Within split seconds of hearing Rafeef Ziadah's spoken words for the first time, I recognized I was witnessing an explosion, an exquisite exclusively Palestinian star. A spoken word artist of courage, strength, freedom and beauty. And inside of a week, I watched as ‘We teach life, sir’--performed on November 12th at the Tabernacle in London in an evening of political performance poetry with Remi Kanazi and Special Guests--go viral and soar to over 90,000 hits by today. Below Ziadah performs her anthem, 'Shades of Anger', on that same evening.
Listen to Rafeef Ziadah radio interview describing the inspiration for "my anthem," Shades of Anger:
We were at York University doing a creative action ...a Zionist came by.. as I was lying on the floor he kicked me right in the gut really hard and said "You deserve to be raped before you have your terrorist children", and that really stuck with me... The only way I could deal with it was to write back my poem and the poem is... I may be angry but what I'm going to produce is your next rebel and you won't be able to stop us.
Rafeef Ziadah is a member of the steering committee of the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI), also a founding member of the Coalition Against Israeli Apartheid (CAIA) promoting the BDS campaign in the US, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand and an organizer of International Israeli Apartheid Week. Her debut CD Hadeel is dedicated to Palestinian youth.
she so hot she sizzles. i hope her anthem takes off like a rocket the way ‘We teach life, sir’ did because it is equally worthy. a dynamite work of art.
i’m tweeting this.
I hope that Rafeef can inspire some U.S. campus group to push for a Boycott-Israel resolution in their student government.
Don’t let our calls for boycott be censored:
link to annarbor.com
Thank you.
She is impressive. That was wonderful.
Jurgen Stroop, an SS commander in Warsaw during WWII , said:
“Flags and national colors are a means of combat exactly like a rapid-fire weapon, like thousands of such weapons.”
I’m sure for zionists ,a native, Palestinian language, a poem that touches a soul is also “a means of combat”.
If one knows ,that one is doing some evil, everything/anything that exposes it , is “a means of combat” that needs to be destroyed.
I think her “savage” is even better
link to youtube.com
Especially
-I have an immune system you can only dream of built on hamrah, hummus and fuul
and
-they tell me you’re Polish and some god promised you my land
-And of all the world decided to promise away my land
-Every rock in Jerusalem knows my last name
thanks for the heads up seafoid. maybe next week..savage.
Polish?? That’s interesting. She probabely means Polish Jews.
Many Jews from Israel now claim Poland as their country, just-in-case-if-things-are-not-going-to-work-out-well in Israel.
Are the Polish people happy??
They are as happy as Palestinias.
link to biweekly.pl
dumvitae,
Yeah I think she definitely meant Polish jews, unless you got catholic zionists who feel the need to kick women in the belly out there in Poland. (Hey did you know that mondo’s lovely Eva Smagacz is Polish too?)
Of course, I know about Eva being Polish:)
Please do not insult catholics. Only I have the right to do it:).
Sadly to say, there are some catholic zionists. Not so many like those brainless herds of american protestant/evangelical zionists, but yes, there are ,and I had a doubtful pleasure of conversing with some of them.
They believe in this idea of Israel a “Chosen Nation” yada, yada, ya.
I do not get it . This made me question an Old Testament a lot.
God in an Old Testament is not such a nice fellow.
And I’m being nice right now.
To gain an insight into the God of the Old Testament, I recommend the book The Bible Unearthed by Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman.
Ever read a book called: Not The Bible, #2 Best Seller?
Highly recommend it for some spiritual comic relief.
Thank you, but I will pass on it.
I just don’t have to figure out something that basically can’t be figured out anyway. I’m too confused with lots od things right now to further confuse ,intentionally , myself. I will let it go.
When,hopefully, one day , I will meet with God , I will ask Him a few questions. I focus more on the New Testament, and it is enough to make me ponder, question, doubt and search.
One of the best, most beautiful songs on the subject (great words).
“Who will light your path
Through the night?
When you travel the marshes
Toward which light
Will you turn your eyes?”
link to youtube.com
“To gain an insight into the God of the Old Testament, I recommend the book The Bible Unearthed by Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman.”
