Israel/Palestine
Related: About this forumThe Mizrahi Thorn in the Side of Israeli Left
Roy Hasan has been described as the Israeli Eminem. The subversive, indignant, radical 32-year-old Mizrahi poet from a housing project outside Haifa received the prestigious Bernstein Prize and an award of 50,000 NIS from the Israeli Publishers Association this past July.
His provocative poem If Therell Be Peace, All the Arsim Will Come sheds light on the complex dynamic in Israel between the white Jewish left and Mizrahim, Jews of Middle Eastern descent. The poem calls out Ashkenazim Jews of European origins for hypocrisy, hegemony, and all around ass-hole-itude, as it has been described by the radio station TLV1.
In order to fully understand [the poem] you need to have grown up here or live the reality of Israeli society, Hasan told me in an email exchange.
The poem focuses on local, everyday Israel through Hasans point of view. He criticizes privileged socialists who participate in capitalism, and leftist atheists who scorn religious Judaism, but ostensibly respect Islam.
Read more: http://forward.com/culture/320255/the-mizrahi-thorn-in-israels-leftist-side/#ixzz3ktvm4EuD
I just love those
socialists who hate capitalism
so ostentatiously, wear ugly sandals
and torn t-shirts, wrapping themselves in a homeless look
without telling a soul about grandmas inheritance or dads real estate
(they look homeless too)
and criticize the culture of affluence with bombast
as if they were prophets of vengeance with gurgling stomachs.
I just love those
who wish their Arab brothers
Ramadan Kareem
and sign petitions legalizing
the sale of hametz during Passover.
I just love those
who relish in the muazzins call
and see the Chabad or Breslav
truck in the neighborhood
as the devils wheeled messengers.
I just love those
who call the settlers messianic
and crazy because they believe in this land
by some godly decree
and cry the pain of the Palestinians
for having been expelled from this land
which they believe to be theirs
by some godly decree
(the very same decree from the very same god, by the way).
I just love those,
third generation to the
plunder of lands by the kibbutzim,
who boycott the settlements
because Occupation and stolen land
(I dream one day
to have the privilege
of boycotting cultural events on kibbutzim
as a political act, in the meantime
I suffice with charging them weekend rates
on weekdays).
I just love those
sensitive Jews who demonstrate against the Occupation
and go home to their
Arab house in Yaffo
which they call Yaffa
with a melancholy glance of
shared fate over hummus
at Abu something-or-other
licking their lips with every
wipe of the pita and
murmuring about ending the Occupation,
dreaming of two states for two nations
because walla
(they fumble for the Arabic)
Occupation Occupation
(or nakba nakba):
next to them but not with them,
theyre Arabs after all.
An Arab friend said about them once
that theyll never make peace,
because if therell be peace
all the arsim[1] will come.
guillaumeb
(42,641 posts)Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)underthematrix
(5,811 posts)European in America, Europeans in Africa, Europeans in Asia, Europeans in the Middle East, Europeans in Central and South America, Europeans in Australia.
More than 85% of the world's population are people of color. The Middle East is comprised of brown peeps so I'm pretty sure Jesus' feet were not white or pink.
Less (white) cannot produce more (brown/black) so the idea that European Jews can lay claim to an area to which they could never have come from is rich. But that is the nature of Europeans, always claiming other people's lands and resources and then building totally illogical narratives to reinforce their treachery.
I'm not mad. I'm just stating the facts. And social media has become a powerful tool for deconstructing the treachery and exposing it for what it is.
6chars
(3,967 posts)That's a classic.
underthematrix
(5,811 posts)It was established in Palestine in 1947. My point is Europeans are not native to the Middle East. people in the Middle East do not have PINK SKIN. PINK skin is much more common among Europeans.
Response to underthematrix (Reply #4)
6chars This message was self-deleted by its author.
underthematrix
(5,811 posts)King_David
(14,851 posts)grossproffit
(5,591 posts)Mosby
(16,319 posts)Some descended from families in Roman controlled Israel and Judea.
Genetically they are close to Kurds.
leftynyc
(26,060 posts)You would have thought the DNA proof would have been enough to put this bullshit to a stop but here it is, on DU - a supposed liberal board.
