Friday, May 17, 2024

An ICJ Excerpt: "This genocide takes place within the context of the ongoing Nakba –– the 76th anniversary of which was celebrated yesterday –– the continued forced displacement of the Palestinian people, the erasure of Palestinian presence in Palestine and replacement with colonial settlers –– a criminal process entrenched and maintained by 76 years of apartheid and 56 years of illegal belligerent occupation... "

International Court
of Justice
THE HAGUE
YEAR 2024
Public sitting held on Thursday 16 May 2024, at 3 p.m., at the Peace Palace, President Salam presiding,
in the case concerning Application of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide in the Gaza Strip (South Africa v. Israel)
____________________
VERBATIM RECORD
___________________

The verbatim record of today's hearings in South Africa v. Israel are now available on the ICJ's website:

https://www.icj-cij.org/.../192-20240516-ora-01-00-bi.pdf

on Page 11

4. Israel is escalating its attacks on Palestinians in Gaza, and in so doing is wilfully breaching the binding Orders of this Court. Israel similarly breaches the binding resolutions of the United Nations Security Council, erroneously believing from the lack of counter-measures by the international community that it is exempt from having to respect international law. This institutionalized impunity has led Israel to engage in this genocide, which has shocked the conscience of humanity.

5. South Africa is mindful that the present genocide operates in denial of the Palestinian people’s inalienable right to self-determination and collective right to return to their homes in Palestine. This genocide takes place within the context of the ongoing Nakba –– the 76th anniversary of which was celebrated yesterday –– the continued forced displacement of the Palestinian people,

on Page 12

the erasure of Palestinian presence in Palestine and replacement with colonial settlers –– a criminal process entrenched and maintained by 76 years of apartheid and 56 years of illegal belligerent occupation. Undoubtedly, the ongoing scenes of Palestinians being forced to repeatedly flee for their lives is not only reminiscent of the Nakba of 1948 –– it is a continuation of it.

6. Seven months ago, South Africa could not have imagined that Gaza would now be mostly wiped off the map. It could not foresee that every family, every neighbourhood, every class of students, every workplace, would be pulled apart, killed, maimed, displaced, malnourished or starved. South Africa had hoped — when we last appeared before this Court — to halt this genocidal process –– to preserve Palestine and its people. Instead, Israel’s genocide has continued apace and has just reached a new and horrific stage.

7. Israel has sought to hide its crimes through the weaponization of international humanitarian law. It pretends that the civilians it ruthlessly kills — through its 2,000-lb bombs, through its targeted airstrikes, through its artificial intelligence systems, through its executions — are “human shields”.

This whitewashing of Israel’s genocide misses the key and fundamental element –– that of the massive and still-mounting evidence of Israel’s genocidal intent –– documents and videos of Israeli parliamentarians and military leaders, calling for the destruction of the Palestinian people in Gaza, incitement by Israeli civil society and leading public Israeli figures, all collectively supporting the genocide and its continuation.

8. Israel continues to show utter contempt for Palestinian life, operating with impunity. South Africa has no other option than to, once again, seek protection in the halls of justice for the fundamental right of the Palestinian people to their existence.

9. Although this present application was triggered by the unfolding horrific situation in Rafah, Israel’s genocidal onslaught across Gaza has intensified over the past few days, also warranting the attention of this Court. With that, Mr President, I respectfully wish to request you to invite Professor Vaughan Lowe to set out South Africa’s substantive legal arguments. I thank you.... READ MORE https://www.icj-cij.org/sites/default/files/case-related/192/192-20240516-ora-01-00-bi.pdf

[AS ALWAYS PLEASE GO TO THE LINK TO READ GOOD ARTICLES (or quotes or watch videos) IN FULL: HELP SHAPE ALGORITHMS (and conversations) THAT EMPOWER DECENCY, DIGNITY, JUSTICE & PEACE... and hopefully Palestine]

Thursday, May 16, 2024

Palestine Nakba 1948-2024

NAKBA 76 years so far....

