GAZA, WHERE DOES IT END?
Gaza haunts us all. The children maimed or killed, the devastation of the Palestinians' cities, the sheer terror being wreaked on innocent people.
There can be no forgiving, no forgetting the events of 7th October 2023, when a group of Hamas fighters crashed into Israeli families’ homes and shot innocent people at point blank range. Shot children at point blank range.
But equally there can be no forgiving or forgetting the disproportionate response of the Israeli government, which has bombed and starved the ordinary people of Gaza, driven them from their homes, and destroyed their families and their lives. Their actions have been condemned by the International Criminal Court, which accuses Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his Defence Minister, Yoav Gallant, of war crimes.
As too, it accuses Hamas leaders Yahya Sinwar, Mohammed Diab Ibrahim Al-Masri and Mohammed Diab Ibrahim Al-Masri.
They are guilty on both sides, so why do the UK and many of its Western allies continue to support the Israeli action by supplying arms? Why did US President Joe Biden allow Benjamin Netanyahu to come on a state visit to America?
The war in Gaza continues to raise more questions that it solves. That is the nature of war. That is why Dove Tales has invited writers, artists and musicians to register their thoughts and feelings on one of the most awful tragedies of our time. It haunts us all.
IYAD HAYATLEH
To Gaza
To Gaza
I’ve arrived with what remains of my dream
to spill at your doorsteps
may it grow up with the youngsters into a giant
embroider the courtyards with dew
To Gaza
I’ve arrived with my papers
and the river of my blood
to further supply my plume with it
inscribing tombstones of martyrs .. not dead
To Gaza
I’ve arrived with tears in my eyes
to pour them in prayers
for healing of grandmothers left alone
May the remains of those
who have long gone
along the path of my aspirations
be my intercessors
and revive me .. cease my weeping
To Gaza
I’ve arrived with the fire of my longing
to the sea I adore
to diffuse my grievance with its splendor
and quench it with the tide of my beloved
to rekindle life in my bones
To Gaza
I've arrived with my spilled blood
to mix it with the sea of musk
exuding the pleasant fragrance
from the martyrs’ paradise
They are not gone .. alive they are
with smiles on their shining faces
to this bearing witness
Peace be upon you our beloved
Should you be gone
we have planted your pictures
like primroses, deep in our hearts
we water them with teardrops
guard and pamper them
protecting their open wounds
so they remain masters of the scene
Peace be upon you beloved ones
Peace be to the bird
ahead of daylight
which opened his wings
flying away to the sun
in his blood, love played its tune
Peace be upon you beloved ones
Peace be to the nightingale
whose ablution
was with the purest water
of her happy heart
She flew away
shrouded with jasmines
leaving me
to my poems
speaking against my will
words betraying my tongue
To Gaza
I’ve arrived
with the well of my depths
for you to dwell in
for you to wander in its tales
for you to lose yourselves in its reflections
and for you to observe how Gaza
has created in me a multitude of GAZAS
إلى غزّه
إلى غزّه
أتيتُ بحلميَ الباقي
لأسفَحَهُ على العتباتْ
لِكَيْ ينمو معَ الأولادِ عملاقاً
يطرّزُ بالنّدى الحاراتْ
إلى غزّه
أتيتُ بحبرِ أوراقي
ونهرِ دمي
مداداً كي أخطَّ شواهدَ الشّهداءِ .. لا الأمواتْ
إلى غزّه
أتيتُ بدمعِ أحداقي
لأسكُبَهُ تهاليلاً
تُبلسِمُ وحشةَ الجدّاتْ
لعلَّ رُفاتَ من غابوا لأجلِ رؤايَ تشفعُ لي
وتُحييني .. فأوقفُ أنهرَ العَبْرات
إلى غزّه
أتيتُ بنارِ أشواقي
إلى البحرِ الذي أهوى
أبثُّ بهاءَهُ الشّكوى
وأطفِئُها ببردِ لقاءِ من أهوى
فتُبْعَثُ في الضّلوعِ حياةْ
إلى غزّه
أتيتُ بدمّي المطلولِ
أمزِجُهُ ببحرِ المسكِ
فاحَ عبيرُهُ من جنّةِ الشّهداءِ
ما ماتوا .. همُ الباقونَ
والضّحِكاتُ ملءَ عيونِهِمْ تشهدْ
سلاماً يا أحبّتنا
فإنْ غِبتمْ
زرعنا رسمكم في القلبِ ريحانا
بدمعِ العينِ نرويهُ .. ونحرسهُ
نُداوي جرحَه المفتوح للآفاقِ
نحميهُ .. ليبقى سيّد المشهدْ
سلاماً يا أحبّتنا
لِعصفورٍ قُبيلَ الفجرِ
رَفَّ جناحَهُ للشمسِ مرتحلا .. وفي دمِهِ الهوى غرّدْ
لِبُلبُلَةٍ .. تَوَضّتْ في نَمير فُؤادها الأسعدْ
مَضتْ .. مَحفوفةً بِخمائلٍ مِن وَرْدْ
وَخَلّتني .. بِجوفِ قصيدتي أهذي
فتهربُ من فمي الكَلِماتْ
إلى غزّه
أتيتُ ببئرِ أعماقي
فَصولوا في خباياها
وَجولوا في حكاياها
وَتيهوا في مراياها
تَروا غزّة .. تولّدُ داخلي غزّاتْ.
