#we teach life sir

[violottie]

faith unshaken.

"A Palestinian family in Tal al-Sultan camp, west of Rafah, decorates its tent in preparation for the month of Ramadan in order to preserve Ramadan customs and bring joy and happiness to the children to alleviate the effects of war." from Belal Khaled, 02/Mar/2024:

[houseofpurplestars]

We teach life, sir.

We Palestinians teach life after they have occupied the last sky.

We teach life after they have built their settlements and apartheid walls, after the last skies.

We teach life, sir.

[emily84]

this is from 2011. twelve years, and it's still relevant today, more than ever. ms ziadah is a canadian-palestinian poet and activist.

[ember-knights]

translation is not the best, so here is what she says:

"I am not afraid of people like them, those cowards. I am not afraid. They are like mice. They have weapons, and they have tanks, and yet they hide behind tanks afraid of civilians like us? Their will is weak. Their fear borders on madness.

Their levels of fear is abnormal.

We are not afraid of them. No matter what they do to us, we will never be afraid. Their bombs fell on us like water because they were dropped by a loser's hands, a coward's hands... by the weak hands."

As long as there is a Palestinian alive and fighting i will not lose hope.

#we_teach_life_sir

[this-is-not-a-slow-burn]

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Laiyonelth Hurtado (@laiyonelth)

(also on YT here if you can't view IG links)

Video Transcript:

Today, my body was a TV’d massacre.

Today, my body was a TV’d massacre that had to fit into sound-bites and word limits.

Today, my body was a TV’d massacre that had to fit into sound-bites and word limits filled enough with statistics to counter measured response.

And I perfected my English and I learned my UN resolutions.

But still, he asked me, Ms. Ziadah, don’t you think that everything would be resolved if you would just stop teaching so much hatred to your children?

Pause.

I look inside of me for strength to be patient but patience is not at the tip of my tongue as the bombs drop over Gaza.

Patience has just escaped me.

Pause. Smile.

We teach life, sir.

Rafeef, remember to smile.

Pause.

We teach life, sir.

We Palestinians teach life after they have occupied the last sky.

We teach life after they have built their settlements and apartheid walls, after the last skies.

We teach life, sir.

But today, my body was a TV’d massacre made to fit into sound-bites and word limits.

And just give us a story, a human story.

You see, this is not political.

We just want to tell people about you and your people so give us a human story.

Don’t mention that word “apartheid” and “occupation”.

This is not political.

You have to help me as a journalist to help you tell your story which is not a political story.

Today, my body was a TV’d massacre.

How about you give us a story of a woman in Gaza who needs medication?

How about you?

Do you have enough bone-broken limbs to cover the sun?

Hand me over your dead and give me the list of their names in one thousand two hundred word limits.

Today, my body was a TV’d massacre that had to fit into sound-bites and word limits and move those that are desensitized to terrorist blood.

But they felt sorry.

They felt sorry for the cattle over Gaza.

So, I give them UN resolutions and statistics and we condemn and we deplore and we reject.

And these are not two equal sides: occupier and occupied.

And a hundred dead, two hundred dead, and a thousand dead.

And between that, war crime and massacre, I vent out words and smile “not exotic”, “not terrorist”.

And I recount, I recount a hundred dead, a thousand dead.

Is anyone out there?

Will anyone listen?

I wish I could wail over their bodies.

I wish I could just run barefoot in every refugee camp and hold every child, cover their ears so they wouldn’t have to hear the sound of bombing for the rest of their life the way I do.

Today, my body was a TV’d massacre

And let me just tell you, there’s nothing your UN resolutions have ever done about this.

And no sound-bite, no sound-bite I come up with, no matter how good my English gets, no sound-bite, no sound-bite, no sound-bite, no sound-bite will bring them back to life.

No sound-bite will fix this.

We teach life, sir.

We teach life, sir.

We Palestinians wake up every morning to teach the rest of the world life, sir.

[houseofpurplestars]

[Image id: an elderly Palestinian man with a white beard, wearing a tan suit and a white ghutra with an agal, enjoys pink cotton candy. /end id]

Occupied Jerusalem, Palestine

June 25, 2015

[backyardflames]

Rafeef Ziadah - 'We teach life, sir', London, 12.11.11

I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve posted this on various platforms. Nothing has changed in 13, 26, 58+ years. The world has decided that what Israel has done/is doing, is ok. When the US lectures *anyone* on morality, just remember the Palestinians. Know that the US government is well aware it is happily facilitating a genocide. 

[donotlookaway]

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Anne-Laure Greco (@annelauregreco)

We teach life, sir

[violottie]

to live despite it all is resistance

"It is not about the place, nor even about the circumstances, but rather about the people, the family, and our country❤️🍉" from amirgharabawi, 13/Mar/2024:

[houseofpurplestars]

"We suffer from an incurable malady called hope."

