Saturday, December 27, 2008

Besieged

This morning’s assault on Gaza and the massacre of 205 Palestinians (so far) was easy to foresee. First came the official lapse of the six-month ceasefire between Israel and Hamas. Then an Israeli incursion, and the Gazan response: firing dozens of home-made Qassam missiles at southern Israel. A little bit of damage was done to property as a result. Meanwhile, Hamas leaders said they’d be pleased to work out a renewed ceasefire deal. According to Haaretz, Shin Bet chief Yuval Diskin understood this clearly enough: “Make no mistake, Hamas is interested in continuing the truce, but wants to improve its terms. It wants us to lift the siege, stop (IDF) attacks, and extend the truce to include Judea and Samaria (the West Bank),” he said.

Extending the truce, and letting the Gazans live, seem not to be on Israel’s agenda. It’s election time, and the mood for stamping out resistance has taken Israel in its arms.

In other circumstances it might seem strange that a population on the Mediterranean coast is being besieged and starved without a murmur from the rest of the world. But this is Gaza, Palestine, and the victims suffer alone. Reports say Mubarak had given his assent to a ‘limited blow’ before today’s blood; he’s been keeping the Egyptian border with Gaza sealed, keeping the ugly oppressed in their cage very effectively since they briefly broke out last January. Tony Blair – who should be in prison but is instead poncing about in Ramallah and Jerusalem ­– has been winking to Israeli journalists about necessary change in Gaza. No response to today’s crime is likely in Lebanon, or Jordan, or Egypt. The peoples of Europe and America are, by and large, silent.

This, in the land of Crusades, is a medieval siege. Gaza is walled in. Nothing passes in or out. More than fifty percent of the population are officially unemployed. The banks have closed. The strip’s only power station has shut down. The people are starved quite literally: most bakeries have closed for lack of heating oil. A Red Cross report describes “progressive deterioration in food security for up to 70 per cent of Gaza’s population.” It goes on: “Chronic malnutrition is on a steadily rising trend and micronutrient deficiencies are of great concern.” Which means, amongst other things, that this generation of children in Gaza are not receiving the nutrients they need for healthy brain development.

I quote from the Independent: “The report paints a bleak picture of an increasingly impoverished and indebted lower-income population. People are selling assets, slashing the quality and quantity of meals, cutting back on clothing and children’s education, scavenging for discarded materials – and even grass for animal fodder – that they can sell, and are depending on dwindling loans and handouts from slightly better-off relatives. In the urban sector, in which about 106,000 employees lost their jobs after the June 2007 shutdown, about 40 per cent are now classified as “very poor,” earning less than 500 shekels (£87) a month to provide for an average household of seven to nine people.

This is a deliberate, cruelly organised crime. And nobody notices.

This morning, with children in school, people on the streets and in offices, policemen at a graduation ceremony, the sky screamed and roared. There are reports of general panic, and of roads clogged with corpses.

I know the writing becomes a whine when these simple sentiments are expressed: but, again; imagine you are living, or dying, with your children, in such a place. And imagine that the world ignores you.

The Second Intifada was valiant, and to start with showed signs of succeeding. Like the First Intifada it was a spontaneous mass movement in which all sections of society participated. Not provided with any organisation from the top, the Intifada was self-mobilising, rapidly generating new organisations, leaders and methods of resistance. Marwan Barghouti proved himself a principled and intelligent leader, a more-than-worthy successor to Arafat. (Like the best of Palestinian leaders who are still alive, Barghouti is now held in an Israeli prison).

I don’t condemn the Palestinians for militarising the Intifada. In many respects, the armed struggle had become, again, inevitable. The Oslo ‘peace process’ had, according to its careful design, eaten up still more of Palestine and made a genuine two-state solution unviable. In the first weeks of protest after Sharon’s visit to al-Aqsa, hundreds of stone-throwing youths (and other civilians not throwing stones) were gunned down. The US media, meanwhile, wondered why Palestinian mothers didn’t love their children. What would you expect the shot-upon to do? Passive resistance doesn’t get you very far if neither the oppressor nor his friends have a conscience.