When You Are Full Grown
(for Kira, one year old in Scotland
and for each of the children in Gaza
Will you live under windmills,
used to their habitual swoosh,
amazed by Grandma's tales
of dirty energy, of burning coal,
for heaven’s sake, burning black
carbon jewels, crushed trees,
when the great trees are so rare
these days; they too are as jewels ?
Will you see a live tiger, pacing
its enclosure, for surely not in its wild.
Will its life, only on video, fill you with grief
for the overgrown corridors that might
have saved them a little longer, but not
from the oilmen and the poachers,
foolish women who covet a big cat’s coat,
the makers of handbags, of love potions ?
Will I be at your graduation - in what field ?
Will you study old knowledge, read books,
looking only backwards for wisdom.
There was a time when it was possible
to know everything - how will you choose ?
Will you strike out for new knowledge.
new truths, a relevant morality, tolerance,
a world that is kind to itself, out of love.
My entire life lived in peaceful years,
wars far off; I wish the same for you
every mother, every grandmother.
whatever her knowledge of world affairs,
would plead for their own flesh.
But will you be hawk or dove,
blessed or cursed with patience,
or just cursed with the will to retaliate ?
This first year, I watched you learn.
The sight of your little fingers flicking
the guitar string is a wonder to us both.
That intent, that determination, will stay
and grow until the world’s windmills, tigers
and universities will all be grist to your mill,
as you take on the challenges of your world,
another wonder, once you are full grown
Unanswered Questions, the Zionist who is Ashamed
I am a Zionist and also a non-practising Jew. Neither of these labels bothered me greatly until October 7th last year when Hamas made its surprise horrific attack. Now the shame and pain I feel is a daily growing sorrow. A burden of real pain and helplessness.
Can telling you what has happened in my life be of any help to anyone else? I don't know, but feel constrained to try. I can't verify the facts of my family history because everyone who could tell me is dead And when my parents and grandmother were alive I was heedlessly enjoying a protected middle class life. Living to be very old (I was born in 1937) can be a blessing from God except that in spite of a somewhat religious education I don't believe in God. I am a genuine agnostic. Should God be real he, she or it has a lot to answer for.
My father Max was born in Palestine, which was part of the Ottoman Empire. His parents were religious Jews from Romania. Their group settled in barren land some miles from Haifa and began to farm. Did they buy the land or squat on it? I don't know. My grandfather farmed with horses - my Dad used to say that my lifelong obsession with horses was inherited from him.
My Dad's parents did not stay long in Palestine. Max was six when they took ship to America but landed up in Liverpool. Dad said it was the malaria from mosquitoes that drove them away. Relations with the Arab Palestinians in the area? I have no idea.
The family settled in Manchester and began selling materials in the market. They made good money and opened a shop in Piccadilly.
I was told that the name Morgenstern was given to them at Customs. I was sorry that in the Second World War, my parents dropped the 'stern' and I went to school as Dorothy Morgan.
In Palestine, the Romanians who went there at the end of the nineteenth century were supported by Edmond de Rothschild. Max remembered nothing of his early years. He never spoke about his parents or his brothers and with the heedlessness of youth I never enquired.
My mother was born in London, as was her mother. So they had no refugee origins and my mother would make cutting comments about refugees.
She practised what you would call social Judaism. Synagogue every Saturday, festivals and Holy days observed. Special clothes for these events. I never felt she 'believed' in religion. It was rather boring to me.
A tutor came to give me Hebrew lessons. I ignored him as well as I could. I never came across antisemitism until school days. I was shocked to read the art mistress' comment in her notebook, 'The Jewesses are the best at Art.' Indeed we were. I got the highest marks in GCSE in school.
At thirteen in a cinema I first saw the clips from Belsen. The effect was momentous but not shared with anyone - my beloved elder brothers spoiled me and treated me like a doll and I never spoke intimately to Mum or Dad.
