Not Anonymous

Despite focusing lately on things not relating to the occupation in a direct manner, I still access the media and am as big a News junkie as ever.

As some of you may or may not know, today is Land Day, which is a commemorative day marking the strikes and protests Palestinians held in 1967 after the state (Israel) appropriated privately held Palestinian land. Thousands of dunams were basically stolen from under the owners feet.

This appropriation is still happening today, obviously.

But Land Day is a big event and such there are more demonstrators and many more wounded.

It's been a while since I've been involved in anti-occupation politics as I am focusing on more organised LGBT activism and, well, my life, but I don't think one can really separate the issues, as they colour every fraction of my life one way or another.

For instance, what does it mean that Israel cut ties with the UN Human Rights Commission, because they dared open up a probe regarding the building of settlements in the West Bank.

Apropos land appropriation. If I cared one whit about Israel's image I'd say we shoot ourselves in the foot, but seriously, we commit flagrant human rights violations every day, all the time. I can't say I'm surprised the foreign ministry started talking about Al-Qaeda (your guess is as good as mine as to why) and about how it's the Palestinian Authority committing - wait for it - diplomatic terrorism on Israel.

Because the state terrorism Israel commits on a regular basis is really not a part of the discourse.

Speaking of state sanctioned terror, and another reason why the IDF is a hierarchical, masculine-supremacist, racist and patriarchal institution of the worst kind?

(Trigger Warning: Rape Culture, Encouragement Of Rape, Overt Racism): IDF Colonel-Rabbi implies Rape is Permitted in War.

If you read the body of the text (heed the trigger warnings, my god!) you will see that when they write "imply", they actually mean "clearly states" that raping female prisoners is not only permitted, but actually encouraged!

...even though fraternizing with a gentile woman is a very serious matter, it was permitted during wartime (under the specific terms) out of understanding for the hardship endured by the warriors. And since the success of the whole at war is our goal, the Torah permitted the individual to satisfy the evil urge...

As the author of the article writes, this is the face of the IDF of 2012.

The fact that this kind of religious doctrine is actually published by the IDF is telling. Mainly, they they really can't see anything beyond their weeping national erection.

Despite the above, or possibly because of the above, I must mention Adrienne Rich's passing.

Her writing has been an inspiration to me for many years, both her poetry and essays - all of which have been a great aid to me when it came to my own feminism, even if I didn't agree with everything she had to say (her gender essentialism was and is notorious, despite the way she leveraged it so beautifully in the political and theoretical spheres).

She was also a Jewish woman who spoke out against the Israeli occupation of Palestine and a supporter of BDS, which, you know, is special.

She also spoke of the role and the responsibility of the poet, the writer, the artist to be political and proactive and not shy away from social justice in their work.

Someone is Writing a Poem

...But most often someone writing a poem believes in, depends on, a delicate, vibrating range of difference, that an “I” can become a “we” without extinguishing others, that a partly common language exists to which strangers can bring their own heartbeat, memories, images. A language that itself has learned from the heartbeat, memories, images of strangers...

May her memory be blessed.

Right after the murder at the gay youth club in August, there was a public poll via the Ha'aretz News Paper which I wrote about at the time - that indicated 46% of those questioned thought gays are deviant. Now this came right after the murder. I'm quite convinced that if the poll was taken now or before it happened, the number would be higher.

There is currently a "scandal" in the ministry of education concerning a poem by renowned Hebrew poet Yona Wallach, who was proud of her own queer sexuality.
There is talk of censoring it because it is not only erotic, it is also explicitly queer.

Yeah, we're such a haven for LGBTQ people in the Middle East

The poem in question is very difficult to translate into English - It's called "You are (he is) my Girlfriend", available in Hebrew and English at the bottom of this post - as it relies heavily on the gendered pronouns in Hebrew - each sex has a different pronoun, making Hebrew, in Wallach's own words, a "Sex maniac".

I speak of this, not only because it's an issue that is personally dear to my heart - Yona Wallach is my favourite poet - but because while the issues may appear different, they are intertwined on an international level.

