July 18, 2011
AFTER SEEING CARYL CHURCHILL’S SEVEN JEWISH CHILDREN
After Seeing Caryl Churchill's Seven Jewish Children, A Play For Gaza
by Rafiq Kathwari
Tell her the proper name of things
This is barbed wire
This is a watch-tower (so unlike the one in Brooklyn)
These are thermal imaging video cameras
These are 25-foot-high concrete slabs
Don’t tell her this is a fence
Tell her it is a wall
Teach her to spell a p a r t h e i d
Tell her about the 200 nukes in the Negev
Tell her how freedom-loving Yanks are aiding
History’s most persecuted minority
The specious democracy in the Middle East
The colonial-settler state embracing Biblical pretensions
To systematically exterminate
The world’s most dispossessed tribe
Tell her the truth so she grows up to speak its name
Rafiq Kathwari is a Kashmiri-American poet. Follow him on twitter @brownpundit
Posted by S. Abbas Raza at 12:25 AM | Permalink
Comments
I'm very glad that the situation in Kashmir it's so nice and quiet that the Kashmirian poets are obsessed with other faraway wars and conflicts where sometimes culprits are the victims in the same time and reality is much more complex. The poet, born in Kashmir,and living in USA,thinking that the virulent antisemitic and anti-Israeli play SEVEN JEWISH CHILDREN is not enough, he is writing his own pastiche version in very badly versification.
To say and remember that watch-towers and barbed wires were put there as an international border border AFTER we evacuated Gaza of ALL the Jewish settlers in an inverse ethnic cleansing of ourselves and we are still receiving rockets and terrorist try to break those borders?
To explain again that Jews were and are the most persecuted nation of the world, that only 70 years ago 6 millions Jews were exterminated after 2000 years of persecutions, pogroms and exile?
...again to explain that's no Apartheid in Israel and that Gaza is another country in war with Israel, kidnapping our soldiers, lancing rockets on our towns?Again to explain that if were not for the (legend of) atomic weapons, millions of soldiers will march against us, that those (real or imaginary) weapons and the power of our army exist because we we will " not go gentle into that good night"? That never ever someone will kill the Jews again without that the Jews in arms will stand for the battle, be it the last one for everyone?
The poison is not dripping here but coming in floats, together with the future to come: war, tears, misery, death. Many children, Palestinians and Jewish alike, will die maybe this September 2011, when Palestinians will move to conflict and protests; in Middle East there are no peaceful protests Gandhi style, but Libyan and Syrian style, with firearms and shooting.
Palestine and Israel will see hard days. What is pity is that the poets instead of speaking of compromise and understanding, they are seeding hate, anger and poison. Must be different. Iwill post another poem anchored oin our daily sorrows.
A BRIDGE OF PEACE
"They shall sit every man under his vine and under his fig tree,
and none shall make them afraid." (Micah, 4.4)
My Arab sister,
Let us build a sturdy bridge
Form your olive world to mine,
From my orange world to yours,
Above the boiling pain
Of acid rain prejudice—
And hold human hands high
Full of free stars
Of twinkling peace
I do not want to be your oppressor
You do not want to be my oppressor,
Or your jailer
Or my jailer,
We do not want to make each other afraid
Under our vines
And under our fig trees
Blossoming on a silvered horizon
Above the bruising and the bleeding
Of poison gases and scuds.
So, my Arab sister,
Let us build a bridge of
Jasmine understanding
Where each shall sit with her baby
Under her vine and under her fig tree—
And none shall make them afraid
AND NONE SHALL MAKE THEM AFRAID.
Ada Aharoni, "A Bridge of Peace"
Not In Your War Anymore (1997)
Posted by: Mirel | Jul 19, 2011 8:22:28 AM
"To systematically exterminate
The world’s most dispossessed tribe Tell her the truth so she grows up to speak its name"
This tiny conflict between Jews and Arabs dominates the media, the UNGA, most international forums on conflict resolution, the agenda of western socialists, and the focus of international aid agencies. Palestine has a population that is growing and that is not being exterminated, and moreover, it sits about half way in the global Human Development Index. Even taking poetic license into account, the claim that 'the world’s most dispossessed tribe' resides in the Middle East would be laughable if the problem of dispossessed and displaced peoples in Africa was not such a chronic and overwhelming problem. To even compare the West Bank with the UN Camps for the dispossessed in Africa is an indication of the religiously centric position this Kashmiri poet takes. Tell her to get some f**king perspective.
"The death toll from conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is literally one thousand times greater than that in Israel-Palestine, yet it is the latter that is the object of far greater media coverage … [and where] the intricacies and nuances of the conflict, political situation and peace process are almost obsessively analyzed and presented.… [African] conflicts are frequently brushed off and dismissed as being chaotic, or worthy of some vague pity or humanitarian concern, but rarely of any in-depth political analysis."
— Virgil Hawkins, What’s death got to do with it?, Stealth Conflicts, December 12, 2008
http://www.globalissues.org/article/84/conflicts-in-africa-introduction
Posted by: Troy | Jul 19, 2011 11:13:27 PM
Gabriela, do you mean "Gone baby gone"?(2007)Directed by Ben Affleck. With Morgan Freeman, Ed Harris, Casey Affleck, Michelle Monaghan. Two Boston area detectives investigate a little girl's kidnapping ...? I believe that's something else ;-)
Posted by: Mirel | Jul 20, 2011 2:03:33 AM
The Kashmiri poet Rafiq Kathwari, born in Kashmir where he was jailed for terrorist Islamist activity/intentions as a teenager, is now, after 35 years, an American citizen that is following his militant ways manifesting for building a mosque on Ground Zero and for Hamas and against Israel in the comments of articles on different newspapers on line. Speaking for building this mosque,the Kashmiri poet shows strong American feelings:""This has been made by a very vocal minority into an issue of bigotry," said Kathwari, as he held up his U.S. passport and was nearly drowned out by shouts from the crowd. "I'm standing in a hall in which I feel ashamed to be an American."
Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/us/2010/07/13/dozens-speak-planned-mosque-near-ground-zero-nyc-hearing-landmark-status/#ixzz1SchnJz2F
About his state of mind when flotilla to Israel was seized, the poet says:..."I am sure there are thoughtful officials in Obama's adminstration and out of of it who must realize that as a Muslim-American educated here in expensive neo liberal institutions where I learned to challenge authority, to speak truth to power, I can contain my rage against my own adopted country only so long and no longer. My rage is dormant, bubbling. I am not alone. But I also believe words are mightier than an unexploded amateurish device in Times Square, provided the moderators that be have a spine, unlike our audacious president."
http://timespeople.nytimes.com/view/user/33233253/activities.html
So much about the ashamed American obsessed by Palestine. This maybe not answer why he is centered on Israeli-Palestine when the world, including his own countries (USA and Kashmir)are burning with other events and troubles. For the world also there is also no explanation...
Posted by: Mirel | Jul 20, 2011 2:40:07 AM
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