And attacks inside Israel brought the war to the enemy in a way that had never happened before. Whatever the morality of attacks on civilian targets (and I rankle at the moralising against the Palestinians, when Israel murders vastly higher numbers, when the Palestinians, the aggrieved party, have tried peace), and whatever effect calling these attacks ‘Islamic’ may have on Muslim and non-Muslim perceptions of Islam (AbdulAziz ar-Rantissi hinted at this when he said “In this conflict many red lines have been crossed, by both sides”), the attacks did what they intended to: Israel became, for a year or two, a country ‘occupied’ by fear. Many Israelis left; many avoided restaurants and markets; the economy slumped. Tourism stopped.

Globally, the Intifada sparked a new generation’s interest in Palestine. In the Muslim world this fed into the growing Islamist passion, and also into popular initiatives to boycott American goods. There were huge demonstrations in support of Palestine even in places where demonstrating was a new and illegal activity. In the West blogs and websites like the Electronic Intifada became alternative news sources for activists, and new Palestinian diasporic figures like Ali Abunimeh arrived on the scene. The Intifada at first shifted opinion in Europe, where there was a sense that something at last had to be done, that the contagious wound of Palestine had to be doctored.

Then came September 11th, then Afghanistan and Iraq, and the specific issue of Palestinian dispossession was overshadowed by the generalities of the ‘war on terror’. Israel and its friends worked very hard to transfer the medieval-Islamic-terror label to the Palestinians and Lebanese, to cast the struggle against ethnic cleansing, expulsion, occupation and apartheid as an atavistic spouting of anti-freedom bile.

Wahhabi-nihilists obligingly played their part: A non-client in power in Riyadh would have dramatically changed the balance in Palestine’s favour, but al-Qa’ida atrocities kept the al-Sauds in power after the invasion of Iraq. Massacres of commuters in London and Madrid, and the mindless barbarism of sectarian warfare in Iraq, convinced the mainstream European media of the Israeli narrative: Muslim violence has no relation to political causes, but is culturally inherent. Civilisation can only enwall and frighten these people.

Europe like America has accepted this now.

Israel destroyed the Palestinian Authority and fought its way back into the cities it had vacated during the Oslo years. It conducted mass arrests and made travel between West Bank villages not much easier than travel beyond the solar system. It built a huge barrier through communities on the West Bank, and entrenched the settlement system.

The Second Intifada was defeated, but not comprehensively. In its wreckage Palestinian society is poorer, less educated, more traumatised, more splintered. A collaborative class polices the West Bank on Israel’s behalf, thousands of young men are locked in Israeli prison camps. And Gaza starves.

The paradoxical victory is in Gaza; not much of a victory of course, perhaps just a hint at the possibility of victory. A popularly-mandated resistance organisation has kept control of the territory in the most difficult of conditions, and has started to transform itself into a guerrilla organisation, taking Hizbullah as its model. It remains to be seen if Israel will attempt a full ground invasion. If it does, it will be interesting to see how Hamas holds ground.

And if Israel reoccupies Gaza, what then? It was resistance that made it leave before, and resistance will be more ferocious now. Hamas, meanwhile, is constantly developing its missile capacities. The resistance may fall. If it doesn’t, it will grow in strength. Then both sides will be beseiged, the Israelis by time.


