My Open Letter to Israel & the Remarkable Response from an Israeli Reader
Moved beyond words... A young Israeli/Jewish student approached me requesting to use words from a poem of mine, below, for a tattoo 'to honor Palestine.'
My poem in question was written years ago, but the young reader wrote: 'your Letter was speaking right out of my heart in the summer of 2014, that is why I for my part decided to choose your poem instead of Suheir Hammad or any one else... your poem was the best reflection of my thoughts and feelings in this horrible summer.'
As an Arab with a Palestinian grandmother, who was made to leave her home/land at gunpoint by Israeli soldiers, I found this note of solidarity from a stranger incredibly heartening. People can be so breathtakingly beautiful when they struggle to overcome anger, fear or hatred and instead choose to forgive, connect, and honor their higher allegiances... to Humanity!
What's more, this young lady's courage and compassion did not come without a price and were putting a serious strain on her family relations :/
Here's more from her remarkable correspondence:
'My whole family, now, I have a breaking with everyone of them, except my mother and grandparents of course. I have family in Israel too, they broke up with me a week ago. I didn't use hard words, I didn’t want to discuss Israel, cause I know, it’s wasted time. Their brain wash sits so deeply... My famliy are the people who understand me, who share the same kind of morals I have... but it breaks my heart... to watch my people ... people who were victims not long before ...doing the same things to another nation..
I don't have words to describe my despair, and this blindness... I am so full of hatred for Zionism... and my whole family, they are all Zionists... Therefore I understand your words absolutely, I for myself also lost hope in humanity... I think I need a few Jewish guys fighting for Palestine to build it up... I think there are not enough of them.
And to be honest, it’s a bit hard for me at the moment too, to separate between Jewish people and Israeli, between Israeli & Zionists, & between Jewish culture and the things happening today... I know I should separate it..but I am so disappointed and heartbroken seeing these things happening... Let us hope for a better future... When Palestine is like Palestine was before, when Arabs & Jews lived peacefully together !!! Thank you Yahia 😊"
Amen! You may call me a dreamer, but so long as there are people of conscience so deeply troubled by injustice and the status quo, there is hope. Below, is my poem:
Open Letter to Israel
He who fights monsters should see to it that, in the process, he does not become a monster. — Nietzsche
Tell me, what steel entered your heart,
what fear made you rabid,
what hate drove out pity?
How could you forget
that how we fight a battle
determines who we become,
when did you grow reckless
with the state of your soul?
We are responsible for our enemy,
compassion is to consider the role
that we play in their creation.
If you prick us, do we not bleed?
… If you poison us, do we not die?
and if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?
Strange, how one hate enables another;
how they are like unconscious allies,
darkly united in blocking out the Light.
Yes, we can lend ideas our breath, but ideals —
Peace, Justice, Freedom — require our entire lives
and, all who are tormented by such ideals
must learn to make an ally of humility.
Truth, and conscience, can be like large, bothersome flies
— brush them away and they return, buzzing louder
nearly 2,000 dead, in Gaza, 500 children
no, these are unbearable casualties to ignore
To speak nothing of the intangible casualties:
damage done to our collective psyche, trust, and sleep
no more nightmares, please, give us back our dreams
we can still begin, again, and must
wisdom is a return to innocence.
© Yahia Lababidi
(Images: Beit Hanoun, northern Gaza, Basel Yazouri / ActiveStills
Christ of Galilee - Pixabay)
UPDATE: Just as I published this post, a dove landed on my windowsill... coincidence? And then, just like that, the elusive, auspicious creature took off. Here’s a picture:
Israeli Settlers Torch 100 of World's Oldest Olive Trees in Palestinian Olive Grove http://bit.ly/2ndaUUP
"people who were victims not long before ...doing the same things to another nation" - sadly, too true. As a half-jew (ostensibly, the wrong half, i.e. paternal) and an immigrant - it breaks my heart to watch so many who'd fled persecution for who they were turn into bigots once they land on these shores. It never made any sense to me, but always, it breaks my heart.
Here's hoping for wisdom indeed. The return to innocence kind. I wish I had your optimism, Yahia. Hell - I wish I had some of my old idealism left. But the nature of man in all its ugliness, in its always seeking the otherness in their fellow men - it feels pathological.
Thank you, for your typically sensitive response, @authorofthings. What to say, my friend? There is pathology at play, here, a perversity of human nature so deep that it is almost a law, which Auden sums up, here:
"I and the public know
What all schoolchildren learn,
Those to whom evil is done
Do evil in return.
