Solidarity between Palestinians and Indigenous Activists has Deep Roots

Rally supporting indigenous communities in Vancouver, Canada. (Photo: Supplied)

Source

By Marion Kawas

Palestinian solidarity with indigenous struggles here in Turtle Island was highlighted last week, with both local and international Palestinian support for the Wet’suwet’en nation’s struggle on unceded territory in British Columbia.

The BDS National Committee (BNC) released a powerful statement at the same time as diaspora Palestinians in Vancouver sent greetings to the daily #WetsuwetenStrong protest in that city. Both emphasized the brave and tireless resistance of the indigenous defenders, with the BNC noting that Palestinians owe them “a great debt for teaching us how to resist settler colonialism generation after generation through your powerful resistance, grace and indomitable spirit”. 

But these strong expressions of Palestinian support are not new and have a long and rich history.

Mahmoud Darwish’s iconic and epic poem, “The Penultimate Speech of the ‘Red Indian’ to the White Man,” is one early example of the modern Palestinian resistance movement’s link with indigenous issues. Some verses of that poem have been put to music by Roger Waters in a segment appropriately entitled “Supremacy”.

Russell Means, leader of the American Indian Movement, also wrote a poem in response to Darwish, entitled “The Song of the Palestinian”. In fact, solidarity delegations of AIM visited Beirut in the 1970s and were welcomed at many Palestinian offices and centers.

Mahmoud Darwish was in Vancouver, Canada in 1976 as part of the Palestinian delegation to the UN-Habitat Conference. At a packed public meeting organized by local activists, he appeared on stage to recite his poetry along with celebrated indigenous poet Lee Maracle. He read several of his poems, and she presented the English translation of “Write Down, I am an Arab” for the audience.

Maracle later said that upon “Hearing his work…she felt an intrinsic connection. ‘He spoke to something so old inside my body it felt like floating in a sea of forever’.”

That same year, indigenous activists in Vancouver were also protesting the arrest and later extradition of Leonard Peltier. Peltier had been part of the 1973 resistance to the US military siege on Pine Ridge, but was falsely accused of murdering an FBI agent. He came to Canada, was jailed and later handed over to the US government, where he was incarcerated and remains to this day.

Weekly protests were held in 1976 to support Peltier, and Palestinians were there to support those actions. An article from the Native Study Group in a newsletter of the day “Palestine in Struggle”, highlighted Peltier’s case and showed why solidarity between all indigenous struggles is critical.

In 2012, there was a strong statement of support from Palestinians with the IdleNoMore movement and indigenous rights. Multiple organizations and individuals signed on to show the depth of support and understanding between the two struggles.

They said in part:

“We recognize the deep connections and similarities between the experiences of our peoples – settler colonialism, destruction and exploitation of our land and resources, denial of our identity and rights, genocide and attempted genocide.”

Indigenous activists from Canada have been part of the Gaza Flotilla multiple times. Both Robert Lovelace and more recently, Larry Commodore, sailed on Boat to Gaza vessels in solidarity with the Palestinians. Larry, in particular, was treated brutally and injured by the Israeli military upon his arrest from the al Awda in 2018.

Solidarity between Palestinian and Mohawk activists also has a long history across Canada. There are many examples of mutual support, with Mohawk flags being seen at Palestinian demos and Palestinian flags flying high on Six Nations land.

One activist, the late Splitting the Sky (John Boncore), who was part of the Gustafsen Lake standoff, was also pivotal in furthering indigenous solidarity in British Columbia. He joined the parents of Rachel Corrie and others on a Vancouver stage in 2003 in a remarkable meeting to mark the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinians.

Slogans such as “Sovereign Forever, Never Surrender” and “If you deny our Existence, Expect our Resistance” have been highlighted in the #WetsuwetenStrong protests. These slogans also resonate completely with the current phase of the Palestinian struggle, as Palestinians deal with Trump’s apartheid plan and the crushing vision for the future it embodies.

The bonds of shared trauma, shared resistance to settler colonialism and the enduring spirit of defending the land will keep the solidarity between Palestinians and the indigenous people of Turtle Island alive for generations.