There was not much interest at home in the formation of the state of Israel but Wal and I went there on our honeymoon. He came from an assimilated Austrian family who had brought up the two boys and the girl as non-Jewish. Wal hadn't even been circumcised.
Our honeymoon in Israel, eight years after its foundation, brought us no knowledge of mistreating the Arab population and endless lectures from Wal's cousin about the milk yield of boring cows. We never met an Israeli who had not lost someone in the Holocaust or the wars in Israel.
We went to freelance in Israel some time later. For my 20th birthday we hired two donkeys and trekked plus dog from Kafr Cana in Galilee up to the Lebanese border. The slower pace of Arab life, the hospitality overwhelmed us.
Wal realised that this sizeable minority were subject to a lot of unfairness. So he wrote a book, The Arabs in Israel,published by Faber and Faber. The book was evenly criticised by Arabs and Jews, which convinced us Wal's comments were accurate.
Living again in Israel at the start of the 60s we both got it wrong - we still believed that a two state solution would soon be established.
We returned to the UK in the 70s. Things weren't so good but optimism continued. For example we both believed the USA was the land of the free.
That Israel was the only democracy in the region was my view for most of my life.
Then the Hamas atrocity. Then the IDF response. A Jewish friend of mine cut me off all contact as he considered me too sympathetic to Hamas. I was appalled at his response.
At first the IDF was defending their country. I started to follow Al Jazeera. Doubts crept in my mind like spiders. Al Jazeera was banned from Israel. Then a sniper shot a Palestinian journalist wearing a Press vest. I began to have misgivings. I am a Zionist. The IDF must defend Israel.
But more press items of increasing horror. The photographs are not manipulated. Can they be?
Then and then and then more photographs of destroyed buildings. And a particular sorrow to me of destroyed orchards and farm land.
Maybe the figures of civilian deaths and women and children were exaggerated? Over the coming months my wish to accept what the IDF was doing began to crumble. These young soldiers are the grandchildren of immigrants who fled to Israel to escape the Nazis. How can they behave like Nazis themselves?
So I am left with unanswered questions.
Why did Israel vote Netanyahu into power three times? Why didn't they stop the digging of tunnel buildings throughout the last decades?
Total disillusionment came last night on August 20th, when watching the news, I saw a distraught husband looking at a white shroud containing the bodies of his wife and six children.
How do I accept that what I thought of as just and right is wicked and wrong. Have you any answers for me?
Who are the idiots who don’t believe in peace?
fly, fly
through this spectral dark
struggle on for peace with heart
to reinvent - find new rhythm
turn that dirty face to heaven
fly, fly
candles cough and flicker
fly, fly
gunmen and young soldiers
they drew a line around Palestine
and the olives did not grow
there’s an ugly Colonel Kurtz
looming up from Zion
fly, fly
bread and meat grow scarce
fly, fly
you terrorists of peace
to the victims you shift blame
hide your face, die of shame
they drew a line around Palestine
and the olives do not grow
war crimes upon war crimes
fly, fly
in genocidal rage
fly, fly
so far beyond the bell
so warped by violence
to every cry for peace
your reply is war, war, war,
more war, more murder, and more war
fly, fly
- turn a blind eye.
water song
Those without water
Were beyond pessimism.
Trapped
In the realm of the arid.
We have abundance of water
We have abundance of wind,
But we have put guards on our borders
So the suffering poor can’t come in.
Here in this country called Scotland
There is plenty of water and wind
And all of the wealth we have stolen
In alliance with the English Crown.
We dance merrily, dance merrily,
We danced till our thirst it did roar,
Then we drank and we drank, and we drank and we drank
Until we were thirsty no more.
And we have abundance of water
And now we have abundance of wind,
But we have put guards on our borders
So the suffering poor can’t come in.
Out in the West Bank and Gaza
The olives are struggling to grow
Because water is used as weapon
And the people have no place to go.
Still they dance, and they dance,
They danced till their thirst it did roar,
Deep in their dreams they drink and they drink
Until they are thirsty no more.
And everyone needs precious water
But blistering hot is the wind,
And they have put guards on the borders
So nobody gets out or in.
Shakshuka
A friend does not reminisce,
as he has done before,
about playing football, a child
in the dirt streets of Gaza.
Any news? Your mother? Your father?
Your brothers and sisters?
He shakes his head.
He does not want to talk about Gaza:
I imagine black clouds billowing,
charred roof beams and rubble,
the smell of debris, of death,
But we do not talk about Gaza.
We watch him finely chop chillies.
I think of people grinding down
animal feed, digging into the soil
to access water pipes.