Malnutrition: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/chronic-malnutrition-in-gaza-blamed-on-israel-1019521.html

Sara Roy on the seige: http://www.lrb.co.uk/v31/n01/roy_01_.html

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t5osk2toY1E&eurl=http://www.juancole.com/

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thankyou for the aticle . I would like to say that this attack wouldn,t have happened without the green light being given by Gazas own neighbours . Mubarak , Abdullah the tall and Abdullah the short ..who are without any germ of honour , humanity or respect .
The Israelis have used this opportunity to show their population that they can be as brutal as they are wanted to be , as blood thirsty , as cruel as they can be . But the Arab leaders are as bad or even worse by crying crocodile tears and really hoping Israel will do the dirty work for them ...
I dont, know how the people in Gaza have managed so far , they have extraordinary courage and patience , God save them . The scenes are heart wrenching, i only hope all the world will see what we see and wake up and give justice to the people in Gaza...
One last point , the smallest child in Gaza has more guts , balls , courage than any top gun Isreali terrorist fighter pilot using his flying death machine to massacre innocents , again God save the people in Gaza and give them the power to overcome this attack ...

Anonymous said...

NASRALLAH’S HEZBULLAH

“Why the war? Leave small details to a future Plutarch; this is another round of battle for Palestine. Supported and supplied by their captive empire, the US, the Jews had all the weapons, all the ammunition, all the diplomatic support, when hubris-drunk they drove into disarmed and starved Gaza to kill off its last resisters and impose the Yoke of Zion. Their invasion was prepared by a yearlong siege and incessant shelling; they were cock-sure they can devour Gaza at will. And indeed, all kept mum: the Egyptians traded the glory of the Ramadan war for greenbacks, sons of Hejaz and Nejd were too busy serving at the oil pump, and the princes of the Gulf cared but for their falcons. The Jews felt secure as they stooped to kill off Gaza: who will disturb the lion of Judah roaring at his prey? And a tiny force from the Mount Lebanon said: we will. They attacked the all-powerful Jews; thus the hobbit pierced the sinew of Nazgul when he stooped to kill. The Israeli army roused from his prey turned north and lashed with all its might at the Hezbullah fighters. But they stood fast.” [2]



1.



And yesterday, on August third, I heard –



That Israeli planes are dropping from the air leaflets over Beirut

Urging its population to evacuate immediately,

For the city will soon be razed from the surface of the earth.



The teacher said:



“Hezbullah’s deeds deserve to be immortalised by poets”.



I say, the poet must need, have a deed to be needed, or kneaded -

Like the dough of good fresh bread whose sweet smell rises

In the air all over Senegal before the dawn appears light crimson

Once more above the blackness of the night –



You are that prayed for deed, and need, that precedes The Twelfth Imam’s

Glorious and luminous appearance upon the terror of this firma –

Cries of my children now dying in Lebanon,

The wailing of my mothers, fathers, sisters, and brothers in Lebanon,

The destitution from destruction and unrighteous slaughter

Of innocent multitudes now in Lebanon,



And this was your measure of measured measurement Israel?



I saw the horrid pictorial sequence of your obvious intention,

Your objective - to amputate the feet of an entire living nation,

To cut out its heart and soul – an ethnic and ethic cleansing that came,

Just after the announcement was made to leave before the bombing began,

And as they obeyed, you bombed everything until there was nothing left to leave.



The finest stitch of hypocritical dress, you are still a mess Israel,

You are still the same wicked harlot you were when my brother Ezekiel

Wrote you his prophetic poem, his song of blood, sweat, and tears,

The vivacious and vicious need of your historical and masochistic yearning

To desperately burn in the depths of karmic hell, a measured swelling,

Your insatiable greed of world domination; in the meantime -

All nations of the world are presently invited to attend the present

“Mono-Jewish Cultural Festival” held on land and in the skies over Lebanon.



IT IS NOW RAINING MOLTEN FIRE IN THE SKIES OF LEBANON,

IT IS NOW RAINING MOLTON FIRE ON THE LAND OF LEBANON,

IT IS NOW RAINING MOLTON FIRE ON THE INNOCENT OF LEBANON,

IT IS NOW RAINING MOLTEN FIRE ON THE FLESH OF LEBANON,



2.



