A Letter from the Dead – Tehran, July 31, 2024
On the day of the death of Ismail Haniyeh – assassinated in Tehran, the capital of Iran, in the early hours of Wednesday
“Killing Haniyeh really is a sign from the Israelis that they are not interested in negotiating the ceasefire, the hostage release, prisoner exchanges. They just want to assert Zionist Jewish supremacy in all of Palestine and control the powers around the region,” says Khouri
(Palestinian American journalist, Rami Khouri, in Boston.)
“Israel’s killed numerous members of his family including three of his sons, at least two of his grandchildren, his sister and her family..” (Amy Goodman)
Who can name this country we have just entered?
Its language is now without the words that were torn
from our throats
when the missile tears the room we are talking in
– to pieces.
Who can tell us where we have arrived?
Paradise or a promise of Revolution, a
Promised Land of justice and compassion?
An end to cruelty and oppression.
An end to wrath, retribution and revenge?
Still
this Place is a refuge where silence falls
like rain
on the flowers and the trees
who carry the voices of those
we have left behind.
Who knows what meaning may lie beyond words?
This is also the voice of the wind rousing
those who cared little while they were alive
from their stubborn selfish sleep.
In this Land all debts are laid out on the table
clothed in the rags we were left with
while we ourselves stand naked in the face
of our own unfulfilled promises.
To be so human must now be a blessing;
one still beaten, each day, from the streets,
with batons and with hatred.
Let me tell you, Politicians,
(in your truth-proof bunkers),
no one, luckily, will survivor this life.
Here, we can see, Death has both
the courage and the decency
no tyrant nor statesman can lie
or boast about.
It offers equality and justice, an end
to war, to poverty, to exile, to
the poison of this “dark and dangerous”
ideology.
Its twilight is filled
with the peace of interminable conflicts.
Its music is a kind and caring opium for their hatred.
Its comfort, the tears of the righteous, its heart,
“the heart of a heartless world”, beating, beating
in harmony….
It spreads its table with the feast
of our failed uprisings.
It has recorded in a great Book
our hopes and dreams and the enormous price
those we loved have paid
for our desires and our dreaming.
Only here can freedom
sing and dance
each endless night
beyond deep darkness
and despair.
Here we may meet each other without translation:
sons and siblings, sister, nieces and nephews,
and our slaughtered grandchildren,
in a land without refugee camp, without tent or prison or torture.
In a country without bloodshed or blasphemy.
But for those who never had a home
for those whose home was stolen
by these savage European settlers,
those whose villages were bulldozed into dust
in the name of Progress and Prophecy,
this place will be a Land of Plenty.
It has raised our cry higher than the lies and
the hypocrisy of these loudmouthed fools.
It has made the word Martyr into a mountain
these monsters who kill children must one day climb
to find what is left of their heart and their souls
hidden in a little boy’s bedroom
while the killer-drones and the missiles and the madness
of the fundamentalists and these Zionist war-criminals
pour grief over a land
where
a simple people
once lived
in peace.
séamas carraher
31 july – 3 august 2024
Image
Israeli Government Press Office posting removed from Facebook
Democracy Now – 31 July 2024 (“fair use”)
Notes
this “dark and dangerous” Ideology
(1) Haaretz columnist Gideon Levy, in Tel Aviv
(2) We need to talk about Zionism |
The Listening Post – June 1, 2024
(3) Sheikh Ahmed Ismail Hassan Yassin (1997):
“I want to proclaim loudly to the world that we are not fighting Jews because they are Jews! We are fighting them because they assaulted us, they killed us, they took our land, our homes, our children, our women, they scattered us, we became scattered everywhere, a people without a homeland. We want our rights. We don’t want more. We love peace, but they hate the peace, because people who take away the rights of others don’t believe in peace. Why should we not fight? We have our right to defend ourselves.”
New York Times – 23 October, 1997
(4) “There is no place for Zionism in this world” Diana Buttu (Palestinian lawyer and former adviser for the Palestine Liberation Organization)
History, genocide and Israel’s war on Gaza (Debate)
Al Jazeera – Head to Head – 2 August, 2024
“the heart of a heartless world” (Karl Marx, 1844)
“Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.”
“in a Land without refugee camp, with no prison nor torture”
Israel’s Torture & Rape of Palestinian Prisoners Defended by Knesset Members, Far-Right Mobs
Democracy Now – August 1, 2024
Links
The Death of Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh
Who was Ismail Haniyeh? | The Take
IDF Murder of of Ismail Hanieyh’s family
Israeli forces kill three children of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Gaza
Three sons and four grandchildren of Hamas leader killed in Israeli airstrike
Hamas confirms Haniyeh’s sister – Zahr Haniyeh, – killed in overnight strike in Gaza City
Times of Israel – June 24, 2024
Israeli air strike kills 10 family members of Hamas chief Haniyeh in Gaza
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