Don’t call me homeless, because I have a home thousands of years old.
I have a home in Jrash which you demolished, erased from your map. I have a home whose stones still stand as witness to your crimes, still stand witness to what once was and to what will be. I have a home that will be rebuilt with the same stones and on the same spot where it originally was and where it should be. I have a home in Jerusalem which you occupy, a home that will be liberated. I have a home in Hebron which you closed, a home that will be reopened. I have a home in Gaza which you bombed, a home that will be rebuilt. I have a home carved in my heart. I have a home in An-Naqab, I have a home in Tabaria, I have a home in Bisan, I have a home in Jenin, I have a home in Jerusalem, I have a home in Safad. Every part of Palestine is my home; every olive field is my sitting room, every hilltop is my balcony, every meadow is my playground, every stone is my chair, every bit of shadow beneath a fig tree is my bed. The land of Palestine is my ground, the sky over Palestine is my roof. All of Palestine is my home, my one and only home.
Don’t call me homeless, because I have a home and it’s called Palestine.

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Don’t call me voiceless, because I have a voice even if you don’t want to listen.
I have a voice that roars in the midst of the storm. I have a voice that breaks the silence of those who sing non-stop of humanity, of human rights to every other people and every other nation, but are blind, deaf and mute to the Zionist crimes. I have a voice that silences the lies, silences the hasbara. I have a voice that sings of freedom, of liberation and of return. I have a voice that is louder than the whips of oppression, louder than the bullets of the occupation. My voice is my heart that beats every second to write in blood the name of my beloved Palestine. My voice is my eyes that see Palestine as it will always be; one from the river to the sea. My voice is my body that stands steadfast, only armed with a belief in a just cause, to face your bulldozer, your bombs, your tanks and your war planes. My voice is my hand that plants the lands you so savagely murder, that waters the olive and the fig tree that you so mercilessly massacre. My voice is my fingers that draw Palestine free of occupation and colonization. My voice is the children who memorize the names of the villages you erased, and write these names in their hearts, in their copybooks and on their maps. My voice is the children who cherish the keys to their homes, hold on to them, dream of the homes that are theirs, the homes that once stood under the blue sky of Palestine, and wait for the day to return and rebuild them. My voice is the children who count the number of trees you uproot, and replant a thousand tree for every tree you kill. My voice are the children who wake up to the sound of your planes, go to school despite your tanks, play in the alley of Palestine despite your bombs, fly kites despite your F-16, face your machine gun with their slingshot. My voice is the children who continue to dream of freedom and return every day despite your terror, despite your killing machines. My voice is the parent who plants the love of Palestine in the hearts of children. My voice is the youth who raises the flag of Palestine in the face of oppression. My voice is the elderly who passes the heritage of Palestine to the future generations. My voice is the farmer who draws Palestine in every field, on every hilltop, on every flower and on every leaf. My home is the teacher who teachers the children a song about Palestine. My voice is the refugee who swears to return to Palestine.
Don’t call me voiceless, because every cell of me screams: Palestine.

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Don’t call me a terrorist, because you are the one terrorizing my family and my homeland.
You occupy our home, colonize it with aliens and expel us from our birthplace. You kill our children while sitting in their classrooms, you kill our parents while on their way to work, you kill our friends while waiting at checkpoints. You bomb our schools during the day while we are at our desks, you bomb our homes at night while we are asleep, you bomb our streets while we play, you bomb our fields while we pick the olives, you bomb our ambulances while they rush us to hospital. You kidnap our siblings from their beds, from their schools and from their workplace, you torture our comrades and imprison them in dark cold dungeons. You demolish our homes over our heads, uproot our trees and destroy our fields to build colonies and roads for aliens who don’t speak the language of the land. You steal our drinking water, you starve our children and our olive trees to fill your swimming pools and to water you European exported flowers and trees. You walk our roads armed from head to toe, you burn our mosques and besiege our churches, you teach your children that “a good Arab is a dead Arab”. You steal our homeland, steal our homes and fields, steal our heritage. You massacre our songs, our tales, our laughter, our books and our dances. You attack us with phosphorous bombs and F-16 and markavas. You shoot our pregnant mothers, our baby brothers, our children. You threaten our existence every day, every minute, every second.
Don’t call me a terrorist because it is you who is the personification of terrorism.

