Thanks for all those who shout their humanity and solidarity
Poetry from Aida Refugee Camp

by AbdelFattah Abu-Srour,
Director of Al-Rowwad Cultural and Theatre Training Center � Aida Refugees Camp-Bethlehem

 April 11, 2002

This is from Dr. AbdelFattah Abu-Srour, Director of Al-Rowwad Cultural and Theatre Training Center - Aida Refugees Camp-Bethlehem, a wise and gentle man.

Nancy and I and others gained so much understanding of the plight that the Palestinains are in while at the center and in the homes in this community.  

- Gary Anderson in Jerusalem


Hello every body,
 

Upon your requests, I send you some of my writings and the background about Aida camp and Al-Rowwad Theatre

Best of wishes for all of those who are back home, and for those who stayed in palestine.
Love
Abed


Dear friends

We are doing fine, do not worry about us.

Nothing goes far from the plans of Sharon and Bush,

Silence is international, and noise is terrorism

Thanks for all those who refuse to remain silent

Thanks for all those who fight against the silence

Thanks for all those who refuse to burry their heads in the sand

Thanks for all those who refuse to be buried alive

Thanks for all those who refuse that we are to be buried alive

Thanks for all those who shout their humanity and solidarity

Thanks for all those who remain humans

by AbdelFattah Abu-Srour
Director of Al-Rowwad Cultural and Theatre Training Center � Aida Refugees Camp-Bethlehem




What to be done?

Say-I as Cyrano de Berjerac has said it before.

What to be done? I ask you all?

You, innocent citizens, or famous politicians

You human beings or humans lost

You, people of this world without pity



Terrorists we are,

Terrorists we remain,

Does not matter what we do

Does not matter how we live

Does not matter what we suffer,

Terrorists we shall remain for all of you



You push us to a dead end

Israel by here,

America is by there

And the big Europe becomes minuscule

En following the steps

Et this world of hypocrisy

Allow rumors to continue

Knowing all the horrors

That victims are transformed by magic

Into oppressors



Silence is gold

Everyone wants to be rich

Silence is gold,

Sleep like an old

And all of us, palestinians, pay the price you hold



Day of happiness

Wears a dress of sadness



Robe of melancholy

Envelops the smiles of our children with sorrow

And light is darkness

To make a safer passage for the agony



What shall we do? Ask the soldiers of Israel,

A check point by here, another by there?

Let's dig this road

And close that passage

And put some barriers

And while we are here,

Let's build up a new colony

And cut all the trees around

And demolish the houses in the neighborhood

And eliminate all the suspected terrorists

Or those who might be terrorists

One can never trust anyone here

Even the corpses have the smell of terrorism



What to be done?

Stop violence they say

Well, sure, let's stop the violence

Assassinate suspected terrorists

All Palestinians are candidates for terrorism

So let's stop the violence

And forget all about this incidence

Let's forget all the incidences

Let's forget all what Israel have done, or will do

Palestinians have to stop the violence

Palestinians of this century, and centuries to become, pest

Epidemics with no treatment,

Pray for a divine justice

Dream of a brighter future

And ask yet: What to be done?



Change your Coran, and all your holy books

Make a subscription to the mosque

Forget all about your religion

Prayers are harmful for your health

Never talk about your rights

Or those called: refugees

They are the source of all troubles

Eliminating them would be the end of everything



Kneel before the great Israel

The only democracy in the middle east

What Israel says is logical

Its power is magical

And all over the world is well known

And it is feared

And all before the temple

Come to ask pardon

For what the ancestors have committed against the people of Israel



Don't teach your children history

Palestine was nothing but a nightmare

And things are as they should be now

Nothing is equal to the land of 'Israel'



And there we are again

Let all the world declare

War against terrorism

And palestinians rejoin the troupe

And tear each other a part

And cry finally

Live the happy world

Live the war against terrorism





Let us close un office by here

Arrest an activist by there

And destroy every thing

To make happy this sinister world

So that all the ministers

Smile widely and laugh

Of a funereal fun


AbdelFattah Abu-Srour
Al-Rowwad Theatre




I witnessed

I have witnessed with my own eyes how is made the decline of human beings in savage beasts?
I am a son of a refugee, living in Aida refugee camp. Aida, a tragic opera, but this time written not by Verdi, but by the Israeli occupation.

An opera, where the Israeli offense army plays music that changes rhythm and force every day, and every hour. The gun machines, automatic guns - light or heavy - on entrée, then a main dish of F16 and Apachi Helicopters with some spices from the tanks all around. And finally, the dessert, blood and tears of the victims ripped and spread at every corner of the streets.



The eyes of my father are drowned in sorrow

No light neither in the eyes of my mother

No tears for our joy or hope or melancholy

The field of tears, dryness

The fire of our emotion, flameless

The ocean of our forgiveness, evaporated

The force of resistance and belief is lost in our loneliness and abandon by those our relatives and those who are not relatives

The river of our memory is still running, fertile as always



WE DO NOT FORGET



What remains for us, human beings, so that we could attach ourselves to this dress full of holes that the humanity wear for the dancing nights?



