Pallywood
The computer underlines the word
In red– wrong, no such word.
But there is such a word
(See Wikipedia).
Words are made up
Make themselves up
Words are wild
Words are actors.
Pallywood means Palestinian propaganda.
I like the word, brainchild of historian Richard Landes,
Because it hints at a light-hearted core
In his bleak imaginings of the Palestinians.
(Israel, high-tech, prosperous, the only democracy
In the Middle East, more deserving of the annual
Allowance from its special friends in Washington
Than Puerto Rico and shithole states,
Israel does not need propaganda.)
My bringing up of this snide term of endearment
Is prompted by a recent inconclusive investigation
By an Israeli multidisciplinary committee
Of a medley of Palestinian blonds acting
As a family defending village land.
I can empathize with the suspicions
Of the members of the committee.
A whole family of blonds would be European,
At least of European origin,
As asserted in the published part of its report.
Palestinian families, we know, are dark,
Like, say, my family, even though my mother was blond.
We are Arabs, and Arab genes revert to their darkness,
Never mind my uncle Shaakir’s all-blond family,
Which only proves every rule has a blond exception.
Palestinians like playing with words,
Like actors. Remember Edward Said,
Whose organic name was Muhammad,
Not Edward. And he knew it.
He had lobbied his father to name him Edward
Because he wanted to be a European,
And more precisely, a European organic intellectual
Who speaks truth to power. Imagine.
In reality, Edward was his blond nom de guerre
When Palestinians were genuine
Terrorists, strutting in olive oil-green fatigues.
Today, Pallywood pictures them as genuine victims.
A brazen case in point is the clip from the village
Of al-Nabi Saleh, the Prophet Saleh
(No doubt, a fictional place name,
Has anyone ever heard of a prophet Saleh?),
Built tactlessly in the middle of Israeli settlements.
There a blond girl was prompted to play
The daughter of blond parents
And with her small hand slap
The half-bared soldier’s face
Because he re-acts with restraint
While being filmed by a crowd of cell phones.
The sequel was predictable:
The army will cuff the girl’s reckless hands
And the courts corral her into jail
As they did a million others before
With no discrimination as to age
Or gender, only national origin.
And the reel will go viral
And the village be embraced
As the blond victim, darling
Of human rights believers, far left academics, doped artists,
Over-rated writers, self-serving foreign aid agents, anti-Semites,
Jews not in love with Israel, endangered liberation theologians,
Nostalgic labor leaders—the usual suspects.
Palestinians, it must be conceded,
are actors ad absurdum,
and can’t get off the stage.
Didn’t they sell their dear land to Jews
For a handful of sterling pounds?
Didn’t they abandon their homes in 1948?
And would do it again, if forced to?
See, trouble looms
Palestinians are acting.
ad absurdum, in context is very clever, perhaps a hakka for the made up Prophet, who warned about the limits of power and the illusion of dominion,
would anyone in the west have noticed this child if she were black or meek, i enjoyed the interplay of the impossible and the inevitable dear Dr.
Palestinians made up but an inevitable reality all the same, there’s nothing to aad.
let us not discount the possibility of sudden calamity, ar rajfah, as sayhah, this is our lot.
I smiled several times while enjoying your poem. Thank you very much!
Thank you Sharif
Wonderful and bitingly clever poem. Thank you, it was a pleasure reading it.
I have a bad feeling that if the spot light goes away the Israelis will hurt this blond kid real bad if they haven’t already.