Palestinian female employees in the Telephone and Telecom service, Jerusalem, PALESTINE 1942

Anti-Defamation League ramps up lobbying to promote controversial definition of antisemitism : Federal records show a dramatic spending increase that critics say is primarily intended to punish criticism of Israel and target pro-Palestinian groups

The Anti-Defamation League has spent record amounts on lobbying in recent years, including on bills opponents say are meant to punish criticism of Israel and target Jewish peace and Palestinian rights groups.

The Jewish civil rights organization, founded in 1913, is the self-described “leading anti-hate organization in the world”, and has historically focused on combating antisemitism by shaping public opinion. Its lobbying spike marks a dramatic shift – it spent about $100,000 on lobbying in 2020 and is on pace to spend nearly $1.6m this year based on its first quarter expenditures, a Guardian analysis of federal records finds.

The spending positions the ADL as the largest pro-Israel lobbying force on domestic issues. Records show the surge’s broader aim is to promoting a controversial definition of antisemitism across a range of federal agencies and mobilizing the government to enforce it....

On Nakba Day, as Palestinians run for their lives, Biden advances $1 billion in arms sales to Israel – Day 221

contact@ifamericansknew.org May 15, 2024

On Nakba Day, as Palestinians run for their lives, Biden advances $1 billion in arms sales to Israel – Day 221

A woman mourns as she carries the body of a child killed following overnight Israeli strikes on Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip on 6 May 2024 (photo)

Palestinians in Gaza can’t seem to run fast enough to keep up with Israeli evacuation orders; can’t dig airstrike victims out of the rubble; Israel reportedly was aware of UN car that it bombed, killing a high-ranking international worker; Israeli police reportedly knew about aid convoy and allowed its destruction; Israel appears ready for a full-scale invasion of Rafah; Ben Gvir calls for expulsion; Palestinian killed in West Bank; Biden seeks approval for another $1 billion in military sales to Israel; campus protest update, more

By IAK staff, from reports

Palestinians mark 76 years of dispossession as a potentially even larger catastrophe unfolds in Gaza

Associated Press reports: Palestinians on Wednesday will mark the 76th year of their mass expulsion from what is now Israel, an event that is at the core of their national struggle. But in many ways, that experience pales in comparison to the calamity now unfolding in Gaza.

Palestinians refer to it as the Nakba, Arabic for catastrophe. Some 700,000 Palestinians — a majority of the prewar population — fled or were driven from their homes before and during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war that followed Israel’s establishment.

After the war, Israel refused to allow them to return because it would have resulted in a Palestinian majority within its borders.

Instead, they became a seemingly permanent refugee community that now numbers some 6 million, with most living in slum-like urban refugee camps in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

In Gaza, the refugees and their descendants make up around three-quarters of the population.

Now, many Palestinians fear a repeat of their painful history on an even more cataclysmic scale.

All across Gaza, Palestinians in recent days have been loading up cars and donkey carts or setting out on foot to already overcrowded tent camps as Israel expands its offensive. The images from several rounds of mass evacuations throughout the seven-month war are strikingly similar to black-and-white photographs from 1948.

Mustafa al-Gazzar, now 81, still recalls his family’s months long flight from their village in what is now central Israel to the southern city of Rafah, when he was 5. At one point they were bombed from the air, at another, they dug holes under a tree to sleep in for warmth.

(Read the full article here.).... READ MORE https://israelpalestinenews.org/on-nakba-day-as-palestinians-run-for-their-lives-biden-advances-1-billion-in-arms-sales-to-israel-day-221/

From 1948 to 2024, three Palestinian sisters speak of endless Nakba For Dalal

For Dalal, 1948 was the year she was forced to walk hundreds of kilometres on foot with her mother and two brothers, Nimr and Naim to reach safety.

