Separation wall
It’s funny there’s a sidewalk here. I walked with my finger tips touching the huge blocks of the great, made-to-scare-me wall. I didn’t look at the graffiti; I know it very well. The sky was halfway eaten by the wall, and the sun was no better. I stumbled with a stone, which was probably thrown by some of my friends yesterday. I sat down where I stumbled and grabbed the stone, stared at it for a minute, and threw it to the other side of the wall. I listened for an aw, a curse word, footsteps , a call, a whisper, or a gun shot. Nothing. I kept on walking. It didn’t seem to end. My finger tips were now colored with all dry paint colors. I stopped. Turned my face to the wall. Put both my hands on it. I pushed. I kept pushing, my arms straight, my teeth stressed, my legs rooted to the ground, the paint of the graffiti’s smell going through my lungs, the man on the other sidewalk stopping to see what will come out of this. My feet started backing the other way. A sound from inside me broke out to a scream. I collapsed to the ground crying. And, the man on the other sidewalk giggled and went on walking.
(Crossposted at Rawan Yaghi's blog We Resist)
The wall always strikes me as so ironic. Jews out of the WWII ghettos, built themselves another ghetto in Israel.
RE: “Jews out of the WWII ghettos, built themselves another ghetto in Israel.” ~ American
MY REPLY: I guess they decided that they did not want to be “beyond the pale”* .
* JPEG IMAGE – link to facebook.com
“BEYOND THE PALE”, phrases.org.uk:
SOURCE – link to phrases.org.uk
RE: “JPEG IMAGE – link to facebook.com” – me, above
ELABORATION: This capture (of medieval Sweden) is from the following film.
Arn: The Knight Templar (Arn: Tempelriddaren), 2007, R, 133 minutes [a very good, but not great, film - J.L.D.]
Based on Jan Guillou’s Crusades trilogy about Swedish Knight Templar Arn Magnusson (Joakim Nätterqvist), this adventure saga follows the son of nobility from his monastic education to his return to the family to help fight for the crown of Sweden. That mission is interrupted, however, when Arn impregnates his lover and is sent to the Holy Land, where as penance he must become a warrior for Christ in the battles of the Crusades [with an interesting segment regarding Saladin*].
Language: Swedish (English subtitles) DVD/Blu-ray has English audio option.
Netflix Availability: Streaming, DVD and Blu-ray
NETFLIX LISTING – link to movies.netflix.com
Arn: The Knight Templar, Movie Trailer – link to youtube.com
* P.S. So much for the power of the “True Cross”!
The wall used to confiscate more Palestinian land.
link to icj-cij.org
Moving piece. The mention of the grafitti reminds me of this story about street artist Banksy.
see: link to briansewell.com
[be sure to check out the pictures in the link if you haven't already seen them]
Throughout Rawan’s writing, one can find the deep narrative of Palestine.
Keep telling the story.
Mainly due to israel, Gaza is living a hell, the siege, the aggression, the murder, the crimes, the lack of almost everything (except dignity; Gaza has plenty of that). However, we I think of the miserable conditions of the West Bank. I come to believe that the situation there is much much worse than it is in Gaza, the Wall, the checkpoints, the daily night raids & arrests, the settlements, the jews-only highways, land grab, human rights violation and (mom insists I add this) PA (which means minus dignity) make life in the West Bank a living hell. My heart bleeds for the West Bank.
Rawan is another story, one of dignity, of a little body insisting on carrying on the toughest project of all, the project of living.
dem walls
anything more hateful than a wall of separation?
a concentration camp?
what’s that but a place with a wall surrounding it?
like at the warsaw ghetto?
like in gaza and the west bank
i love everything Rawan writes. everything everything everything.
“It’s funny…”
Yes. One pipsqueak of a girl, mebbe a hundred and not very many pounds, attempting to push over tons of concrete wall. Of course the fellow on the other side of the street couldn’t suppress a giggle! The sheer absurdity of it. Wonderful! Every little push helps.
i know, she is a little pipsqueak too..but she packs a powerful punch with her writing.
