searching for any sign of home
I have been reading today the story of Palestinian researcher, and engineer, Salman Albu Sitta. He was born in 1937, about ten years after my grandmother June.
He was forced out of his home as a young boy - only ten years old, which is only two years older than my son - during the Nakba, by Zionist militia. He has never been able to return.
Salman became one of the many refugees that became the occupied people of the Gaza Strip. He has spent all of his time since then, searching for any sign of home - and campaigning for the right of return for Palestinian refugees.
I have been homeless, a couple of times. But I would not ever say, as a white person who is descended from colonisers, that I sense home the way that Palestinian people sense home. I can’t imagine what it would feel like, to belong to a place like that.
Salman talks about being lonely for home, his whole life; longing for the earth he was born on, his parents were born on, their parents, and their parents. The way he speaks about Palestinian land is with awe, respect; a deep love.
Salman’s words explaining the way his home was described as empty should horrify every person: as ‘grazing land’, by Zionists in 1919 at the Paris Conference. People fucking lived there. Whole cities and towns. Britain supported this view of his home: but of course they would. Terra Nullius is how they described this place too.
The gaslighting started a long time ago: that was a part of it. The early days of propaganda. Sleight of hand to steal a place by claiming nobody else has a right to it.
But of course, as Salman says, Palestine is not an ‘it’ in the same way this place is not an ‘it’ for the people who belong to it. He talks about belonging to Palestine, not owning it.
I want people to read about Salman. I want to remind everyone about him; his longing for his home. I also want people to stop being distracted from what is being done to children on the land he loves; as a mother, I think of them every day. I don’t know how anyone couldn’t.
I was reading this poem tonight by the Palestinian writer Hanan Mikha’il Ashrawi. I want to share it with you and encourage you to keep turning your face back to Palestinian lands, and continue to hold Israel accountable for what they have done.
I read today, yet again, that I am considered racist for opposing the efforts that were made to silence ANPA in speaking out in solidarity with the Palestinian people.
Think what you want. Say what you want. Write what you want, and twist words however you like. The law is the law and the ICJ said what they said. If considering genocide immoral and something everyone should be against is racist, then the world is upside down. But go on - say what you want.
You will still be wrong. It will still be genocide. We will still be responsible to say something with every platform we have. Genocide is everyone’s business. By law.
I regret nothing.
And I stand with the children of Gaza and will, always. As should every mother.
The more you draw attention to me, the more I will use the tiny platform I have left to draw attention to Gaza and what is being done to the children there. Up to you what you want to do with that, my friends. Sometimes, even bad press is useful for justice. Use what you have, start where you are - do what you can.
Every eye turned toward me, I will turn toward Gaza and the 35,000 murdered in captive conditions - mostly women and children - in violation of International Human Rights Law.
I leave you with Hanan’s words. And may Palestine be free.
From the Diary of an Almost-Four-Year-Old
by Hanan Mikha’il Ashrawi
Tomorrow, the bandages
will come off. I wonder
will I see half an orange,
half an apple, half my
mother’s face
with my one remaining eye?
I did not see the bullet
but felt its pain
exploding in my head.
His image did not
vanish, the soldier
with a big gun, unsteady
hands, and look in
his eyes
I could not understand
I can see him so clearly
with my eyes closed,
it could be that inside our heads
we each have one spare set
of eyes
to make up for the ones we lose
Next month, on my birthday,
I’ll have a brand new glass eye,
maybe things will look round
and fat in the middle—
I’ve gazed through all my marbles,
they made the world look strange.
I hear a nine-month old
has also lost an eye,
I wonder if my soldier
shot her too—a soldier
looking for little girls who
look him in the eye—
I’m old enough , almost four,
I’ve seen enough of life,
but she’s just a baby
who didn’t know any better.