We do not talk about Gaza.
He serves us Shakshuka,
sizzling in a wrought iron pan,
its thick red sauce of tomatoes
speckled with white stars of eggs.
We know he learnt to cook
watching his mother:
You will see her again, I start to say,
but he holds up his hand.
Eat, eat, he says. Enjoy.
He cannot talk about Gaza.
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The White Man's Burden
The burden of the ills we’ve inflicted on others
Is very hard to bear, but bear we must
The mountain of hate, contempt and brutality
That forbears and the current bearers of this triad
Of imperial lust for property and power have left us.
We are to blame, even if we merely turned away,
While our soldiers bombed, burnt and plundered
So that we can have more of what is not ours.
We take and in exchange we give chaos
And call it the bounty of our civil ways
To which they can aspire – for centuries
Because that’s how long it takes
And they should not complain.
Who are they? you ask. All those of darker skin
Who happened across our way as we searched worldwide
For profit and progress that builds on dirt and despair
Favelas, slums and shanty towns,
Forgotten or never known, tut-tutted by the Western press
Like that walrus on the beach who helped himself
To the sweetest of sweetmeats from a foreign land.
It is a heavy burden when you think:
Best not to do that and best to believe it will all come right
Sometime somewhere in a millennium or two.
In the meantime this wine is good and has the taste of distant shores.
The chocolate, coffee and now the cars
Are made there, and why not?
They can keep the mess, and we’ll send them ours.
They have to serve.
It is a burden that we must bear
And don’t we do it well! We feel so bad,
Yet we have to take and take again
As we have standards to protect.
It is a burden but we’re really not to blame.
Our grandfathers went a little mad,
But they meant well, even as they killed
And burdened us with this burden
We call the past, a prophecy fulfilled.
The Massacre
Where there’s the dark of cruel oppression
There’s the light of human kindness
Amongst the oppressed who smile
And weep and weep and weep.
But smile they must to help their fellow human beings
Where’s there’s light of affluence and hope
There’s the dark of cruel machinations
And lies and lies and lies again.
Zion has reached the undeniable nadir
Of racism’s foul and so foolish degradation.
Palestine weeps and is but a thread
Of its former self and courage,
And yet it holds its place with bleeding hands
And smiles and weeps and weeps
And weeps again.
Edward Bernays Has Told Me So
What’s the sauce for the geese
Will never do for the gander.
Propagander, propagander!
What use is the truth when
You can feed them on lies – lies and lies.
Bernays has told me so.
Where’s the demos in democracy?
You couldn’t have that, just think of the mess!
Propagander, propagander!
We must keep order, because order is great,
Bernays has told me so.
How do you keep order of the rules-based kind?
With wars and lies, and lies and wars.
Coup, coup goes the pigeon with never a pause
Because order’s disorder, and confusion provides
Profits and profits, destruction, reconstruction,
Poverty and wealth, jobless and rentiers,
Bombing and building, but bombing again,
Propagander, propagander!
It’s working so well that only nothing we know,
And nor do we care,
Bernays had told me so.
Edward Bernays’s book, Propaganda, was published in 1928 not, I believe, for the mass market but for wealthy and powerful future customers. He makes it clear that letting the electorate decide on government would be as absurd as it is dangerous, and claimed that he could make the public love someone or hate someone obviously against payment of invoice in due course. He believed that politicians were never in control, but people like him though, in truth, he was up for sale. In 1954 he organised the successful coup to overthrow the elected government of Arbenz in Guatemala using only his propaganda techniques.
Children Set Up Shelter Amid the Rubble of their Neighbourhood
The light is so strong in this photograph, the shadows so deep,
it’s a struggle to make sense of what the boys are attempting.
Domestic details are scarce. There’s a low enclosure
of loosely constructed breeze blocks,
a row of sacking along the top of a high wall
and draped beneath there’s a sheet of fabric,
patterns of pink, coral, green.
On the left there’s a heap of bedding,
assorted ragged quilts and mattresses.
Maybe the five children are cousins and brothers?
It’s not a den, it’s their home.
The tallest pauses a moment, turning back
over his shoulder to glance at us. One of them
has even found a broom - there it stands
propped in readiness against the wall
Helvetica Light is an easy-to-read font, with tall and narrow letters, that works well on almost every site.
A Sunny Day in Rafah
There are plenty of photographs
of donkeys pulling carts
piled with the possessions
of the ‘internally displaced’
as they flee south
but in this one, on the lower corner of page 9,
two children are pushing a sack trolley
stacked chaotically high with what appear to be box files and papers
topped with a child’s maroon backpack.
