sea from the cities of ash, and
I was alone
Again alone
O alone? And Ahmad
Between two bullets was the exile of the sea
A camp grows and gives birth to fighters and to thyme
And an arm becomes strong in forgetfulness
Memory comes from trains that have left and
Platforms that are empty of welcome and of jasmine
In cars, in the landscape of the sea, in the intimate nights of prison cells
In quick liaisons and in the search for truth was
The discovery of self
In every thing, Ahmad found his opposite
For twenty years he was asking
For twenty years he was wandering
For twenty years, and for moments only, his mother gave him birth
In a vessel of banana leaves
And departed
He seeks an identity and is struck by the volcano
The clouds are gone and have left me homeless, and
The mountains have flung their mantles and concealed me
I am Ahmad the Arab, he said
I am the bullets, the oranges and the memory

Mahmoud Darwish (1941-2008): Ahmad Al-Za’tar, 1998, English version by Tania Nasir, 1998

A Palestinian man carries a wounded child to an emergency room in front of the media at Shifa hospital in Gaza City on July 20: photo by Khalil Hamra / AP, 20 July 2014

Shujai'ya 2014: A farewell to humanity?

Smoke rises as flames spread across buildings after Israeli strikes in the Shijaiyah neighborhood in Gaza City. The airstrikes set off huge explosions that turned the night sky orange: photo by AP, 20 July 2014

Omar Ghraeib: Why I vowed not to have children in Gaza (2014)

Israel said the ground invasion into Gaza would be limited, which makes you think that the tanks would only advance a few meters in. That was the case for the first two days. Little did we know that Israel planned widespread ethnic cleansing and massacres. Israel’s goal was to wipe out an area, and the people who reside in it, too.

Things started escalating at around 10pm on Saturday. Israeli drones swooped down lower and started buzzing loudly. Tanks advanced. Apache helicopters and F-16 warplanes bombed and also provided cover. And then the eastern Gaza City neighborhood of Shujaiya started getting hit hard.

Non-stop shelling. I heard it all from my house. I couldn’t even keep up with the number of explosions and artillery rounds.

Hundreds and hundreds of families evacuated, leaving their homes and lives behind, seeking refuge in any calmer place, even though nowhere is safe in Gaza.

They walked in the streets, holding nothing but their kids, trying to escape death. Some even climbed into the shovel of a bulldozer. Many were just wandering in the streets with no destination in mind or nowhere to go.

*

Many ended up gathering at al-Shifa hospital, only to see the bodies of their relatives, neighbors and friends arrive.

I don’t know how to describe that night. I am at loss for words and out of breath. Gaza looked like a huge ball of fire as Shujaiya was being burned.

All of Gaza was under darkness. Power outages have reached twenty hours per day, or even more. We could hear the merciless attacks on Shujaiya, people screaming and fires burning.

All we had was a radio to let us know what we already knew but wanted to deny. We kept holding onto the last thread of hope un we had to face the truth: the people of Shujaiya were being butchered.

Every night we count down the hours, waiting for dawn to start breaking through, lighting up the sky and pumping Gaza with sun. But not that night. We were hoping the sun would take its time so we could delay seeing what the light would reveal.

We expected what had happened, but what the light showed was beyond devastation.

*
We couldn’t recognize Shujaiya. It was like a tsunami of bullets had struck the area. Or a blazing earthquake. Something natural but disastrous. But what really happened was beyond nature or even humanity. It was like the 1948 Nakba all over again, with scenes similar to the 1982 Sabra and Shatila massacre. There were flashbacks to the Cast Lead massacre of five-and-a-half years ago, too.

The Red Cross proposed a humanitarian ceasefire in Shujaiya so that medics could pull out the dozens of dead and hundreds of injured. Israel refused the ceasefire at first, then accepted it, and then broke it by bombing the area and opneing fire on medics and ambulances.

Medics managed to pull out 72 dead Palestinians, their bodies splayed across the streets. More than four hundred injured people were taken to the hospital.

Medics say that the numbers of the dead and injured may increase dramatically.

International and local journalists, medics and doctors were crying in pure disbelief. They reported seeing a massacre that can’t be unseen.

I guess we are all scarred for the rest of our lives.

Pictures of devastation and destruction were circulating from that morning on.

But what was very painful, to the extent that I stopped breathing, are the pictures of parents carrying their dead and injured children while they wept in a way that could move mountains.