Hence, those who ought to know better proceed to defend the indefensible and repeat the vicious cycle...
But, what to do? One cannot live without hope (this one, at least). Past the violence, I see profound woundedness and murderous fear. Repeatedly, I must remind myself that where there are demons there is something precious worth fighting for... human dignity.
As a fellow immigrant (and Muslim) living in the US, I'm well aware of the 'ugliness' you speak of, the dark shadow of xenophobia creeping into even the hearts of otherwise decent people... But, I tell myself that 'we are responsible for our so-called enemies, and compassion is to figure out the role we play in their creation.'
Thank you for indulging me. For selfish reasons, I wish you some of your old idealism back. Love, Yahia
‘Children afraid of the dark
Who have never been happy or good’ - hope I’m not misquoting it.... But we are that, the recent election just a symptom of the disease, and I believe xenophobia is just that - the deadliest sort of sickness. I am, however, unconvinced one can truly be decent and xenophobic... One can, of course, be a coward.
Love right back. Not all is lost for as long as there poets and intellectuals like you to keep us in check :-)
Yes, you quote correctly (here's a reading I did of this tremendous poem, https://soundcloud.com/yahia-lababidi/september-1-1939-by-w-h-auden)
I agree this dark mood is a malady & we're all battling for our souls... Yet, viewed differently, these might be the last throes of the old world & these cries the birth pangs of a New World (it's just that the old guard are afraid of change and, in turn, noisily, terrified of letting go...)
Incorrigible optimist that I am, hopeless Idealist if you will, I don't believe much in evil people, per se... cowards, yes. But, those can be show the Light and made to follow it.
All is never lost, my dear @authorofthings Here, are the words of Auden, once more:
Yet, dotted everywhere,
Ironic points of light
Flash out wherever the Just
Exchange their messages:
May I, composed like them
Of Eros and of dust,
Beleaguered by the same
Negation and despair,
Show an affirming flame.
Although I'm not a poem fans, this one is really touching me. May Allah bless our brothers and sisters in Palestine
Sometimes, we can say things in poetry that we cannot say otherwise. Grateful to hear this poem moved you, as a non-poetry fan :) Heaven help us to help ourselves!
I agree completely :)
Realy bro you deserve all of my upvotes but i can only give you one on this.
Bless you - thanks, again for your kind attention. 🙏🏼
Ameen and GOD bless you.
It's a powerful poem. Thank you for sharing it.
The letter... sigh. I have a hard time separating anti-Zionism from antisemitism, because as long as we live in an antisemitic world, I can't object to the core principle of Zionism, which is that Jews should have state that can be their (our) refuge. This does not, by any means, mean I condone my government's activities done in the name of Zionism.
I think about leaving this country every day. Literally, every day. But it's hard to leave one's home, one's family and friends. My parents were Zionists in the USSR, where it was an act of incredible bravery. Leaving would be a betrayal in a sense. But staying often also feels like a betrayal.
Israel, right now, is an example in drawing the wrong lessons from history. Gradually, over the years, the country that was a driving force behind the creation of the Refugee Convention has changed from "Never Again" to "Never Again TO US," and that change, indeed driven by fear, stoked by extremists (including the one who's been PM for much of the last 20 years), has made the country toxic as it is.
Good to hear the poem spoke to you. Thank you, too, for sharing your thoughts, @didic, and laying your embattled heart bare. It's easier for me to separate an ideology from a people. I think it unconscionable to build one's home on land where others already live - which is, of course, what settlers do all the time. I don't know that leaving is the answer, either, since I believe in 2 state solution.
But, I do know that no lasting peace can be founded on injustice, and the systematic humiliation of a people 'more sinned against than sinning.' I also know that, while neither party is completely innocent, the greater moral burden rests on the shoulders of those with greater power.
Peace, Yahia
We agree on all counts. Thank you.
Bless you, brother. We are each other.
Great story and poem sir@yahialababidi i,m sad
Thank you. I think we must try not to be sad... As we used to say during our Egyptian Revolution: اليأس خيانة والامل أمانة (“Despair is betrayal, and Hope is a responsibility”)
Everyone should try to bring peace instead everyone is busy waging war and chaos. They should atleast think that it will destroy us from within. We call ourself human but we are behaving like some wild animals.
It's true, @imchandansah. Once we realize how profoundly interconnected we are, we realize that when he hurt others, we hurt ourselves. It's the illusion of separateness that permits us to behave unconsciously, like beasts...
Great story & poem.
Thanks. 'The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.' —Theodore Parker