AND NOW A NONABEL LEBANON IS PRESENTLY UNDER HISTORICAL SEIGE OF THE WRATH AND JEALOUSLY OF CAIN, AS HE SLAYS HIS BROTHER OVER AND OVER AGAIN. AND NOW YOU WANT TO CRY ANTI-SEMITE AS THE REST OF THE WORLD POINTS YOU OUT ISRAEL. YOUR HOLLOWEEN FALSE FACE OF TYRANICAL MASK FINALLY REMOVED AND WHO SHALL NOT RECOGNIZE YOUR MARK BROTHER CAIN, WHILE YOU CALL DOWN BLOOD FROM THE SUN? YOUR COLORFUL BRILLIANT PLUMAGE, A MULTITUDE OF HYPOCRITICAL PROMISES AND ATROCIOUS LIES -



I will don the Holy prophetic dress of sackcloth and ashes,

I will walk the streets of the nations as a living breathing witness and sign,

I will beg the Lord of the Worlds to chastise you,

I will cry a haunting cry to awake the sleeping of the population,

I will call upon ALL the righteous of the world to undress you,



You, a nation born in a single day,

You, the victim have now become the victimiser,

You, the oppressed have now become the oppressor,

You, who claimed six million innocent unjustly slain and exterminated -

Now YOU exterminate sixty million more????!!!!



Zeina Karam of the associated press reports:



“BEIRUT, Lebanon (Aug. 9) - Ali Rmeity lies broken and bandaged on a hospital bed, wincing in pain. Three of his children and his parents are dead -- but he doesn't know all that yet. Doctors fear telling the 45-year-old now would be a bigger blow than he can sustain. Rmeity was at home with his wife and four children shortly after nightfall Monday when Israeli missiles slammed into their apartment building in the predominantly Shiite southern Beirut suburb of Chiah.



At least 41 people were killed - including 15 from Rmeity's family - making it the deadliest single strike of the four-week-old Israeli offensive in Lebanon. Workers continued to retrieve bodies from under the slabs of concrete Wednesday.”The hospital's owner, Dr. Nazih Gharious, said it was too early to tell Rmeity of his loss, which might prove to be too much of a shock. Rmeity's brother-in-law, Ibrahim Jomaa, repeatedly warned visitors not to slip and tell Rmeity that his children were killed.



"If he finds out he will surely die," he said.



"I had been feeling tired, so I went into the bedroom and lay down on the bed. Five minutes later the bombs fell and I found myself crying for help under the rubble," Rmeity said Tuesday. "My wife, who was on the balcony, was thrown in the air. They found her somewhere, I don't know where”



…In total, 15 of Rmeity's relatives were killed, according to hospital officials and relatives. Ali so far had only been told that his mother had died.”



3.



When it rains death from the heavens,

Where does one go, where does one hide?



As you deliberately target innocent victims,

Your insatiable and barbaric appetite for revenge,

You cannot defeat them from the land,

So you hunt, bomb, and kill them like dogs from the sky,



It doesn’t matter who, anyone will do – YOU,

A terrorist state supported by Little Boy George and Crew,

You are now the New Aryan Race – and from your

American Co-Murderers, as Azmi Bishara, rightly informs:

“Comes the laser, micro-optics, microelectronics,

And high tech aerodynamics allowing for precision flying,

Hairline fine guidance, dead-on targeting and surgical destruction.” [3]



You are the New and Improved Freddy Krueger now piloting F16 jets,

Technolo-fied, multiplied, and amplified in Surround-Sound 3D,

A resurrected and rabid Frederick Nietzsche foaming at the mouth,

Streaking across the skies faster than the speed of sound,

Soaring - Beyond Good and Evil - you think,

An arrogant immoral creeping shrieking Frankenstein horror movie

Stalking the crust of the earth,

An insane army of Jeffrey Dahmer pedophiles feeding upon the flesh

Bone and blood of the innocent little children you shoot down from above.