– Marion Kawas is a member of the Canada Palestine Association and co-host of Voice of Palestine. She contributed this article to PalestineChronicle.com. Visit: www.cpavancouver.org.

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The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Blog!

Mahmoud Darwish and the Jews

Posted on August 10, 2017 

by Richard Edmondson

August 9th marks the ninth anniversary of the death of the great Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish. Poems that eloquently capture the essence and spirit of the Palestinian struggle for independence–this is what Darwish gave to the world.

Born on March 13, 1941 in the village of Al-Birwa, Darwish published his first book of poetry at the age of 19. His home village, Al-Birwa, no longer exists, by the way. Located in western Galilee near the border with Lebanon, it was destroyed in 1948. Darwish was seven years old at the time. He and his family and other villagers were forced to flee. A kibbutz and the Jewish town of Ahihud occupy the land today.

A week ago I put up a post entitled Solzhenitsyn and the Jews, the purpose of which was to mark the ninth anniversary of the death of the famed Russian writer, Alexander Solzhenitsyn. The parallels between Solzhenitsyn and Darwish are striking. For one thing, both men died within a week of each other–Solzhenitsyn on August 3, 2008, and Darwish on August 9, 2008. Both of course were also great writers. But perhaps most striking of all is both spent a major portion of their lives living under a brutal system of government imposed by Jews–and in both cases the experience powerfully shaped their writing.

Here is what I wrote in my article on Solzhenitsyn:

The Soviet Union, at least in its earlier years, seems very much to have been an example of Jewish power gone berserk.

The same of course can be said of Israel.

You can kind of sense that power gone berserk in what follows. It’s one of Darwish’s most famous poems–“I Come from There.”

I Come From There

I come from there and I have memories
Born as mortals are, I have a mother
And a house with many windows,
I have brothers, friends,
And a prison cell with a cold window.
Mine is the wave, snatched by sea-gulls,
I have my own view,
And an extra blade of grass.
Mine is the moon at the far edge of the words,
And the bounty of birds,
And the immortal olive tree.
I walked this land before the swords
Turned its living body into a laden table.
I come from there. I render the sky unto her mother
When the sky weeps for her mother.
And I weep to make myself known
To a returning cloud.
I learnt all the words worthy of the court of blood
So that I could break the rule.
I learnt all the words and broke them up
To make a single word: Homeland…..

On June 8, 1987, Darwish published an essay entitled, “The Cruelest of Months.” The essay marked the twentieth anniversary of the 1967 war, a war in which Israel, in addition to bombing the USS Liberty, further extended its control over Palestinian land, capturing East Jerusalem and the West Bank.

In his essay, Darwish employs the rhetorical device of repetition, repeating the words “June is the cruelest of months,” throughout the piece. He may have intended it as a literary allusion to T.S. Eliot’s “The Wasteland,” whose  opening line consists of the immortal words, “April is the cruelest month.” At any rate, the piece jumps straight into the poet’s portrayal of June’s agony:

No one is safe from the pain of memories, or from psychological collapse. June is the cruelest of months. June is an abyss which tries to ascend from its own depths to improve the conditions within it. A strained hand is raised to prevent the wall from collapsing and a strained cry rings out: let whatever is collapsing collapse–let our internal pain complete its twentieth year. The passing of twenty years startles us as we ponder what time can and cannot do. Twenty years of pain that we try to forget, but which pursues us. Whoever was born then, in June, is now twenty years old–children familiar with rocks and small rockets, with prisons, children who have lived abnormal lives. We see to what extent we have been further scattered and to what extent the homeland has narrowed. Twenty seasons of burned wheat.

And as we bid the years farewell, the ideas of youth fade. They would have remained young if night had not been confounded with day. June is the cruelest of months. Because we are witnesses of the event. And turning back to that part of this age which has already ended, this age which defies proper description, does not enable us to escape the fever or to ascertain its origins: is it the past that has taken with it the memory of the defeat and gone away; or is it the present, incapable of separating itself from the spectacle of the defeat and its history so that the past remains capable of repeating itself as long as the reality of the defeat is present in the form of the occupation?

