LPP – Text Collection

Arabs of all Lands, Rise!
Rise against oppression,
For it is our mission,
To help our fellow Palestinians,
Screaming from the top of their breathless lungs,
Their famished bodies wailing,
Closing their tearless eyes,
For they have no water left to cry,
Or drink,
And as the water of life is slowly being drained away from them,
From their corpses,
By the oppressor,
A moral army that kills thousands,
And leaves traces of blood in its wake,
In an attempt to erase them all.
It is not self-defense, it is genocide,
But if there is no one left alive to speak,
How will we know that it was a genocide?

Arabs of all Lands, Rise!
Where were we in 1948 when the Nakba befell on their heads?
Killing thousands, displacing hundreds of thousands,
And abandoning one’s home can be as sorrowful as death.
Where were we in 1967?
When they took the Sinai, the Golan, the West bank, and Gaza away from us?
When they extended the settlements and destroyed our beloved environment?
We have not been doomed for Six Days, but for Sixty years,
We believed in liberation,
But Gamal Adbel Nasser is dead, David Ben Gurion still haunts our dreams,
And Benyamin Netanyahu is hell on earth.
Where have we been since the 7 October 2023,
When Palestinians have become the resistant fighters of a crime against humanity?
They want to obliterate their land and their history,
Deprive them of their faith and soul,
Their heart and love for humankind,
But Palestinians will not leave, they will die buried here,
Not in the sand, but in the earth,
Their hearts filled with belief and hope,
That one day, their sons and daughters will prevail,
Upon the true barbarians and assassins,
For they will pay,
On Judgment day,
For the crimes they have committed,
The lives they have taken,
The pain they have inflicted,
The horrors they have perpetrated,
And the joy they have crushed.

Arabs of all Lands, Rise!
In almost a century,
Palestinian resistance has accomplished victory,
Because even as the oppressor remains,
Resistance can never fail,
For the mere act of resisting accomplishes,
What was once deemed impossible,

Resistance.

Palestine was never terra nullius,
It was inhabited,
But was made uninhabitable by our dear Lord Balfour,
And his declaration,
As despicable as his portrait hanging in the National Gallery,
Labelling him as the glorious creator of a national home for the Jewish people,
Without prejudicing others in the region, 
Quid of the Palestinian people?
The sound of these lies is too loud to ignore, 
So we cannot honour his memory,
Nor his legacy
For he partitioned a land,
The land of Palestine,
And left Palestinians alone,
To face crushing military might,
Repressed by the sanguinary Zions and their allies,
Failed and betrayed by the Arabs,
And abandoned to their violent fate.
But the Palestinian people remains,
Standing, 
Fighting for its indigenous rights,
Alongside the colonized,
From Algeria to Vietnam,
From Kanafani to Arafat,
From Leila Khaled to Mahmoud Darweesh
And from the River to the Sea,
In an attempt to be free.

Arabs of all Lands, Rise!
Why have South Africa and Guatemala become the main defenders of our cause?
Can we not speak for ourselves?
In 2011, we started a revolution,
But this revolution is not dead,
It will swipe the whole region,
And kick out our archaic leaders,
Who only pay lip service to Palestine,
In an attempt to protect their own interests,
And keep their people calm and ignorant,
A people terrified to speak up, but frightened of silence,
Albeit deserving of freedom,
For all humans deserve freedom,
For the mere quality of being human.
Palestinian and Arab Liberation are one and the same,
Firmer than the shaky United Arab Republic,
Determined to free each other,
From their own monsters, 
For every oppressed Arab is a Palestinian at heart,
But those heartless Arab leaders are not even Arabs at heart.

Palestinian resistance is multi-faceted,
Armed and artistic,
Written and sung,
Transmitted and passed on.
Generations of Palestinians,
Stateless and integrated,
In camps and houses,
Have shaped resistance.
They have remained a source of inspiration,
A beam of hope for the future,
To witness return to the original land,
To smell the branches of the olive trees and the oranges of Jaffa,
That linger on Palestinian and Arab collective memory,
And reminds us of our legitimate belonging,
To the Palestinian struggle,
A political struggle that may go on for decades or centuries,
But will eventually be settled,
By the means of justice,
To render justice,
To a people marked by catastrophes,
But not defined by them,
But rather defined by resilience,

Resistance.

Dounia AL JIJAKLI, French of Lebanese and Syrian descent (father), Morocco (mother), lived in Spain, Canada, the UK, and am currently based in Beijing, China