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<a class="gmail-domain gmail-reader-domain" href="https://www.palestinechronicle.com/here-we-will-stay-zionist-genocide-and-the-battle-for-civilization/">palestinechronicle.com</a>
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<h1 class="gmail-reader-title">'Here We Will Stay': Zionist Genocide and the Battle for Civilization</h1>November 6, 2023</div>
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<img src="https://www.palestinechronicle.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/HebaZagouti_Video.png" alt="" title="HebaZagouti_Video" class="gmail-moz-reader-block-img" width="435" height="292" style="margin-right: 25px;">
Palestinian painter Heba Ragout was
killed in an Israeli airstrike on October 13. (screenshot by
Hyperallergic via Palestinian Artists on YouTube)
<p><strong>By <a href="https://www.palestinechronicle.com/writers/louis-brehony" title="Display all articles for Louis Brehony">Louis Brehony</a></strong></p>
<blockquote>
<h3>Palestinians in Gaza continue to show the world that they will stand firm in the face of Zionism’s bloody dehumanization.</h3>
</blockquote>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.”</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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:</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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 <em>ghurba</em>, exile, composed by Lebanese songwriter Elie Shwery,
and has made its way into the Palestinian resistance canon. Gaza itself
is a place of exile.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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:</p>
<blockquote><p>Here we will stay</p>
<p>Until the pain goes away</p>
<p>Here we will live</p>
<p>And the melody will be sweet</p>
<p>My proud homeland</p></blockquote>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<div>
<p><img src="https://www.palestinechronicle.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/Louis-Brehony-bio.png" width="180" height="180" class="gmail-moz-reader-block-img"></p>
<p><span><em>– 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.</em></span></p></div>
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