Hi gloopy, it was made into a fascinating 2-hour TV documentary available on Youtube:
link to youtube.com
Taxi,
I’m usually very careful with reading so called “bestsellers”.
I’ve read (parts of it) another best selling book ,”Conversations with God” a while ago. What a bunch of balooney.
I do not recommend it to anybody.
But thanks for the hint.
Walid,
This I may consider.
50 min or so to gain some insight.
Thanks Walid. And dumvitaestspesest, I’ll give you an even shorter version: the Israelites (who were actually Canaanites who wandered away from one place and set up shop in another) didn’t go around killing and conquering anyone, and God didn’t promise them anything. The books about David and Solomon were written a couple of centuries after their reign and is mostly propaganda for the then-ruler Josiah (David’s descendant). They elaborate even more on that in another book, David and Solomon. Using archeological evidence all over the area, including evidence unearthed by Israeli archeologists, they determined that a lot of the battles and stories in the OT either didn’t happen or happened, but involving different players, in more nuanced situations. IOW anyone who uses the Bible as proof that Palestine “belongs” to any one religion, or that God favors any one group of people over the others, are the same people who object to actual science being taught in schools instead of myths written by exiled Jews in Babylon thousands of years ago and their views collapse under any scrutiny.
dumvita, here is some music you might like.
link to youtube.com
link to youtube.com
link to youtube.com
link to youtube.com
The above are songs of reflection and longing.
This last one is a song of celebration, so expect quite a mood change.
link to youtube.com
Enjoy!
After I sent the last post, dumvita, I realised I had forgotten to include a great song, and that I had included a version of another that did not show the performers.
This first song is one I’ve loved from the day I heard it some 20 years ago. Great music, excellently sung, and lyrics that capture the attention, which I’ve just realised are so fitting in regard to what this site is about. With relevant visuals it could be used to very good effect.
One comment on it was
Lovely, lovely song and such a talented man – who puts his opinions and morality before a glossy video aimed at getting continual airplay. See this video once and you never forget it.
link to youtube.com
The song below is an alternate version of Leonard Cohen’s “If it be your will”, this time showing him and the Webb sisters.
link to youtube.com
“IOW anyone who uses the Bible as proof that Palestine “belongs” to any one religion, or that God favors any one group of people over the others, are the same people who object to actual science being taught in schools instead of myths written by exiled Jews in Babylon thousands of years ago and their views collapse under any scrutiny.”
Gloopygal, true the Jews are good at it, but they’re not alone in doing it. The Christians and Muslims to make their narratives fly are not averse to doing it too. What’s odd is how each one claims their book as the real thing and the other 2 wrong.
“You deserve to be raped before you have your terrorist children”
it never fails to astound me hearing misogynistic zio-colonialist diatribe.
She shoulda kicked him back and hard in the nuts to permanently diminish his sperm count and said: ‘This, sir, is for world peace!’
When the ex president of Apartheid isreal is a convicted RAPIST, and half the country wants gender segregation in public places, well, I mean, need I say more about the criminally sexist ‘culture’ of that (stolen) country?
I tell ya I can hardly wait for the next war, the guaranteed humiliation and fleeing of violent racist white euros from the middle east.
Yes in our lifetime we will see Apartheid israelistan go belly up!
half the country wants gender segregation in public places
things are going off the rails for womens rights in israel.
from ”
Human rights groups slam deal for all-male rabbinical judge appointments panel ”
link to haaretz.com
half the country wants gender segregation in public places
is there a link to that?
“things are going off the rails for womens rights in israel.”
I don’t know whether it will be the oligarchs, the settlers or the Orthodox that sink Israel first. The Israeli political system is incapable of standing up to unsustainable concentrations of power that act against the long term interest of the state of Israel. But there will be lots of time back in Galut to figure this out.
Did you say link?
Like the one that says 83% of tel aviv women have been sexually harassed in public?
link to haaretz.com
Oh there are many more: just google it dbg.
Pretty much the same zio-colonialist diatribe said in a more refined way by Golda Meir.
what I’m going to produce is your next rebel and you won’t be able to stop us
ok, i’ll shut up now.