Sally Ibrahim

Gaza

16 May, 2024

Amina Nassar, one of the three Palestinians sisters, embracing her granddaughter, Layan. [Sally Ibrahim/TNA]

Dalal, Naima and Amina Nassar are three sisters who lived through a horrific journey of forced exodus, destruction and death since 1948 and today, indicating how endless the Nakba has been for the Palestinians throughout the decades.

The three sisters are Palestinian refugees from Julis in northern occupied Palestine. Their family was forced to flee their town in 1948 to the Gaza Strip, like more than 700,000 other Palestinians, by Zionist militant groups, according to official Palestinian data.

For Dalal, 1948 was the year of the Nakba, when she was forced to walk hundreds of kilometres on foot with her mother and two brothers, Nimr and Naim, to reach the nearest safe place in the Gaza Strip.

"The situation was as if we were experiencing the Day of Judgment (...) Crowds of people escaping from the death on foot and others riding donkeys and camels, while children ran in front of their families as the sound of bullets fired by the Zionist gangs towards us," Dalal recalls to The New Arab.

Dalal Nassar, a 84-year-old Palestinian refugee elderly woman — Dalal Nassar is an 84-year-old elderly Palestinian refugee. [Sally Ibrahim/TNA]

The 84-year-old mother of six never forgot one scene during that time. She describes how men and women lay dead in the streets, shot by Zionist forces while they were trying to escape. No one managed to save them or know who they were.

"Everyone was trying to survive (...) No one had weapons during the exodus. We were and still are defenceless women, children and helpless elderly people," she remarked.

Before the Nakba in 1948, Dalal said, "We lived a quiet, simple life." She lived in a mud house and her family owned land on which they planted legumes and vegetables. They had a cow from which they got milk for the children and made cheese to eat.

Nakba Day: Palestinians share memories of loss, displacement

MENA

The New Arab Staff

Despite the passage of time, Dalal vividly remembers details of her life with her neighbours and friends, when they used to gather daily to play in front of their houses, and the long walks they all took together to fill some galloons with water.

"I miss farming the land with my mother during the farming seasons," she said. "Sometimes we grew lentils and chickpeas, and in another season, we grew tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, cabbage, and many vegetables and fruits."

"But," Dalal added, "Everything was destroyed. Our lives became hell after we were forced to flee to the Gaza Strip, where my family lived in the city of Deir al-Balah in central Gaza, sheltering in tents that did not protect us from the harsh winter cold or the oppressive summer heat.

Dalal continued to live the tragic reality with her family in light of the lack of all necessities of life. She recalls, "Living in tents is the height of tragedy, without protection and privacy for you and your family (...) We felt naked in front of each other and felt ashamed all the time, even when we had to relieve ourselves inside tents."

Dalal and her five-member family then tried to deal with the "new difficult reality" imposed on them, believing that they would return to their town, from which they had been displaced, after weeks or months.

But many years passed, and neither Dalal nor any of the Palestinian refugees were able to return to their homes, denied their inalienable right to return.

Palestinians across Middle East mark Nakba with eyes on Gaza

MENA

The New Arab Staff & Agencies

"For many years, I heard stories from my family about immigration and how happy and stable my family's life was after that, but I did not expect that I would live a catastrophe and know its details intimately until the war broke out between Israel and the Arab countries in 1967," Naima, the 74-year-old middle sister, said to TNA.

At that time, she said, "Internal displacement was imposed on us again; we were forced to move from Deir al-Balah to Mawasi Khan Yunis and stay there during the six days of the Israeli-Arab war in 1967."

She recalls "tens of thousands of people running and fleeing on foot (...) I cannot forget the beating of my heart that was accelerating due to fear of Israeli bullets. And I cannot forget the sights of so many bodies lying in the streets. What I witnessed was terrifying, and I thought we would die."

Naima, the mother of six, elaborated that experiencing the Nakba is not just fear and anxiety for one's self but is also part of fear and anxiety for the Palestinian existence.