6chars
(3,967 posts)i take it as a person who is uninformed/misinformed.
there are some people with an agenda who put out pseudo papers on this kind of thing, and it then gets passed on through more and more repetition and so people who aren't really paying attention sort of absorb it as part of their worldview. but it is necessary to correct it, including when things get conveyed in places like DU, so that this misinformation doesn't propagate.
leftynyc
(26,060 posts)who post on political boards - those with higher than average IQs and education - the benefit of the doubt. He/she is just trying to find a audience receptive to that crap.
shira
(30,109 posts)I'm constantly asked where I come from & the guesses range from Spain to Italy to Armenia.
It's really rich you believe European Jews are white. We weren't treated as whites for centuries in Europe, but now we're white?
Unbelievable.
Israeli
(4,151 posts)Here is another for you :
Open Letter to a Small Town Boy
Shlomi Hatuka
Dont enlist
This is rebellion
In any case
you wont gain a thing
All of the promises
are reserved for whites
and all of the concessions
are promised to their children
and anyhow no right
is worth your mothers tears,
or his
Whats the use
of your hands adjusting to the feel of metal
and your eyes seeing friends
through the gun sight
and why should you hear
commanders barking
youre better off with
professions of love
from a girl
Go to the army shrink
tell him
about your dreams-
hell think that youre mad
Go to the doctor
ask him
why they make sure that you are healthy
just before sending
you to die
Take these three years
give them to your heart:
a good
firing zone
its the place
that blurs the boundaries
Or at least
give them to your mind
take three years to think
study
acquire knowledge
for even if you do wish to fight and kill
surely you must first discover
who exactly
your enemy is.
source: https://ilanot.wordpress.com/open-letter-to-a-small-town-boy/
guillaumeb
(42,641 posts)A very beautiful expression, especially the part:
of your hands adjusting to the feel of metal
and your eyes seeing friends
through the gun sight
and why should you hear
commanders barking
youre better off with
professions of love
"and you eyes seeing friends through the gun sight".
Think of that. Seven words that get to the very heart of the matter. ALL of the inhabitants of historic Palestine share the same genetic heritage, the same Semitic heritage. They may call God by a slightly different name, but they share a common
belief in the one God, a common religious heritage. A path to God that went from Judaism to Christianity to Islam.
It is truly cousin fighting cousin, and like the US civil war, like every civil war in every country, the echoes of this family war will resonate for many years.
Finally,
surely you must first discover
who exactly
your enemy is.
The enemy is those who would divide cousin from cousin, worker from worker, in the name of power and profit.
Thank you for the poem, and the link, Israeli.
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)not saying that the left is evil.
He's wrong to defend the West Bank settlers, but other than that there's a lot of validity in those lyrics.
Israeli
(4,151 posts)and hate ....just like Shlomi Hatuka is Ken .
They both have good reason ...
see : http://972mag.com/the-tragedy-of-the-lost-yemenite-children-in-the-footsteps-of-the-adoptees/85930/
the " enemy " they both talk of is the Ashkenazi elite .
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)made a cataclysmic social and political blunder in refusing to include the Mizrahim in their "social democratic" vision of the new state. The Mizhahim were and are mainly working-class and poor and would have been receptive to a left program that treated them as equals. The Askenazim, from the 1to940's onward, refused to see this and evidently couldn't imagine the Mizrahim playing any role in the building of Israel other than as low-skilled cheap labor), leaving the Mizrahim open to false "populist" appeals from the right(who took their votes and then pitted the Mizrahim against the Israeli Arabs and Palestinians in the Territories for low-status jobs and lives, just as economic elites in the States pitted and continue to pit working-class whites against African-Americans, Latinos and Native Americans). This is largely why the Mizrahim are more right-of-center than any other voting bloc in Israel and also why they tend to be much more hawkish towards and contemptuous towards Israeli Arabs and Palestinians than other blocs within that country).
Not that you didn't know all of that, of course, Israeli(I would never intentionally subject you to "goysplaining" , but some other people checking on the I/P group may not be aware of that background.