To Save Palestine is to Save the World

In the horizon, there before my eyes, written the truth in plain indisputable language.

(LONDON) - I often pondered as to why the name Holy Land was given to Palestine?

What is it about this land that justifies or legitimizes such a description when in fact that land, through myriad of foreign invasions has witnessed some of the cruelest, most barbaric, most unholy, most immoral human behaviour?

My latest visit to my Home-Land Palestine was a heartrending experience with shocking reality; a roller-coaster, a volcano of paradoxical emotions, an extraordinary visual and sensual intensive course, with daily, if not hourly, spiritual lessons.

While the visit itself did not last more than ten days, I however travelled through time, standing on the terrace of my grandparents, I saw what was, what is and what could be.

As I stood on that old terrace of my grandfather's house, facing the remains of the village of Lifta on one side and the construction of the Jewish colony Givat Shaul with its hideous buildings and eery cemetery on the other, what I saw was indescribable: a vivid screen shot of two extremes of human existence and endeavour, a visual manifestation of a bizarre reality of two paradoxical worlds narrating the tragedy of what had happened and is still happening to Palestine and the world:

In the horizon, there before my eyes, written the truth in plain indisputable language.

With poignant Lifta on my left I saw the past: organic, natural, native, sustainable, gentle, green, alive, flowing, timeless, tender, harmonious, modest, and exquisitely beautiful.

With Givat Shaul on my right I saw the present, violently constructed on the ruins of Deir Yassin by the Jewish-Zionist occupiers; artificial, implanted, pompous, forced, disconnected, harsh, malignant, cancerous, dead, offensive, aggressive, predatory, foreign, ruthless, and hideous beyond words.

On the terrace of my grandfather's I saw a Civilization that lived by fostering life VS a Devilization that can only exist by destroying life.

On the terrace of my grandfather I saw a culture of Life being momentarily oppressed by a culture of Death.

On the terrace of my grandfather I understood that for us Palestinians if we are to make it into the future, all we need to do is to vehemently reject the poisonous glitter of the occupiers with all its multifaceted deception: where slavery is sugar-coated with slogans as "modern banking systems", "global trade", "free loans", "buy now pay later" and "economical growth".

On the terrace of my grandfather I understood that what ever we do we must vehemently oppose any attempt that want to lure us to "learn" or mimic the occupier in any shape or form:

Not in the way they run their society, where the selfish concept of "I" and "my interest" are promoted and admired the foundation of civil human interaction and the altruistic concepts of "we" and the "communal interest" are frowned upon, despised and discouraged as irrelevant backwardness;

Not in the way they conduct business by the use of usury enriching the rich few and impoverishing the masses of poor;

Not in the way they use aggressive agriculture, under the veil of "increasing productivity" they kill the land with over-irrigation, destroy the future with GMO sterile seedless crops, they farm animals in most cruel conditions and under the veil of modernity they inject seeds of death and un-sustainability, bleeding the land dry of its rich resources;

Not in the way they model their pyramidic hierarchical systems of which those who languish at the bottom are crushed by those who climb to the top.

Not in the way they build colonies brutally carving out the heart of our beautiful landscape, slicing through our precious hills and butchering our millennia-old meadows and mountains.

“To smile when confronted with the most severe oppression, is an act of Resistance rooted in unparalleled beauty.”

~ Jonathan Azaziah