[houseofpurplestars]

[reconstructwriter]

Rafeef Ziadah - 'We teach life, sir', London, 12.11.11

[iamadarshbadri]

Poems That Tell a Tale of the Struggle for Palestine

Poetry evokes emotions. Perhaps when the world turns a blind eye to the horrors in Palestine, it is crucial to read poems. In these crazy times, there is nothing like poetry to remind ourselves of humanity. And we all need some poetry right now to feel for Palestinians, their children who are bombed by the Israeli forces—and whose memories are forever etched in the tragedies of today. Dead…

[houseofpurplestars]

There is something I think of often, knowing what I know about Palestinians and their Resistance. No one knows the occupation better than Palestinians. If Palestinians tell me that this is the time, I believe them.

I don't believe for a moment that Hamas did not predict the brutality of the zionist response, and as OP says, that's a sacrifice they made. They made that sacrifice for their people yes but also for the world, for the future, so that the world can HAVE a future, a future without zionism.

The Resistance knows the occupation better than anyone. They have fought the occupation before and won in very tangible ways. Hamas already decolonized Gaza once. I trust that they know what they're about. So, by their undertaking this operation, I understood that they are in a position to make this call. Whatever the zionists have, the Resistance knows they have, but the Resistance still has surprises for their enemy, who has only ever underestimated them.

Palestinians have always known their enemy, which is one of the reasons that zionist violence is as brutal, repressive, and horrific as it is. The zionists know they can't actually win against Palestinians.

What I'm saying is, if the Resistance "started" this operation on October 7th, I believe they have the capability, as a united Resistance, to "end" it. To end the zionist colony.

From the outside, non-Palestinians will struggle to see this. They see only bombs and flattened streets. But those of us who know anything about Palestinians know. They know where their enemy is vulnerable, and they strike with precision.

Keep faith in the Resistance. Every day they work miracles. They will show you a way you have never seen.

Sacrifice

I think that there's something we all need to understand, which is that Hamas is not only literally sacrificing their families and fighters' lives in this brutal war that they have triggered knowing the price the Palestinian people will pay for the cause; they are also sacrificing their own political future for the sake of a united Palestinian front. One of the proofs of it is that among their main conditions for a hostage deal is the liberation of Marwan Barghouthi who is actually a Fatah leader.

This is a fact that even the fiercest anti-hamas/pro-israel/pro-two-state-solution historians and political analysts who have a minimum of intellectual integrity have recognized; such as Jean-Pierre Filiu and others. Israeli leaders know this very well, and it's something that terrifies them.

[desi-yearning]

I went to college today after deciding that I'll shut my mouth and won't speak to anyone much, worked out till I started answering my Sir's questions right from the first period😭

[scientia-rex]

One of my patients used to be a Big Deal Specialist in the city and you can just TELL he’s SEETHING that no one out here is even qualified to understand what he did, much less how important he was. He’s also terrified of death. It’s both annoying and really sad. Like, sir, I hate to break it to you, but no amount of knowledge will protect you from the ravages of time. It’s a special kind of hell to know the stages of various fatal diseases intimately. What is it going to feel like when it’s my turn? How do doctors want to die? Suddenly, quietly. Slip away painlessly in my sleep. But how likely is that? Not very. More likely I’ll get cardiovascular disease or cancer, the greatest killers of our time.

He was so afraid of cancer he had an organ that wasn’t cancerous removed just in case. He talks down to me as if I’m his student, and who knows? Maybe I was. He was in the same city as me, and they were forever dragging Big Name Doctors in to teach us things. Maybe I learned how to elicit Achilles tendon reflexes from him.

But mostly I find myself a little scornful. Who lives without the shadow of death? Who doesn’t think about death all the time? When you die, life is a round thing, finished and whole. What will your life look like when God holds it in the palm of his hand?

Also don’t fucking call me by my first name unless I’ve specifically said you can. I don’t GIVE that permission to patients, except for my mentally ill trans and queer patients. If I wanted to be disrespected by an older man I would have married young.

You do not have time. This important doctor who based his whole life around his importance lived as rich and full a life as anyone. And now he’s clinging to it, leaving fingernail marks on the walls on his way out. No one has time. There will be a moment when you’re dying when you think, I would give anything I have to be back in that moment. Any ordinary moment. Taking the dogs out to go potty. Browsing at the grocery store. When you’re being crucified on a hospital bed, dying and aware of it through the morphine, you would give anything you ever possessed to go back and have one more agony-free afternoon. Sit on a curb or a stoop. Walk through a park. Hug your spouse. These tiny fragmentary moments that we are constantly sliding through, tobogganing past at high speeds, these are what will be our life when our life is over.

I am accountable to that self. To the dying me. What did I do with this gift and curse? I don’t believe in God, but I know that I will die, and I have watched enough dying people by now to know the kinds of things I’ll think about. I want to make that me proud of what I’ve done and how I’ve spent my life. She will be a harder judge than God, and I want her to look at this one little life and think, yes. I did what I meant to.