Songs heard beyond the walls

"I know the echo of the songs are heard beyond the walls," says 11-year-old rapper in Gaza. Abdelrahman al-Shantti has never been beyond the 25-mile-long and 5-mile-wide Gaza strip, yet he sings in flawless American-accented English, and his music has gone viral. 

I was born in Gaza City,

and the first thing I heard was a gunshot.

In my first breath,

I tasted gunpowder.

His song "Peace" refers to early memories of war and violence. 

Abdelrahman, or MCA Abdul as he is known, is certain his message has gone beyond the walls because he has been interviewed by media all over the world, including The New York Times, Al-Jazeera, and Variety. Major rappers from all over the world have noticed and helped extend his reach with their approval. His instagram account, @mca.rap has 122,000 followers at last count (Make that 122,001).

The latest article in Variety says he has been offered a contract. https://variety.com/2020/music/news/12-year-old-rapper-gaza-empire-records-offer-1234761201/

In an interview in the October 2020 issue of Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, MAC Abdul states "I want to show [the American children] how, as children, we are all supposed to be free, like children for outside the walls, fences and bombs of Gaza."https://www.wrmea.org/israel/palestine/the-first-thing-i-heard-was-a-gunshot-a-gaza-symphony.html

We wish him well and hope that his message of peace and freedom shines through the well-deserved praise and attention his talent has attracted. Let his music speak for itself:

MCA Abdul attends a school run by UNRWA, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency. In recent years the agency has struggled to fund its activities since the United States has cut funding to the United Nations. Schools in Gaza have been heavily damaged in repeated attacks. 

Please consider donating to UNRWA to help educate the talented new generation of Gaza, living under 18-hour electricity blackout due to lack of fuel for the electric plant. Smart phones, the only way to reach the outside world, are regularly charged with car batteries. People find a way to survive under the harshest conditions. 

Click the image or copy this link: https://getinvolved.unrwausa.org/campaign/2020-fund-unrwa/c267485 to donate to UNRWA USA, to give a tax deductible contribution to help children in Gaza.

Talk of Annexation--Again

 In the January 1984 issue of Palestine Perspectives, Muhammad Hallaj wrote an editorial entitled "Injustice is Never Irreversible" that addressed the then current topic of annexation or de facto annexation of the Occupied Territories.

Dr. Hallaj raised two questions: 

1. Does military occupation become "irreversible?" In our view it does not. The forceful subjugation of one people by another cannot acquire legitimacy due to the unilateral act of the occupier, although such acts may very well make the withdrawal symptoms more severe.

2. The second question which needs to be raised is this: what happens to the Arab-Israeli conflict if Israel's de facto annexation of the occupied West Bank and Gaza does become "irreversible?"

Hallaj recognized the possibility that, given the vastly unequal balance of power, such possibility exists.

In that case only what Israel wants would be achievable. But in that case it makes no difference what the Palestinians do, because Israel is dead set against Palestinian self-determination—with or without association with Jordan—as its immediate and categorical rejection of the Reagan scheme and as its refusal even to discuss the cessation of settlement demonstrates.

However, it behooves those who advise the Palestinians to swallow whatever it is that is being shoved down their throats, as a presumed alternative to oblivion, to consider another theoretical possibility which is transformable into a practical option...the struggle with Israel would cease to be over the West Bank and would become again a struggle over Palestine. In other words, instead of closing the file on the Palestinian people, Israel's annexation of the West Bank and Gaza would re-open the file from the beginning.

In the nearly 37 years that have elapsed since the writing of the editorial, much has remained the same: the Israelis still talk of annexation, and they are still supported by the powers that be in the United States. Unfortunately, that does not mean we have come full circle, stuck in a repeating cycle. The Palestinian position has weakened in the interim. 

The West Bank struggles with the stranglehold Israel has over the water supply, not to mention the supply lines of everything else that it needs to continue life as usual. Outside help wanes as economies around the world face uncertainty in the face of a continuing pandemic.

The situation in Gaza is desperate. After years of blockade in conjunction with continuous and violent suppression, the people of Gaza struggle to survive. Electricity is intermittent due to the scarcity of fuel for the power plant; medicines of all sort are in sort supply; the water treatment plant languishes in scarce energy and maintenance hampered by lack of parts. The hospitals struggle to meet the day-to-day needs of the community, yet they are called upon to reach even greater demand by recurring violence and now the worldwide struggle with covid-19 adds to the misery.

 

The Elections are Coming!

It is a sad commentary on the state of the Palestinians and their struggle for freedom that articles written more than thirty-five years ago are just as relevant and applicable to their plight today as they were the day they were written. In the November/December 1983 issue of Palestine Perspectives, Muhammad Hallaj wrote the following commentary:

It is often said that the presidential election season is a time of paralysis for American foreign policy. This may be true in some areas of U.S. foreign policy, but certainly not in the Middle East. American policy toward the Arab-Israeli conflict does not suffer from paralysis, but instead becomes gripped with a fit of epilepsy.

This pathetic seasonal phenomenon has already made its appearance in preparation for the coming elections. The various contestants, whether they are guarding their jobs or grabbing for them, have already begun to pay homage to Greater Israel. Although we have become somewhat accustomed to this irresponsible ritual, occasionally we are still shocked by how far some candidates go in sacrificing America's interests and integrity in their chase after votes and campaign money. 

This piece was written in response to a speech by Senator John Glenn to the Foreign Policy Association in New York. Dr Hallaj summarized the main thrust of the speech as "an attack on the concept of 'evenhandedness' in U.S. Middle East Policy. He [Senator Glenn] charged that evenhandedness means a 'tilt away from Israel,' as if that were a self-evident evil."

