Free Palestine Quotes

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There's a Palestine that dwells inside all of us, a Palestine that needs to be rescued: a free Palestine where all people regardless of color, religion, or race coexist; a Palestine where the meaning of the word "occupation" is only restricted to what the dictionary says rather than those plenty of meanings and connotations of death, destruction, pain, suffering, deprivation, isolation and restrictions that Israel has injected the word with.
Refaat Alareer (Gaza Writes Back)
he says I am from there, I am from here, but I am neither there nor here. I have two names which meet and part… I have two languages, but I have long forgotten— which is the language of my dreams
Mahmoud Darwish's farwell to Edward Said
Libraries offer, for free, the wisdom of the ages--and sages--and, simply put, there's something for everyone inside.
Laura Bush
he says I am from there, I am from here, but I am neither there nor here. I have two names which meet and part… I have two languages, but I have long forgotten— which is the language of my dreams
Mahmoud Darwish
It is when darkness prevails that I sit by the window to look past all those electricity-free houses, smell the sweet scent of a calm Gazan night, feel the fresh air going straight to my heart, and think of you, of me, of Palestine, of the crack, of the blank wall, of you, of Mama, of you, of my history class, of you, of God, of Palestine—of our incomplete story.
Refaat Alareer (Gaza Writes Back)
Long before it was known to me as a place where my ancestry was even remotely involved, the idea of a state for Jews (or a Jewish state; not quite the same thing, as I failed at first to see) had been 'sold' to me as an essentially secular and democratic one. The idea was a haven for the persecuted and the survivors, a democracy in a region where the idea was poorly understood, and a place where—as Philip Roth had put it in a one-handed novel that I read when I was about nineteen—even the traffic cops and soldiers were Jews. This, like the other emphases of that novel, I could grasp. Indeed, my first visit was sponsored by a group in London called the Friends of Israel. They offered to pay my expenses, that is, if on my return I would come and speak to one of their meetings. I still haven't submitted that expenses claim. The misgivings I had were of two types, both of them ineradicable. The first and the simplest was the encounter with everyday injustice: by all means the traffic cops were Jews but so, it turned out, were the colonists and ethnic cleansers and even the torturers. It was Jewish leftist friends who insisted that I go and see towns and villages under occupation, and sit down with Palestinian Arabs who were living under house arrest—if they were lucky—or who were squatting in the ruins of their demolished homes if they were less fortunate. In Ramallah I spent the day with the beguiling Raimonda Tawil, confined to her home for committing no known crime save that of expressing her opinions. (For some reason, what I most remember is a sudden exclamation from her very restrained and respectable husband, a manager of the local bank: 'I would prefer living under a Bedouin muktar to another day of Israeli rule!' He had obviously spent some time thinking about the most revolting possible Arab alternative.) In Jerusalem I visited the Tutungi family, who could produce title deeds going back generations but who were being evicted from their apartment in the old city to make way for an expansion of the Jewish quarter. Jerusalem: that place of blood since remote antiquity. Jerusalem, over which the British and French and Russians had fought a foul war in the Crimea, and in the mid-nineteenth century, on the matter of which Christian Church could command the keys to some 'holy sepulcher.' Jerusalem, where the anti-Semite Balfour had tried to bribe the Jews with the territory of another people in order to seduce them from Bolshevism and continue the diplomacy of the Great War. Jerusalem: that pest-house in whose environs all zealots hope that an even greater and final war can be provoked. It certainly made a warped appeal to my sense of history.
Christopher Hitchens (Hitch 22: A Memoir)
a free Palestine where all people regardless of color, religion, or race coexist;
Refaat Alareer (Gaza Writes Back: Short Stories from Young Writers in Gaza, Palestine)
Sonnet of Palestine I don't want to wage a war, All I want is to raise a family. I don’t want your empty pity, All I seek is a little humanity. To call genocide as self-defense, May be textbook diplomacy. Killing innocents to keep control, Is an act of terrorist hypocrisy. Brokers may bring ceasefire, But they can never give us liberty. All they do is arrange assemblies, While we suffer through the century. So I say to you o people in luxury, Look at us and you'll know your fallacy.
Abhijit Naskar (Mucize Insan: When The World is Family)
Pakistan, she observed, had a policy of “profiting from the disputes of others,” and she cited Pakistan’s desire to benefit from tension between the great powers and Pakistan’s early focus on the Palestine dispute as examples of this tendency. “Pakistan was occupied with her own grave internal problem, but she still found time to talk fervently of sending ‘a liberation army to Palestine to help the Arabs free the Holy Land from the Jews
Husain Haqqani (Pakistan: Between Mosque and Military)
Israel’s settler colonialism differed from its predecessors’ in another way. Where European powers colonized from a position of strength and a claim to God-given superiority, the post-Holocaust Zionist claim to Palestine was based on the reverse: on Jewish victimization and vulnerability. The tacit argument many Zionists were making at the time was that Jews had earned the right to an exception from the decolonial consensus—an exception born of their very recent near extermination. The Zionist version of justice said to Western powers: If you could establish your empires and your settler colonial nations through ethnic cleansing, massacres, and land theft, then it is discrimination to say that we cannot. If you cleared your land of its Indigenous inhabitants, or did so in your colonies, then it is anti-Semitic to say that we cannot. It was as if the quest for equality were being reframed not as the right to be free from discrimination, but as the right to discriminate. Colonialism framed as reparations for genocide.
Naomi Klein (Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World)
To call genocide as self-defense, may be textbook diplomacy. Killing innocents to keep control, is an act of terrorist hypocrisy.
Abhijit Naskar (Mucize Insan: When The World is Family)
If racism is the product of historical and socio-economic conditions, to the extent that these conditions can be changed, racism can eventually be abolished.
Rebecca Ruth Gould (Erasing Palestine: Free Speech and Palestinian Freedom)
They once said Palestine will be free tomorrow. When is tomorrow? What is freedom? How long does it last?