The line about night being “confounded” by day is perhaps the most powerful of all. In an obscene world of cruelty and madness, darkness is preferable to the light of day. Darkness at least brings us a sense of respite from the murderous depravities.

The essay also addresses Israel’s tiresome and incessant demands from one and all–including the very people it has displaced–for recognition of its “right to exist.” And there is also a backhanded slap at Arab governments which, in exchange for cordial relations with the Zionist state, have all but abandoned the Palestinian struggle (other than the payment of occasional lip service).

Here a June question arises: if the decision to make war was an Arab decision, why should the decision to make peace be based on a Palestinian agreement to absent himself? Here the Greek tragedy and the Shakespearean tragedy are completed: the Palestinian is expected to absent himself from his homeland, from his problem, from his case, and from himself. He is requested to appear on  stage only once. He who is absent is asked to appear to witness that he is absent, invisible; he is supposed to come only to recognize Israel’s existence, Israel which is present only on the condition that the Palestinian is absent. Then the Palestinian is supposed to disappear. He is also supposed to present himself before the Arab ruler to acknowledge that he does not represent himself, to admit that he is absent from the stage in the presence of the one who has requested him to attend once for the sake of permanent absence.

But Darwish foresaw, even then, way back in 1987, that the Palestinians were not going to give up, that the struggle for justice would go on:

We must realize again that June did not come from outside as much as it sprang from within. Is June still alive within us? We have witnessed twenty years of occupation. But also twenty years of steadfastness of a people surrounded and besieged by occupation. Twenty years of embers springing from the ashes. Twenty years of the crystallization of the Palestinian national identity. Twenty years of shaping the miracle.

That essay, as I say, was published in June of 1987. Six months later, in December of 1987, the first intifada broke out.

A tribute to Darwish has been published at the website Palestine Square. The article tells a little of his personal story and also provides links to a number of writings–these consist of Darwish’s own writings as well as articles that have been written about him. One of the articles linked to is a commentary Darwish himself wrote on the 9/11 attack. Here is a brief excerpt from it:

No cause, not even a just cause, can make legitimate the killing of innocent civilians, no matter how long the list of accusations and the register of grievances. Terror never paves the way to justice but leads down the shortest path to hell. We deplore this horrendous crime and condemn its planners and perpetrators with all the terms of revulsion and condemnation in our lexicon. We do this not only as our moral duty, but also in order to reassert our commitment to our own humanity and our faith in human values that do not differentiate between one people and another. Our sympathy with the victims and their families and with the American people in these trying times is thus an expression of our deep commitment to the unity of human destiny. For a victim is a victim, and terrorism is terrorism, here or there; it knows no boundaries nor nationalities and does not lack the rhetoric of killing.

A Palestinian girl lights candles in tribute to Darwish.

That article, condemning the horrendous attacks, was published in a Palestinian newspaper on September 17, 2001. As was the case with most people in the world at that time, it obviously had not occurred to Darwish that 9/11 may well have been a false flag, with Israel as the possible principle perpetrator. In any event, the marked sympathy he shows for Americans should be noted–it is a distinctly humanist perspective, coming from one of the leading intellectuals in Palestinian society, this despite America’s ongoing support for Israel.

In 2001, America truly had the sympathy of the entire world. We managed to squander it. Our response to 9/11 was to bomb and invade one country after another–in wars that were relentlessly advocated by Jewish neocons and the Zionist-owned media.

***

Remembering Mahmoud Darwish

Palestine Square

It is difficult to overstate the legacy of Mahmoud Darwish, Palestine’s iconic poet, whose passing on 9 August 2008 has left behind a literary treasure. His was a voice that touched every Palestinian, and with it, Darwish delivered the Palestinian experience to a global audience. His poems have been translated into more than 20 languages, and continue to ring true for many Palestinians who long to return home. Indeed, exile was the central thread of Darwish’s poetic journey. And, while exile is often regarded as a political reality, Darwish’s experience reveals a far broader concept. As he said in a 1996 landmark interview featured in this month’s Special Focus below, “Exile is a very broad concept and very relative. There is exile in society, exile in family, exile in love, exile within yourself.” It began with an exile from his natal village in the Galilee, where Darwish lived under military rule along with 150,000 other Palestinians after Israel’s establishment in 1948. Then, came Moscow, Paris, Cairo, Tunis, Beirut, Amman, and finally Ramallah, where he was buried. This fragmented living resonated with a broader Palestinian experience of displacement and dispersion.