The fear, dehumanisation, distortion and silencing of queer voices transcends the local and colloquial.

I speak of this, because yesterday, I had the greatest misfortune to read a fail so monumental I do not know where to even begin de-constructing it!

I warn you, because while I've a great many editorials in which gays are maligned, dehumanised and basically accused of being a disease upon humanity, I don't think I've ever read something so virulently hateful and historically inaccurate.

I found it via Andrew Sullivan's The Daily Dish, who linked to The Washington Times's Letters to the Editor here, or under the ( cut )

I'm not American, so this conceivably, has nothing to do with me. But when I see this kind of mis/disinfomation, this kind of unabashed hatred, to invoke Hitler in the same sentence with homophobia is the height of ignorance.

In Israel the Holocaust is the Shoa, it is a tragedy of the Jews. At Yad Va'Shem there is very little mentioning of the rest of the victims of the industrialised murder by the Nazi's.

It was only when I was 16 and went on the school trip to Poland and was at the actual camps did I realise that there were other victims, that not all were Jews. Jews held a special place in Nazi ideology, but we weren't the only victims and there was an intersection between the different populations of course.

I had no idea that the pink triangle was the gay symbol for prisoners.

I'm digressing.

My point is; to compare a leader to Hitler because one has a personal grievance, a political/policy disagreement with him is fallacious at best, obscene at worst.

It's difficult for me to even discuss this because you know what? This shouldn't even be a discussion!

I read this lovely letter the same day, via my reading list, I read The Bad Old Days, in The Advocate. In 1967, CBS aired a news report (the full length video is embedded in the article) titled "The Homosexuals, which was basically 45 minutes of dehumanising, demonising, fear-mongering and paradigm entrenching propaganda, regarding gay men (gay women are not mention and are thus invisible, bisexuality is what happens when a gay man marries a woman and keeps homosexual liaisons on the side).

I watched it.

Talk about being touched by history. Homosexuality is a cancer spreading around America and the world. Watching pre-Stonewall homosexual activists always makes me cringe - it's like they're a begging for bread crumbs. Which is exactly what they are doing.
Begging to be treated as human beings.
Unlike the Gay Liberation movement, the Matachine society were assimilationists - the whole Lib vs. Assim isn't over

That was 1967. And this is only in the "West".

Here's the video of "The Homosexuals", if you're not interested in going to the Advocate article:

( אתה חברה שלי )

( You are my Girlfriend )

Written long ago in a mental hospital, this poem has always spoken to me, especially after the Second Lebanon War.

In memory of those who dies for this country, now 61 years old. In a few hours the black melancholy that wraps itself around the population will lift and the Independence Day celebrations will commence.
I'll be avoiding the crowds and going to a late night Mangal (BBQ) with [Southern!Girl] at a friends house, in which we will eat, drink and be cynical about the whole thing.

Dulce Et Decorum Est

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of disappointed shells that dropped behind.

GAS! Gas! Quick, boys!-- An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And floundering like a man in fire or lime.--
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,--
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori*.

Wilfred Owen, 1917 (Killed in the battle of the Sambre, November 4th 1918 - a week before Armistice)

*It is sweet and proper to die for one's country

It is said that Joseph Trumpledor, as he died, uttered "Never mind, it's good to die for ones country" ("en davar, tov lamut be-at artzenu"-אין דבר, טוב למות בעד ארצנו) which is very much a paraphrase of Horace's old adage, quoted in Owen's poem.

Personally, I think that like most soldiers who die in battle he probably swore an oath and cried for his mother.

The Associated Press report via Ynet.

Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish dies
Celebrated poet passes at age 67 in Houston hospital following complications after open-heart surgery
by Merav Yudilovitch

Renowned Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish died on Saturday evening at the age of 67 after undergoing open-heart surgery in Houston, Texas.

Darwish, who has been struggling with heart problems for several years, developed complications some 24 hours after the procedure and was rushed to intensive care, where doctors put him on life support. However his situation continued to deteriorate and he passed away in the early evening.
( Read More )

I Belong There
by Mahmoud Darwish
Translated by Carolyn Forché and Munir Akash

I belong there. I have many memories. I was born as everyone is born.