Mosab Abu Toha (Things You May Find Hidden in My Ear: Poems from Gaza)
Most televangelists, popular Christian preacher icons, and heads of those corporations that we call megachurches share an unreflective modern view of Jesus--that he translates easily and almost automatically into a modern idiom. The fact is, however, that Jesus was not a person of the twenty-first century who spoke the language of contemporary Christian America (or England or Germany or anywhere else). Jesus was inescapably and ineluctably a Jew living in first-century Palestine. He was not like us, and if we make him like us we transform the historical Jesus into a creature that we have invented for ourselves and for our own purposes. Jesus would not recognize himself in the preaching of most of his followers today. He knew nothing of our world. He was not a capitalist. He did not believe in free enterprise. He did not support the acquisition of wealth or the good things in life. He did not believe in massive education. He had never heard of democracy. He had nothing to do with going to church on Sunday. He knew nothing of social security, food stamps, welfare, American exceptionalism, unemployment numbers, or immigration. He had no views on tax reform, health care (apart from wanting to heal leprosy), or the welfare state. So far as we know, he expressed no opinion on the ethical issues that plague us today: abortion and reproductive rights, gay marriage, euthanasia, or bombing Iraq. His world was not ours, his concerns were not ours, and--most striking of all--his beliefs were not ours. Jesus was a first-century Jew, and when we try to make him into a twenty-first century American we distort everything he was and everything he stood for.
Bart D. Ehrman (Did Jesus Exist?: The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth)
War doesn't solve problems, but peace has the potential to create a world free from violence and the quest for supremacy. Let's advocate for peace, give it a chance, and say no to needless war.
Bamigboye Olurotimi
DB: There's a lot of talk about terrorism. In fact, it's become almost an obsession for the media in the United States. But it's a very narrow definition of terrorism. AR: Yes. It completely ignores the economic terrorism unleashed by neoliberalism, which devastates the lives of millions of people, depriving them of water, food, electricity. Denying them medicine. Denying them education. Terrorism is the logical extension of this business of the free market. Terrorism is the privatization of war. Terrorists are the free marketeers of war - people who believe that it isn't only the state that can wage war, but private parties as well. If you look at the logic underlying an act of terrorism and the logic underlying a retaliatory war against terrorism, they are the same. Both terrorists and governments make ordinary people pay for the actions of their governments. Osama bin Laden is making people pay for the actions of the US state, whether it's in Saudi Arabia, Palestine, or Afghanistan. The US government is making the people of Iraq pay for the actions of Saddam Hussein. The people of Afghanistan pay for the crimes of the Taliban. The logic is the same. Osama bin Laden and George Bush are both terrorists. They are both building international networks that perpetrate terror and devastate people's lives. Bush, with the Pentagon, the WTO, the IMF, and the World Bank. Bin Laden with Al Qaeda.
Arundhati Roy (The Checkbook and the Cruise Missile: Conversations with Arundhati Roy)
On behalf of those you killed, imprisoned, tortured, you are not welcome, Erdogan! No, Erdogan, you’re not welcome in Algeria. We are a country which has already paid its price of blood and tears to those who wanted to impose their caliphate on us, those who put their ideas before our bodies, those who took our children hostage and who attempted to kill our hopes for a better future. The notorious family that claims to act in the name of the God and religion—you’re a member of it—you fund it, you support it, you desire to become its international leader. Islamism is your livelihood Islamism, which is your livelihood, is our misfortune. We will not forget about it, and you are a reminder of it today. You offer your shadow and your wings to those who work to make our country kneel down before your “Sublime Door.” You embody and represent what we loathe. You hate freedom, the free spirit. But you love parades. You use religion for business. You dream of a caliphate and hope to return to our lands. But you do it behind the closed doors, by supporting Islamist parties, by offering gifts through your companies, by infiltrating the life of the community, by controlling the mosques. These are the old methods of your “Muslim Brothers” in this country, who used to show us God’s Heaven with one hand while digging our graves with the other. No, Mr. Erdogan, you are not a man of help; you do not fight for freedom or principles; you do not defend the right of peoples to self-determination. You know only how to subject the Kurds to the fires of death; you know only how to subject your opponents to your dictatorship. You cry with the victims in the Middle East, yet sign contracts with their executioners. You do not dream of a dignified future for us, but of a caliphate for yourself. We are aware of your institutionalized persecution, your list of Turks to track down, your sinister prisons filled with the innocent, your dictatorial justice palaces, your insolence and boastful nature. You do not dream of a humanity that shares common values and principles, but are interested only in the remaking of the Ottoman Empire and its bloodthirsty warlords. Islam, for you, is a footstool; God is a business sign; modernity is an enemy; Palestine is a showcase; and local Islamists are your stunned courtesans. Humanity will not remember you with good deeds Humanity will remember you for your machinations, your secret coups d’état, and your manhunts. History will remember you for your bombings, your vengeful wars, and your inability to engage in constructive dialogue with others. The UN vote for Al-Quds is only an instrument in your service. Let us laugh at this with the Palestinians. We know that the Palestinian issue is your political capital, as it is for many others. You know well how to make a political fortune by exploiting others’ emotions. In Algeria, we suffered, and still suffer, from those who pretend to be God and act as takers and givers of life. They applaud your coming, but not us. You are the idol of Algerian Islamists and Populists, those who are unable to imagine a political structure beyond a caliphate for Muslim-majority societies. We aspire to become a country of freedom and dignity. This is not your ambition, nor your virtue. You are an illusion You have made beautiful Turkey an open prison and a bazaar for your business and loved ones. I hope that this beautiful nation rises above your ambitions. I hope that justice will be restored and flourish there once again, at least for those who have been imprisoned, tortured, bombed, and killed. You are an illusion, Erdogan—you know it and we know it. You play on the history of our humiliation, on our emotions, on our beliefs, and introduce yourself as a savior. However, you are a gravedigger, both for your own country and for your neighbors. Turkey is a political miracle, but it owes you nothing. The best thing you can do
Kamel Daoud
Jesus was surely not the first exorcist to walk the shores of the Sea of Galilee. In first-century Palestine, professional wonder worker was a vocation as well established as that of woodworker or mason, and far better paid. Galilee especially abounded with charismatic fantasts claiming to channel the divine for a nominal fee. Yet from the perspective of the Galileans, what set Jesus apart from his fellow exorcists and healers is that he seemed to be providing his services free of charge.
Reza Aslan (Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth)
The long-run goal is, I think, the same for every human being, that politically he or she may be allowed to live free from fear, insecurity, terror, and oppression, free also from the possibility of exercising unequal or unjust domination over others.
Edward W. Said (The Question of Palestine)
The UN took a strong stand against apartheid; and over the years, an international consensus was built, which helped to bring an end to this iniquitous system. But we know too well that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians.