"Every time we survived, we insisted on proving our Palestinian presence (...) After the end of the war and Israel's occupation of Gaza, we were forced to live as immigrants inside our cities. Still, the pain inside us is great after we lost many of our loved ones and our lands and watched the Israelis seize our lands and establish settlements," she added.... READ MORE https://www.newarab.com/news/1948-2024-three-palestinian-sisters-live-endless-nakba

‘Barbaric’: Palestinian lorry drivers recount settlers’ attack on Gaza aid convoy- Israeli soldiers escorting convoy accused of doing nothing to stop widely condemned incident

A worker clears piles of spilled food parcels scattered across the ground in a lorry park. Photograph: Oren Ziv/AFP/Getty Images

About this content

Lorenzo Tondo, Sufian Taha and Jason Burke in Jerusalem

Thu 16 May 2024 02.30 EDT

Last modified on Thu 16 May 2024 05.17 EDT

Palestinian lorry drivers delivering aid to Gaza have described “barbaric” scenes after their vehicles were blocked and vandalised by Israeli settlers, preventing humanitarian supplies reaching the territory where much of the population face imminent starvation.

Drivers and contractors who were targeted on Monday at the Tarqumiya checkpoint in the occupied West Bank also said Israeli soldiers escorting the convoy did nothing to stop the attack.

The incident sparked international condemnation after videos emerged on social media that appeared to show Israeli settlers throwing boxes of much-needed supplies on the ground and at least one vehicle being set ablaze.

Yazid al-Zoubi, 26, said between 50 and 60 lorries had set out in the convoy.

“We were carrying oil, sugar and other things and driving from the Tarqumiya crossing,” he said. “We left in a convoy with an army vehicle in front of us and an army vehicle behind us, and we took a special army road that civilians could not cross. Suddenly, after 20 minutes on the road, near the crossing, we were surprised by at least 400 settlers. They attacked us. The rest of the drivers and I escaped from the vehicles after the settlers starting throwing stones at us.’’

Zoubi said the situation escalated when the settlers started breaking the windscreens of the lorries and piercing the tyres, then climbed on to the vehicles and threw packages of food into the road.

Aid agencies have described famine conditions in parts of Gazathat they have said have been caused by Israeli restrictions on aid entering the Palestinian territory... READ MORE https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/may/16/palestinian-lorry-drivers-israeli-settlers-attack-gaza-aid-convoy

Wednesday, May 15, 2024

The Nakba Explained- May 15th is the day commemorating the Nakba—a term used to denote Palestinians’ forced expulsion from their homeland by Zionist forces in 1948.

Palestinian artist Sliman Mansour reflects on the impact of the Gaza war, the life and legacy of his friend Fathi Ghaben, and the role of art under occupation.

Palestinian artist Sliman Mansour on Fathi Ghaben, Gaza and art during war

Since the start of Israel's war on Gaza, Palestinian artist Sliman Mansour has had trouble focusing on his work.

“I haven't been able to produce much art," he tells The New Arab. "I have only made three or four paintings in the last couple of months. Usually, I do much more, but then I listen to the news and it becomes hard to concentrate."

It was only at the end of February that Sliman Mansour's friend and colleague, Fathi Ghaben, died after Israeli authorities did not allow him to leave Gaza to receive medical help.

Ghaben, like Mansour, was a renowned Palestinian artist, and aside from their love of art, the two friends also had other things in common.

Both were born a year before the declaration of the establishment of Israel and Israeli authorities have imprisoned both throughout their lives because of their paintings which address Palestinian identity.

“I have been detained twice in my life, but only for two to three weeks each time; they just kept me for interrogation. Fathi, on the other hand, spent three months in prison because he had painted his nephew, who Israelis had killed. He was still a boy.

"Fathi painted him wrapped up in the colours of the Palestinian flag. So, they confiscated the painting with a couple of other artworks and imprisoned him," Sliman tells The New Arab.

"The Israeli court gave him a prison sentence of six months. I, along with other artists, demonstrated against the court’s decision, and they finally agreed to let him out after three months under the condition not to repeat his actions. I think that was in 1983.”

The shift in colours: Art during the war

The few paintings Mansour has produced since the war are less colourful than before.