I have a mother, a house with many windows, brothers, friends, and a prison cell

with a chilly window! I have a wave snatched by seagulls, a panorama of my own.

I have a saturated meadow. In the deep horizon of my word, I have a moon,

a bird's sustenance, and an immortal olive tree.

I have lived on the land long before swords turned man into prey.

I belong there. When heaven mourns for her mother, I return heaven to

her mother.

And I cry so that a returning cloud might carry my tears.

To break the rules, I have learned all the words needed for a trial by blood.

I have learned and dismantled all the words in order to draw from them a

single word: Home.

Title: Tin Man (9/10)
Author: Mel (eumelia)
Disclaimer: Marvel owns it all, I just like to play with other people's toys and get no money from it.
Rating: PG-13, here be some language and violent imagery
Fandom: Iron Man (Movieverse) - this happens approx. a month after the events of the movie.
Characters: Tony Stark and Pepper Potts.
Previous Chapters: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7 and Part 8.

( Part 9 - Close him up. There's nothing else we can do )

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Feedback is love and I reply with great devotion.
Yes, rhyming ain't my forte.

Title: Tin Man (6/10)
Author: Mel (eumelia)
Disclaimer: Marvel owns it all, I just like to play with other people's toys and get no money from it.
Rating: PG-13, here be some language and violent imagery
Fandom: Iron Man (Movieverse) - this happens approx. a month after the events of the movie.
Characters: Tony Stark, Pepper Potts, James Rhodes
Previous Chapters: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4 and Part 5

( Part 6 )

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Feedback and comments are my bread and butter... and jam, because it makes everything extra tasty.

Title: Tin Man (4/?)
Author: Mel (eumelia)
Disclaimer: Marvel owns it all, I just like to play with other people's toys and get no money from it.
Rating: PG-13, here be some language considered dirty, though it seems pretty natural to me.
Fandom: Iron Man (Movieverse)
Characters: Tony, Jarvis... sorta.
Previous Parts: One, Two and Three.

( This dying thing… it seems a bit premature don't you think? )

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Feedback would be much appreciated!

Another day of memorial, this one is present and thus, to me, much less poignant than Yom Ha'Shoah was last week, for some reason.
Dead soldiers and dead civilian victims, killed in War and Terror.

My feelings are mixed.
Last year I was depressed and the whole thing washed over me and was dimmed into the background of my own personal self pity and pain, to do with the war I participated in.
Now everything feels sharp, not the pain, but the facade of the (necessary and important) ceremonies in which the names of the dead will be spoken and candles will be lit, is so much more clear to me.
The ceremonies seem like theatrics to me. But I'll go to my elementary school where every year, younger and younger (because every year I get older) children stand on the grass slope where they will sing the same songs as last year, recite the same poems and maybe the choreography of the dance will be different, though I doubt it.
I'll go because dead men and women need to be remembered and at this point this is what we have.

Tomorrow is Independence Day, always after Memorial Day, so that we know what those dead men and women fought, lived and died for.

Korin Alal (though Ehud Manor wrote it) puts into words the way I feel best on these days... even if they are mixed:

I have no other land
Even if the ground is burning
Only a word in Hebrew, penetrating
Into my veins, my soul
In an aching body,
In a hungering heart.
Here is my home

I will not be silent, for my land
Changed her face
I will not concede to her
I will sing in her ear
Until she opens her eyes

At the Tori Amos Concert in London, Tori sang this song and it moved me in a way a song hadn't in quite a while.
I cried and then bawled when she sang "Winter" right after.
Tami and I were a couple of mushy, wet, sobbing fangirls.
Pathetically fun, I might add.
In any event, Tami found the song and sent it to me and I thought it's just too good not to share with everyone so here it is for download: Home on the Range - Tori Amos.

And under the cut are the beautiful ( lyrics )

In addition, the genocide in Darfur must be stopped.

וכמו כן, צריך לעצור את רצח העם בדרפור.