I like her attitude . She’s right, of course.
It immediately brought to mind Mahmoud Darwish’s ‘ID Card’:
Record!/ I am an Arab/ You have stolen the orchards of my ancestors/ And the land which I cultivated/ Along with my children/ And you left nothing for us/ Except for these rocks./ … Record on the top of the first page: I do not hate people/ Nor do I encroach/ But if I become hungry/ The usurper’s flesh will be my food/ Beware/ Beware/ Of my hunger/ And my anger!”
It reminded me of this
link to umkahlil.blogspot.com
Seven Palestinian Children
A response to Caryl Churchill’s Seven Jewish Children:
Tell her Bassem always smiled. Tell her that Bassem was killed because he wanted to live on and tend his own land in Bil’in. Tell her Bassem wasn’t involved in any ‘violent’ protest. Tell her he was telling the soldiers to stop throwing tear gas projectiles because a woman was wounded. Tell her when people ask ‘Where is the Palestinian Gandhi’ that Bassem is one of many Palestinian Gandhis. Tell them the morning that Bassem was killed he gave medicine to Hamis, whose skull was broken because he wanted to live on and tend his own land in Bil’in. Tell her that people from all of the surrounding villages came to Bassem’s funeral. Tell her that Bassem still walks with us.
Tell her that Ghassan was blown up in his car with his thirteen year old niece, Lamees,whom he loved very much. Tell her that Ghassan wrote a story for each of Lamees’ birthdays. Tell him that Annie, his wife, heard the explosion but “could not find Ghassan.” She could only find his left leg. Tell her that Ghassan’s son “started knocking his head against the wall.” Tell her that “little Lalya was crying: ‘Baba . . . Baba.’”
Tell her that he was killed for writing that Palestine was a land filled with people:
I saw the long line of the big cars enter Lebanon leaving faraway the land of oranges…I started weeping in a loud sharp way…your mother was still looking in silence to the
oranges…In your father’s eyes were the reflection of all the orange trees he had left
behind for the Israelis …all the clean orange trees he had planted one by one glittered
in his face. He failed to stop the tears that filled up his eyes, when facing the police
head officer. When we reached Saida, in the afternoon, we became refugees.
Tell her that Kamel Nasser was a beloved poet. Tell her that Ehud Barak, the Lithuanian-Pole, dressed up like a woman and shot him in the mouth and his right hand. Tell her that Kamel was babysitting for some friends who went to Jordan for a funeral when Ehud Barak burst into his bedroom and shot up the right hand which held a pen that wrote:
Shed no tears in sorrow for me
For in my homeland
Life is degradation and wounds
And in my eyes the call of danger rings.
Beloved, if word of my death reaches you
And the lovers cry out:
The loyal one has departed, his visage gone forever,
And fragrance has died within the bosom of the flower
Shed no tears…smile on life
And tell my only one, my loved one,
The dark recesses of your father’s being
Have been touched by visions of his people.
Tell her that Dr. Salman Abu Sitta dedicates his life to recording the names of the villages which the genocidal Pole David Ben Gurion, whose real name is David Gruen, changed from Arabic. Tell her that Dr. Salman’s atlas contains “40,000 names which were in use in Palestine in 1948 and prior.” Tell her that this atlas “shows the locations and the names of 1300 towns and villages, 10,000 religious, cultural and historic landmarks and 20,000 place names.” Tell her that these “names are the vocabulary of Palestinian life.” Tell her that Dr. Salman’s painstaking labors were in part so that “the young generation who have not seen their homes but heard about it, can navigate through it and find where their villages were and where their lands were, so they can reconstruct Palestine.” Tell her that Dr. Salman warns the Jewish people,
“. . . the history of Jews will ultimately be marked indelibly, and above all other historical
events, by what they have done in Palestine.”