A couple of months ago, the 77-year-old artist held a group exhibition in Ramallah and realised that most of his colleague's paintings also contained more grey tones.

"The paintings used to be more colourful before the war, maybe because we were more hopeful then," he says.

The artist, who must go through time-consuming and humiliating checkpoints every day to get to his studio in Ramallah, still wants to convey hope with his art, even if it seems difficult now.

Symbol of Hope by Sliman Mansour

Symbol of Hope, one of Mansour’s most famous artworks from 1985, shows the residents of a Palestinian village looking up to the sky and seeing a dove of peace.

Framed print versions are seen often in Palestinian cafés and bookstores in East Jerusalem, where Mansour lives.

"The Israeli government's main aim is to take our hope from us and dehumanise us. But we hope to live in this land peacefully and freely, with the same rights," Mansour explains.

"The only way you can fight these campaigns of dehumanisation is through art and culture," he continues.

During the First Intifada, Mansour started using mud for his artwork, as he took part in demonstrations.

When I mention to him that he has also lived through the previous Israeli wars, he laughs. "Yes, just my great luck."

"Even if you make a small mistake, you might end up dead for absolutely nothing"

Nevertheless, he believes there has never been as much hatred in society as today and Mansour senses the constant tension.

“Of course, the situation was always tense, but now the tension has increased," the artist says.

"When I am in Jerusalem, I feel less comfortable. Even if I am just in the hospital, I feel it. Recently I wanted to take a shorter route to my studio in Ramallah from Jerusalem, but we missed a sign because it was dusty and dark. We were warned by other Palestinians that the Israeli military might shoot us if we went further because they had closed the street. So, even if you make a small mistake, you might end up dead for absolutely nothing," he explains... READ MORE https://www.newarab.com/features/sliman-mansour-fathi-ghaben-gaza-and-art-during-war

Fathi Ghaben, July 11, 2015.

Photo: Motaz Alaaraj

Palestinians are living a new Nakba: survivor of 1948 says

May 15, 2024 at 8:30 am

Palestinian woman Fatima Aqel, 75, on the outskirts of Jerusalem holds keys to one of the houses appearing in the background that her family was forced to abandon upon the creation of the state of Israel in 1948. .. [photo from] on May, 7 2008 [AHMAD GHARABLI/AFP via Getty Images]

byQays Abu Samra

Seventy-six years ago, Palestinian Mustafa Abu Awwad and his family were expelled from their home at the hands of Zionist gangs during the 1948 Nakba.

Palestinians use the word Nakba in reference to the events of 1948, when armed Zionist militias forced nearly one million Palestinians to leave their homes and villages under the pressure of bombing and mass massacres in the historical lands of Palestine, pushing them further into the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, and neighbouring countries, ethnically cleansing historic Palestine to make way for the creation of the state of Israel.

Now 88, Mustafa lives in the Nur Shams refugee camp near Tulkarm city in the northern occupied West Bank.

He says Palestinians are experiencing a new Nakba that is worse than that of 1948.

Horrors of the Nakba

Mustafa describes his family’s life in Sabbarin village, near Haifa, in what is now northern Israel, as very beautiful days.

The family was expelled from the village on 12 May, 1948, Mustafa explains, in what he says was a “terrible day.”

“We took with us a small amount of luggage because we thought we would return back in a few days or weeks, but this turned out to be our entire life,” he explains.

“After one month, we decided to return back to the village but found it besieged by armed gangs which killed 18 of the youth from the village, so we escaped again from the killing,” he adds.

He notes that following their expulsion, his family resided in a camp established by a charitable group, known as the Lutheran World Federation, near Jenin where they stayed there until 1951.

READ: Number of Palestinians has increased 10-fold since 1948 Nakba

After that date, they moved to the Nur Shams refugee camp, where he still lives.

“We never expected to be refugees,” Mustafa laments.

“My family used to have a vast home, land, lots for olives and wheat, and four camels that we used to transport the wheat and agricultural crops,” he recalls.

