(Circa 2014 Offensive on Gaza, a.k.a. ‘Operation Protective Edge’)
We are with you in Gaza
Where UN resolutions are good for nothing
But stitching into tents for your refugees,
Where schools and museums and family homes
Are legitimate targets
Because this is a war on history,
A war on all memory
Of Palestine.
We are with you in Gaza,
Where the free world spends more money
On weapons aimed at you than it spends feeding Africa,
Where waterless, powerless streets
Are crammed with ghosts
And throng with the spirits of millions
Of Palestinians living now in exile
But whose hearts are with you in Gaza.
We are with you in Gaza
Where the West’s unblinking eyes
Still see no apartheid beyond the wall,
That 430 mile concrete wall
Segregating rights-bearing citizens from the unpeople.
Never mind Mandela, that canonised freedom fighter
Who said the war on apartheid was still on,
Until freedom for Palestine too, was won.
We are with you in Gaza,
Where your family grew as long as the olive grove
Until the tanks came, and the branches
Were crushed as quick as human bone
As the UN, which once owned
And gave away half of Palestine,
Now inquires and condemns
And draws green lines.
We are with you in Gaza,
Where babies born at checkpoints
And called terrorists before their mothers name them,
Where they inherit their grandparents’ nightmares
And the monsters they draw are real
And have no trouble sleeping
Safe in the knowledge that they fight for democracy
(A democracy which ignores elections, draws borders round its majority
And beats its own citizens for protesting Zionist brutality.)
We are with you in Gaza,
Where you see this man here, he talked liberation for sixty years,
Put flesh between hope and bullets for sixty years,
Held his dignity like a shield but died in poverty
Without justice or autonomy
Leaving children who dream only
Of a brother returned from the cells;
The silent, unaccountable cells that
Read no rights and appoint no lawyers
And need no jury to sanction suffering.
We are with you in Gaza,
Where Western weapons roar
While Western leaders hear no evil
Speak no evil – speak only of a peace process
Which mocks the term
What peace without justice?
What process between Gaza and Goliath?
Double speak, double speak,
Is ‘peace process’ just UN speak for ‘well-mannered genocide’?
We are with you in Gaza,
Unlike the mainstream media,
Where a hundred years of oppression
Are redacted and sound bitten.
We are shamed by our anger
And angered by our shame – explain?
Ashamed to rage at Goliath when he’s bankrolled here at home,
And in our name.
We are with you in Gaza,
Where a monsoon of shells flood
The alleys of Al Shujaya with civilian blood
Where the children are coming home legless
Or headless, were helpless
As you feel now, curled up like a child
As the grief pours in;
As we feel now, beyond the sea,
Standing with our candles
As we cry
We will not let Gaza die
(Not that Gaza is waiting on us to fight for her survival
But we are with you
We have been every day since 1948
For whatever it’s worth
I don’t know what it’s worth
A lot, we’re told at every rally
But on days like this it doesn’t seem
To count for much, sadly.)
Gaza, we are marching,
Gaza, we are chanting,
Gaza, we are divesting,
They said the old would die and the young would forget
But we still read the names of your dead.
Nidal, aged five.
Mohammed, fifteen.
Riad, fifty.
Hussein, thirteen.
Salah, six.
Ali, only yesterday, only eighteen months.
And what of the killers, of the IDF?
They traumatise and maim and kill
But they regret
Almost with the vigour they forget
Civilian death.
Oh, but the moment every Palestinian’s gone
Or bends the knee
Then, they say, there can be peace!
How simple
How civilised things might be…