Nelson Mandela
There are currently some five thousand Palestinian prisoners and we know that since 1967, eight hundred thousand Palestinians—40 percent of the male population—have been imprisoned by Israel. The demand to free all Palestinian political prisoners is a key ingredient of the demand to end the occupation.
Angela Y. Davis (Freedom Is a Constant Struggle: Ferguson, Palestine, and the Foundations of a Movement)
VIII — from "Sunday Morning" She hears, upon that water without sound, A voice that cries, "The tomb in Palestine Is not the porch of spirits lingering. It is the grave of Jesus, where he lay." We live in an old chaos of the sun, Or old despondency of day and night, Or island solitude, unsponsored, free, Of that wide water, inescapable. Deer walk upon our mountains, and the quail Whistle about us their spontaneous cries; Sweet berries ripen in the wilderness; And, in the isolation of the sky, At evening, casual flocks of pigeons make Ambiguous undulations as they sink, Downward to darkness, on extended wings
Wallace Stevens (Sunday Morning)
Just as the struggle to end South African apartheid was embraced by people all over the world and was incorporated into many social justice agendas, solidarity with Palestine must likewise be taken up by organizations and movements involved in progressive causes all over the world. The tendency has been to consider Palestine a separate—and unfortunately too often marginal—issue. This is precisely the moment to encourage everyone who believes in equality and justice to join the call for a free Palestine. Is the struggle endless? I would say that as our struggles mature, they produce new ideas, new issues, and new terrains on which we engage in the quest for freedom. Like Nelson Mandela, we must be willing to embrace the long walk toward freedom.
Angela Y. Davis (Freedom Is a Constant Struggle: Ferguson, Palestine, and the Foundations of a Movement)
If you cared about the thousands of children suffering today in Gaza, as much you care about the birth of one middle eastern child two thousand years ago, perhaps then, you could've understood the true meaning of Christmas. As of now, Christmas is just a festival of hypocrisy - and that too, in the name of a man who gave his life to lift up the fallen. My question is, if you cannot be Christlike in your deeds, what's the point of all these festivities, which are supposed to be rooted in goodwill towards all, not mindless self-obsession!
Abhijit Naskar (Visvavatan: 100 Demilitarization Sonnets)
Congress, in the twenties, put an end to the dangerous, turbulent flood of immigrants (14 million between 1900 and 1920) by passing laws setting immigration quotas: the quotas favored Anglo-Saxons, kept out black and yellow people, limited severely the coming of Latins, Slavs, Jews. No African country could send more than 100 people; 100 was the limit for China, for Bulgaria, for Palestine; 34,007 could come from England or Northern Ireland, but only 3,845 from Italy; 51,227 from Germany, but only 124 from Lithuania; 28,567 from the Irish Free State, but only 2,248 from Russia.
Howard Zinn (A People's History of the United States: 1492 to Present)
Sunday Morning She hears, upon that water without sound, A voice that cries, "The tomb in Palestine Is not the porch of spirits lingering. It is the grave of Jesus, where he lay." We live in an old chaos of the sun, Or old despondency of day and night, Or island solitude, un-sponsored, free, Of that wide water, inescapable. Deer walk upon our mountains, and the quail Whistle about us their spontaneous cries; Sweet berries ripen in the wilderness; And, in the isolation of the sky, At evening, casual flocks of pigeons make Ambiguous undulations as they sink, Downward to darkness, on extended wings
Wallace Stevens
I retweet hot takes about bubble tea, MSG, BTS, and some drama series called The Untamed. I learn it’s important to be anti-PRC (that’s the People’s Republic of China) but pro-China (I’m not terribly sure how that’s different). I learn what “little pinks” and “tankies” are and make sure I don’t inadvertently retweet support for either. I decry what’s happening in Xinjiang. I Stand with Hong Kong. I start gaining dozens more followers a day once I’ve started vocalizing on these matters, and when I notice that many of my followers are people of color or have things like #BLM and #FreePalestine in their bios, I know I’m on the right track. And
R.F. Kuang (Yellowface)
When Menachem Begin visited America soon after the creation of the Israeli state in 1948, a letter to the New York Times signed by 28 Jewish liberals and progressives, including Albert Einstein and Hannah Arendt, denounced him as a “terrorist, right-wing chauvinist.” His movement, the letter stated, was “closely akin in its organization, methods, political philosophy, and social appeal to Nazi and Fascist parties. … Within the Jewish community they have preached an admixture of ultranationalism, religious mysticism, and racial superiority. Like other Fascist parties they have been used to break strikes, and have themselves pressed for the destruction of free trade unions. In their stead, they have proposed corporate unions on the Italian Fascist model.”[43
Richard Becker (Palestine, Israel and the U.S. Empire)
American progressives cannot wave a magic wand and solve the Israel-Palestine conflict, but we can certainly take action. We can push Israel to allow the people of Gaza the freedom to rebuild their economy. We can put real pressure on Israel to stop expanding its settlements, and to allow Palestinian towns to grow, as well as allow the free movement of Palestinians in the West Bank. We can make it clear that our democratic values demand that we support Palestinians having the same right to a national existence as Israelis do, and the same right to live in peace and security. We can press Israel to stop blocking the rights that Palestinians are just as entitled to as anyone else. In short, we can act on our principles, which maintain that oppressive conditions diminish life for all but the very few who profit from them.