Yet, for all his collective significance, Darwish was often reserved and his poetry was born from very personal experiences. For instance, he grew up convinced he was unloved by his family, especially his mother. But, when he was jailed in Israeli prison in 1956, he wrote “I Long For My Mother’s Bread,” which has become a Palestinian classic in the voice of Marcel Khalife.

“I wanted to atone for my feelings of guilt toward my mother for thinking she hated me—as a poem of national longing. I didn’t expect that millions would sing it,” Darwish said. Indeed, for countless Palestinians estranged from place and family, this particular poem was embraced as a national resistance poem, where the mother symbolizes Palestine.

Continued here

You can follow the link to access the full tribute to Darwish. At the bottom of the article you will find the links to the other articles. These include a link to the essay, “The Cruelest of Months.” Take note, however, that the articles are in PDF format and will only be available for the duration of the month of August. So if you wish to read them, do so now.

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The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Blog!

In Memory of Mahmud Darwish – A Poem

      
Feb 15 2013 / 8:40 pm

Mahmoud Darwish.
 

By Manash Bhattacharjee

I learnt from your poems how
To wait upon death
And how waiting is a game as
Treacherous as death.

I learnt from you how the root
Of waiting is grasped in despair
And that there is no despair
More deceitful than hope.

Waiting helped you gather those
Roses along the way
Which grow only for travellers
Who walk the loneliest road.

You kept those roses as mementos
Of your nights when gunshots
Would remind you of the difficulty
To make love under the moon.

As you carried the landscape on
Your shoulders and looked
For your address in the clouds
The enemy laughed.

They thought you will grow weary
From repeating the same lines of loss
But they didn’t know those without a home
Are always hungry for memory.

Manash Bhattacharjee

- Manash Bhattacharjee is a poet, writer and scholar from New Delhi, India. He contributed this article to PalestineChronicle.com.

Related posts:

1. Mahmoud Darwish Commemorated in London
2. The Voice of Mahmoud Darwish
3. Under Siege – A Poem
4. Complacency – A Poem
5. How Pale the Sky – A Poem

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The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of this Blog!

Jenny Tonge: A ‘Woman of Substance’

Via Intifada

05. May, 2010 

Jenny Tonge and her like are an endangered parliamentary species

By Felicity Arbuthnot – London
“Unrespited, unpitied, unreprieved,
Ages of hopeless end.” (John Milton, 1608-1674.)

 Democrat M.P., Jenny Tonge (The Rt. Hon., The Baroness Tonge of Kew) has one. Liberal Democrat Leader, Nick Clegg, does not.

Jenny Tonge is a doctor by training, married to a consultant neuroradiologist. Her positions have included Senior Medical Officer for Women’s Services in the large, multi-racial, London Borough of Ealing. In politics, she has been the Party’s spokeswoman for children and for health.
After her daughter was killed in a electrical accident, in 2004, she retired as an M.P., in order to help care for her two young grandchildren. However, made a Peer in 2005, entitled her to address issues of concern in the House of Lords.

Background.
In January 2004, she was sacked as children’s’ champion, by the then leader of the Party, Charles Kennedy, for saying of Palestine suicide bombers, in the hopelessness of the remnants of their land: “If I had to live in that situation – and I say that advisedly – I might just consider becoming one myself.” Refusing to apologize, she pointed out that: ” …having seen the violence, humiliation and provocation that the Palestinian people live under every day and have done since their land was occupied by Israel, I could understand …”
Her statement echoed the haunting words of the late Palestinian poet, Mahmoud Darwish. In his “State of Siege”, he poignantly tiptoes between despair and what Western and Israeli governments label “terrorism.”