Their small figures are dwarfed by piles of rubble –
Shattered concrete and broken girders strewn with wires.
This is the backdrop. The boys are busy.
They can’t be more than seven or eight
and they seem to be in a hurry,
intent, one handle each,
on keeping the trolley steady
as they negotiate the pitted road.
A New Phenomenon
Tucked between newspaper eye-witness accounts
a small photograph reveals the lifeless legs of a young child,
feet aslant bare and dusty, flimsy trousers loosely rolled.
Arabic script flows along the left shin, down to the ankle.
It’s a name.
Cuddle in, my little one, before darkness comes
I’ve a new game, a special game.
Here on my arm, with this pen
scribble me something, anything you like, have a go
and I can try your leg, all the way to your foot.
Don’t wriggle, does it tickle?
Cuddle in, my little one, let us sleep now.
The new phenomenon of children’s names being written on their limbs has been confirmed both by images of dead children in a Gaza mortuary and accounts of doctors and parents
LIAM MURPHY
Headless Babies
On the BBC?
No
Public taste and morals
What’s it got to do with me?
I’d rather know about Huw Edwards’ mental health
That’s important
Unlike headless babies
That’s headless babies
I won’t say it again.
The Mount of Olives is prophesied to be the place where the world will split open on the Day of Judgement when the dead will rise again.
I describe my current paintings as: ‘Phantasmagoric Heraldry’
(Phantasmagoric; ‘a public assembly of ghosts’ and Heraldry; ‘the profession, study, or art of devising, granting, blazoning and tracing genealogy as exercised by an officer of arms’.)
I see the project as a sort of alternative vexilography: how to make banners of peace rather than banners of arms..
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banner_of_arms
As well as painting, I write stuff too. Sometimes the writing is the painting and sometimes the painting is the writing. Here’s a ‘song’:
Flagging
Hark the Herald:
As if a flag could ever be real
As if it could tell you how to feel
And if it could, what feeling should reveal?
A flag is made to be false
Once planted it will not grow
Other metaphors serve to show
That flags fly colours
madefrom guns and ammunition
breeding ignorance,
exciting superstition
Angels sing:
“Away with flags
Bury your hearts,
Your wounded knees.
All flags are false
Like their worshipful,
Most qualified,
Genealogies.
Worship not the family
Pray only for the tree”
Build
All this talking
All this writing,
All of this building
All from stuff just lying around
Seems a shame
To tear it down
When we could talk, write, build.
Heading 6
BIG SISTER, GAZA 2023
They’re all crying, even the eldest,
tasked with keeping the young ones calm.
Her rictus mouth is postbox wide,
her eyes spilling tears. Their car
is marooned in a sea of rubble and people
lie still in the streets. She’s never seen
a dead body before, is scared
to look. Where have her parents gone?
God has raised his ugly head
in this place, convincing the gunmen
on both sides that they alone
are right. They both swear vengeance,
a word she’s not familiar with,
doesn’t know that she and her brothers
will pay for years to come. She shivers
with fear, leans forward to wail.
And there he is in the space behind her,
the littlest one, alarmed that big
sister has shifted, his shield no longer
in place. He shrinks back, knows
something is very wrong. He doesn’t
know that the adults who should be protecting
him are waging vicious war,
ignoring all that their faiths have taught them.
WHO WILL KNOW?
Amirah knows her letters, but not as well
as her brothers. They stayed at school while she
was married off. No time to read now.
He’s dead, and she must clear the rubble from
her home, scrounge water wherever she can.
At night she tells her daughter stories or sings
softly to her, hoping the sweet sound
will block the thud of mortars, lull her to sleep.
At night she lies awake and wonders if their roof
will still be over them in the morning.
Some mornings they have to move on
to a new home. Then she tells herself
stories, sings loudly to block her fear.
What if Samara survives but she does not?
Who will sing to her then? What if they’re torn
apart? Who will know her daughter’s name?
She won’t allow Samara to be forgotten.
On the mornings they move she takes her precious pen
from her little roll of treasures and sends her message
to a world that doesn’t care. My daughter matters.
Kill her or steal her but know who she is.
Scooping Samara into her arms, she holds her
still. سماره. Her beloved. Firmly
she tattoos her love on to her daughter’s skin.
REVOLUTION... AFTER GIL SCOTT-HERON
The revolution must not be sanitised
sent into this breathing world scarce half made up.
lame and unfashionable, photocopied or irrational,
the local of irresponsible hands.
Architects of distraction may seek to divide and conquer.
Tune your radio to the dispossessed,
block out expense account politicians
telling you how white your skin should be,
it is dangerous information designed to demean your imagination
you will get no satisfaction,
don't spout another epithet,
or smoke another cigarette.