When will Palestinians be recognized as people? As humans? As civilians?

When will our children have human rights and be safe?

Israeli cannon fires artillery shells from an artillery unit near the Israeli border with Gaza. Four Palestinians were killed and 50 others wounded when Israeli shells struck a hospital in central Gaza, despite a call by the UN Security Council for a truce: photo by EPA, 22 July 2014

*
Can you imagine the devastation of a father who is holding his child dead in his hands? Can you imagine his loss? And how ashamed and guilty he feels for not being able to protect his child?

That’s why I vowed to never, ever to have children here. I will not bring them to this world and fail to protect them. I will not watch my children die. It is too painful watching other children die and their parents weep; I can’t handle going through it myself.

How could the world consider wiping out a whole area and its residents as “self defense” and “righteous?” How can children be considered “militants” and “terrorists?”

The mosque nearby started calling for a donation campaign, only to make me feel more powerless. What can you give to those who lost their loved ones, their houses and a life they once knew?

I wished I could give them my heart or ease their pain in any way, but I couldn’t, so I joined a trivial donations campaign. How can money or material things ever make up for the loss of your child?

I spent hours feeling numb, paralyzed, breathless and stunned. I couldn’t shed a tear.

And then, tears started flowing. So abundantly. They were very hot, and burned my cheeks.

On Tuesday, the Gaza-based Ministry of Health said that more than 600

Palestinians have been killed and 3,700 injured since the beginning of Israel’s ongoing offensive against the besieged Gaza Strip, including the 72 killed and 400 injured in the Shujaiya massacre.

People were showered with tank shells while they slept at home in their beds.

People either fled or died under the rubble.

*
As I bid farewell to my humanity and soul today, and mourn them, I bid farewell to the dead Arab nation and Arab leaders, but without mourning. Human rights organizations, as well — I bid them farewell; they have always failed to protect human rights. Reports and documents do not protect innocent children.

I also bid farewell to all aid agencies in Gaza, for using the blood of Palestinians as a propaganda stunt to collect millions in “donations.” I bid farewell to international humanity.

Omar Ghraeib: Why I vowed not to have children in Gaza, The Electronic Intifada, 20 July 2014

Gaza: The Pantry of the Future-Devourers: photo by Ibrahim Abu Mustafa, 28 May 2007; image by AnomalousNYC, 5 June 2007

Gaza: The Pantry of the Future-Devourers | As Palestinians mark the dismal 40th Anniversary of the Israeli Occupation, Israel rains bombs on the crowded cities and refugees camps of Gaza, among the most densely populated pieces of land in the world. Behind all the bluster, it is seldom mentioned that nearly half of the population of the Gaza Strip are under the age of 14, and that the majority of all victims of Israel's daily attacks are children and other civilians. Virtually all of these children have either personally witnessed people murdered by israelis, or lost one or more family members or relatives to Israeli attacks. Virtually all of them, unsurprisingly, exhibit symptoms of acute forms of psychological trauma. Virtually none of these children have ever been permitted outside the walls which enclose Gaza. Until recently, most of them had never even seen the ocean, even though the Strip is only two miles wide, because of Israeli movement restrictions and the Jewish-only beachfront settlements which took up one-third of the land of Gaza. Of the 1,500,000 people crammed into the Gaza prison -- most of them refugees from Israeli ethnic cleansing -- fully 1,100,000 of them are entirely dependent on ouside food aid to survive. Perversely, Israel routinely blocks and restricts the delivery of food and water to Gazans, and constantly lobbies other states to do the same. As a consequence, according to the UN, Gazans are suffering from malnutrition at levels comparable to the worst famine zones of sub-saharan Africa, and one in ten of these children will suffer some degree of phsyical and mental retardation.This week, former Chief Rabbi Mordechai Eliayhu declared that every one of these children is a legitimate target for Israeli attack. He proposed that the launching of rockets from Gaza against the city of Sderot, which recently killed two Jews, permits Jews to indiscriminately kill "even a million" Palestinians. The Jerusalem Post notes that his religious ruling will be distributed to every synagogue in Israel.:image by AnomalousNYC, 5 June 2007

Israeli soldiers rest next to artillery shells from an artillery unit near the Israeli border with Gaza. The death toll after 14 days of fighting was at least 509, Gaza Health Ministry spokesman Ashraf al-Qedra said, adding that some 3,150 have been injured: photo by EPA, 20 July 2014

