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<PRE>THE HOFFMAN WIRE
Dedicated to Freedom of the Press, Investigative Reporting and Revisionist History
Michael A. Hoffman II, Editor
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March 30, 2002
The International Parliament of Writers delegation visited the
Palestinian ghetto of Ramallah on March 24 and 25. They were addressed
by the Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish, whose brief speech, "We Have an
Incurable Malady: Hope," is reproduced below.
We seldom think of literature when we think of Palestine but the
Palestinians have eminent writers and a wealth of culture. Prior to the
endless, American-backed Israeli war crimes and mass murder, the
Palestinians were the least fanatic of all Arabs with a high proportion
of Christians in their population, and constituting the most modern and
progressive of Arab nations.
Rage and a sense of powerlessness in the face of 20 years of land
expropriation by "settlers" and the killing of children, hospital
administrators, medics, the indiscriminate bombing of the civilian
population, the demolition of houses, blockades of whole cities for
months, and the subjection of the population to a regime of degrading,
inhuman apartheid, has changed all that, leading to the rise of Hamas
and a conversion to Muslim fundamentalism in dress and ideology.
>From March 24 to the 29th, the International Parliament of Writers, most
of whom are European, put their bodies on the line for the Palestinians,
something few American human rights celebrities bother to do, even as
the massacres in Palestine by Sharon continue unabated. One member of
the writers' contingent, Portuguese Nobel laureate Jose Saragamo,
likened the treatment of the Palestinians to Auschwitz, to predictable
howls of outrage from the hypocritical Israelis, who consider themselves
exceptional on account of the horrors of Nazism.
Anything Sharon does is justified in the name of Israeli security,
including state-supported terrorism. As for the Palestinian terror, the
Algerians used terrorism against the French colonizers. Zionist
terrorists committed murderous acts upon the Palestinians and the
British before 1950. The South African blacks fought the apartheid
regime with bombs planted in bars and hotels. Is one terrorist somehow
superior to another? One wears the cloak of righteousness and the other
the rags of reprehension?
It has been observed that, "The use of the term �terrorist� is always
imprecise, contradictory and self-interested: a huge range of nations,
religious creeds and ideologies have engendered organizations inciting
people to kill civilians on behalf of some supposedly sacred cause."
This includes American mass murder of civilians during World War Two in
the "sacred cause" of defeating Hitler and Tojo.
Morality is not defined by terrorists and anti-terrorists, because
realistically, every state uses terror as a matter of policy, condemning
only the terror of the opposition. Ever since the attack on the Twin
Towers and the unilateralism declared by Bush in his January 29 speech,
Sharon has enjoyed total immunity. Hence, Sharon can launch his war
machine against whomever he wishes--a school for the blind two weeks
ago, a school in Lebanon today -- for as long as he wants and without
answering to anyone.
Is there an antidote, or do we become only more cynical and disengaged
(attitudes the enemies of truth seek to instill in us), in the face of
this sanctioned Israeli holocaust?
There is an antidote and it is found within each of us, as individuals.
The Israelis fear the presence of prominent intellectuals in the
Palestinian refugee camps. The Zionists count on doing their murders
accompanied by western media spin and relative obscurity. They count on
the cooperative apathy and complacency of American writers and artists
to give them the cover for their low intensity genocide of the
Palestinian people, and in this they have succeeded. Most American
intellectuals remain deafeningly silent, or they actually cheerlead
Sharon's state terror (Wall Street Journal, New York Post, Baltimore
Sun, Pensacola News-Journal, NBC, Fox) or spin it in such a way as to
obscure it (N.Y. Times, Linda Gradstein of NPR, etc).
It was reported on Friday that other European activists had arrived in
the Occupied territories to stand in the way of Israeli tanks. The
Israelis are the most media-savy war criminals on earth. The prospect of
news cameras filming them mowing down European human rights activists
fills them with trepidation and paralysis. In human terms this
translates into the antidote we seek, as a crucial first step: the
saving of the lives of Palestinian civilians, who would otherwise be
"expendable" victims in the eyes of those whom Billy Graham in 1972
said, had a "Jewish stranglehold" on the U.S. media. Hope, indeed, is
incurable.
WE HAVE AN INCURABLE MALADY -- HOPE
by Mahmoud Darwish
http://www.autodafe.org/correspondence/cor_art_13.htm
It gives me great pleasure and honor to welcome you in this land during
its bloody Spring, a land yearning for its old name: the land of love
and peace. Your courageous visit during this monstrous siege is one form
of breaking the siege. Your presence here makes us feel no longer
isolated. With you we realize that the international conscience, which
you honorably represent, is still alive and capable of protesting and
taking the side of justice. You have assured us that writers still have
a valuable role to play in the battle for freedom and in the fight
against racism.
Responsibility for the human destiny cannot find expression solely in
the literary text. In situations of emergency and human calamity the
writer searches for a moral role to play in other forms of public
action, a role that consolidates his literary integrity, and mobilizes
public counciousness around higher values, most important of which is
freedom. This is what we read in your noble messsage for us today : the
message of solidarity and sympathy.
I know that the masters of words have no need for rhetoric before the
eloquence of blood. Therefore our words will be as simple as our rights:
we were born on this land, and of this land. We knew no other mother,
nor any mother tongue but its own. And when we realized that it has too
much history and too many prophets, we understood that pluralism is an
all-embracing space and not a prison cell and that no one has a monopoly
over land or God or memory. We also know that history is neither fair
nor elegant. But our task, as humans, is to humanize history, as we are
simultaneously its victims and its creation.
There is nothing more apparent than the Palestinian truth and the
Palestinian right: this is our country, and this small part is a part of
our homeland, our real not mythical homeland. This occupation is a
foreign occupation that cannot escape the universal definition of an
occupation, no matter how many titles of divine right it enlists; God is
no one�s personal possession.
We have accepted the political solutions based on the principle of
sharing life on this land within the framework of two states for two
peoples. We only demand our right to a normal life, within an
ind�pendant state, on the land occupied since 1967, including East
Jerusalem, and to a fair solution to the problem of refugees, and an end
to colonialist settlement. This is the only realistic path to a peace
that will put an end to this vicious circle of blood.
Our state of affairs today is self-evident, it is not a case of a
struggle between two existences, as the Israeli government would like to
portray it: either them or us. It is a question of ending an occupation.
Resisting occupation is not only a right. It is a national and human
duty that transforms us from the condition of slavery to the condition
of freedom. The shortest raod to averting more disasters and to reaching
peace is to liberate the Palestinians from occupation, and liberate the
Israeli society from the illusion of controlling another people.
The occupation does not content itself with depriving us of the primary
Conditions of freedom, but goes on to deprive us of the bare essentials
of a dignified human life, by declaring constant war on our bodies, and
our dreams, on the people and the homes and the trees, and by committing
crimes of war. It does not promise us anything more than the apartheid
system, and the capacity of the sword to defeat the soul.
But we have an incurable malady: hope. Hope in liberation and
independence. Hope in a normal life where we are neither heroes nor
victims. Hope that our children will go safely to their schools. Hope
that a pregnant woman will give birth to a living baby, at the hospital,
and not a dead child in front of a military checkpoint; hope that our
poets will see the beauty of the color red in roses rather than in blood
; hope that this land will take up its original name: the land of love
and peace. Thank you for carrying with us the burden of this hope.
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<PRE>Hoffman is a former reporter for the New York bureau of the Associated Press
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