Cancel your subscription to the promised land.
Corrupt elements of an ancient society have set aside history,
From nightfall to nightfall they Tik Tok crimes against humanity.
The remnants of 75 years of occupation
are being murdered with impunity.
There will be videos of soldiers shooting children.
There will be white shrouds containing the bodies of children.
There will be photographs of blindfolded naked Palestinians being led
through bombed out streets, going fuck knows where.
Genocide has been blessed by Archbishop Welby.
Seems strange he used to be so offended.
On his knees he probably thinks
“i'll give this fine gentleman sanctuary and all is mended”
What we have here is a failure to communicate.
The poison of celebrity has disengaged our humanity,
Imbecile ex presidents, Mossad secret agents, eighth in line playboys
are on film fucking under-age wanna bes.
The concierge who knew way too much was murdered in his cell.
His concubine is doing twenty years in hell.
We all need mouth to mouth resuscitation
A skin flick in the wings before the hurricane begins
because the bathroom scales lie to protect overweight objectives,
deregulating a shopping cart mentality.
Life just got a side order of futility.
Harpers and Vogue are simply not interested,
This month it's 11 Madison Park.
The Cookbook. The Kosher Salt.
Gelatin is gold, cream is heavy, wine is dry.
Kid Charlemagne invites you to
a 12 course dinner to discuss an end to poverty and hunger.
Fossils under Foster Grants,
undercover from the dawn's advance
soft shoe shuffle into fold away chairs,
freckled fingers finger marked cards.
Win or lose it's just happenstance,
old money given leave to remain,
all that cornucopia soft machine stain
paying two thousand pounds for a pizza.
The Jack of hearts gambles cheats trifle,
waitresses push liquor through the crowd,
Autographs dedicate half a million smiles
A quartet plays jazz, not too loud.
To the glitterati it's all quite romantic,
he wears an iron vest,
his profession's their religion,
his disease is their lifelessness.
Drums roll, a curtain slowly unfolds
on the pop charts latest all points west all purpose clown.
Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.
The revolution must be televised
cos' your mind broke,
cos' your monkey got choked
and you will drown before you land in that little row boat
Cos your mind broke,
Cos your monkey got choked,
and you will never get to heaven in that little row boat
The Mount Revisited
And it came to pass the people gathered
to hear Shyster Shyster and Flywheel
speak and they spake unto them saying
we pledgeth pledges unto the poor..
We pledge to pledgeth our pledges
unto all who cometh unto us for pledges
for if thou dost cometh unto us for pledges
we shall pledgeth pledges unto thee.
Blessed are the pure in heart
for they shall wonder
what the fucketh that doth actually mean.
And they spake unto the multitude saying
we shall taketh tuppence in the pound off thy NI,
thus shalt thou haveth less
than thou hadst before
we didst fucketh with it.
And a rich man said it is easier
to pass a needle through the eye of a camel
than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven.
And the people also wondered
what the fucketh that didst actually mean..
And a man in short trousers spake unto them saying
we pledge to pledge an significant pledge
to stoppeth all those who seeketh shelter..
Indeed if they knocketh on the door
it shall be closed unto them
excepteth they goeth to Rwanda
or drowneth in the sea,
whichever cometh first.
We pledge this for the time we have.
Which I pledgeth unto thee
shall be no longer than three more weeks or so.
For three shall be the number.
Neither shalt thou tarry at two,
for three shall be the number.
Four is right out unless thou goeth back
unto three which shall be the number.
Neither shalt thou proceedeth to five or six,
for three is the number and the number shalt be three.
Yay verily we sayeth unto thee
blessed are they who pledge pledges
concerning pledges they have pledged
unto they who hunger for pledges
to be pledged unto them.
Blessed are the sick for they shall haveth
their meaningless promises of waiting time
putteth back months later
and wouldst grind and gnash their teeth,
saying saveth us oh Lord,
for surely we cannot be so utterly bereft of a sense that is common
that we chooseth another one of their kind
who wilt maketh false promises libels and dreams
to set us in deadly hate the one against the other ?
And the multitude were hungry and tired
from hearing so much talk of pledges pledged unto them.
So a man formally on the back benches
senteth his followers for fish suppers and deep fried Mars bars,
alas there was not enough and he putteth his hands
into the baskets and every soul was fed,
and thereafter it was known as the Corbyn manouver
And they went unto their dwellings
and on the appointed day
they voted in their thousands, in their millions
saying we are all Palestinians, for we are saved,
yea blessed are the peacemakers.
yea even the cheesemakers
especially those who bringeth unto our tables
that delicious number 7 Cheddar
or a surfeit of well ripened Brei
perhaps some of that wonderful lemon and caper dressing
from Fortnum and Masons
and breadsticks with olives,
not the shrivelled type
resembling low sperm count testicles,
big juicy ones the size of plums, for his names sake. Amen.