Eliyahu advocates carpet bombing Gaza

All civilians living in Gaza are collectively guilty for Kassam attacks on Sderot, former Sephardi chief rabbi Mordechai Eliyahu has written in a letter to Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. Eliyahu ruled that there was absolutely no moral prohibition against the indiscriminate killing of civilians during a potential massive military offensive on Gaza aimed at stopping the rocket launchings. The letter, published in Olam Katan [Small World], a weekly pamphlet to be distributed in synagogues nationwide this Friday, cited the biblical story of the Shechem massacre (Genesis 34) and Maimonides' commentary (Laws of Kings 9, 14) on the story as proof texts for his legal decision. According to Jewish war ethics, wrote Eliyahu, an entire city holds collective responsibility for the immoral behavior of individuals. In Gaza, the entire populace is responsible because they do nothing to stop the firing of Kassam rockets. The former chief rabbi also said it was forbidden to risk the lives of Jews in Sderot or the lives of IDF soldiers for fear of injuring or killing Palestinian noncombatants living in Gaza. Eliyahu could not be reached for an interview. However, Eliyahu's son, Shmuel Eliyahu, who is chief rabbi of Safed, said his father opposed a ground troop incursion into Gaza that would endanger IDF soldiers. Rather, he advocated carpet bombing the general area from which the Kassams were launched, regardless of the price in Palestinian life."If they don't stop after we kill 100, then we mustkill a thousand," said Shmuel Eliyahu. "And if they do not stop after 1,000 then we must kill 10,000. If they still don't stop we must kill 100,000, even a million. Whatever it takes to make them stop."In the letter, Eliyahu quoted from Psalms. "I will pursue my enemies and apprehend them and I will not desist until I have eradicated them.

Matthew Wagner, Jerusalem Post, 30 May 2007

The town of Old Jerusalem and the Dome of the Rock this morning: image via Zena Al Tahhan @zenatahhan, 19April 2018

Mahmoud Darwish: Under Siege

Protesters demonstrate in support of the ongoing Israeli military operation on the Gaza strip, in Friday, July 18, 2014, in Philadelphia. Israeli troops pushed into Gaza on Friday in a ground offensive that officials said could last up to two weeks as the prime minister ordered the military to prepare for a "significantly" wider campaign. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)

Protesters in Philadelphia demonstrate in support of the ongoing Israeli military operation on the Gaza strip, on Friday, July 18, 2014. Israeli troops pushed into Gaza on Friday in a ground offensive that officials said could last up to two weeks as the prime minister ordered the military to prepare for a "significantly" wider campaign: photo by Matt Rourke / AP, 18 July 2014

Here on the slopes of hills, facing the dusk and the cannon of time
Close to the gardens of broken shadows,
We do what prisoners do,
And what the jobless do:
We cultivate hope.

***
A country preparing for dawn. We grow less intelligent
For we closely watch the hour of victory:
No night in our night lit up by the shelling
Our enemies are watchful and light the light for us
In the darkness of cellars.

***
Here there is no "I".
Here Adam remembers the dust of his clay.

***
On the verge of death, he says:
I have no trace left to lose:
Free I am so close to my liberty. My future lies in my own hand.
Soon I shall penetrate my life,
I shall be born free and parentless,
And as my name I shall choose azure letters...

***
You who stand in the doorway, come in,
Drink Arabic coffee with us
And you will sense that you are men like us
You who stand in the doorways of houses
Come out of our morningtimes,
We shall feel reassured to be
Men like you!

***
When the planes disappear, the white, white doves
Fly off and wash the cheeks of heaven
With unbound wings taking radiance back again, taking possession
Of the ether and of play. Higher, higher still, the white, white doves
Fly off. Ah, if only the sky
Were real [a man passing between two bombs said to me].

***
Cypresses behind the soldiers, minarets protecting
The sky from collapse. Behind the hedge of steel
Soldiers piss -- under the watchful eye of a tank --
And the autumnal day ends its golden wandering in
A street as wide as a church after Sunday mass...

***
[To a killer] If you had contemplated the victim’s face
And thought it through, you would have remembered your mother in the
Gas chamber, you would have been freed from the reason for the rifle
And you would have changed your mind: this is not the way
to find one’s identity again.