Marc Lamont Hill (Except for Palestine: The Limits of Progressive Politics)
Sunday Morning V She says, "But in contentment I still feel The need of some imperishable bliss." Death is the mother of beauty; hence from her, Alone, shall come fulfilment to our dreams And our desires. Although she strews the leaves Of sure obliteration on our paths, The path sick sorrow took, the many paths Where triumph rang its brassy phrase, or love Whispered a little out of tenderness, She makes the willow shiver in the sun For maidens who were wont to sit and gaze Upon the grass, relinquished to their feet. She causes boys to pile new plums and pears On disregarded plate. The maidens taste And stray impassioned in the littering leaves. VI Is there no change of death in paradise? Does ripe fruit never fall? Or do the boughs Hang always heavy in that perfect sky, Unchanging, yet so like our perishing earth, With rivers like our own that seek for seas They never find, the same receding shores That never touch with inarticulate pang? Why set the pear upon those river-banks Or spice the shores with odors of the plum? Alas, that they should wear our colors there, The silken weavings of our afternoons, And pick the strings of our insipid lutes! Death is the mother of beauty, mystical, Within whose burning bosom we devise Our earthly mothers waiting, sleeplessly. VII Supple and turbulent, a ring of men Shall chant in orgy on a summer morn Their boisterous devotion to the sun, Not as a god, but as a god might be, Naked among them, like a savage source. Their chant shall be a chant of paradise, Out of their blood, returning to the sky; And in their chant shall enter, voice by voice, The windy lake wherein their lord delights, The trees, like serafin, and echoing hills, That choir among themselves long afterward. They shall know well the heavenly fellowship Of men that perish and of summer morn. And whence they came and whither they shall go The dew upon their feet shall manifest. VIII She hears, upon that water without sound, A voice that cries, "The tomb in Palestine Is not the porch of spirits lingering. It is the grave of Jesus, where he lay." We live in an old chaos of the sun, Or old dependency of day and night, Or island solitude, unsponsored, free, Of that wide water, inescapable. Deer walk upon our mountains, and the quail Whistle about us their spontaneous cries; Sweet berries ripen in the wilderness; And, in the isolation of the sky, At evening, casual flocks of pigeons make Ambiguous undulations as they sink, Downward to darkness, on extended wings
Wallace Stevens
He sailed off again through the corridors. He must tell Gina he had invited little Jacoby to dinner and fix the exact time. Sister Helene would have to remind him. If possible, it had better be an evening when Ruth was free too. Why did he suddenly think about his daughter? Obviously in connection with little Jacoby. But why? Perhaps it was the earnestness, one really had to say, the frenzy, with which both pursued their aims. He, Edgar, smiled at Ruth’s Zionism. He ought to spend more time with her. Reason, reason, my daughter. Get thee not to a nunnery, Ophelia. It was a pity that the simplest things were the most difficult to understand. He was a German doctor, a German scientist. German medicine and Jewish medicine did not exist, the only thing that existed was science. He knew it, Jacoby knew it, old Lorenz knew it. But apparently Ruth did not know it, and certain others who mattered were still less aware of it. He thought with some uneasiness of the conference he was going to. In the end, little Jacoby would have to be sent to Palestine, he thought, smiling.
Cohen (The Oppermanns)
In first-century Palestine, nearly every claimant to the mantle of the messiah neatly fit one of these messianic paradigms. Hezekiah the bandit chief, Judas the Galilean, Simon of Peraea, and Athronges the shepherd all modeled themselves after the Davidic ideal, as did Menahem and Simon son of Giora during the Jewish War. These were king-messiahs whose royal aspirations were clearly defined in their revolutionary actions against Rome and its clients in Jerusalem. Others, such as Theudas the wonder worker, the Egyptian, and the Samaritan cast themselves as liberator-messiahs in the mold of Moses, each would-be messiah promising to free his followers from the yoke of Roman occupation through some miraculous deed. Oracular prophets such as John the Baptist and the holy man Jesus ben Ananias may not have overtly assumed any messianic ambitions, but their prophecies about the End Times and the coming judgment of God clearly conformed to the prophet-messiah archetype one finds both in the Hebrew Scripture and in the rabbinic traditions and commentaries known as the Targum.
Reza Aslan (Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth)
Prisons are racism incarnate. As Michelle Alexander points out, they constitute the new Jim Crow. But also much more, as the lynchpins of the prison-industrial complex, they represent the increasing profitability of punishment. They represent the increasingly global strategy of dealing with populations of people of color and immigrant populations from the countries of the Global South as surplus populations, as disposable populations. Put them all in a vast garbage bin, add some sophisticated electronic technology to control them, and let them languish there. And in the meantime, create the ideological illusion that the surrounding society is safer and more free because the dangerous Black people and Latinos, and the Native Americans, and the dangerous Asians and the dangerous White people, and of course the dangerous Muslims, are locked up! And in the meantime, corporations profit and poor communities suffer! Public education suffers! Public education suffers because it is not profitable according to corporate measures. Public health care suffers. If punishment can be profitable, then certainly health care should be profitable, too. This is absolutely outrageous! It is outrageous. It is also outrageous that the state of Israel uses the carceral technologies developed in relation to US prisons not only to control the more than eight thousand Palestinian political prisoners in Israel but also to control the broader Palestinian population. These carceral technologies, for example, the separation wall, which reminds us of the US-Mexico border wall, and other carceral technologies are the material constructs of Israeli apartheid. G4S, the organization, the corporation G4S, which profits from the incarceration and the torturing of Palestinian prisoners, has a subsidiary called G4S Secure Solutions, which was formerly known as Wackenhut. And just recently a subsidiary of that just have one more page of notes corporation, GEO Group, which is a private prison company, attempted to claim naming rights at Florida Atlantic University by donating something like $6 million, right? And, the students rose up. They said that our football stadium will not bear the name of a private prison corporation! And the students won. The students won; the name came down from the marquee.
Angela Y. Davis (Freedom Is a Constant Struggle: Ferguson, Palestine, and the Foundations of a Movement)
Another obstacle was the stubbornness of the countries the pipeline had to cross, particularly Syria, all of which were demanding what seemed to be exorbitant transit fees. It was also the time when the partition of Palestine and the establishment of the state of Israel were aggravating American relations with the Arab countries. But the emergence of a Jewish state, along with the American recognition that followed, threatened more than transit rights for the pipeline. Ibn Saud was as outspoken and adamant against Zionism and Israel as any Arab leader. He said that Jews had been the enemies of Arabs since the seventh century. American support of a Jewish state, he told Truman, would be a death blow to American interests in the Arab world, and should a Jewish state come into existence, the Arabs “will lay siege to it until it dies of famine.” When Ibn Saud paid a visit to Aramco’s Dhahran headquarters in 1947, he praised the oranges he was served but then pointedly asked if they were from Palestine—that is, from a Jewish kibbutz. He was reassured; the oranges were from California. In his opposition to a Jewish state, Ibn Saud held what a British official called a “trump card”: He could punish the United States by canceling the Aramco concession. That possibility greatly alarmed not only the interested companies, but also, of course, the U.S. State and Defense departments. Yet the creation of Israel had its own momentum. In 1947, the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine recommended the partition of Palestine, which was accepted by the General Assembly and by the Jewish Agency, but rejected by the Arabs. An Arab “Liberation Army” seized the Galilee and attacked the Jewish section of Jerusalem. Violence gripped Palestine. In 1948, Britain, at wit’s end, gave up its mandate and withdrew its Army and administration, plunging Palestine into anarchy. On May 14, 1948, the Jewish National Council proclaimed the state of Israel. It was recognized almost instantly by the Soviet Union, followed quickly by the United States. The Arab League launched a full-scale attack. The first Arab-Israeli war had begun. A few days after Israel’s proclamation of statehood, James Terry Duce of Aramco passed word to Secretary of State Marshall that Ibn Saud had indicated that “he may be compelled, in certain circumstances, to apply sanctions against the American oil concessions… not because of his desire to do so but because the pressure upon him of Arab public opinion was so great that he could no longer resist it.” A hurriedly done State Department study, however, found that, despite the large reserves, the Middle East, excluding Iran, provided only 6 percent of free world oil supplies and that such a cut in consumption of that oil “could be achieved without substantial hardship to any group of consumers.