And seeing such goodly humour and warmth
towards his independent portal
Shyster Shyster and Flywheel
sneered, pouring scorn on his countenance,
printing lies in their gutter dwelling rags
And he spake unto them saying none shall be forgiven
We hold them responsible for crimes against humanity.
We hold them responsible for an eternity.
We hold them unfit to darken the minds of our fraternity
We hold them guilty for each and every soul, for each and every limb
We hold their posturing goose-stepping lies up to scrutiny
We hold their disgrace beneath our dignity.
We hold them as remnants of a pestilent society
and condemn their grubby hate infected lives to the dustbins of history.
ROSE ANN FRASER RITCHIE
Our desires, our dreams
Who is coming to save us?
Horrors on a blasted building site
Our desires are to be normal
Our dreams, for peace eternal
Yet we want to survive
Not waiting to die
Not scavengers
Save Gaza
ANDREW FERGUSON
Empire
Then there came among them
men too compromised to fight a holy war.
They sued for peace, we held our vigils; there were almost no reprisals
from the other side. The faithless stood astounded;
the truth became more stylised;
the worthy made excuses and became unworthy;
the cities burned, and the Old Ones turned
again to past impermanencies.
There was no redemption, no release; the envoy gave a crooked smile
when he came to sue for peace.
The call went out from the parapet: ‘time to negotiate’;
and we all knew the outcome
was founded in blood.
The treaty was signed amongst candles and wine
whilst the drums beat surrender outside of the walls;
and the soothsayer laughed in our faces, when we asked him to read us the runes.
‘Fools,’ he said, ‘don’t you realise
the past and the future dance to the same tune?’
With the city states all around burning,
the women sang sad songs of yearning
to know of their fate by the dawn.
‘Please tell us,’ they begged us, ‘What will become of us then?’
What can you say of the deeds of men
who never tasted remorse?
When blood ran under the wheels of a horse?
Call off the dogs: see if they’re listening;
the killers will always be just out of earshot;
and the women are asking for blind reassurance
though the ones with experience will know it’s a lie.
CHAD NORMAN
What am I watching
late summer mystery
above my home
in the form of a number,
gulls in a crazed flight
as if my mind can say
it is some kind of mating,
all of them there never before
or did I miss this
in years gone by, days too,
all of it leaving me
to think about another beauty
my head lifts for, my eyes
stay pinned by, a sight I
am stopped for, the arms
of a Palestinian woman.
She on a daily basis deals with
what the American gov’t openly funds
a nearby country the bible promotes,
the precious Is Rye Elle, she
watches from a window left unopened
on purpose for a certain dust
to enter, to end up on the arms
of a Palestinian woman.
I endure a constancy each night
as the programmed mouths begin
when a certain hour has been paid for,
the smile millions let into their homes,
let into their beliefs, the beloved news
they use to create who the stations
want & tell them to be, the channels
flickering on the arms
of a Palestinian woman.
She carries a longing left too long,
it has moved throughout her,
what war drives her to decide
when there is no need to hide,
she feels the hands of her children
holding onto the only part of her
left smooth, attractive, the part
some men see as beautiful as a
sky full of gulls come and gone
like the arms of a Palestinian woman,
moving in ways like wings
meant to be a mystery, not to
shelter her young, to be a
scene never forgotten, the arms
of a Palestinian woman.
The Arms of a Palestinian Woman
DAVID BETTERIDGE
The Olive Branch
On reading an account of Israeli volunteers helping Palestinian olive farmers at harvest-time.
Today, as every day, somewhere
in our war-wrecked lands,
there will be funerals, an excess of them.
Some of the mourners will join the war-dead
soon, being in their last hours, but not knowing it.
There can be no knowing.
We are all of us vulnerable, under storm-clouds
of death-sentencing, and so it has been
since the curse and grind of this war first came.
We hold hard, meantime, to the task
of keeping going, surviving somehow
against short odds, shielding our young and our frail,
cherishing our hopes, still to be gained,
as yet again we bury this day our latest dead,
in grief, and in anger, too, born of our long pain.
It is not graves that should so dominate, surely,
but rather groves: our ancestral olive groves,
alive with the meanings that they hold for us,
being givers of good, sources of wealth,
embodiers of who we are, and signifiers
of our longed-for, long-envisaged state;
but, like each last entity that we prize,
like our very selves, these groves are locked
in hard struggle: how long, we ask, can they -
can we? - survive?
