Talofa dear reader
I’m sitting down quietly shaking with rage-dread-disgust after listening to the faux-humble voice of David Seymour on RNZ, badly disguising his triumph on his ‘appointment’ as HRH-half-pie-Deputy-PM. The only thing that stops me from wanting to walk into the sea fully clothed never to return is the teeny-tiny relief that at least he is not Minister of Treaty of Waitangi Negotiations, or Minister of Pacific Peoples or Minister of Arts and Culture.
When someone send me a tweet a while back with a ‘leak’ that Seymour was going to be Minister of Arts and Culture, I felt something akin to panic. I saw David (fresh from the smouldering ashes of Ministry of Pacific Affairs) dressed as Guy Fawkes, conical hat, low over his gleaming squinty eyes, ferret chin set resolutely, lighting a powder keg under the arts in Aotearoa and watching it explode into a shower of snuffed out creative sparks.
Little relief to the country today. It’s a dark day for Te Tiriti and Aotearoa. My small bright-side is like sifting through the bomb-blast for grains of rice.
For now, I will give mention of Seymour a rest, but keep your eyes out for part one of the David and Me Saga that I’ll post next week.
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I was planning to go to the Gaza protest here in Otautahi (but alas foiled by epileptic seizures earlier today). The protesters will walk the length of Gaza (41 kms) around and around Hagley Park. Such a small space to contain so much death.
I was going to take a megaphone with me and read a poem over and over, but there are protests most weeks, so, I’ll wait till I’m seizure-free.
I wrote this poem in 2014 in response to that particular Gaza war (there have been so many since 1948). The 2014 war ended after the slaughter of 3000 people. This 2023 war numbers 14,000+ and still rising.
In 1997-8 I lived on the Egyptian side of South Sinai, on the Red Sea, a 3 hour drive from the Israeli border. Because I spent a year in South Sinai (for no good reason other than arriving there during my travels, loving it and deciding to stay) I took a share-taxi to Israel every 3 months to renew my visa. During those visits, I would wander about in Israel; I made a number of friends who are still friends today. They are dear and difficult friendships, as you might imagine, particularly at this time in history.
Palestine was a lot more difficult to ‘wander’ and make friends in. It was a relatively peaceful time. Relatively. Palestine was not being bombed to blood and dust then but it was very much in lockdown by the Israeli Army. I could visit but there was a strictly enforced curfew when each day I was there, I would have to leave and return to Israel. It certainly was not lost on me that the vast majority of Palestinians could not make this trip; this trip from third world to first world separated by a few steps, an impenetrable razor-wired fence and the might of the Israeli army. I spent a little time in Gaza and the West Bank and Jericho.
It wasn’t until much later, that I met and made friends with diasporic Palestinians. One of those people is Izzeldin Abuelaish. He is a paediatrician who would commute between his home in Gaza and two children’s hospitals in Israel, where he cared for Israeli children. During the 2009 Gaza War, during an Israeli television interview beaming into Israeli homes, Izzeldin’s house was bombed by the IDF. The bomb landed in his daughters’ bedroom killing his 3 daughters.
All this was caught live during the interview while Israeli viewers watched. The Israeli interviewer was able to send an ambulance into Gaza to Izzeldin’s house and give medical help to his family – the ones who were not killed immediately.
I’m going to include the link to that video here, but, trigger warning: it is upsetting viewing
Izzeldin went on to write the book, I Shall Not Hate . This is his philosophy, despite losing his children. It is an extraordinary book by an extraordinary man. I encourage you to read it.
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I cannot write a poem about Gaza
for Izzeldin Abuelaish and everyone
I cannot write a poem about Gaza because I cannot eat a whole desert.
I cannot write a poem about Gaza because I cannot go to bed with the stiff little babies and the bodies of children, there is no room for the little lost limbs, the disembodied arms yanked off like parts in a doll hospital.
I cannot write a poem about Gaza because if I speak up for the bodies of babies, for the pieces of children, for the women pulling out their own eyes, you will call me anti-Semitic and I must allow the blood of thousands to absolve me.
I cannot write a poem about Gaza because my fury and my grief will rise up out of my chest like a missile plotted on a computer in Tel Aviv, it will track me, pinpoint me and in a perfect arc, it will whine down out of the surgical sky, enter the top of my head and implode me.
I cannot write a poem about Gaza because Israel has a right to protect itself Israel has a right to protect itself Israel has a right to protect itself Israel has a right to protect itself Israel has a right to protect itself Israel has a right to protect itself Israel has a right to protect itself.
And Gaza does not.
I cannot write a poem about Gaza because behind every human shield is another human shield and another human shield and another human shield and another human shield and another human shield. And behind that human shield - is a human.
I cannot write a poem about Gaza because it's complicated, so complicated, very, very complicated. So, I cannot write a poem about Gaza until I finish a PhD in Middle Eastern Politics and the Holocaust, until I am reborn a Jew and live under the iron dome myself.
I cannot write a poem about Gaza because Tamar in Tel Aviv has got to get to the supermarket and the garden centre before the next siren. She's putting plants in their bomb shelter and the kids' favourite toys and treats, to make it less depressing.
I cannot write a poem about Gaza because Fatima in Gaza City has 58 seconds to evacuate her house with her babies before the missile strikes and the only way out is the sea. She has seen pictures on TV of babies thrown into pools and swimming instinctively.
I cannot write a poem about Gaza because there is an impenetrable iron dome that covers the entire state. It covers each mind and each heart, except for the few that line up and demand to be imprisoned.
I cannot write a poem about Gaza because of my friends: Tamar, Shira, Yael, Michal, Noya, David, Yair in Tel Aviv and Nazareth and Beersheva. Because every time I point to the blood-soaked I upset them, offend them, anger them, betray them. Let them go.
I cannot write a poem about Gaza because of my friend Izzeldin and his three exploded daughters and one exploded niece filleted across his living room.
I cannot write a poem about Gaza because I can do the maths. If two thousand one hundred and sixty-eight dead Palestinians divided by sixty-nine dead Israelis equals. Find the true value of one Palestinian.
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We are all wondering what we can do. Join a protest, below is the link for nation-wide protests today.
As -salamu alaykum/ Peace be upon you
Peace be upon us all.
Shalom Miri, such a painful time for us as onlookers - imagining what it must be be like for you with your whakapapa. And for those in Gaza - all words fall millions of miles short, but our voices are often all we have. Thanks for you insight. Alofa xx
💔 this poem is so powerful - thanks for sharing the backstory. I am a Jew and I can't write a poem about Gaza without getting accused of being antisemitic either, which is a truly bizarre experience. I did write this around the time of the 2014 siege but I'm not sure it works. I was (unsuccessfully) trying to learn some Hebrew at the time, thinking a lot about the 'right to return' and watching all the brutality on the news. Came to the conclusion that if a Palestinian refugee doesn't have the right to return then certainly I don't - my ancestors haven't lived there for thousands of years.
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Jerusalem Letters
Every Hebrew noun
is either masculine or feminine.
Eretz, the word for land, is feminine.
Bayit, the word for house, is masculine.
Emet, the word for truth, is feminine
and davar, the word for thing, is masculine.
Milchamah, the word for war, is feminine.
The words for family, blessing, and people
are all feminine.
Most names of streets, cities and countries are feminine.
Jerusalem, Gaza, and Israel are all feminine.
In Hebrew, every verb
must agree with the gender of its subject.
Dear Israel
This is just to remind you
the words for mother
are em and imah.
I can't find your word
for mothering/to mother
but you could still do it
if you wanted to.
See you then
or not at all.
Sincerely
etc
Miriam