He added that there were four water streams in Sabbarin.

“The village used to gather in all festivals and ceremonies, we used to solve our problems without courts, it was a simple life.”

A new Nakba

“The life in the camp is misery, Israel turned our life into a nightmare through the daily incursions into the camp.”

“What’s happening today is worse than what was committed in the 1948 Nakba,” he said.... READ MORE https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20240515-palestinians-are-living-a-new-nakba-survivor-of-1948-says/

76 years after #Nakba, Palestinians continue to be forcibly displaced.

UNRWA

@UNRWA

76 years after #Nakba, Palestinians continue to be forcibly displaced. In #GazaStrip, 600k people have fled Rafah since military operations intensified. Around 1.7 million people had to flee their homes & shelters due to war in #Gaza, many of them multiple times. #CeasefireNow

Palestinian Refugees (1948-NOW) refused their right to return... and their right to live in peace free from religious bigotry and injustice. photo credits Red Cross ICRC & UNWRA historic archives

Nakba yesterday, Nakba today: The story of my grandmother's two keys- Ghefreh has lived through two Nakbas, 1948 and today. Her grandson Emad Moussa tells her story of twinned displacement and how they've now blurred into one.

Emad Moussa

15 May, 2024

The testimony of Emad Moussa's grandmother Ghefreh is living proof of Palestinian sumud [photo credit: Lucie Wimetz/TNA/Getty Images]

“History repeats itself, first as a tragedy, second as a farce.”

Karl Marx coined the phrase to denote the cyclical nature of history. When tragedies reoccur in the same context they become a farcical spectacle, pointing not only to the cynical human nature but also the poor imitation of past events.

My 94-year-old Palestinian grandmother, Ghefreh, does not know Karl Marx, and I doubt she cares about philosophy. But she understands that tragedies do recur and that history can “often rhyme" — to quote Mark Twain.

"The tent turned into a house in a refugee camp. The refugee camp turned into a community, and that community into a whole society"

As a young Palestinian woman in 1948, my grandmother was expelled from her village and ended up as a refugee in Gaza. 75 years later, Ghefreh was displaced again to Rafah and then Nuseirat, only a few kilometres from her home in Gaza City.

The resemblance between two worlds separated by seven decades has blurred and confused her timeline. Her perception of reality has changed tragically, farcically even.

The loss of a home(land)

Ghefreh was born in a village called al-Sawafir in the early 1930s. The village was based on the ancient Roman name Shaffir, and it was located only a few kilometres from Ashdod, a Palestinian city built upon the ancient Canaanite urban settlement with the same name.

Al-Sawafir was ethnically cleansed early in 1948 during Operation Barak, a Haganah-led onslaught and part of Ben-Gurion’s Plan Dalet, the Zionist master plan to conquer all of Palestine

In her memories, the hardships of being a villager were irrelevant, what resonated was al-Sawafir’s olive trees, the affluent citrus orchards, and the “coherent community that made it into a paradise.”

“A time of peaceful existence, until the European Jews came”, she would say with a sigh.

“We had no guns to defend ourselves. The British — before leaving Palestine — made sure of that while pouring weapons into the Jewish militias’ lap.”

I heard this from my grandfather, on the other side of the family, and every one of his generation in our refugee camp. It was not a sense of loss alone, but also betrayal.

My grandmother would add, “My father had a rusty Ottoman pistol that he fired at wedding celebrations. Mother would hide it in her clothes when the Brits came from the nearby camp in the village of Julis.”

Israel is a broken society. And it's not just Bibi to blame

Voices

Emad Moussa

From the direction of Julis — a village allegedly named after Julius Caesar — the Haganah attacked al-Sawafir. Ghefreh and her family ran from one village to another, joining the masses of refugees in their search for safety. Behind them, the advancing Jewish militias ran amok, destroying, ransacking, and massacring Palestinian communities in the region.