THIS IS A KATYUSHA REVOLUTIONARY GUERILLA KING KONG GODZILLA POEM - CALLING INTO EXISTENCE A BURNING SEARING CLEANSING FLAME TO GO BEFORE NASRALLAH’S HEZBULLAH, TO BURN THE LAND, AIR, AND SEA, ON BEHALF OF ALL THE WAR CRIMES YOU HAVE COMMITTED ISRAEL –



THIS IS A WARRIOR POEM FOR ALL THOSE UNAFRAID TO FIGHT,

FOR ALL THOSE WHO DO NOT FEAR THE BRIGHTNESS OF THE LIGHT,



THIS IS A POEM OF WAR ON BEHALF OF THE POOR, THE DISTRESSED,

THE DISPOSSESSED, AND THE OPPRESSED OF THE WORLD WHO DO NOT FEAR TO GIVE THEIR LIVES FOR WHAT IS RIGHT –



THIS IS A NEEDING SCREAMING RINGING BLEEDING POEM:



For all the little babies and children you have murdered,

For all the little babies and children you have left faceless,

For all the little babies and children you have left headless,

For all the little babies and children you have crippled for life,

For all the mothers and fathers you have left homeless and hopeless,

For all the husbands and wives you have left emotionally castrated

For all the families you have completely destroyed,



THIS IS A MULTICOLORED MANY FLOWERED POEM –

A RADIANT FRAGRANT LOVE SONG

ON BEHALF OF NASRALLAH’S HEZBULLAH:



RISE UP YOU FEARLESS ONES AND REMEMBER - THE SAHABA

WERE ALSO OUT NUMBERED, ILL-EQUIPPED, AND CHALLENGED

TO THEIR FAITH AS YOU FEW, ONLY LATER TO BE ASKED BY THE ENEMY,



“WHO WERE THE MEN IN WHITE FIGHTING WITH YOU?”



4.



Rise up! Oh Noble Warriors and remove the yoke of Zion!

Rise up! Oh Courageous Warriors and break the yoke of Zion!

Rise up! Oh Fearless Warriors and throw off the yoke of Zion!



Oh Glorious Sons of Ali, alaihi salaam, the Power of God is with you!

Oh Glorious Sons of Ali, alaihi salaam, the Glory of God is with you!

Oh Glorious Sons of Ali, alaihi salaam, the Truth of God is with you!



Remember the innocent MASSACRED in Qana,

Remember the innocent MASSACRED in Qubya,

Remember the innocent MASSACRED in Qasba,

Remember the innocent MASSACRED in Beit Hanoun,

Remember the innocent MASSACRED in Bint Jbeil,

Remember the innocent MASSACRED in Jabalya,

Remember the innocent MASSACRED in Jenin,

Remember the innocent MASSACRED in Al-Shajalya,

Remember the innocent MASSACRED in Al-Bureij,

Remember the innocent MASSACRED in Nablus,

Remember the innocent MASSACRED in Nahalin,

Remember the innocent MASSACRED in Lebanon,

Remember the innocent MASSACRED all over Palestine,



The Ahl’al-Bait and all the Imams of the past, present, and future, support you! [4]



THIS POEM IS FOR THE GLORY OF NASRALLAH’S HEZBULLAH, A HOLY DHRIKRULLAH AND SACRED CHANT PROCLAIMED, [5]



For all the Red Cross and supply trucks you have annihilated,

For all the doctors, nurses, and workers you have obliterated,

For all the people’s homes and automobiles you have disintegrated,

For all the schools and schoolteachers you have pulverized to ash and dust,

For all the hundreds of fleeing refugees you blew away from the face of the earth,



As they peacefully fled their homes and cities to escape your hate -



A NOT TOO LATE ANSWER TO YOUR SECULAR YET SPECTACULAR

DENIED PROTOCOLS OF ZION –



I WISH FOR YOU ONLY WHAT YOU HAVE WISHED FOR OTHERS ISRAEL.