Daniel Yergin (The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, and Power)
For a free PALESTINE Your tears, I want to dry it. If I could make a deal with God. Your freedom, I would like to return it to you. If I could make a deal with God.
Kristian Goldmund Aumann
To understand the Arab-Israeli conflict, we need to look into the past in more detail. For Israelis, this past starts many thousands of years ago, back in the days of Moses and Noah and David and Solomon. But more importantly, it branches out to include the history of Europe in the mid-20th century and the rise of global anti-Semitism. For Palestinians, the relevant history is more recent, contained in the years and generations since the British Mandate of Palestine. And yet nowadays, both sides seem to overlook one significant detail: Jews and Muslims once coexisted. It was not always peaceful coexistence, or even coexistence free from discrimination, but coexistence it was.
Jamie Alexander (Nowhere Like Home: Misadventures in a Changing World)
I have fought against white domination, and I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve. But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.
William Parry (Against the Wall: The Art of Resistance in Palestine)
What do their references about killing Jews, and a perverse Islamic view of what is a Jew, have to do with Palestinian self-determination, except perhaps for their stated condition that a Palestine must be Judenrein – Jew free?
Barry Shaw (Fighting Hamas, BDS and Anti-Semitism: Fighting violence, bigotry and hatred)
The Jewish communities of Europe are seen by the public as extensions of and advocates for a regime in Israel that is rapidly losing its legitimacy in the eyes of the intelligentsia, the media, the left, and the anti-globalization crowd,” according to David Harris, head of the American Jewish Committee. “So the question really becomes, how do you fight anti-Semitism in France or Belgium if the image of their Jewish citizens is inextricably linked to Israel?”6 Israel, with the only freely elected government in the Middle East, with the only free press, with a citizenry still decidedly in favor of a two-state solution with Palestine, has become a pariah.
Robert L. Beir (Roosevelt and the Holocaust: How FDR Saved the Jews and Brought Hope to a Nation)
A few of the Germans managed to reach Palestine, where they disappeared. The French party fell into the hands not of angels but of two of the worst scoundrels in history, Hugh the Iron and William of Posquères, Marseilles shipowners, who offered the young crusaders free transport to the Holy Land, but carried them instead to Bougie in North Africa and sold them as slaves to Arab dealers.
Morris Bishop (The Middle Ages)
As the overarching organization of workers’ trade unions, the Histadrut controlled key areas that were needed to accomplish the primary tasks of the Zionist colonial enterprise. These included economic production and marketing, defense, and control of the labor force, as well as creating jobs outside the free market so as to avoid competition with abundant and cheap Arab labor. The Histadrut thus introduced the irregular phenomenon of a “trade union” that established its own industrial, financial, construction, transport, and service enterprises.41
Tikva Honig-Parnass (The False Prophets of Peace: Liberal Zionism and the Struggle for Palestine)
The occupation deprives you of your humanity by depriving you of the ability to control time. A free human being controls his time: he gets up when he wants and goes to bed when he wants; he goes to work according to a simple daily routine; she visits her relatives and her fiance; he goes to the movies; she goes for a walk amid nature around her home any time she wishes. A human being is human because he makes his own decisions, because he has the ability to plan for tomorrow and the day after tomorrow, for next week and for the next ten years. A human being pursues her freedom through her ability to control her time. Freedom guarantees that simple, extraordinary, and sometimes hard-to-define thing: dignity.
Ala Hlehel
Then there were those who were thrilling to Senator Sanders, who believed that Bernie would be the one to give them free college, to solve climate change, and even to bring peace to the Middle East, though that was not an issue most people associated with him. On a trip to Michigan, I met with a group of young Muslims, most of them college students, for whom this was the first election in which they planned to participate. I was excited that they had come to hear more about HRC's campaign. One young woman, speaking for her peers, said she really wanted to be excited about the first woman president, but she had to support Bernie because she believed he would be more effective at finally brokering a peace treaty in the Middle East. Everyone around her nodded. I asked the group why they doubted Hillary Clinton's ability to do the same. "Well, she has done nothing to help the Palestinians." Taking a deep breath, I asked them if they knew that she was the first U.S. official to ever call the territories "Palestine" in the nineties, that she advocated for Palestinian sovereignty back when no other official would. They did not. I then asked them if they were aware that she brought together the last round of direct talks between the Israelis and Palestinians? That she personally negotiated a cease-fire to stop the latest war in Gaza when she was secretary of state? They shook their heads. Had they known that she announced $600 million in assistance to the Palestinian Authority and $300 million in humanitarian aid to Gaza in her first year at State? They began to steal glances at one another. Did they know that she pushed Israel to invest in the West Bank and announced an education program to make college more affordable for Palestinian students? More head shaking. They simply had no idea. "So," I continued, "respectfully, what is it about Senator Sander's twenty-seven-year record in Congress that suggests to you that the Middle East is a priority for him?" The young woman's response encapsulated some what we were up against. "I don't know," she replied. "I just feel it.
Huma Abedin (Both/And: A Memoir)
Until all of us are free, none of us is free.
