Holy Week - Good Friday

Psalm 22

Do not be far from me,
For trouble is near
And there is no one to help. (Ps 22.11)

Sixty-three years ago this month, the Palestinian village of Deir Yassin was the scene of a massacre by Jewish paramilitaries. It was April 9, 1948, just before Israel declared its independence on May 15. There have been many accounts of what happened that day—for many years Israelis denied that a massacre had taken place, but in recent years, as government documents were made available, it has become clear that the Irgun and the Lehi Zionist paramilitary groups, fanatical offshoots of the Hagannah, were responsible for the killing of more than 100 villagers, including women and children.

Dr. Masin Qumsiyeh, who spoke in Denver I March, wrote this poem on the anniversary of the Dei Yassin massacre, as he returned home from his US visit: http://desertpeace.wordpress.com/2011/04/09/a-poem-for-juliano/

Deir Yassin to Gaza
by Mazin Qumsiyeh, written in honor of Juliano Mer Khamis, who was killed in Jenin April 4. Learn more about him on my April 8 blog post.

My kind old mother laments
Decades of memory that transcends
Fake Gods and fake peace offers
who bless nichsayon and slaughter
our eyes fail to see or just lament
blood of a child licked off a pavement
By stray thirsty cats
with more morals than army brats
Our ears fail to hear
voice of Dr. Izzeldinne echoes
"I shall not hate" his anguished cries
After three beautiful daughters
With a tank shell and in a niece in a slaughters
Our noses fail to smell
The whiff of death mixed with gun powder
Or the vomit of our tortured
Our hearts fail to feel
the punctured womb by the old home
the severed girl's head by the mosque dome
Mutilated,
dismembered,
disconnected
Our fingers fail to touch
an anguished young mother
Looking for a child
Jews, Christian, Muslims wail
The lost humanity to no avail
the generals must have their joy
to test their newest toy
in Gaza white phosphorous back in use yesterday
impunity from war crimes thanks to the US of A
billionaires must make more dollars
zealots must sacrifice children at altars
Gabriel can stay a knife but not drones
And hate can murder a thousand Julianos
While the apathetic multitude watch TV
Obliviously focused on their shopping spree
Bypassing love and responsibility
Chasing gadgets, hate, and vanity
Next news bulletin.... get the experience
Next anniversary..awaken the conscience?

Poem also published by Palestine News Network:
http://english.pnn.ps/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=9865&Itemid=

[You can read a detailed and well-documented description of what is believed to have happened at Deir Yassin on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deir_Yassin_massacre with pictures. Ilan Pappe writes about it in his book, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine.]