Until the politics of violence abates,
these green assets will be burned, axed, uprooted,
chain-sawed, bull-dozed, or barricaded-off,
until no crops are left: they are soft targets
for our enemies’ deep hate.
If the Olive Trees knew the hands
that planted them, the poet Darwish said,
Their oil would become Tears.
We, knowing that, shed our own tears, too,
and with them also our blood is shed.
Who will come to our aid?
Who will join our fight, first as a People to endure,
and then, freed from harm and the likelihood of harm,
to bring in harvest upon harvest, richly, of every type?
To you, who hear our call, including you, confederates
of those others who would see us killed or cowed
or dispossessed, to you we extend the hand of friendship,
and the olive branch.
Today, as every day, we must bury our too many dead,
but never our hopes; no, we shall keep them uppermost
in heart and mind, and they will sustain us
through our future’s worst, instead.
ANNE DUNFORD
Gaza Haiku
there among rubble
new life - as green shoots appeared
we hoped for more life
we watch birds fly free
we - locked in prison - tortured
long for our freedom
wives losing husbands
children orphaned abandoned
hope will fly away
JIM AITKEN
Uday, One Day
In memory of Uday Abu Mohsen who lived only one day after being killed during the Siege of Gaza, 2023.
Uday was the baby boy’s name. Uday, it was.
He would have known so little but he would
have known he was someone with being.
He would have been welcomed and loved.
He would have been welcomed with fear
and would have known little of the blast
that ended his one- day old life, mayfly Uday.
Yet he leaves behind much more than a name.
He leaves behind the insanity of surgical strikes,
the criminality of collateral damage, the nonsense
of precision bombing, the lunatic costs – and profits –
of warfare set against the massacre of the innocents.
Uday’s death certificate was bizarrely issued before
any birth certificate arrived and the bombing continued
after his death. But mayfly Uday must be remembered
and not just in Gaza and in Palestine, not just there.
The cry of Uday must be heard in Israel, in Syria, in Iraq,
in Russia and Ukraine, in Yemen, Tigray and Sudan.
Uday’s little whimper should cross oceans, mountains
and plains, teeming cities and deserts, turning louder.
Turning louder all the time so that the whole world
begins to realise that without justice there is no peace;
that only justice can guarantee peace. Uday, one day
peace and justice will reign in your name. Uday, one day.
Beneath the Rubble
Beneath the rubble of Gaza
lie the broken bodies of babies, of children,
of their parents and grandparents too
along with the fragments of bomb casings
beneath the rubble of Gaza.
And it is a rubble that is generic
for it brings to mind Stalingrad
and Dresden; it brings to mind
Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Mosul and Aleppo
and vast swathes of Afghanistan.
Beneath the rubble of Gaza
also lie some unlearned lessons –
the one about rubble begetting more rubble
the other one that peace only comes with justice
beneath the rubble of Gaza.
KRISS NICHOL
The Cost
bodies thin as heron’s legs
eyes dark defeated
submissive
they wait in line to fill plastic containers
heft onto heads
drag back to waiting
families who squat on rubbled dust
impermanence
pervades the air
scours entire beings
ripped from their homes
herded abandoned betrayed
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Historically most of our Dove Tales members have been writers, but we are constantly trying to reach more musicians and artists.
Pauline Bradley is one of our members and a fine singer. Below you can listen to her performance of her own song, Ceasefire Now on Youtube.
PROTEST IN HARMONY
Pauline is also a member of Protest in Harmony, a radical singing group based in Glasgow, who sing songs of protest and struggle. They sing about peace, justice, the environment and human rights.
They sing at events and demonstrations. Anyone can join, no experience necessary, and no auditions.
They are not affiliated to any political, environmental or religious group.
They believe that song can be a powerful, positive force.
They meet one Saturday each month to learn songs of freedom and struggle from around the world. All are welcome.
https://www.facebook.com/share/7UumXUBfdJRbzjyW/?mibextid=LQQJ4d
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
LIAM MURPHY - The beautiful banners dividing the sections are details from the assemblages of Liam Murphy, who uses mixed media and recycled found materials for his work. These images seemed perfect for our project, as they evoke both the patterned carpets of Eastern cultures and the damaged, rubble-strewn landscapes of Gaza, where the people will have to rebuild their homes with whatever materials they can find.
JJIM FERGUSON's poems, Who are the idiots who don't believe in peace? and water song, were previously published in his video, Turn a Blind Eye, with Brian McFall.
JIM AITKEN's poem, Uday One Day, has also been published on Culture Matters and Heckle
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