Abhijit Naskar (Hometown Human: To Live for Soil and Society)
Meanwhile, Facebook censors Palestinian groups so often that they have created their own hashtag, #FBCensorsPalestine. That the groups have become prominent matters little: in 2016, Facebook blocked accounts belonging to editors at the Quds News Network and Shehab News Agency in the West Bank; it later apologized and restored the accounts.30 The following year, it did the same to the official account of Fatah, the ruling party in the West Bank.31 A year after Facebook’s relationship with the Israelis was formalized, the Guardian released a set of leaked documents exposing the ways the company’s moderation policy discriminates against Palestinians and other groups. Published in a series called “The Facebook Files,” the documents contained slides from manuals used to train content moderators. On the whole, the leaks paint a picture of a disjointed and disorganized company where the community standards are expanded piecemeal, and little attention is given to their consequences. Anna, the former Facebook operations specialist I spoke with, agrees: “There’s no ownership of processes from beginning to end.” One set of documents demonstrate with precision the imbalance on the platform between Palestinians and Israelis (and the supporters of both). In a slide deck entitled “Credible Violence: Abuse Standards,” one slide lists global and local “vulnerable” groups; alongside “foreigners” and “homeless people” is “Zionists.”32 Interestingly, while Zionists are protected as a special category, “migrants,” as ProPublica has reported, are only “quasi-protected” and “Black children” aren’t protected at all.33 In trying to understand how such a decision came about, I reached out to numerous contacts, but only one spoke about it on the record. Maria, who worked in community operations until 2017, told me that she spoke up against the categorization when it was proposed. “We’d say, ‘Being a Zionist isn’t like being a Hindu or Muslim or white or Black—it’s like being a revolutionary socialist, it’s an ideology,’” she told me. “And now, almost everything related to Palestine is getting deleted.
Jillian York (Silicon Values: The Future of Free Speech Under Surveillance Capitalism)
Another former staffer told me under the condition of anonymity that it was a “constant discussion,” and that the company was under pressure from the Israeli government. As Maria tried to point out to her superiors, Zionism is an ideology or a political doctrine, akin to “communism” or “liberalism”—not an immutable characteristic. Treating it as such is not merely a mockery of actual characteristics that make a person or group vulnerable, but elevating it—and not Palestinians—to such a level also fails to take into account the power imbalance that exists between occupied and occupier. But, Maria told me, “Palestine and Israel has always been the toughest topic at Facebook. In the beginning, it was a bit discreet,” with the Arabic-language team mainly in charge of tough calls, but after the 2014 conflict between Israel and Gaza, the company moved closer to the Israeli government. Somewhat notably, one of the first twenty members of Facebook’s new External Oversight Board is Emi Palmor, under whose direction the Israeli Ministry of Justice petitioned Facebook to censor legitimate speech of human rights defenders, according to 7amleh.
Jillian York (Silicon Values: The Future of Free Speech Under Surveillance Capitalism)
Whether these politicians lack understanding of the law or simply seek to circumvent it by using corporate regulations instead is unclear. But in the case of both Hamas and Hezbollah, we need to ask: What is the impact in Palestine and Lebanon, where these groups are powerful players in local politics—local politics that have no shortage of violent actors? Azza El Masri is a media researcher from Lebanon who, for the past several years, has studied content moderation. “Is Hezbollah’s involvement in Syria, Iraq, Yemen and its participation in the Iran-KSA proxy war tantamount to terrorist activities? Yes,” she told me in a text message. “However, this doesn’t absolve the fact that Hezbollah today is the most powerful political actor in Lebanon.” Lebanon’s political scene is, to the outsider, messy and difficult to parse. After the fifteen-year civil war that killed hundreds of thousands, the country’s parliament instituted a law that pardoned all political crimes prior to its enactment, allowing the groups that were formerly militias to form political parties. Only Hezbollah—an Iran-sponsored creation to unify the country’s Shia population during the war—was allowed by the postwar Syrian occupation to retain its militia. The United States designated Hezbollah (which translates to “Party of God”) a foreign terrorist organization in 1995, more than a decade after the group bombed US military barracks in Beirut.
Jillian York (Silicon Values: The Future of Free Speech Under Surveillance Capitalism)
With you, I, an American Negro, am deeply concerned about liberty of a man in Yugoslavia and about the rights of Jews in Europe. We care that a Chinese peasant shall have the right to till his land free from fear and want. But I ask you this-an honest question-why is there talk of Spain and Yugoslavia, of Palestine and Greece but no talk of Aiken County, South Carolina. Why so little of Isaac Woodard, a veteran whose eyes were gouged out by a policeman's club? Why do we sweep the burning fact of discrimination against 15,000,000 citizens under the carpets of America? There are 15,000,000 Negro Americans who do not believe you, ladies and gentlemen, when you say, "justice." We have reasons to believe you mean justice for whites only.
Oliver W. Harrington (Why I Left America and Other Essays)
Until all of us are free, none of us are free.
Abhijit Naskar (Yarasistan: My Wounds, My Crown)
This is no simple declaration. It is, in fact, an act of treason. In first-century Palestine, simply saying the words “This is the messiah,” aloud and in public, can be a criminal offense, punishable by crucifixion. True, the Jews of Jesus’s time had somewhat conflicting views about the role and function of the messiah, fed by a score of messianic traditions and popular folktales that were floating around the Holy Land. Some believed the messiah would be a restorative figure who would return the Jews to their previous position of power and glory. Others viewed the messiah in more apocalyptic and utopian terms, as someone who would annihilate the present world and build a new, more just world upon its ruins. There were those who thought the messiah would be a king, and those who thought he’d be a priest. The Essenes apparently awaited two separate messiahs—one kingly, the other priestly—though most Jews thought of the messiah as possessing a combination of both traits. Nevertheless, among the crowd of Jews gathered for the Feast of Tabernacles, there seems to have been a fair consensus about who the messiah is supposed to be and what the messiah is supposed to do: he is the descendant of King David; he comes to restore Israel, to free the Jews from the yoke of occupation, and to establish God’s rule in Jerusalem.
Reza Aslan (Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth)
If you cared about the thousands of children suffering today in Gaza, as much you care about the birth of one middle eastern child two thousand years ago, perhaps then, you could've understood the true meaning of Christmas.
Abhijit Naskar (Visvavatan: 100 Demilitarization Sonnets)
1877 when Radical Reconstruction was overturned. And it was not only overturned, but it was erased from the historical record. So in the 1960s we confronted issues that should have been resolved in the 1860s, one hundred years later. As a matter of fact, the Ku Klux Klan and the racial segregation that was so dramatically challenged during the mid-twentieth-century freedom movement was produced not during slavery, but rather in an attempt to manage free Black people who would have otherwise been far more successful in pushing forward democracy for all.
Angela Y. Davis (Freedom Is a Constant Struggle: Ferguson, Palestine, and the Foundations of a Movement)
The UN took a strong stand against apartheid; and over the years, an international consensus was built, which helped to bring an end to this iniquitous system. But we know too well that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians.
