Baba Aye's

The ferociously brutal bombing of Gaza in October drove me to immerse myself in literature on Zionist colonialism in Palestine and the Palestinian people’s resistance. Most of what I did was rereading. Rashid Khalidi’s and Wasseem El Sarraj’s books were two that I read for the first time, and found invaluable. They are both similar in two ways. First, as with many other books worth reading on the history of the Palestinian struggle, they both provide a rich history of the land. Tracing this back for centuries, they disprove the Zionist lies of “a land without people, for a people without a land.” They reveal Britain’s deceitful actions, spanning from the Balfour declaration to the Nakba, and the continuous backing of Jewish colonialism by imperialist powers. The books examine how Arab countries, like Jordan, have had conflicting stances on the Palestinian cause and how this impacts the people’s struggle. And prominently, they highlight this struggle’s “history from below” in all its st...

Death rains on Gaza From clouds of bombs In skies of lies Leaving twisted bodies Entombed beneath rubble   Infants breath their last With gasps of horror, as their lives are snatched Before they were fully lived Their dismembered bodies bear witness Their innocent blood cry out for justice   Bewildered mothers wonder If tomorrow they bury another child Or if their own corpses would be The uninterred remains, amidst shrapnel and debris   Displaced families flee to ever fleeting places of refuge Grasping at mirages of safety, nudged to the tragic reality Of Zionist intent at mass slaughter, and unmitigated brutality   Yet, empty talks fill the hallways of governments in the West With the stench of star-spangled hypocrisy White voices with power that condemn the neo-Tsar Are silent before the travesty of an accursed King Saul   With their bloodstained hands They turn away the face of Bartholdi’s statue From th...