From his grave, Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish responds to Newt Gingrich's anti-Palestinian bigotry

Long before Newt Gingrich made his repeated bigoted statements that the Palestinian people are an "invented" people, renowned Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish wrote two poems challenging this hateful genocidal rhetoric against the Palestinian people, their identity, their heritage, and their future.

Newt Gingrich is not the first nor is going to be the last person to engage in such Nazi-like revisionism that attempts to deny a people their existence, past, and dignity. As if robbing a people of their homes, land, freedom, and rights is not sufficiently immoral, Newt Gingrich and those who share his views want to intensify it  with an assault on their past and memories.

Mahmoud Darwish responded to the similar racist Israeli campaigns to erase the Palestinian identity and culture through his poems. The world lost this genius on Saturday, August 9, 2008. His poetry remains celebrated around the world by all those who value human rights and support justice and freedom for the Palestinian people.

Read and/listen to the two poems below and you will understand the pain, hope, perseverence, and aspirations of the great real and un-invented people called the Palestinians.

Passport - By: Mahmoud Darwish (Song performed by renowned Lebanese singer Marcel Khalife)     They did not recognize me in the shadows That suck away my color in this Passport And to them my wound was an exhibit For a tourist Who loves to collect photographs They did not recognize me, Ah . . . Don’t leave The palm of my hand without the sun Because the trees recognize me Don’t leave me pale like the moon! All the birds that followed my palm To the door of the distant airport All the wheatfields All the prisons All the white tombstones All the barbed Boundaries All the waving handkerchiefs All the eyes were with me, But they dropped them from my passport Stripped of my name and identity? On soil I nourished with my own hands? Today Job (The Prophet) cried out Filling the sky: Don’t make and example of me again! Oh, gentlemen, Prophets, Don’t ask the trees for their names Don’t ask the valleys who their mother is From my forehead bursts the sward of light And from my hand springs the water of the river All the hearts of the people are my identity So take away my passport!

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Identity Card - By: Mahmoud Darwish

 (Arabic and English read by Souhad Zendah  - English begins at: 3:55)

Record!

I am an Arab

And my identity card is number fifty thousand

I have eight children

And the ninth is coming after a summer

Will you be angry?

 

Record!

I am an Arab

Employed with fellow workers at a quarry

I have eight children

I get them bread

Garments and books

from the rocks..

I do not supplicate charity at your doors

Nor do I belittle myself at the footsteps of your chamber

So will you be angry?

 

Record!

I am an Arab

I have a name without a title

Patient in a country

Where people are enraged

My roots

Were entrenched before the birth of time

And before the opening of the eras

Before the pines, and the olive trees

And before the grass grew

 

My father.. descends from the family of the plow

Not from a privileged class

And my grandfather..was a farmer

Neither well-bred, nor well-born!

Teaches me the pride of the sun

Before teaching me how to read

And my house is like a watchman's hut

Made of branches and cane

Are you satisfied with my status?

I have a name without a title!

 

Record!

I am an Arab

You have stolen the orchards of my ancestors

And the land which I cultivated

Along with my children

And you left nothing for us

Except for these rocks..

So will the State take them

As it has been said?!

 

Therefore!

Record on the top of the first page:

I do not hate people

Nor do I encroach

But if I become hungry

The usurper's flesh will be my food

Beware..

Beware..

Of my hunger

And my anger!