Nelson Mandela, 1997
The Gaza Sonnet, 1264 (All Free or None Free) Al-Shams to Alpha Centauri, All occupied lands will be free. Till there is smile on every face, All happiness is blasphemy. Happiness is not an imperial merch, Freedom is no colonizer's heirloom. Joy is no bigot's ancestral bequest, Earth is not a zionist hand-me-down. Divide and rule is the law of animals, Unite and integrate is law of humanity. One human life is worth more, than all the gas reserves underneath. Gaza is not a place, Gaza is a wake up call, to the peace-crying humanity. Awake, Arise, O Citizens of Earth - Till all of us are free, none of us are free!
Abhijit Naskar (Yaralardan Yangın Doğar: Explorers of Night are Emperors of Dawn)
All free or none free.
Abhijit Naskar (Yaralardan Yangın Doğar: Explorers of Night are Emperors of Dawn)
Happiness is not an imperial merch, Freedom is no colonizer's heirloom. Joy is no bigot's ancestral bequest, Earth is not a zionist hand-me-down.
Abhijit Naskar (Yaralardan Yangın Doğar: Explorers of Night are Emperors of Dawn)
felt dizzied by a sudden sweeping understanding of our collective grief—kids ripped from their homes in Palestine, kids shot in the streets of Gaza and Houston and Rio, the greed, the oil, and guns—it was the same struggle everywhere.
Sim Kern (The Free People's Village)
There are vast numbers of people behind bars in the United States—some two and a half million—and imprisonment is increasingly used as a strategy of deflection of the underlying social problems—racism, poverty, unemployment, lack of education, and so on. These issues are never seriously addressed. It is only a matter of time before people begin to realize that the prison is a false solution. Abolitionist advocacy can and should occur in relation to demands for quality education, for antiracist job strategies, for free health care, and within other progressive movements. It can help promote an anticapitalist critique and movements toward socialism.
Angela Y. Davis (Freedom Is a Constant Struggle: Ferguson, Palestine, and the Foundations of a Movement)
Important factors included growing Muslim hostility toward Jews as a result of nationalist mobilization, the creation of Israel, rampant poverty, and the ongoing refusal of citizenship by the French as well as negative experiences with the anti-Semitic Vichy regime during the war.100 Tension with the Muslim majority population started to grow in Morocco in 1947 against the backdrop of the war in Palestine. Following the June 1948 pogroms in Oudjda and Djérada in eastern Morocco on the border with Algeria, emigration of Jews from Morocco to Israel became a more widespread phenomenon.101 When the French colonial rulers realized that the constant illegal flow of migrants could not be stopped, they allowed for the organized emigration of Jews, giving the Jewish Agency free rein in processing and selecting the migrants. For this purpose, the Jewish Agency–operated Kadima (forward) office was created in April of that year.102 A similar office had operated in Tunis since the second half of 1948, when the French authorities had started tolerating, if initially not fully legalizing, Aliyah.103
Jannis Panagiotidis (The Unchosen Ones: Diaspora, Nation, and Migration in Israel and Germany)
Al-Shams to Alpha Centauri, All occupied lands will be free. Till there is smile on every face, All happiness is blasphemy.
Abhijit Naskar (Yaralardan Yangın Doğar: Explorers of Night are Emperors of Dawn)
since 1967, eight hundred thousand Palestinians—40 percent of the male population—have been imprisoned by Israel. The demand to free all Palestinian political prisoners is a key ingredient of the demand to end the occupation.
Angela Y. Davis (Freedom Is a Constant Struggle: Ferguson, Palestine, and the Foundations of a Movement)
Israeli Jewish society is incapable, for moral and political reasons, of murdering millions or hundreds of thousands of Arabs. It is also inconceivable that Palestine’s Arab inhabitants would abandon the country of their own free will. But a campaign of expulsion, as required to rid the country of all or most of its Arab population, would doubtless take weeks if not months to implement and would be halted in its tracks by the international community and by much of Israel’s Jewish public. Similarly, the achievement of a Jew-less Land of Israel through murder or expulsion or a combination of the two by the Arabs would in all likelihood be stymied by the international community, or at least the United States, which might well intervene militarily.
Benny Morris (One State, Two States: Resolving the Israel/Palestine Conflict)
One might speculate that the Islamists’ call for democracy is a tactical manoeuvre because in the current political situation in the Arab-Islamic world free elections might assure them the ascendancy to power. And as easily as it was integrated into their thought it might be rejected again if the political situation changes. This could be true, even though Islamists probably do not see it in these terms. As I have shown in the preceding section on the Intifāḍa, the Islamists genuinely believe that Islam corresponds to the "true nature" of Muslim people. If Muslims stray from their path and adhere to other ideologies, this is only a matter of ignorance and it is hoped that one day this "true nature" will regain the upper hand. The Islamists can thus be very confident and honestly support the idea of free elections.
Andrea Nuesse (Muslim Palestine: The Ideology of Hamas)
This is the frontline between the free and civilized world and radical Islam. We’re stopping the wave of radical Islam from flowing from Iran and Iraq all the way to Europe. When we fight terror here, we’re protecting London, Paris, and Madrid.
Antony Loewenstein (The Palestine Laboratory: How Israel Exports the Technology of Occupation Around the World)
BDS is a useful boogeyman for the Israeli and American right wings, allowing them to expand their assault on democracy while advancing the narrative that “the whole world is against Israel.”70 Rubio weaponized the BDS debate in an effort to force an internal fight among Democrats, who he knew were split between those who agreed with the Republicans and those who saw it as a violation of free speech.
Marc Lamont Hill (Except for Palestine: The Limits of Progressive Politics)
Acts of terror committed by a government is still terrorism.
Abhijit Naskar (Hometown Human: To Live for Soil and Society)
Sonnet of Occupation With just weeks of lockdown, You all feel restless and bland. That is how everyday life is, For people in occupied land. Imagine living your whole life, Subject to restriction and suspicion. Ask a Palestinian or a Kashmiri, They'll reveal the face of occupation. Life, liberty and happiness, Are the rights of every being. Whenever a government violates them, Civilized humanity must intervene. I call to all humans far and near, Rest not till statehood is declared.
