We Palestinians Wake Up Every Morning To Teach The Rest Of The World Life, Sir!
By Farooq Sulehria
July 14, 2014
Rafeef Ziadah is many things – an activist, scholar, musician, and poet. In every role, she is voice of Palestine. During a demonstration, a western journalist asked her: “Ms Ziadah, don’t you think that everything would be resolved if you would just stop teaching so much hatred to your children?”
In mainstream western discourses, it is usually not Israel that is posing any problem. The Palestinian-Israeli conflict is explained away by an instinctive Muslim/Palestinian hatred for Jews. Islamophobic clichés strengthened by the rise of Hamas help ease the job.
As if to introduce the journalist to the rich tradition of Arabic poetry, Rafeef responded with a dazzling poem, titled, ‘We teach life, sir!’ Below an excerpt:
“Today, my body was a TV’d massacre./Today, my body was a TV’d massacre that had to fit into sound-bites and word limits.
“Today, my body was a TV’d massacre that had to fit into sound-bites and word limits filled enough with statistics to counter measured response./And I perfected my English and I learned my UN resolutions.
“But still, he asked me, Ms Ziadah, don’t you think that everything would be resolved if you would just stop teaching so much hatred to your children? /Pause.
“I look inside of me for strength to be patient but patience is not at the tip of my tongue as the bombs drop over Gaza. /Patience has just escaped me.
“Pause. Smile. /We teach life, sir!
“Rafeef, remember to smile. /Pause.
“We teach life, sir! /We Palestinians teach life after they have occupied the last sky.
“We teach life after they have built their settlements and apartheid walls, after the last skies. /We teach life, sir!”
Yet again Israel is pounding Gaza. In the realm of social media, any gesture of solidarity with Palestine earns you liberal wrath. ‘Why do a few dead bodies and a couple of bombs over Gaza bother you so much when the Taliban are massacring innocent Pakistanis next door?’, comes the reprimand.
Ironically, this is exactly what the religious right does. Point out any puritan barbarity and in response they will cite two imperial/infidel outrages. The way politicised Islam refuses to be a ‘religion of peace’ beyond Nile-to-Kashgar, the liberalism of many Pakistan liberals also begins to wane when the victims at the receiving end of imperial or Zionist barbarisms happen to be ‘uncouth Arabs’.
The outrage over the Gaza bombings does not owe to fundamentalists’ hegemonic sway over the apocryphal Muslim world, or Talibanisation in the case of Pakistan. Long before the Taliban were even born, Jalib used to mock the mullahs for ignoring the Palestinian cause while Faiz penned ‘Lullaby for a Palestinian Child’ and attributed his ‘Meray Dil Meray Musafir’ to Yasser Arafat.
That Palestine invokes such passions in the Muslim world and beyond mirrors, for the first, success of the Palestinian liberation struggle as a political project. Second, symbolised by Leila Khaled, Mehmoud Darwesh, Edward Said and Yasser Arafat, the heroic Palestinian resistance against the last surviving and violent colonial project has invoked a general solidarity worldwide.
From post-apartheid South Africa to communist Cuba, Palestine has won global solidarity. In Sweden, a Davis Cup match in 2009 between Sweden and Israel was played in an arena without spectators. Authorities banned any audience for fear of anti-Israel protesters. In fact, Palestine solidarity is much stronger in the west than the Muslim world. Third, history and the west’s guilty conscious/hypocrisy further stoke the Palestinian fire.
I would humbly suggest: instead of getting irritated over Gaza, let us learn lessons in resistance and dignity from Palestine. Rafeef Ziadah correctly points out:
We Palestinians wake up every morning to teach the rest of the world life, sir!
Farooq Sulehria is a freelance contributor.
Source: http://www.thenews.com.pk/Todays-News-9-261615-We-teach-life
URL: https://newageislam.com/islam-terrorism-jihad/we-palestinians-wake-up-every/d/98223