[News] 'Here We Will Stay': Zionist Genocide and the Battle for Civilization

[Anti-Imperialist News]

palestinechronicle.com
<https://www.palestinechronicle.com/here-we-will-stay-zionist-genocide-and-the-battle-for-civilization/>
'Here We Will Stay': Zionist Genocide and the Battle for CivilizationNovember
6, 2023
------------------------------
Palestinian painter Heba Ragout was killed in an Israeli airstrike on
October 13. (screenshot by Hyperallergic via Palestinian Artists on
YouTube)

*By Louis Brehony
<https://www.palestinechronicle.com/writers/louis-brehony>*

Palestinians in Gaza continue to show the world that they will stand firm
in the face of Zionism’s bloody dehumanization.

The infamous Lord Balfour once wrote that all of the great Egyptian
contributions to civilization had come about under “despotism,” and claimed
that British colonial rule would safeguard this heritage for both occupier
and occupied.

The historic treasures of the Egyptian people were looted for British
museums, with brutal imperialist rule brought to an end only by fierce and
heroic resistance. Zionism has long plundered Palestinian indigenous
culture: the artworks of pre-1948 Palestine, 1982 Beirut, and other
conquests remain under lock and key in military archives, and everything
from hummus to Arab musical instruments is appropriated as “Israeli.”

But the present genocidal onslaught is not merely about preserving this
cultural theft. The destruction of Gaza is a war to obliterate a
millennia-old civilization and a whole people who resist so bravely to keep
it within their grasp.

Those martyred during just three weeks of Zionist terror include poet, oud
player and community leader in Nuseirat camp, Omar Fares Abu Shawish
(October 7); vocalist “al-Nabatshi” Mahmoud al-Jubairy (October 16);
painter Heba Zagout, killed with her two children on October 13; and
muralist Muhammed Sami Qariqa’, on October 13.

On October 30, the occupation murdered actress and children’s workshop
leader Inas al-Saqqa, along with two daughters and a son. Inas was a
well-loved figure who had performed alongside Syrian actor Duraid Lahham
when he visited Gaza. This is not to single out cultural figures from the
thousands killed by the Zionist state in this genocidal campaign, but their
presence among the martyrs only serves to highlight the fact that most
Palestinian musical, artistic, and cultural actors are entwined with the
grassroots, among and of the people, not sitting out of harm’s way in
positions of comfort and privilege.

There have also been arrests and threats against Palestinian cultural
actors – and of course many others – in historic Palestine. Dalal Abu
Amneh, held briefly from October 16-18, is one well-known figure. In Gaza,
the implementation of a sadistic policy of communications blackouts means
that the massacres and everything lost in these ongoing assaults are never
fully detailed. Millions lie awake wondering if they will be next. Sol Band
percussionist Fares Anbar wrote from Gaza City:

I had not slept until this moment. Bombs from the east, west, south and
north did not stop firing at us from all kinds of military weapons… A party
[with] the world’s number one DJ, Israel, and the party’s financier, the
Arab world and the Europeans, and the primary beneficiary, the US.

Captioning her painting of a female oud player, Heba Zagout wrote on
September 16: “We live our lives like the rhythm of music. Sometimes it is
loud music and other times it is like quiet music.” Other Sol musicians,
Said Srour, Hamada Nasrallah, and Rahaf Shamaly are scattered throughout
the Gaza Strip and have become activist reporters, hitting back at
mainstream media silence.

Music has been central to the ways Palestinians in Gaza have resisted and
kept together their families and communities, through intifadas and other
historic moments.

A video has circulated of the large family of al-Jazeera journalist Wa’el
al-Dahdouh, sitting outside in the dark – like many thousands displaced
from their homes – keeping warm around a fire and singing Bektob Ismik ya
Biladi (I write your name, my country). This is a song of *ghurba*, exile,
composed by Lebanese songwriter Elie Shwery, and has made its way into the
Palestinian resistance canon. Gaza itself is a place of exile.

On October 25, Wa’el’s wife, two children and grandson were killed in a
Zionist strike on Nuseirat camp, where they had sought refuge after leaving
their home in the north. Umm Ali, who grew up in Bureij camp, Gaza during
the first intifada remembered hearing the same song on a black and white
TV, sung by Duraid Lahham, and began to sing it with PFLP-supporting family
members. Bureij and Nuseirat were then, and remain today, places of fierce,
physical opposition to Zionist incursion.

Among the many heroes of the Palestinian response to this genocide have
been medical workers. Refusing to leave al-Awda hospital after repeated
Zionist threats, doctors and nurses gathered outside its entrance on
October 26 to sing Sawfa Nabqa Huna (Here we will stay). Set to poetry by
Adel al-Mashiti, it is a song known by many in Gaza. Abu Maher recorded his
three children singing it during the internet blackout, smiling in the dark
at the camera and assuring whoever heard that they would not be forced from
their home in Hayy al-Nasr, Gaza City:

Here we will stay

Until the pain goes away

Here we will live

And the melody will be sweet

My proud homeland

Answering the Orientalism of Balfour and other British imperialists, Edward
Said observed that their narratives were “both antihuman and persistent,”
in how they dealt with the cultures of the colonized. But these very
cultures are, by their very nature, expressive of human life and all its
aspirations.

Palestinians in Gaza continue to show the world that they will stand firm
in the face of Zionism’s bloody dehumanization. When Palestine sings, it
resists. When Palestine resists, it sings.

*– Louis Brehony is a Manchester-based musician, activist, researcher and
educator. He is the director of the film Kofia: A Revolution Through Music
(2021) and the author of an upcoming book on Palestinian music in exile. He
writes regularly on Palestine and political culture and performs
internationally as a guitarist and buzuq player. He contributed this
article to The Palestine Chronicle.*
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