Darwish walks in the shoes of one with only his being remaining:
“I love life
On earth, among the pines and the fig trees,
But I can’t reach it,
So I took aim,
With the last thing that belonged to me”, he wrote of the suicide bomber. Such acts, he too, held, were not of a people with a culture of death, but a reflection of the despair of life under over sixty years of destruction and occupation.
“Palestinian people are in love with life. If we give them hope – a political solution – they’ll stop killing themselves.”

Even in death, Darwish mirrored Palestine’s tragedy, her sons and daughters either exiled or captive – walled, or checkpointed in.

He died in August 2008, far from the land he loved, after a life reflecting his nation’s plight in words of searing, soaring beauty, during enforced wanderings among temporary roofs.
In November 2008, Tonge joined a group of twelve parliamentarians from the UK., Ireland, Switzerland and Italy, breaking the Israeli siege of Gaza by boat, an act of not inconsiderable courage, given Israel’s addiction to ramming, shooting at or apprehending craft, whether attempting to take in aid (1) or fishermen engaged in their livelihood.(2)

In January 2009, in the House of Lords, she drew attention of the relevant Minister to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights speaking of “war crimes being committed in Gaza” (during Israel’s month long bombardment) and asked that the British government “show leadership” (that would be a first) “and call for an immediate … UN fact finding commission … to investigate all breaches of international law.”
That March, Jenny Tonge was part of a small delegation of UK parliamentarians who travelled to Damascus, to meet Khaled Meshaal, Hamas leader since the assassination of Abdel Aziz al-Rantissi, in 2004. “You don’t make peace by talking to your friends (but) by talking to your enemies”, she commented at the time.
The group, she said, were attempting to pressure the British government to talk to Hamas, who had won the Palestinian Legislative Council elections in 2006. Such contact might lead to the US following suit, they hoped. They knew their meeting might be considered illegal and lead to arrest, but: “That is one of the risks you take”, said Tonge.

Strange times when talking to an elected government can lead to arrest. Wrong kind of democracy again?
In a distinctly undemocratic action, Israel’s Mossad also attempted to assassinate Meshaal, in Amman, Jordan, in 1997, approaching him from behind and spraying a lethal nerve gas in to his ear. Two of the agents were apprehended by the Jordanian security services, with King Hussein demanding of Israel the antidote. On their refusal, amid growing international furore, President Clinton successfully intervened.
“Israeli threats have one of two effects: some people are intimidated, but others become more defiant and determined. I am one of the latter”, commented Meshaal, of the episode.

This month, Tonge was again sacked by Nick Clegg, after suggesting an independent inquiry should be established into allegations of organ harvesting in earth quake devastated Haiti, by the Israeli Defence Force (IDF). As Liberal Democrat Health Spokeswoman in the House of Lords, her concerns were valid, given statements by even a senior Israeli forensic scientist, over Israel’s past practices. (3)
Ironically, the storm was caused by her measured statement to the Jewish Chronicle, in which she suggested perfectly reasonably that: “To prevent allegations such as these – which have already been posted on You Tube – going any further, the IDF and the Israeli Medical Association should establish an independent inquiry immediately, to clear the names of the teams in Haiti.” It is fair to assume that were any other country’s nationals accused, their Medical Associations would need little prompting for such an inquiry.

For her stand, Tonge has been dubbed, by a juvenile group of scribblers, “Jihad Jenny.” Contrasting her humanitarian concerns, the Editor of the Jewish Chronicle, Stephen Pollard, in answer to an email from a reader, who asked whether his paper considered: ” ..extra-judicial murder by Israel or any other state acceptable in any way”, allegedly replied: “Yes.”

Contributors to the Chronicle include Geoffrey Alderman, who has argued that according to Jewish law, it is “entirely legitimate to kill” every Palestinian in Gaza who voted for Hamas.”(4)

The “Jihad Jenny” nonsense, would seem to have come, from amongst others, Douglas Murray, a “self-described neocon and Zionist” and author of  “Neoconservatism: Why We Need It.” He seemingly fails to convince. At the time of writing, it is remaindered on Amazon at $2.00; 59c used. (5)

Nick Clegg, who found her comments re Israel’s teams in Haiti: “wrong, distasteful and provocative”, on becoming Leader of his Party, described himself as: “A liberal by temperament, by instinct and by upbringing.” Indeed. In an interview with GQ magazine, pressed on the number of women he had slept with, he replied: “No more than thirty…” assessing his frolicking skills: “I don’t think I am particularly brilliant or particularly bad.” The interview earned him the title of “Cleggover.”