It is so convenient to forget why this wall was built. Ten years ago Israel had endured a barrage of terrorist attacks including the Passover massacre in Netanya. Sadly it had no choice if it was to not succumb to these blatant attempts to destroy it.
Too bad it doesn’t serve as protection for Palestinians against IDF terrorist attacks. You’d think that’s the least they could have done…you know, given whose land they built it on. Poor, poor Israel. Maybe the next attack, massacre, assassination, administrative detention, humiliation, Jew-only road, etc.. will be the one that will finally make Israel really safe for good. Gotta keep working at it, right?
@elephantine: Seems like you cannot get enough of the propaganda shtick about Jewish-only roads.
Check here link to israelmatzav.blogspot.com.au before you try to fool us with your fakery.
And try the roads in Saudi Arabia next time you get a chance if you want a real good taste of apartheid.
LMAO. Oh, okay, so these roads, built on occupied land, by occupying forces which are virtually all Jews, are only not permitted to be used by the people being occupied, which in this context is non-Jews, are only “de facto Jew-only roads.” And this is supposed to make your Judeo-supremacist fantasy land look good?? What a depraved people you zionists are.
They are Jewish-only roads. Theoretically, Israeli Arabs can use them, but those Arabs are not allowed to live in the illegal settlements, so in reality, they are Jewish-only roads.
I’m sorry that you think so little of Israel that you use one of the world’s more vile tirranies as a yard stick. I do love how you hasbrats are so quick to compare Israel with the dictatorships in the region, yet when the question of Israel’s nukes is beough up in the media, Israeli leaders are quick to denounce such moral equivalnce as an outrage.
You people are a joke.
Yeah, what a putty the Palesrinians dudn’t build one of these along the borders laid out by UNGAR181. That would have prevented terror attacks by both sides and stopped Israel building it’s own, which serves no purpose but ro grab land.
This abomination does nothing to stop terror attacks. 1,500 Palesrinians manage to climb over, around and through this monument to Ziofascim every week. A suicide bomber would have no problem getting into Israel.
The only reason suicide attacks ended was because Hamas called an end to them.
That’s a load of crap. If the wall were built behind the green line, the lame zio excuse would be facially plausible. But the way that it was routed simply demonstrates that it was further theft, oppression and Nakba.
“Ten years ago Israel had endured a barrage of terrorist attacks including the Passover massacre in Netanya.”
And the Palestinians have suffered worse for longer. So bag your excuses.
>> It is so convenient to forget why this wall was built.
It is so convenient to forget that the religion-supremacist Jewish state was born of terrorism and ethnic cleansing.
It is so convenient to forget that the religion-supremacist Jewish state remains engaged in a 60+ years, ON-GOING and offensive (i.e., not defensive) campaign of aggression, oppression, theft, colonization, destruction and murder.
It is so convenient to forget that the religion-supremacist Jewish state refuses to halt this campaign immediately and completely, despite having the power to do so.
It is so convenient to forget that the religion-supremacist Jewish state refuses to enter into sincere negotiations for a just and mutually-beneficial peace.
But, yeah, it’s all the Palestinians’ fault. Poor little religion-supremacist Jewish state… :-(
@eljay: which alternative do you subscribe to? The one-state democratic fantasy which Israeli Jews would never accept unless they lost all sanity and became suicidal or another religion-supremacist Islamic state of which there are all too many repressive examples dotted across the Middle East.
>> @eljay: which alternative do you subscribe to?
I’ve stated on several occasions that I support the idea of two secular, egalitarian and democratic states: Israel, the nation state of and for all Israelis equally; and Palestine (or whatever it is to be called), the nation state of and for all Palestinians equally.
This post generally sums it up.
>> This post generally sums it up.
I messed up the link, so let me try again: This post generally sums it up.
It’s a crime against nature, an eyesore representing a crime against humanity. Zionist Jews are destroying the Holy Land with settlements, walls and gulags. They’re destroying the Holy Land with their inhumanity.
and they got their sights on destroying the world. it’s called revisiting the masada end times.