A Letter from the Dead – Tehran, July 31, 2024

by séamas carraher, global rights | 2024-08-04 8:28 am

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)

Democracy Now – July 31, 2024[1]

 

 

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”)[2]

 

Notes

this “dark and dangerous” Ideology

 

(1) Haaretz columnist Gideon Levy, in Tel Aviv

Democracy Now – 31 July 2024[3]

(2) We need to talk about Zionism |

The Listening Post – June 1, 2024[4]

(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[5]

(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[6]

 

“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.”

Full Text @ Marxists.org[7]

 

“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[8]

 

Links

The Death of Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh

Al Jazeera – August 1, 2024[9]

Who was Ismail Haniyeh? | The Take

AJ – The Take[10]

 

IDF Murder of of Ismail Hanieyh’s family

Israeli forces kill three children of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Gaza

Al Jazeera – 10 April, 2024[11]

Three sons and four grandchildren of Hamas leader killed in Israeli airstrike

CNAsia – 10 April, 2024[12]

Hamas confirms Haniyeh’s sister –  Zahr Haniyeh, – killed in overnight strike in Gaza City

Times of Israel – June 24, 2024[13]

Israeli air strike kills 10 family members of Hamas chief Haniyeh in Gaza

Al Jazeera – 25 June, 2024[14]

Source URL: https://globalrights.info/2024/08/a-letter-from-the-dead-tehran-july-31-2024/

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