***
The siege is a waiting period
Waiting on the tilted ladder in the middle of the storm.

***
Alone, we are alone as far down as the sediment
Were it not for the visits of the rainbows.

***
We have brothers behind this expanse.
Excellent brothers. They love us. They watch us and weep.
Then, in secret, they tell each other:
"Ah! if this siege had been declared..." They do not finish their sentence:
"Don’t abandon us, don’t leave us."

***
Our losses: between two and eight martyrs each day.
And ten wounded.
And twenty homes.
And fifty olive trees...
Added to this the structural flaw that
Will arrive at the poem, the play, and the unfinished canvas.

***
A woman told the cloud: cover my beloved
For my clothing is drenched with his blood.

***
If you are not rain, my love
Be tree
Sated with fertility, be tree
If you are not tree, my love
Be stone
Saturated with humidity, be stone
If you are not stone, my love
Be moon
In the dream of the beloved woman, be moon
[So spoke a woman
to her son at his funeral]

***
Oh watchmen! Are you not weary
Of lying in wait for the light in our salt
And of the incandescence of the rose in our wound
Are you not weary, oh watchmen?

***
A little of this absolute and blue infinity
Would be enough
To lighten the burden of these times
And to cleanse the mire of this place.

***
It is up to the soul to come down from its mount
And on its silken feet walk
By my side, hand in hand, like two longtime
Friends who share the ancient bread
And the antique glass of wine
May we walk this road together
And then our days will take different directions:
I, beyond nature, which in turn
Will choose to squat on a high-up rock.

***
On my rubble the shadow grows green,
And the wolf is dozing on the skin of my goat
He dreams as I do, as the angel does
That life is here...not over there.

***
In the state of siege, time becomes space
Transfixed in its eternity
In the state of siege, space becomes time
That has missed its yesterday and its tomorrow.

***
The martyr encircles me every time I live a new day
And questions me: Where were you? Take every word
You have given me back to the dictionaries
And relieve the sleepers from the echo’s buzz.

***
The martyr enlightens me: beyond the expanse
I did not look
For the virgins of immortality for I love life
On earth, amid fig trees and pines,
But I cannot reach it, and then, too, I took aim at it
With my last possession: the blood in the body of azure.

***
The martyr warned me: Do not believe their ululations
Believe my father when, weeping, he looks at my photograph
How did we trade roles, my son, how did you precede me.
I first, I the first one!

***
The martyr encircles me: my place and my crude furniture are all that I have changed.
I put a gazelle on my bed,
And a crescent of moon on my finger
To appease my sorrow.

***
The siege will last in order to convince us we must choose an enslavement that does no harm, in fullest liberty!

***
Resisting means assuring oneself of the heart’s health,
The health of the testicles and of your tenacious disease:
The disease of hope.

***
And in what remains of the dawn, I walk toward my exterior
And in what remains of the night, I hear the sound of footsteps inside me.

***
Greetings to the one who shares with me an attention to
The drunkenness of light, the light of the butterfly, in the
Blackness of this tunnel!

***
Greetings to the one who shares my glass with me
In the denseness of a night outflanking the two spaces:
Greetings to my apparition.

***
My friends are always preparing a farewell feast for me,
A soothing grave in the shade of oak trees
A marble epitaph of time
And always I anticipate them at the funeral:
Who then has died...who?

***
Writing is a puppy biting nothingness
Writing wounds without a trace of blood.

***
Our cups of coffee. Birds green trees
In the blue shade, the sun gambols from one wall
To another like a gazelle
The water in the clouds has the unlimited shape of what is left to us
Of the sky. And other things of suspended memories
Reveal that this morning is powerful and splendid,
And that we are the guests of eternity.

.....................Ramallah, January 2002

Mahmoud Darwish (1941-2008): Under Siege, from A State of Siege, 2002, English version by Marjolijn De Jager

An explosion by an Israeli strike is seen in Gaza City, northern Gaza Strip, late Saturday, July 19, 2014. Gaza Health Ministry spokesman Ashraf al-Kidra said the new round of strikes raised the death toll from the 12-day offensive to more than 330 Palestinians, many of them civilians and nearly a fourth of them under the age of 18.(AP Photo/Lefteris Pitarakis)

An explosion caused by an Israeli strike is seen in Gaza City, northern Gaza Strip, late Saturday, July 19, 2014. Gaza Health Ministry spokesman Ashraf al-Kidra said the new round of strikes raised the death toll from the 12-day offensive to more than 330 Palestinians, many of them civilians and nearly a fourth of them under the age of 18: photo by Lefteris Pitarakis / AP, 19 July 2014

