Israel Makes Children Cry

Of course, everyday I could write a post titled as such for everyday the state of Israel makes Palestinian children cry as it kills their parents, siblings, relatives and friends. As its beats them. As it starves them. As it demolishes their homes. As it steals their land. As it restricts their movements.

palestinian children in jenin pHN8I 19672

And here is a story about Arab children in Israel - mind you, all these children are not the citizenship-less Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, but actually citizens of Israel - that demonstrates just how cruel Israel/Zionist culture is:

Some 250 children of an Arab village's summer camp left a country club in the northern city of Katzrin in tears on Thursday, after the club's manager refused to allow the counselors to play Arabic music.

This is Israel, This is Zionism. This is the cruelty. Israel wants to strip the Arabs of their identity, it can't stand them and their language, it wants to erase the original inhabitants for this is the nature of a colonial-settler state based on ethnic privilege as the state of Israel is. So the children must be left teary-eyed. But they should consider themselves lucky for things could have been worse, they could have summoned them to the police station for even having the temerity to ask for Arabic songs.

Such was the fate of the late, great poet Mahmoud Darwish. Darwish was born in northern Palestine in what become Israel in 1948. Darwish's family was one of the few that managed to still stay on the land that is rightfully theirs, most Palestinians were not so lucky as Israel ethnically cleanses 800,000 Palestinians in its war to drive the Arabs out and establish a Jewish majority.

A student in an Israeli school, his teacher recognized his poetic nature early on and asked him to write a poem celebrating Israel's Independence Day. Darwish wrote it as a letter from an Arab boy addressed to his Jewish classmate describing how as an Arab in a Jewish state that has thrown out his people he could not celebrate the event. Darwish's poem landed him in front of an Israeli security office who threatened Darwish that if he were to repeat such pro-Arab, anti-Zionist sentiment his father will lose his work permit. Imagine this scene for a moment. Imagine a nation where a young child is sent to the police station for his poetry and threatened with the lose of his father's job. Such is the nature of Israel.

Darwish was quite for his remaining youth, but as an adult he continued to defy the authorities. Israeli security officers warned him not avoid references to Palestine and Palestinian attachment to the Holy Land. Darwish ignored their threats and for that was placed under house arrest.

This is Israel: Leaving children in tears, and threatening and forcibly confining poets.

Is this a nation worthy of your support?