Be happy, world enveloped by the silence

Be happy people of this world, enriched by the silence



On March 8th, of the year 2002, the Israeli missiles and the automatic gun machines of the Apachi helicopters have transformed the asphalt in Aida streets into a volcano, the floor was boiling fire, the fire escaped from the shelled cars and the bombarded houses. The blood of innocent people and animals was irrigating the streets and the floors of the houses hit, Israeli soldiers, of the powerful army equipped with the highest and latest technologies, hiding behind his heavy machines, started to dig the walls of the houses, destroying the walls and opening tunnels between the neighboring houses to pass from one house to the next, like moles. What a courageous tactic for the undefeatable army.



Go on soldiers. In position fire

There, probably a man maybe armed, on the other side his son, and there behind, his pregnant wife and her little daughter.

Go on soldiers fire



There, an old man, he doesn't stop telling stories about some rights of return to ancestral villages, and other idiocies as well.

Go on soldiers. prepare yourselves, fire



And there, on the other corner of the street, a woman, her husband in prison, her eldest son exiled, the second is a terrorist, her youngest son is a martyr, I want to say dead like a dog, this woman is dangerous, go on soldiers, fire



And there also, walk some cats, they violated the curfew, go on soldiers of Israel, fire-fire-fire

Here, there. And there a house, and another, this place and somewhere else
Fire soldiers.

Fire everything that moves or does not move.

We have nobody to care about, we are not afraid from anybody, we do not deliver accounts to aanyone except our respected leaders.

We are the soldiers of Israel, no body will dare to ask us anything, to criticize our actions, otherwise, anti-Semitism is the accusation for him.

Let us kill these barbaric Arabs, these savage terrorists. These rats that fled as fast as they can our helicopters and F16s and our tanks, and our skilled snipers.

Let's demolish all the houses, homes of martyrs who dared to resist the arrogance of Israel.

Go on soldiers, take the bodies of these Palestinian beasts, exhibit them on our tanks and bulldozers.

Let all who see them be terrorized forever.

And let's take a photo for memory beside these bodies, how skilled hunters we are!

Let's devastate all the houses and the shops and institutions and schools and hospitals...

Let's vandalize... steal, rob, divest all what we can

Let's leave nothing, take everything, money, electronics, cellular phones... computers, jewelry, things to eat

Everything is good to be stolen by the army of Israel

Soldiers of a regular army, not mercenaries

Thieves and assassins of no values, without honor, without any respect for the uniform they wear if the uniform of a soldier, even though army of occupation inspires respect



Go soldiers, prepare yourselves

In that houses, a lot of cries, someone is dead, an old woman

No body shall be allowed to go there. Blocks on all the roads, no ambulances, fire, no doctors, fire, no hospitals, fire, no journalists, fire

Let's do better, soldiers, let's send the Special Forces they are very clever these stupid Palestinians.

So let's prepare a plan.

Take an ambulance, go in and infiltrate in the middle of Palestinians, kill all the activists, terrorists, and while you are there, fire on everything that moves, or anything that has the intention to move even if it does not move.

Let's shell that hospital,

No protestations what so ever. No protestation from the Red Cross?

Let's destroy that statue of virgin Marie on that church, religion is dangerous for peace? No protestation from religious world?

Let's demolish their entire infrastructure. No protestation from the European Union and the donor countries?

Let's kills some journalists, no protestation from the media?

Well, we do not care, who dares to protest against Israel? And even if someone dares, we shall say that we will do an investigation, no body will follow up the results of an investigation that will remain with no results.

But, what is wrong? Why don't you feel victorious? Why are you ashamed of your achievements?

What will happen to you soldiers when you return home, to your mothers, wives and children, how would you look in their eyes and feel again as a human being? How would you look at yourself in the mirror?



People of this world, whether you are politicians or simple citizens, intellectuals or alphabets, rich or poor, oppressor or oppressed, powerful or powerless.

No one can say today that he didn't know, that he was not informed? that he is not responsible of what the others do

I will cry as Emile Zola did: I accuse



I accuse you of being witnesses on the massacres committed, and not doing anything.





Your silence is hypocrisy.



Your silence permits the massacre of an entire people.

Your silence is a good prize for the injustice and the oppression.

Your silence is against human rights, children rights, animal rights, and living things rights to live in dignity

Your silence sacrifices embryos that are not yet born, pregnant women who did not give birth, children who did not learn how to speak yet, old men who still live a dream of return to their ancestral lands, young people who have the power to hope, to live and to resist the oppression and negation and abandon and forgetfulness.

Your silence is unjust
Your silence is nonhuman
Your silence kills us all


Dr. AbdelFattah Abu-Srour
Director of Al-Rowwad Theatre
Aida Camp-Bethlehem-Palestine

abosrour@yahoo.com
alrowwad@p-ol.com
tel. 052- 401 325


 

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