O’Jerusalem!
This poem appears in the Chapter on Palestine in my upcoming book “New Kid on the Block: Islam’s Challenge for America.” It articulates the Palestinian cause in a nutshell, and solicits American support for the just cause of the underdog. It is an article in poem form, with a commentary at the end.
Jerusalem, with a towering church steeple,
O’ Ye beautiful city of many people.
Where the proud domed Aqsa Mosque stands tall,
Where Jews worship at the Wailing Wall.
Yet this city so proud and old,
By so many hands controlled.
From Canaanites to Philistines,
Diverse peoples and changing scenes.
Across its fertile and forsaken landscape, pharaohs fought Hittites,
And Phoenicians, Assyrians and Persians traversed its holy sites.
The Children of Israel had their hour,
For King Solomon wealth, like rivers, flowed.
Exiled by the Babylonian power,
God’s “Chosen People” reaped what they had sowed.[i]
The city was conquered by Alexander the Great,
Till the Romans handed it yet another fate.
The proud and noble Arabs protected it against invaders, letting the Jews return.
Until the wrath of Europe’s Christians brought the Crusaders, who displaced them without concern.
Saladin, the Kurd, in noble fashion again liberated the city, the Jews were welcomed back.
Simply to be inherited by the Mamluk slaves of antiquity, still they remained free from attack.
For four hundred years the Ottoman Turks allowed Jerusalem to mend and expanded its walls.
Upon occupying it, the British General Allenby declared ‘today to the Crusades it falls.’
The Empire of the set-less sun administered it with impunity,
Mandated a land for one people to another without authority.
Europe persecuted Jews, Zionists colonized the land,
Uprooting its yeoman inhabitants from rock, soil and sand.
Palestine “A land without people for a people without land” they said.
Tell the millions made refugees, those at Deir Yassin, and the thousands dead.
Palestinian blood is a witness to the Holy Land’s gene pool.
Who would deny them of their indigenous birthrights save a fool?
Fool indeed, as the Zionist manifesto did read:
Welcome! from Poland to Palestine- only if a Jew.
A god we don’t believe in gave us land, title and deed.
Pray tell, what are the dispossessed Palestinians to do?
“The most moral army in the world” targets civilians,
Men, women, children, the old, journalists and medics too.
Ethnic cleansing paid for with America’s billions.
And what are the dehumanized Palestinians to do?
Ah, lest one invoke the “T” word,
Just ask yourself what would you do,
To blow one’s self up is absurd!
Unless you knew, what they went through.
Samson was the first “suicide bomber,”
For the soldiers of Zion- a hero.
Today the “IDF” is no calmer,
As the kill rate rises ten to zero
The “T” word has been thoroughly abused,
One man’s freedom fighter is another’s rogue,
The victim of aggression stands accused,
As the oppressor feigns virtue in vogue
I am proud to say that Jerusalem is the city of my birth,
But as long as my people cannot live in Palestine what is it worth?
It’s worth everything dear, yet it’s not the land we revere.
It would be nothing without the cause to which we adhere.
The world marvels at rockets fired from Gaza not realizing,
A fifth-generation refugee longs for what was once her home.
Akin to the Heroes of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising,
They remind us freedom is more powerful than any “Iron Dome.”
In peace, Jews are welcome from the Euphrates to the Nile,
Or rule over an apartheid state- or live in exile.
Long before Ancient Rome’s occupation the Arabs roamed the Holy Land.
Long after Israel’s occupation, like deep rooted olive trees they shall stand.
Jews reject Christ, they and Christians deny our beloved Prophet.
But to him, Moses and Jesus are his brothers as God saw fit.
Since Adam built the second house[ii], Al-Quds has been a Muslim trust.
As long as God wills, it will be in the hands of those who are just.
“Death to apartheid,” once and for all,
Symbolic words believed since days of yore.
Echoed by Patrick Henry in that great hall,
Death to tyranny- it shall be no more.
Practice here at home what is preached abroad.
America raise your hand to be seen,
And stand up in justice for Filisteen,[iii]
A free Palestine we can all applaud.
[i] https://biblehub.com/1_chronicles/9-1.htm
[ii] Muslim tradition states that Adam built the foundations of the Aqsa mosque forty years after the ka’ba
[iii] Arabic word for Palestine
COMMENTARY: Jerusalem, and by extension the Holy Land, has been home to countless ethnicities, nations and peoples throughout its 5,000 year-plus history. It has been conquered many times over. From a Muslim standpoint the Biblical prophets such as Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, David and Solomon were considered Muslims, i.e., those who surrender to God. This is important to know for two reasons 1) This means Muslims and Palestinians claim David as their religious descendant (and hero) over the Canaanites whom they share DNA with based on gene pooling. 2) Muslims accept Jesus as Messiah. This means Muslims are in a better position to protect all the Holy sites of the “People of the Book,” the Christians and the Jews, whereas both Jews and Christians reject Mohammed (Peace be upon them all). I make reference to the Chosen People reaping what they sowed based on a clear Bible verse (1 Chronicles 9) that they were exiled to Babylon because of their unfaithfulness, transgressions and sins.
