BEING FOR "PEACE NOW" IS
OFTEN MORE SELF-SERVING THAN HELPFUL
MER - In these terribly depressing and confusing days while the "Palestinan Authority" arrests professors, journalists and human rights leaders; while Israeli troops masquerading as Arabs have become "death squads" and apartheid-style barricades and regulations of the "autonomous" areas are common-place; and while Arafat's lieutenants are begging for meetings with Ariel Sharon and thanking him for his contributions to the "peace process" -- this moving poem by a Palestinian woman intimately familiar with the tragedies of her people and the duplicitous words of help often sent their way. 7/7/97.
W A T C H M E B L E E D
by L.M.Hashim (Um Ahmad)
Come, my brother, enter herein - enter my life. You wanted to know. You wanted to see. Come taste my strife.
You speak of peace so easily - not knowing my war - not feeling my pain. Your "justice of all" is only "justice for few" while the guilty remain.
You want us to put our weapons down, while their weapons persist. For you - easy talk. For you- food, family and freedom exist.
It might make you feel good to speak out on aggression and say that you care. But that does not give you license to make my decisions while I am not there.
You set up your conferences to "educate others" on our situation. Yet, you pick your own speakers to represent us while we lose our nation.
You say you are with us and convince all around you it is peace that you seek. You say you will listen. You say you will hear us, but you won't let us speak.
And you with the peace signs, organizing your marches, please only yourselves. You think your good thoughts can alone change the world like your signs on the shelves.
You must face reality You think it is simple - it simply is not. Reality is watching your land taken away and your relatives shot.
Two fingers up does not stop a bullet and make everything right. Righteous indignation does you no good if you won't see the light.
You ask lots of questions, but won't hear our answers about what we need. The only thing left is for me to invite you to come watch me bleed...
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