Sharing the Losses: Poems for Palestine

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Written by Gilbert Schramm Gilbert Schramm

Published: 20 November 2023 20 November 2023

 

From Gilbert Schramm, he has written some excellent poetry over many years, include many concerning the Middle East…

He is offering these for sale, all proceeds go towards humanitarian relief in Palestine. A sample is below.

 

My book is published! It is a benefit for promoting peace in the Middle East in two ways: any profits will go toward humanitarian relief in Palestine, and it is also a way of promoting awareness of this issue. Please share with friends and networks. It is always difficult promoting a self-published book. If, after reading it, you feel it is informative and useful, it would really help to make a brief review= on Amazon. It would be preferable to comment on the work itself- it's not a place for airing general feelings about the conflict. If anyone has connections to groups involved in similar work, please try to make them aware of it.

 

On Amazon at Sharing the Losses: Poems for Palestine

 

Jerusalem in the afternoon is the bitterness of two hundred winter-bare olive trees fallen in the distance.--Deema Shehabi

Jerusalem/ Gaza

(2012-2014)

If there were no separation between
Events in space because of time
How would we order our world?
We would have to live with our history then
And live with our acts always

Ancient walls would be
Obscured by the images of the hands
That lifted the stones, again and again
And we would see those hands
Like a cloud of birds, rising, fluttering.

And we would also see the hands
That cast those stones down
And the shape of each stone falling.
Perhaps seeing that appalling waste
would teach us something.

Some places in the world
Would be thick always
With the images of the slain
Heaped in the roads and gutters like leaves
Fall, the gurgling of clotting drains.

And from on high the view would seem
Like something from a crazy Escher dream
Outlines of the bodies, chalked in as at the scene
Of a crime of such brutal magnitude
No absolution could ever intrude.

-- Gilbert Schramm

The March for Israel Was a Hate Rally

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Written by Peter Miller Peter Miller

Published: 16 November 2023 16 November 2023

The Israeli public has embraced the Smotrich doctrine

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Written by Orly Noy Orly Noy

Published: 14 November 2023 14 November 2023

The internalization of the far-right minister's 'Decisive Plan' is evident in the popular support for a new ultimatum for Gaza: emigration or annihilation.

Six years ago, Bezalel Smotrich, then a young Knesset member in his first term, published his “Decisive Plan” — a kind of “endgame” for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. According to the far-right lawmaker, who now serves as Israel’s finance minister and the government’s West Bank overlord, the inherent contradiction between Jewish and Palestinian national aspirations does not allow for any kind of compromise, reconciliation, or partition. Instead of maintaining the illusion that a political agreement is possible, he argued, the issue must be unilaterally resolved once and for all.

The plan makes only passing references to Gaza, with Smotrich seeming content with Israel’s encagement of the enclave as an ideal solution to what he calls the “demographic challenge” posed by Palestinians’ very existence. Vis-à-vis the West Bank, however, he calls for annexing its entirety.

In the latter territory, demographic concerns will be ameliorated by offering the 3 million Palestinian residents a choice: to renounce their national aspirations and continue living on their land in an inferior status, or to emigrate abroad. If, instead, they choose to take up arms against Israel, they will be identified as terrorists and the Israeli army will set about “killing those who need to be killed.” When asked at a meeting, in which he presented his plan to religious-Zionist figures, if he also meant killing families, women, and children, Smotrich replied: “In war as in war.”

Insofar as it has received any public attention at all, the Decisive Plan has been perceived since its publication as delusional and dangerous even among mainstream Israeli political commentators. Yet an examination of the current Israeli media and political discourse shows that, when it comes to the army’s current assault on Gaza, large parts of the public have completely internalized the logic of Smotrich’s plan.

In fact, Israeli public opinion regarding Gaza, where Smotrich’s vision is being implemented with a cruelty that even he may not have foreseen, is now even more extreme than the text of the plan itself. That’s because, in practice, Israel is removing from the agenda the first possibility on offer — of an inferior, de-Palestinianized existence — which until October 7 was most Israelis’ chosen option.

Read more at +972 Magazine: https://www.972mag.com/smotrich-decisive-plan-israeli-public/

A tribute to Vivian

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Written by Samah Salaime Samah Salaime

Published: 14 November 2023 14 November 2023

I know you will be greeted up above by your Palestinian and Israeli partners in activism, and the thousands of other victims of this pointless war.

Nothing prepared me for yesterday’s bitter news of Vivian’s tragic end. I felt deep despair, like a bottomless sink-hole had opened under the foundations of humanity, where thousands are already buried – men, women, children, innocent Palestinians and Israelis. People who had wished for peace, and did not live to see that wish fulfilled. 

https://www.972mag.com/vivian-silver-tribute-peace-activist/