When Omar Ibn Al Khattab conquered Jerusalem in 637 CE the Jews who had been banned from Jerusalem by the Byzantines were allowed to return. Again, when Salahuddin (known in the West as Saladin) liberated Jerusalem from the Crusaders in 1187 CE the Jews were welcomed back to the City. Furthermore, Muslims have ruled over Jerusalem for well over a thousand years. By contrast the United Kingdom of Israel and Judah lasted a little over a century. Even with the modern state of Israel, Jewish control over Jerusalem and parts of the Holy Land barely accounts for a period of three hundred years out of the last three thousand years.
Given the fact that Muslims consider Abraham, Moses, David and Solomon as their own, the Aqsa Mosque as the third most sacred site in Islam and twelve hundred years of attachment to the land, one can understand why Muslims insist Jerusalem belongs to them as custodians. Moreover, I make reference to the Arabs roaming the Holy Land before its conquest by Rome. It is accepted historical fact that the beduin Arab populations traversed, lived and migrated in that area, as well as the Arabian Peninsula, since time in immemorial.
Therefore, an exclusive Jewish claim to the land is not justified historically. The religious claim is even more tenuous given the secular nature of the modern state of Israel. The modern movement of Zionism does not necessarily believe in God, and yet based on that religious claim a Caucasian Jew is entitled to the land at the expense of my semitic mother and father who were born there. This usurpation of Palestine over the rights of its indigenous inhabitants is the sole reason for the bloodshed that so many ignorant Americans will tell you: it’s complicated because they have been fighting forever.
The poem alludes to another important point, that the Muslims can give the Jews something crucial, and no one else can, and that is to live in peace from the Euphrates to the Nile, not as usurpers but as neighbors. Zionists dreamed of a Greater Israel that went beyond the borders of Palestine to include Egypt and Iraq. The only alternative is to continue to live in an apartheid state where the Palestinians will eventually outnumber them, or to be over powered into exile again because of the atrocities they have been committing since the creation of the state in 1948. Unfortunately, Jews have never adequately acknowledged, much less thanked the Muslims for the dignity and safety they have afforded them. They continue to demonize Islam and Muslims.
Islamophobe Zionists will make claims that Muslims have persecuted Jews, however, these are fabrications taken out of context. Whatever instances of bloodshed that have occurred between Muslims and Jews historically stems from politics or feuds akin to warring tribes. Whether one accepts the Muslim version is irrelevant to the fact that the Muslims have their own narrative. For example, the Prophet Mohammed is accused of killing and exiling Jews from Medina. Assuming the event is factual 1) It was the punishment for treason, as the Jewish Tribes of Medina betrayed the Muslims and allied themselves with the pagan Arabs who were waging a war of annihilation against the burgeoning Muslim community. 2) According to Muslim accounts Prophet Mohammed judged them based on the authority of their own scriptures. 3) They were not fought because they were Jews, or like in Europe dehumanized and persecuted as the killers of Christ, but rather over competing interests where Muslims were justified in responding to treachery and betrayal.
Regardless, the tolerance and protection Muslims have shown Jews is indisputable. The poem mentions the instances in which Jews were welcomed back to Jerusalem after being banned by Christians. (Trump wasn’t the only one banning people.) In Muslim Spain Jews wrote in Arabic, and this period is known as the “Golden Age” of Judaism because Jews could practice their faith freely. Indeed, when the Christians reconquered Spain from the Muslims Jews were again persecuted, and again they sought refuge with Muslims. This time in the lands of the Ottoman Sultan, Bayezid II, who was reported to have said of Ferdinand ‘If a ruler enriches my country while he is making his country poor, how can he be a wise ruler’?” Also, in modern times, Muslims in North Africa and other places saved Jews from extermination during the Holocaust. Even recently a Muslim woman defended a Jewish family that was being attacked with racial and anti-semitic slurs on the Underground in London. https://www.dailysabah.com/europe/2019/11/24/muslim-woman-defends-jewish-family-from-racist-attack-in-london
In the poem there is a reference to “Death to apartheid,” a quote I do not apologize for or shy away from. As Palestinians we are considered anti-semites by Zionists. This is truly nonsense as I am a semite. They persecute the Palestinians and feign virtue. What’s more important is I acknowledge the dignity and cause of the Jews of the Warsaw Ghetto, like justice minded Jews condemn the brutal, inhumane and illegal blockade of Gaza, the world’s largest open air prison. There is no difference between saying “Death to Israeli apartheid” and “Death to Tyranny” as Patrick Henry so eloquently made an argument for declaring independence from the British, when he said “Give me liberty or give me death.”
Finally, the poem ends by calling on Americans to get off the sidelines and take a stand for the underdog- the just cause of Palestine.