Tell her that you may as well forget saying you’re Palestinian if Jews are in the room. Tell her that if Jews are in the room the room fills up with their suffering, and there is no room for yours. Tell her that if you find yourself at a workshop about social oppression with African-American table mates and they tell you their hot button is that they don’t like it when people ask “What are you,” and you tell them, “I like it when people ask me what I am because my people are vilified and demonized as terrorists and I like to tell them what I am so they’ll see we aren’t all terrorists,” to forget getting up and speaking to the group even if your table mates force you because no sooner than you’re done speaking a Jew in the room will stand up and say “I am a Jew and we are hated all over the world so I don’t tell people that I’m Jewish because Jews get killed for being Jews.” No, don’t tell her that because it’s Anti-Semitic.
Tell her that you may commemorate the Holocaust every day, but may not teach about injustice in regard to Palestine. No don’t tell her that. Tell her that one must sort of teach around injustice and Palestine. Tell her you may teach Cry, the Beloved Country, but don’t talk about apartheid and Palestine. Tell her that we’re the Jews’ Jews and Hitler’s final victims. Tell her that we’re f*****d. No, don’t tell her that. Tell her that we will “forget the bitter days.” Tell her “we shall return.” Tell her that one day we will not be forced to keep many things inside us.
Tell her that she has every right to live on her own land and to tend her own olives. Tell her she has every right to live from where her grandmother was forced into exile. Tell her that she has every right to live where her grandfather was gunned down when he tried to return to his home. Tell her she has every right to ‘pick the fruits.’ of her land. Tell her she has every right to remove their poison from our wells. Tell her to shun their peace process. Tell her it’s a ruse. A ruse as they salivate anticipating the annihilation of our presence on our land . Tell her that their concern for demographics is racist and hateful. Tell her that there is no compromise with evil. Tell her that there is no compromise. And tell her not to be intimidated by those who call those of us who want to go to our homes extremists.
Tell her that our smiling Bassem loved her. Tell her that our gifted Ghassan loved her. Tell her that gentle Kamel loved her. Tell her that Dr. Salman labors with love for her. Tell her that Raja Shehadeh who writes with love for a landscape he walks, now desecrated by people who lied that they made the desert bloom, loves her. Tell her that we once lived peacefully with Jews. Tell her that we may “breathe,” but we must also “eat.” Tell her that we may “have our house,” but we also need our “children.” Tell her they can’t kill us all. Tell her to remain resolute and to keep up her spirits.
Tell her Bassem wasn’t involved in any ‘violent’ protest. Tell her he was telling the soldiers to stop throwing tear gas projectiles because a woman was wounded. Tell her when people ask ‘Where is the Palestinian Gandhi’ that Bassem is one of many Palestinian Gandhis. Tell her that Bassem still walks with us.
link to maannews.net
iRevolt,
You beat me to it.
Over the years, I slowly realised that while we in the west often measure our civilisation by quantity of output, with hundreds of thousands of books printed and forgotten, there are countries where books are fewer, writing cherished, poems memorised, words savoured, and familiar to all like fables.
I became more humble in my assessment of “superiority” of my, western, civilisation.
RE: “…a Zionist came by.. as I was lying on the floor he kicked me right in the gut really hard and said ‘You deserve to be raped before you have your terrorist children’ ” ~ Rafeef Ziadah
A MID-AUTUMN EVENING’S MUSICAL INTERLUDE, brought to you by the makers of new Zingocaine X-treme®:
John Lennon: “Crippled Inside” (VIDEO, 03:56) – link to youtube.com
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This Rafeef lady has one powerful voice. Israel is spending many millions of dollars on their hasbara and this one lady can come out and erase millions of dollars of propaganda with a performance like this.
This reminds me of the Vietnam war (sounds silly but bear with me). The US threw its entire military might against Vietnam’s National Liberation Front. We put in literally billions of dollars into this one tiny country whose natural GDP was a fraction of what we were spending. At that time I saw an estimate that one Vietnamese rebel armed with an AK47 cost the US close to a half a million dollars to confront. I recall one observer pointing out that wouldn’t it be cheaper to send all of those Viet Cong rebels to Harvard.
Israel is in the same dilemma. A single Rafeef comes along and the Adelson/Moskowitz funded hasbara organizations will feel the need to invest 10s of millions of dollars to counter her voice. But they will only fail. Such is the fate of Western colonial movements.
thanks toivo. yeah.
Wonderful!!