Tuesday, April 16, 2013

I've Seen Them Before

i haven’t looked at the images from Boston. i’ve seen them before. In Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine and myriad other places.

i haven’t read the stories emanating out of Boston. i’ve heard them before. Roz Mohammed, whose brother was killed in a drone attack in rural Afghanistan; little Ayoub, who was blown to pieces under the lemon tree in the family garden in Gaza City, his mother holding a blood splattered lemon as she spoke of her little boy, kissing her goodbye and running outside to go to school; eight year old Fares, the “generator” of the family decapitated as he slept in the family home in Beit Hanoun. These stories are commonplace in the world where American foreign policy is at work. And i am tired of hearing them. i am tired of mourning tents and mother's tears. My heart has been carved into little pieces. In this butcher shop of a world i begin again.

The mistake is the belief that there is a difference between here and there. There is not.

People, all of us, have been paying in endless death and dismemberment. If you woke up angry and vengeful this morning, take a very careful look in the mirror. Go beyond this blemish or that, and look in those angry eyes. Delve deep and see how tarnished and hard our hearts have become. If you do not recognize that the children killed in Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine, Somalia, Libya, Yemen, are as very precious as your children or the children injured and killed in Boston, you are gravely mistaken, you have been blinded.

We Americans, each and every one of us, are killers. We are supporters of terrorism. Each and every time a child is killed by a drone, a tank shell, a bomb (errant or not), machine gun fire, we hold the trigger. We are the terrorists we have been searching for.

There is no "just war". There is no "legal bombing". There is only hatred and ignorance or love. Until we recognize our place as perpetrators in this terrible cycle, hate and ignorance will out.

i choose love.


These stories resonate in light of Boston. It is beyond the time to find a new course in the world.

Sunday, April 07, 2013

Land Day is Everyday, Everywhere

In the end they will take it.
Why not surrender?
Relent . Give up.
Decades of struggle.
Stones vs. tanks.
Like arrows vs. Gatling guns.
It’s silly.
Hopeless.
Undeniable as well.

They want it all.
Every last hectare.
Did they tell you?
There is no place for you.
Did they tell you?
Your children will die.

Manifest destiny.
Propaganda to propagate
colonizers on native land.
Judea and Samaria.
Propaganda to propagate
colonizers on Palestinian land.

Land day is everyday, everywhere.
It is not a nostalgic look back.
It is a possibility
of what yet might be.
A possibility to recover
what was lost.
Taken.
Stolen .

A possibility to stop
the theft happening now, 
in front of you.
You don't see it? 
You think 
it's ancient history?
You are trapped.
In your settler mind.
In your colonizer comforts.
i know. 
i too live on stolen land.

Land day is everyday, everywhere.
A possibility to resurrect
a way of life.
A possibility to
recover your heart.

Surrender is not an option.
Collaboration is a crime.
The savages are the civilized.
The terrorists are the state.
The fight will continue
Until the very last stone.
Until the very last drop of blood.