In this image made with a long exposure, the sky and the city is lit by Israeli forces' flares in the northern Gaza Strip, Friday, July 18, 2014. Israeli troops pushed deeper into Gaza on Friday to destroy rocket launching sites and tunnels, firing volleys of tank shells and clashing with Palestinian fighters in a high-stakes ground offensive meant to weaken the enclave's Hamas rulers. (AP Photo/Lefteris Pitarakis)

In this image made with a long exposure, the sky and the city are lit by Israeli forces' flares in the northern Gaza Strip, Friday, July 18, 2014. Israeli troops pushed deeper into Gaza on Friday to destroy rocket launching sites and tunnels, firing volleys of tank shells and clashing with Palestinian fighters in a high-stakes ground offensive meant to weaken the enclave's Hamas rulers: photo by Lefteris Pitarakis / AP, 18 July 2014

Israeli forces' flares light up the night sky in the northern Gaza Strip, early Saturday, July 19, 2014. Israeli troops pushed deeper into Gaza on Friday to destroy rocket launching sites and tunnels, firing volleys of tank shells and clashing with Palestinian fighters in a high-stakes ground offensive meant to weaken the enclave's Hamas rulers. (AP Photo/Adel Hana)

Israeli forces' flares light up the night sky in the northern Gaza Strip, early Saturday, July 19, 2014: photo by Adel Hana / AP, 19 July 2014

Israeli forces' flares light up the night sky in the northern Gaza Strip, Friday, July 18, 2014. Israeli troops pushed deeper into Gaza on Friday to destroy rocket launching sites and tunnels, firing volleys of tank shells and clashing with Palestinian fighters in a high-stakes ground offensive meant to weaken the enclave's Hamas rulers. (AP Photo/Adel Hana)

Israeli forces' flares light up the night sky in the northern Gaza Strip, Friday, July 18, 2014: photo by Adel Hana / AP, 18 July 2014

A Palestinian child runs on debris from a destroyed house, following an overnight Israeli strike in Beit Lahiya, in northern Gaza strip, Saturday, July 19, 2014. A Gaza health official says the death toll from Israel's 12-day offensive against Hamas militants has topped 300: photo by Lefteris Pitarakis / AP, 19 July 2014

A Palestinian child walks on debris from a destroyed house, following an overnight Israeli strike in Beit Lahiya, in northern Gaza strip, Saturday, July 19, 2014: photo by Lefteris Pitarakis / AP, 19 July 2014

Palestinians flee their homes in Beit Hanoun, northern Gaza Strip, following heavy Israeli shelling, Saturday, July 19, 2014. Gaza Health Ministry spokesman Ashraf al-Kidra said the new round of strikes raised the death toll from the 12-day offensive to more than 330 Palestinians, many of them civilians: photo by Lefteris Pitarakis / AP, 19 July 2014

A Palestinian medic is overwhelmed by emotion as he takes a break treating wounded people by Israeli strikes, at the emergency room of the Kamal Adwan hospital in Beit Lahiya, Saturday, July 19, 2014: photo by Lefteris Pitarakis / AP, 19 July 2014

Palestinian relatives mourn for Qasim Alwan, 4, and Imad Alwan, 6, who were killed Friday by an Israeli tank shell, during their funeral in Gaza City, Saturday, July 19, 2014l: photo by Hatem Moussa / AP, 19 July 2014

Palestinian relatives mourn for Qasim Alwan, 4, and Imad Alwan, 6, who were killed Friday by an Israeli tank shell, during their funeral in Gaza City, Saturday, July 19, 2014. Relatives say the tank shell hit the Alwan family's kitchen, killing Qasim and Imad: photo by Hatem Moussa / AP, 19 July 2014

Protesters hold posters designed with images of the Palestinian flag during a demonstration to show support for Palestinians in front of Israel's diplomatic headquarters, in Quito, Ecuador, Friday, July 18, 2014: photo by Dolores Ochoa / AP, 18 July 2014

Israelis sat on a hill overlooking the Gaza Strip as smoke rose from the scene of an airstrike.

Israelis sit on a hill overlooking the Gaza Strip as smoke rises from the scene of an airstrike: photo by Jim Hollander / EPA, 17 July 2014

A Privileged Seat in the Theatre of Eternal Conflict

"A child's mind is a theatre of becoming"

The whole family out watching gaza burnt to a crisp
From the viewing couches on the bluffs at sderot

Beer in the coolers, instruments precisely adjusted,

As night falls expectation grows among the faithful
Overlooking the grand guignol lightshow,

The most privileged seats in the house reserved for the high end righteous

The chosen ones

As was so long ago foretold.