INSHALLAH HEZBULLAH’S NASRALLAH

SHALL BECOME AN INTERNATIONAL DHIKRULLAH

HEARD ACROSS THE ENTIRE WORLD AND WITHIN YOUR VERY BORDERS SHALL ENTER A STRONG VIOLENT BLAST OF RIGHTEOUS RETRIBUTION FROM THE LORD OF THE HOLY KABA THAT SHALL BURN YOUR VEHEMENT EVIL FROM THE FACE OF THE EARTH AND JERUSALEM SHALL ONCE AGAIN BECOME THE HOLY CITY IT ONCE WAS BEFORE YOU ARRIVED –



A NINETEEN FORTY-EIGHT SELF IMPOSED - JOHNNY COME LATELY,

WANNA-BE NATION OF SUPPORTED CRULETY AND RACIAL TYRANNY.


Epilogue



Oh my beloved Sheikh Hassan, we say to you, As Salaam Alaykum.

We love and honor you and all the great brave Mujahideen who follow you,

Remember - YOU are the Noble and Illustrious Sons of Ali, alaihi salaam,



And remember -



There is no power less than the Power of God,

That can withstand the Power of God –



“Verily, We have given you (O Muhammad) a manifest victory.



That Allah may forgive you your sins of the past and the future,

And complete His Favour on you, and guide you on the Straight Path,

And that Allah may help you with strong help,



He it is Who sent down As-Sakinah (calmness and tranquillity) into the hearts

Of the believers, that they may grow more in Faith along with their (present) Faith.



And to Allah belong the hosts of the heavens and the earth, and Allah is Ever-Knower, All-Wise.” [6]


SIAM

An excerpt taken from Rain of Grace, New & Selected Poems by SIAM
www.rainofgrace.com

qunfuz said...

Thank you, anonymous, for your poetry, which expresses our anger and passion. However, I don't like, even in a poem, all this talk about 'Jews' and the 'Lion of Judah'. Our battle is with Zionism, not the Jews. Finkelstein and Pappe and Chomsky and Pinter and the orthodox of Neturei Karta are Jews. Husni Mubarak is a Muslim. So it isn't that simple.

I'm not sure what you mean by the reference to the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, but you should know that it's a proved forgery. I wrote about it here: http://qunfuz.blogspot.com/2008/03/what-hamas-should-do.html

If you read my blog you know how much I love and admire Hizbullah. However, one of the potential problems of Islamist resistance is that it encourages us to fall into mythological modes of thought and not to examine the reality in front of us. We can use the stories of early Islam to inspire us to resist and to give us courage in the face of massacre, but these Israeli Jews are not the same Jews the Prophet fought in Arabia.

Thanks again for your poetry.

Anonymous said...

"However, one of the potential problems of Islamist resistance is that it encourages us to fall into mythological modes of thought and not to examine the reality in front of us. "

My question to you is, "What is reality?" You make many speculations in your blog about the Zionists and about the Holocaust, but where are your sources. I do not see a list of sources posted to support your claims.

Also, you wrote that the Holocaust was one of the the MOST documented events in history. Why do you suppose that is?

Why is this piece of history documented more than the African Slave Trade? So who shall we blame for any events in history? If we are not to blame the Jews for the current events in Palestine, then who is to blame? You can try to remove the face of the villain, but you will not erase the magnitude of his terror.

The reality is that human BEings are killing human BEings, and there is ethnic cleansing going on here. When will PEOPLE start BEing held accountable for their actions. Not every Jew is responsible for committing these war crimes, however, I also don't see masses of Jews standing in protest of this massacre. To do nothing is the same thing as doing the killing. Passivity is Evil because deep within the soul, you watch and know that it is wrong.

Allah (swt) knows all. He knows our hearts. There is no hiding from the face of evil. You can wear a mask on this Earth, but in the spiritual dimension, there is no where to run or hide.

So, again I ask you, what is REALITY?

By the way, I LOVE the poem. It is an epic poem such as Beowulf.