Those words were penned as the nation prepared for the 1984 elections. Today we are preparing for the 2020 elections. Decades have passed, yet in the midst of it all, American policy toward the Arab-Israeli conflict suffers another seizure. The new Middle East Peace Plan is introduced by none other than Benjamin Netanyahu, the Prime Minister of Israel. It is a plan tilted so far toward Israel that even The New York Times cannot ignore the tilt.

Mr. Trump vowed at the start of his presidency that he would negotiate a “bigger and better deal” to broker peace than anyone could imagine. Three years later, experts say that the plan, developed under the supervision of Jared Kushner, Mr. Trump’s son-in-law, falls remarkably short of that goal and is unlikely ever to become the basis for a peace agreement. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/29/world/middleeast/trump-peace-plan-explained.html 

 What is that saying? The more things change, the more they remain the same.

The phrase was coined by French writer Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr, “plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.

Peace Process Revisited

Muhammad Hallaj wrote the following in his editorial in the November/December 1983 issue of Palestine Perspectives. Unfortunately, his words are just as true and applicable today, more than 35 years later, as it was when he wrote it.

For the first time in recorded history, the world community committed itself in the twentieth century to the ideal of universalizing self-government and economic well-being. Self-determination an development became primary objectives of contemporary human civilization.

The transformation of Palestine into Israel in 1948 and in subsequent years deprived the Palestinian people of the opportunity to share this human dream. They have been denied self-government, and their lives have been disrupted and harassed. 

Granted, the vision of universalizing self-government and development has been only partially and imperfectly achieved. Hundreds of millions of people around the world continue to suffer from hunger, disease and ignorance. And in many countries decolonization has not brought liberty and justice to their peoples. The struggle has not yet been consummated everywhere. But nowhere in the world, except in Palestine, has the deprivation been so deliberate, conscious and determined. 

In other places, the problem has been a failure of the dream, a failure to benefit from an opportunity which has been granted. In Palestine, it has been a failure to grant the opportunity and to share the dream. And that is the rationale and the nobility of the Palestinian struggle... 

The struggle in Palestine is not about the location of boundaries, the confiscation of land, the dissolution of municipalities or political imprisonment, although it concerns all of this and much more. It is fundamentally about the inadmissibility of singling out the Palestinian people for denial of access to the contemporary dream. 

All efforts and initiatives made in the name of peace in the Middle East which fail to take this fact as their underlying premise are doomed to fail and deserve to fail. They are doomed to fail because they do not address the issue, and they deserve to fail because they make a mockery of a universally cherished human vision.

And so it is that we begin one more decade with one more mockery of justice.

We Too Have a Dream

Going through some old publications last night, I came across an article in the September/October 1983 issue of Palestine Perspectives that quoted a message from Mr. Yasser Arafat, then Chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization, expressing solidarity with the March on Washington and its commitment to human rights. The message was sent in celebration of the twentieth anniversary of the celebrated March during which Dr. King give his I Have a Dream speech.

On behalf of my brothers in the Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization and in the name of the Palestinian people who are struggling to achieve their redemption from the yoke of occupation, discrimination, and oppression and for the enjoyment of their inalienable rights to self determination, statehood, return to their homeland, and freedom, we wish to commend your efforts in bringing hundreds of thousands of Americans to Washington to commemorate the historic march led by the great martyr Dr. Martin Luther King.

We the Palestinian people are heartened by this great development which we believe reflects the true commitment of the American people to build a new coalition of conscience that represents the true soul of the American democracy.

We would like you to know that our people both in occupied Palestine and in exile lock arms with you on this occasion in fraternal solidarity with your struggle to achieve the dream of Dr. Martin Luther king for a new society where equality, justice, peace and love would prevail.

Palestinians: We too have a dream!

___________

As a postscript, I was privileged to be present at both the first March in 1963, and the twentieth anniversary march in 1983. Sadly, the dream is slow in coming.

 

 

Dreams and Love in the Face of Violence

"Khalil was shot and killed by Israeli guards at the Qalandiya checkpoint near the West Bank city of Ramallah after he allegedly tried to stab one of them on 22 November. No Israelis were injured during the incident."

https://electronicintifada.net/content/month-pictures-december-2016/19106

Anything about Kalandia catches my attention, regardless of the way the word is transliterated. This one stood out with vivid clarity. That could have been Muhammad. Sometimes the characters we create in novels become real enough to appear in news articles. Muhammad, at least the hero of my novel Checkpoint Kalandia, never really existed. He never really had to be held down to keep from attacking the soldiers at the checkpoint, but his is the background I ascribed to Jihad Khalil. A situation that should never happen continues to be repeated…and repeated…and repeated for years, decades, and generations.

The people of Gaza live under even more repressive conditions than those on the West Bank, yet they continue to make art. They paint, they write, they produce plays, they make amazing music. The video below was one I found on the same website, electronicintifada.net. I find it great fun to find that hip-hop music has found a home in Gaza.

The English subtitles are hard to read, but the words are very uplifting. I have taken some liberties with their less-than-perfect translation:

We’re tightening our strength to be the people who never kneel down to death.
We give the mute dream persistence and voice.
We’re tightening our strength to be the people who never kneel down to death.
 Time passes fast. We still hold faith in our hearts
Immigration is not even an option for us
so we will resist the humiliation until we return
We still hold dreams in our hearts
Tomorrow they will be facts.
The bitterness will change to love
And carry the meaning of liberation.
Come sing with us. Let us fly.
We build the love of the land deep in our hearts
And keep it safe within us.
 Sing with us. Let’s all fly. Let’s all fly. Let’s all fly.
 We’re tightening our strength to be the people who never kneel down to death.
We give the mute dream persistence and voice.
We’re tightening our strength to be the people who never kneel down to death.