August 2014

Israeli forces' flares light up the night sky in the northern Gaza Strip, early Saturday, July 19, 2014: photo by Adel Hana / AP, 19 July 2014

Hazy Gaza City is seen in northern Gaza strip early Saturday, July 19, 2014. Israeli troops pushed deeper into Gaza on Friday in a ground offensive that officials said could last up to two weeks as the prime minister ordered the military to prepare for a "significantly" wider campaign. (AP Photo/Lefteris Pitarakis)

Gaza City is seen in northern Gaza strip early Saturday, July 19, 2014. Israeli troops pushed deeper into Gaza on Friday in a ground offensive that officials said could last up to two weeks as the prime minister ordered the military to prepare for a "significantly" wider campaign: photo by Lefteris Pitarakis / AP, 18 July 2014

Genocide is a mitzvah

Rabbi Ophir Wallas addressing students: screenshot: wwwdotbneidaviddotorg via mondoweiss, 17 April 2018

Influential rabbi teaches would-be Israeli soldiers: Genocide is a mitzvah: Yossi Gurvitz, Mondoweiss, 17 April 2018

Rabbi Ophir Wallas of the Bnei David Military Mechina was caught on video teaching young would-be soldiers that Israelis are, from the halachaic point of view, permitted to wipe out Palestinians, and that only fear of massive retaliation prevents that.

Rabbi Wallas’ words are taken from a longer lecture he has given his students. Here is my translation, with essential footnotes:

“In conquering the Land [of Israel] according to Nachmanides and Rashi [*], who say that the wars of today are also mitzvah wars for conquering the Land, I am beholden to nothing. This isn’t the law of the persecutor [**], right? What law are we dealing with? The laws of a mitzvah war, a war of occupying the Land. Even if I don’t conquer Gaza right now, [conquering it] is part of my ability to settle the Land of Israel, so it is also a part of the mitzvah of conquering the Land. And therefore it follows, there’s no other way; like, we’d have to kill them all. Because this is the difference between the Law of the Persecutor and mitzvah wars. […] A mitzvah war of conquering the Land, which is not limited to saving the people of Israel from their enemies, according to some of the Rishonim [***] I could, on the face of it and by the essential law, destroy, kill and cause to perish [****] all of them. I will not do so, because if I were to do so, and reject international treaties, then the State of Israel shall parish, unless we shall witness a miracle of miracles – and one must not trust in a miracle. And that’s the only reason I won’t do it.”

A few other notes are essential. First, and please bear with me, what is a mechina? Literally, it means a “preliminary school”, but in Israel it came to mean a school which prepares students who finished their high school studies for military service. While most Israeli Jews are drafted soon after finishing high school, a select few are allowed to study for one more year, and in this year they are supposed to be indoctrinated to become better soldiers. Most mechinas boast of a high percentage of graduates who go on to become officers and serve longer than draftees. With one exception, all mechinas are religious, and are in fact a form of yeshiva. Mechina teachers are public employees who get their salaries from both the Education Ministry and the Defense Ministry. Mechina leaders often meet with senior officers, up to the Chief of Staff, and participate in high-level discussions about the level of religiosity of the army, particularly whether women may serve with men. The fact that the mechinas are producing a large number of motivated officers when most Israelis do not wish to become officers gives them unusual leverage with the high command – with the result that they are rarely, if ever, supervised.

This began to change over the last year. The Bnei David mechina, the first of them, has long been considered the flagship of the National Religious movement, and its leader, Rabbi Elli Saddan, even won the Israel Prize – the country’s highest civil honor – for his contribution to education. However, over the last year, several rabbis of the mechina– including Saddan himself – were caught on videos saying highly inflammatory things. The main targets of the mechina rabbis have been gays and women; the utterances were so inflammatory, as the rabbis exposed their misogyny and homophobia, that the Minister of Defense demanded at one point that one of the worst offenders, Saddan’s deputy Yigal Lewinstein, resign or the mechina will be sanctioned. Soon after, Lewinstein went on “vacation”, but the mechina insisted he was not fired.

