“The eyes still aglow with a trickle of light
Can see fire raging across the valley of the Sinai
Beckoning the hearts to be cleansed
As a new contract may yet be drawn
The rich having embraced the infliction of savagery
And the pious learnt to chant the hymns of humiliation –
To alter the tradition of capitulation
Echoes the command of rebellion”
–Faiz Ahmad Faiz
The story of Palestine is as old as the story of blood, pain and suffering. It is a story of rights usurped and lives slaughtered. It is a story of homes burnt and children put to the sword. Written in a million hues and shades, it is the story of a people who have been denied their right to a place and peace.
This story of blood is encapsulated in a proclamation of injustice. Lord Balfour, the author of the declaration granting Jews a national home in Palestine, declared that “Zionism, be it right or wrong, good or bad, is rooted in age-long tradition, in present needs, in future hopes, of far profounder import than the desires and prejudices of 700,000 Arabs who now inhabit that ancient land”. Quite simply, the very origin of the Zionist state is based on a foundation of appalling injustice, of discriminating one people from the other and helping one take root by uprooting the other.
Retribution can be bitter. It can bring cataclysmic destruction in its wake. Wisdom demands that time is not stretched to a point where it may be too late for amends to be made and the suppressed anger may surge forth in waves upon waves. Shooting a rocket carries a message of rebellion. It is a sign of living people fighting to be free of the chains of slavery they have been tied in. Resistance is a natural instinct. It can spew fire
Noam Chomsky, a vibrant voice internationally for the rights of the deprived people, has recently said that “the Israeli government’s immediate policy is to construct a “greater Israel”, including a vastly expanded Jerusalem encompassing surrounding Arab villages, the Jordan Valley, a large part of the West Bank with much of its arable land, and major town deep inside the West Bank, along with Jews-only infrastructure projects integrating them into Israel. The project bypasses Palestinian population concentrations, like Nablus, so as to fend off what Israeli leaders describe as the dread “demographic problem”: too many non-Jews in the projected “democratic Jewish state” of “Greater Israel”— an oxymoron more difficult to mouth with each passing year. Palestinians within “greater Israel” are confined to 165 enclaves, separated from their lands and olive groves by a hostile military, subjected to constant attack by violent Jewish gangs protected by the Israeli army”.
Why is it that a problem that emanated from the grave injustice done to the Jewish people by a western country during the World War II, with which the inhabitants of this swathe of land did not have a connection, has been tackled at the cost of the right to statehood of the Palestinian people? Is it justified by any stretch of the law or ethics that the proclamation of statehood is granted to one people by depriving another of the same? Is it justified that the tiny enclave within which the Palestinian people are herded as cattle is constantly showered in fire; that their young are butchered in cold blood and their new-born snatched from the cradles; that their mothers are molested and raped; that their old are denuded of their self-respect and denied the right to be buried with dignity; and that the future of an entire people is consigned to virtual hell? Can any of this be justified, or should it be accepted as fait accompli simply because the world conscience is driven by profit, and it would not be moved by the infliction of the gravest injustice upon a caged people?
I don’t write as follower of one faith or another, of one creed or another. I don’t write as adherent of one system or another. I don’t write as friend of one and foe to another. I don’t write as of the left or the right. I don’t write for the fair-skinned or those not so fair of skin. I don’t write for the East or the West. My pain is not sensitive to any one breed of people alone. I write as a human being whose heart aches for all who have been deprived of their rights and who are being wrongfully subjected to deprivation. My heart aches for the land of Palestine as it does for the land of Kashmir, or any other place where people may be suffering from the yoke of captivity. They all have an equal right to their freedom which should not be compromised under artificially created conditions and circumstances. Their right should always be ascendant and should supersede the strategic needs of states and political expediencies of their rulers. It is the exercise of this inherent right that brings states into being. People craft states, states don’t make people. The power of the state emanates from the power of the people.
What we are witnessing in the Gaza Strip is not just annihilation of some people. It is the annihilation of humanity itself. A war that begins here can consume the region, even the world. It has been simmering for a long time and has been barely kept from raging across lands and seas far away. But the afflicting powers must not forget that suppression, no matter how brutal it may be, has never kept people captive eternally. The chains will break someday and the same fire that is burning the Palestinian and Kashmiri people today will be heaped upon the oppressors.
It is Noam Chomsky again who said thus: “You take my water, burn my olive trees, destroy my house, take my job, steal my land, imprison my father, kill my mother, bombard my country, starve us all, humiliate us all, but I am to blame: I shot a rocket back”.
Retribution can be bitter. It can bring cataclysmic destruction in its wake. Wisdom demands that time is not stretched to a point where it may be too late for amends to be made and the suppressed anger may surge forth in waves upon waves. Shooting a rocket carries a message of rebellion. It is a sign of living people fighting to be free of the chains of slavery they have been tied in. Resistance is a natural instinct. It can spew fire. An Arab woman has spoken the mind of a whole people who have lived through endless pain:
“I am an Arab woman of colour and we come in all shades of anger
Allow me to speak my Arab tongue before they occupy my language as well
Allow me to speak my mother tongue before they colonise her memory as well
I am an Arab woman of colour
Beware, beware my anger!”
Gaza simmers with anger. Gaza resonates with valour. Gaza will not be subdued. It pricks the world conscience to awaken from its slumber. Justice cannot be put off endlessly. Here is Faiz testifying to its inevitability:
“Let the clarion call go forth to the mighty
To stand sentinel to the measure of their deeds
When the wretched of the earth shall surge
Entreating for vengeance
None shall come to the rescue.
Reward and punishment shall be dispensed here
For here shall be enacted hell and paradise
Here shall be raised the call for the hereafter
Here shall be the doomsday.”