Abhijit Naskar (Hometown Human: To Live for Soil and Society)
Throughout my years inside the IRA, there was always a desperate shortage of good-quality, modern hand-guns.  The IRA had ample supplies of AK-47s, hundreds of which had been supplied virtually free of charge by the PLO (Palestine Liberation Organisation) and Colonel Gaddafi of Libya. A
Martin McGartland (Fifty Dead Men Walking: A true story of a secret agent who infiltrated the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA))
And if your difference of opinion with a friend reflects a difference in core values, you might want to handle it with a little less honesty and an extra dose of polite. Saying you don’t believe in the health benefits of organic nut spread is a little different than saying you don’t believe in a woman’s right to choose, or a free Palestine, or that the New England Patriots are dirty rotten cheaters.
Sarah Knight (The Life-Changing Magic of Not Giving a F*ck: How to Stop Spending Time You Don't Have with People You Don't Like Doing Things You Don't Want to Do (A No F*cks Given Guide Book 1))
As a matter of fact, the Ku Klux Klan and the racial segregation that was so dramatically challenged during the mid-twentieth-century freedom movement was produced not during slavery, but rather in an attempt to manage free Black people who would have otherwise been far more successful in pushing forward democracy for all.
Angela Y. Davis (Freedom Is a Constant Struggle: Ferguson, Palestine, and the Foundations of a Movement)
And so in the 1960s organizations like the Black Panther Party were created. (And I should say the Black Panther Party was founded in 1966, which means that there should be a fiftieth anniversary celebration coming up!) I wonder how we are going to address, for example, the Ten-Point Program of the Black Panther Party. I’ll just summarize the Ten-Point Program and you might get an idea why there are not efforts under way to guarantee a large fiftieth anniversary celebration for the Black Panther Party. Number one was “We want freedom.” Two, full employment. Three, an end to the robbery by the capitalists of our Black and oppressed communities—it was anticapitalist! Number four, we want decent housing, fit for the shelter of human beings. Number five, we want decent education for our people that exposes the true nature of this decadent American society. We want education that teaches us our true history and our role in present-day society. And number six—which is especially significant in relation to the right-wing effort to undo the very small efforts made by the Obama administration to produce health care for poor people in the US—we want completely free health care for all Black and oppressed people. Number seven, we want an immediate end to police brutality and the murder of Black people, other people of color, and all oppressed people inside the United States. Number eight, we want an immediate end to all wars of aggression—you see how current this still sounds. Number nine, we want freedom for all Black and oppressed people now held in US federal, state, county, city, and military prisons and jails. We want trials by a jury of peers for all persons charged with so-called crimes under the laws of this country. And finally, number ten: we want land, bread, housing, education, clothing, justice, peace, and people’s community control of modern technology.
Angela Y. Davis (Freedom Is a Constant Struggle: Ferguson, Palestine, and the Foundations of a Movement)
You said during a talk at Birkbeck University that the Palestine issue needed to become a global one, a social issue that any movement fighting for justice should have on its program or agenda. What did you mean by that? Just as the struggle to end South African apartheid was embraced by people all over the world and was incorporated into many social justice agendas, solidarity with Palestine must likewise be taken up by organizations and movements involved in progressive causes all over the world. The tendency has been to consider Palestine a separate—and unfortunately too often marginal—issue. This is precisely the moment to encourage everyone who believes in equality and justice to join the call for a free Palestine.
Angela Y. Davis (Freedom Is a Constant Struggle: Ferguson, Palestine, and the Foundations of a Movement)
One of the enduring myths about NSO, and many of its competitors, is that it’s a private company looking to make a profit with no formal ties to the Israeli state. It’s a message that’s constantly pushed by the Israeli government, and a lot of the Western media has gone along for the ride, unwilling or unable to investigate what a state-backed spyware outfit means for global relations, privacy, and free speech. It’s easy to condemn Chinese-or Russian-backed hackers, opponents of Western governments, but what if these corporations are supported and used by a Western-favored nation like Israel?
Antony Loewenstein (The Palestine Laboratory: How Israel Exports the Technology of Occupation Around the World)
Gaza is not a place, Gaza is a wake up call.
Abhijit Naskar (Yaralardan Yangın Doğar: Explorers of Night are Emperors of Dawn)
The US government holds in prison within this country five Cubans who attempted to prevent terrorist attacks on Cuba. They were investigating terrorism and in turn were charged with terrorism. I’m referring to the Cuban Five—Free the Cuban Five!
Angela Y. Davis (Freedom Is a Constant Struggle: Ferguson, Palestine, and the Foundations of a Movement)
They once said Palestine will be free tomorrow. When is tomorrow? What is freedom? How long does it last? (Page 15).
Mosab Abu Toha (Things You May Find Hidden in My Ear: Poems from Gaza)
The real first world war has just begun - the war between good and evil - the war between emancipation and occupation - between inclusion and exclusion - between expansion and contraction - between reason and rigidity - between humanity and inhumanity. I call it, World War Human. And unlike previous times, we won't win this war by old-fashioned bullets and bombs, or by deceit and diplomacy. The World War Human can only be won by education, and education alone - by an ardent, absolute, unambiguous, unbending, undoctrinated, unphobic, unwhitewashed, decolonized, nonpartisan, gender neutral, valiant, self-correcting and conscientious execution of education.
Abhijit Naskar (World War Human: 100 New Earthling Sonnets)
There never was a war of the free world against fascism, there was only war between two versions of fascism - because the so-called free world has tortured and massacred more lives than the third reich could only dream of. There never was a world war between good and evil, there was only war between two evils. There never was a world war against tyranny, there was only war between an established tyrant regime and a rising one. The real first world war has just begun - the war between good and evil - the war between emancipation and occupation - between inclusion and exclusion - between expansion and contraction - between reason and rigidity - between humanity and inhumanity. I call it, World War Human. And unlike previous times, we won't win this war by old-fashioned bullets and bombs, or by deceit and diplomacy. The World War Human can only be won by education, and education alone - by an ardent, absolute, unambiguous, unbending, undoctrinated, unphobic, unwhitewashed, decolonized, nonpartisan, gender neutral, valiant, self-correcting and conscientious execution of education.
Abhijit Naskar (World War Human: 100 New Earthling Sonnets)
The real first world war has just begun - the war between good and evil - the war between emancipation and occupation - between inclusion and exclusion - between expansion and contraction - between reason and rigidity - between humanity and inhumanity. I call it, World War Human.
Abhijit Naskar (World War Human: 100 New Earthling Sonnets)