We will return: An-Nakbah - 58 years

[Bilal]

These days the people of Palestine remember An-nakbah “the catastrophe”. After 58 years, 5.1 millions Palestinian refugees are waiting to return back to the homeland of their ancestors.


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(("Jewish villages were built in the place of Arab villages. You do not even know the names of these Arab villages, and I do not blame you because geography books no longer exist, not only do the books not exist, the Arab villages are not there either Nahlal arose in the place of Mahlul; Kibbbutz Gvat in the place of Jibta; Kibbutz Sarid in the place of Huneifis; and Kefar Yehushu'a in the place of Tal al- Shuman. There is not one single place built in this country that did not have a former Arab Population." ))

Moshe Dayan, Address to the Technion, Haifa ( as quated in Ha'aretz, 4 April 1969)
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For more documented information you can visit:

http://www.alnakba.org/
http://www.palestineremembered.com/

 

[Bilal]

Palestinian Poet Mahmoud Darwish:

http://i-cias.com/e.o/darwish_m.htm

This ancient land
is saturated with sorrow.
Every day adds a brook
to the sea of tears.
Sorrow is like a rain,
it respects no boundaries,
it doesn't ask you
how do you name your God.
***********************
A Lover From Palestine

Her eyes are Palestinian
Her name is Palestinian
Her dress and sorrow Palestinian
Her kerchief, her feet and body Palestinian
Her words and silence Palestinian
Her voice Palestinian
Her birth and her death Palestinian
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I Am There

I come from there and remember,
I was born like everyone is born, I have a mother
and a house with many windows,
I have brothers, friends and a prison.
I have a wave that sea-gulls snatched away.
I have a view of my own and an extra blade of grass.
I have a moon past the peak of words.
I have the godsent food of birds and an olive tree beyond the kent of time.
I have traversed the land before swords turned bodies into banquets.
I come from there, I return the sky to its mother when for its mother the

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Mount Carmel is in us

We do not need to be reminded:
Mount Carmel is in us
and on our eyelashes the grass of Galilee.
Do not say: If we could run to her like a river.
Do not say it:
We and our country are one flesh and bone.

Before June we were not fledgeling doves
so our love did not wither in bondage.
Sister, these twenty years
our work was not to write poems
but to be fighting.

The shadow that descends over your eyes
-demon of a God
who came out of the month of June
to wrap around our heads the sun-
his color is martyrdom
the taste of prayer.
How well he kills, how well he resurrects!

The night that began in your eyes-
in my soul it was a long night's end:
Here and now we keep company
on the road of our return
from the age of drought.

And we came to know what makes the voice of the nightingale
a dagger shining in the face of the invaders.
We came to know what makes the silence of the graveyard
a festival...orchards of life.

You sang your poems, I saw the balconies
desert their walls
the city square extending to the midriff of the mountain:
It was not music we heard.
It was not the color of words we saw:
A million heroes were in the room.

This land absorbs the skins of martyrs.
This land promises wheat and stars.
Worship it!
We are its salt and its water.
We are its wound, but a wound that fights.

Sister, there are tears in my throat
and there is fire in my eyes:
I am free.
No more shall I protest at the Sultan's Gate.
All who have died, all who shall die at the Gate of Day
have embraced me, have made of me a weapon.

Ah my intractable wound!
My country is not a suitcase
I am not a traveler
I am the lover and the land is the beloved.

The archaeologist is busy analyzing stones.
In the rubble of legends he searches for his own eyes
to show
that I am a sightless vagrant on the road
with not one letter in civilization's alphabet.
Meanwhile in my own time I plant my trees.
I sing of my love.

It is time for me to exchange the word for the deed
Time to prove my love for the land and for the nightingale:
For in this age the weapon devours the guitar
And in the mirror I have been fading more and more
Since at my back a tree began to grow.

 

[Bilal]

the words of the Palestinian poet, Abdul Rahim Mahmoud, who met with death in the battlefield near Jenin in 1947

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I will hold my soul in my palm

And cast it into the abyss of death;

For me, either a life that pleases friends

Or a martyrdom that enrages the foe;

I swear I see death before me

Yet I rush ahead to welcome it.

My ultimate desire is my martyrdom,

Defending my usurped right, defending my homeland

 

[Polly]

Balal, which charitable organisation would you recommend for donation to help the Palestinian people?

 

[Bilal]

Balal, which charitable organisation would you recommend for donation to help the Palestinian people?

Dear Polly,

The most active organizations are UNRWA and Oxfam

UNRWA (the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East) is the most secure organization.

http://www.un.org/unrwa/

Oxfam:

http://www.oxfam.org.uk/what_we_do/where_we_work/palterr_israel/index.htm?ito=1758&itc=0

International Solidarity Movement:

http://www.palsolidarity.org/main/