As one scandal after another hit Bnei David, leftists have made it a habit to go over the mechina’s videoed lectures looking for bait. The Wallas quote is the latest prize. Most of the haul, however, dealt with misogyny and homophobia. This is one of the rare examples of what Bnei David rabbis think about Palestinians.

Now we need a crash course in Jewish [not Israeli] warfare law. It basically distinguishes between two sorts of wars: reshut (permitted) wars and mitzvah (ordained) wars. Kings are permitted to go on reshut wars if they so please, but such wars are handled under relatively humane laws. Mitzvah laws are a different concept entirely: they are holy wars, the enemy is considered to be the enemy of God, and, as Wallas says, “I am beholden to nothing.” The model is the extermination wars of the biblical Joshua. Most Halacha scholars are divided about what constitutes a mitzvah war, but they agree that wars to reconquer the Holy Land fit the bill – after all, they are modeled on Joshua’s.

There used to be a snag: Only a king could declare a mitzvah wars, and Judaism was not supposed to have a king until the messiah came. The National Religious movement made a leap of faith over this hurdle: it declared Israel to be “the beginning of the growth of our redemption” (a phrase recited every year in the Independence Day prayers), and treats the state as semi-holy, and one that may declare mitzvah wars.

And, at the end of the chain, we have a government-sponsored rabbi teaching children ardent for some desperate glory that legally they are permitted to order their soldiers to destroy, kill and cause to perish women, old men, and children. Yes, there is still a caveat: If Israel is to suffer because of international treaties, it shouldn’t be done.

But what if the time is right?

Technically, Rabbi Wallas is somewhat under military supervision. As his teachings – while essentially correct, alas – go directly against military law, one might expect he’d be removed, demoted or reprimanded. But, while Lewinstein was reprimanded for denigrating women soldiers, Wallas has less to fear. No one in the military command cares about rabbis rhapsodizing about genocide.

Notes

* Two prominent medieval glossa writers, Rabbi Moshe Ben Nachman and Rabbi Shlomo Yitzhaki

** A halachaic law permitting the harm, up to killing, of a person who is “persecuting” others and putting them in danger.

*** Jewish religious scholars of the High and Late Middle Ages period

**** Wallas is here quoting Haman’s order for the extermination of Jews, Esther 3:13.

***** then the State of Israel shall parish, unless we shall witness a miracle of miracles Why is nobody mentioning that the Rab almost seems to be talking about Episcopalians, here, or is it just me, but nevermind?

Murdered in Cold Blood ! Palestinian Mohammad Ayoub 13 y/o shot in the head by Israeli sniper at the eastern border of #Gaza today.: image via mohammed mosleh @MohammadMusle16, 17 April 2018

Samuel Beckett: Apodosis

If only I could make an effort, an effort of attention, to try and discover what's happening, what's happening to me, what then, I don't know, I've forgotten my apodosis, but I can't, I don't hear any more, I'm sleeping, they call that sleeping, there they are again, we'll have to start killing them again, I hear this horrible noise, coming back takes time, I don't know where from, I was nearly there, I was nearly sleeping, I call that sleeping, there is no one but me, there was never anyone but me, here I mean, elsewhere is another matter, I was never elsewhere, here is my only elsewhere, it's I who do this thing and I who suffer it, it's not possible otherwise, it's not possible so, it's not my fault, all I can say is that it's not my fault, it's not anyone's fault, since there isn't anyone it can't be anyone's fault, since there isn't anyone but me it can't be mine, sometimes you'd think I was reasoning, I've no objection, they must have taught me reasoning too, they must have begun teaching me, before they deserted me, I don't remember that period, but it must have marked me, I don't remember having been deserted, perhaps I received a shock.

Samuel Beckett (1906-1989): from The Unnamable (translated from the French by the author, 1959)

Black Square: Kazimir Malevich, 1913 (Russian State Museum, Saint Petersburg)

there they are again, we'll have to start killing them again

A Palestinian protester wears a tyre on his head with an onion (to protect himself from tear gas) dangling from it [Hosam Salem/Al Jazeera] #Gaza : image via HosamSalem @HosamSalemG, 13 April 2018

DSCF9564sofi: photo by ilan Ben yehuda, 1 March 2018

Untitled [Tel Aviv]: photo by Ilan Burla, 5 April 2018

Gaza 2018 | Darwish: Silence for Gaza / Ahmad Al-Za’tar / Under Siege | Genocide is a mitzvah | Beckett: Apodosis (there they are again, we'll have to start killing them again)

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