cover image: Snow Blindness by Sophie Fyfe
A note from the editors:
Dear Reader,
On the day of our writing this note, it has been 412 days since the initiation of the genocide of the people of Palestine by the state of Israel and 27,949 days since the official recognition of this latter state by the U.S. war machine.
In the shadow of 300,000+ unaccounted-for deaths of unidentified Palestinians, and 40,000+ accounted-for deaths of identified Palestinians, as well as the extension of the genocide past the borders of the occupied territories of Palestine and into Lebanon, there is little appropriate to share in the wake of this horrible, heartbreaking, and unbearable loss of human life. In lieu of a note, we would like to instead share these statistics and the words of Mahmoud Darwish. Darwish was a Palestinian poet and author of the Palestinian Declaration of Independence, which formally established the state of Palestine and was proclaimed in Algeria in November, 1988.
From the Fall 2002 issue of BOMB Magazine (emphasis added):
Raja Shehadeh: When did you start to take yourself seriously as a poet?
Mahmoud Darwish: I don’t. What I take seriously is poetry. The irony is that this first happened through the Israeli military governor....
I was 12 years old. My village was under Israeli military rule. I was at the top of my class and was invited during the celebration for the independence of Israel to read something that I wrote. It was, of course, a poem that reflected on our situation as Arabs forced to celebrate Israel’s Independence Day.
The next day the military governor called me to his office and scolded me for writing such a poem.... The incident made me wonder: The strong and mighty state of Israel gets upset by a poem I wrote! This must mean that poetry is a serious business. My deliberate act of writing the truth as I deeply and honestly felt it was a dangerous activity.
RS: Did you go alone to meet the military governor?
MD: Yes, I was all alone, a boy of 12 responding to a summons by none other than the military governor who had been upset by a poem that I wrote. Imagine!
FREE PALESTINE. FREE LEBANON. GLORY TO THE MARTYRS.
Signed,
The Editors