She arrived at al-Majdal — the ancient Canaanite town, Asqalan, Hebrewised to Ashkelon — a few days later, holding but the key to her house and some food.

The Haganah besieged and bombed al-Majdal for six months, forcing the ill-equipped and outnumbered Egyptian troops who fortified there to retreat to the Gaza District. The masses of refugees from nearby villages, alongside al-Majdal’s 11,000 residents, ended up in Gaza as refugees.

“The Zionists tried to starve us in al-Majdal like they do today in Gaza,” she says.... READ MORE https://www.newarab.com/opinion/nakba-yesterday-nakba-today-my-grandmothers-two-keys

Release The Hostages Poem by Palestinian Poet Mosab Abu Toha

https://www.instagram.com/mosab_abutoha/

May 15th poem-a-day from the Academy of American Poets:We Live We Live by Brandy Nālani McDougall- For Palestinian poet Refaat Alareer, with lines from his poems

poem-a-day

May 15, 2024

We Live We Live

Brandy Nālani McDougall

^{For Palestinian poet Reefat Alareer, with lines from his poems

We live.

We live.

We do.

——Refaat Alareer}

You were killed today December 7th
my birthday It was today son of Shujaiya

in an Israel airstrike you were killed
visiting your brother’s home in Gaza City

Today, the anniversary of when my grandfather
only 12 years old climbed onto the roof

                        of his dormitory                      to watch the bombs
            fall on the American naval base         built over Puʻuloa

Your brother               your sister                   and four of her
            children were killed, too                     You were

just a few years younger than me

This morning after Israel’s birds of death

screeched down toward you my children woke up
on their own in Honolulu though it was still dark

                        their breath      like soil           their voices     like soil
            their kisses     like soil           blinking when touched by rain

And my youngest        rubbing her eyes                     asked if
            it was my birthday—              And am I now 47?—

before singing in our ancestors’ language
we are learning to speak together after

the wreckage of English and Americans
And my oldest who is learning to speak

                        in speech therapy        giggled            in her grogginess
            then sang                     her own song too

And what did I do       to deserve                    such tenderness
            this early morning?    Or to live                     this long

having heard bombs and guns fired only
from a distance? Having stood safely

                        scared as a child                     and angry        as an adult
            at the sound     of our lands and waters— Kahoʻolawe

Pōhakuloa Mākua Wahiawa battered
bruised burned poisoned in live fire practice?

By bombs that may have fallen on you or close
to you on those you loved full-hearted recklessly

those you learned to cling to even harder bombs
that may have hurt or killed children like mine who

could still sing? And you what did you do
to deserve your shorter poet’s life except

tell the truth and sow the seeds of songs
in your students except grow your love for them

for your people for your land and country
for the promise within the wreckage

that is this English echoing
all the way here to Honolulu where I resisted

opening my TikTok feed to savor my children’s sleepy
sweetness a little longer before facing

that birthdays are death days too?

                                    That each day              bombs and schools
                        hospitals and houses               fall                   each day children

are pulled from rubble children are pulled away
  crying from rubble that buried their mothers
       that they feel   alone that their hurt seeps
                        down into the dirt       as they look heaven in the eye

somewhere in Gaza? That they have written
their names and their parents’ names on their limbs

so their bodies or maybe just these parts
if that is all that’s left can be known

to anyone who finds them?

That                 if they if you   must die
            so easily uprooted       from the earth             so harshly unsung

let it be a tale and why not write poems to birth
the strongest words of love like rocks?

                        like seeds?                   like songs?      like names?
            And why not               hold those rocks         in your hands?

Your arms? Pull them to your chest like children
lighting the darkest of birthday mornings?

Why not feel their full weight and cling
even harder to live to live dear poet

of Shujaiya of Gaza of Palestine
just before they just before you

take flight?

https://poets.org/poem-a-day?mc_cid=72282341f5&mc_eid=544ee8b5c2

About Poem-a-Day

Poem-a-Day is the original and only daily digital poetry series featuring over 250 new, previously unpublished poems by today’s talented poets each year.