Frolicking aside, Jenny Tonge should have had a natural ally in Clegg. International in upbringing and outlook, he worked widely overseas before entering politics and speaks Dutch, French, German and Spanish. His father is half Russian and his Dutch mother, as a child, was interned with her sisters and mother by the Japanese, in what is now Jakarta. Her father was in an adjoining camp, where they sometimes saw him through the wire.

Clegg’s mother is still a special needs teacher. Her son has also lectured at Cambridge University on International Relations, a discipline which includes international law, state sovereignty, nationalism, human rights and terrorism. The study is thought to have its roots in the 1648 Peace of Westphalia which constituted the legal concept of Sovereignty, encouraged the rise of the independent nation state and the institutionalization of diplomacy. Haiti and Palestine’s crying needs addressed in a nutshell.
He has defended civil liberties, supports liberal intervention, talked at children’s’ charity Barnardo’s recently about “..giving every child a fair start in life” and in the past has supported Survival International. Another politician perhaps selective about application of beliefs.

Perhaps the principled Baroness Tonge sums up the dilemmas of those with more malleable backbones than hers, when she said:

“The pro-Israeli lobby has got its grip on the western world, its financial grips. I think they’ve probably got a grip on our party.” Slapped down again, by the then Leader of her Party, Sir Menzies Campbell for “unacceptable” comment, she emphasized that she was citing: ” .. the Israeli lobby in politics … a big distance from being about anti Jewishness or anti-Semitism.”

Those whether temporarily or over decades, denied a voice, need the courage of those who can speak out on their behalf, seek redress – even if to dispel an allegation which may have no substance. That is democracy.

Jenny Tonge and her like are an endangered parliamentary species, world wide, as are those they seek to speak for. Perhaps fellow travelers should call Survival International.

- Felicity Arbuthnot is a journalist and activist who has visited the Arab and Muslim world on numerous occasions. She has written and broadcast on Iraq, her coverage of which was nominated for several awards. She was also senior researcher for John Pilger’s award-winning documentary, “Paying the Price: Killing the Children of Iraq”. She contributed this article to PalestineChronicle.com.

Source: Palestine Chronicle

River to Sea Uprooted Palestinian

The criminalisation of a Poet

Frustrated Arab's Diary

the Polish-perpetrator
 and
the Palestinian-poet
in
the pretentious-Paris

The municipality of Paris
would like to dedicate one Public-Garden
to David Ben Gorion ,
and
one alley ,  to Mahmoud Darwish .


This resembles to any monuments
that would be dedicated to:
Jack the Ripper and another one to his victims,
in the same city,
or
to Adolf Hitler and another one to Ann Frank ,
to emperor Nero and  another one to Rome.
to the Volcano Etna and another to Pompeii,

Why would Paris commemorate the memory
of a Polish thief , together with the memory
of a robbed-Palestinian- poet  ??.....his own victim.

Since when does a Parisian lord-mayor honour an Arab-poet ??
Since when does a Polish thief deserve any kind of honours ??
and since when do thieves and poets share ,
one and the same honouring-commitee ??

Did that poet become also a criminal ??
or the criminals are now supposed to be honoured ,
just like the poets !! ??

Ben Gorion wrote in his memoirs that :

" any Arab who ,one day, would forgive to the Israelis, would be a fool...."

.......unquote

Why should Mahmoud Darwish become a fool ??
why does the Mayor of Paris think that we are all fools ???

If the municipality of Paris were to be ,a bit more, honest
they would dedicate ....to Mahmoud Darwish  only
who never did steal any country!!!
who never made widows nor any orphans !!!

Raja Chemayel
a francophile. ... but excluding the French-politics

Posted by Тлакскала at 10:45 PM

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 Uprooted Palestinian