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Don’t call me invented, because my roots in this land are as old as the land itself.
I am part of the land and the land is part of me. My blood and sweat have since the dawn of history watered this land, kept it green and blooming and gave the poppies their colour. I have a history in this land that is older than the history of your invented entity and older than the history of the colonial powers that support you. It is my homeland you stole in order to create an invented homeland for yourself. It is my cultural heritage you stole in order to create an invented identity for yourself. It is my history you twisted in order to create an invented history for yourself. It is my homes, my villages, my playgrounds you erased in order to create an invented home for yourself. It is my groves, my fields, my flowers you stole in order to invent for yourself a link to this land. It is my olive tree you uprooted and replanted in your colonies in order to invent a place for yourself in this land. You stole my land, you stole my home, you stole my field, you stole my Hannoun, you stole my olive tree. You stole my Yaffa, you stole my Haifa, you stole my Beisan, you stole my Ramlah, you stole my Tabaria, you stole my Tarshiha, you stole my Jrash. You stole my Dabkah, you stole my Dal’ouna, you stole my Thoub, you stole my food. You stole my books, you stole my history, you stole my tales, you stole my songs. You stole my identity and you call me invented? It is you who is invented, living in an invented entity, creating for yourself an invented identity.
Don’t call me invented because Palestine is as old as time itself and “Israel” is the invented entity.

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Don’t call me Israeli Arab, because there is no such thing as an Israeli Arab.
I am a Palestinian from Palestinian Yaffa. I am a Palestinian from Palestinian Acca. I am a Palestinian from Palestinian Beisan. I am a Palestinian from Palestinian An-Naqab. I am a Palestinian from Palestinian Al-Jalil. I am a Palestinian from Palestinian Beir As-Sabi’. I am a Palestinian from Palestinian An-Nasirah. I am a Palestinian from Palestinian Al-Quds. This land has my features imprinted in every stone, every tree, every cloud, every flower and every creek. You can force me to speak your language, but the land I walk on, the sky above me, the wind and the rain and the rainbow whisper my name: Palestinian. You can force me to write my name in your alphabet, but engraved in the rocks, drawn in the sky, printed in the leaves of trees is one word in Arab: Palestinian. You can force me to carry the ID card of your entity, but the blood that runs in my veins screams I am from Palestine, Ana min Falasteen. You can force my tongue to sing your invented anthem, but my heart will always sing Palestine. You can force my hand to write “Israel” on the map, but my eyes will only see Palestine. You can force me to study the invented history of your entity, but my mind will repeat the massacres you committed, the villages you erased, the on-going Nakba you are causing. You come from the USA and you claim a right to my homeland. You come from Germany and you illegalize my existence, my heritage and my history in this land. You come from France and you lock me up in ghettos in my own homeland. You come from Russia and you silence my mosques and my churches. You come from Ukraine and you deny me my birthright and my rights. But listen, and listen carefully: I am a Palestinian from Palestine, this is my home and I am here to stay till the end of days.
Don’t call me Israeli Arab, because I am a Palestinian from Palestine.

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Don’t call me a Palestinian of the Palestinian Territories because it is called Palestine.
Don’t give me a fraction of my homeland and call it a solution. Don’t give me oppression and call it peace. Don’t give me a Bantustan and call it a home. Don’t give me a prison and call it freedom. Don’t draw the borders of my existence according to your whims and interests and call it a state. My home is not a disfigured result of a till-death-do-us-part-marriage between the occupier and the champions of negotiators-for-life that yields a Bantustan on 20% of my homeland. My home is not a “lets legitimize the Zionist racist colonization of Palestine and hope they accept us and allow us to live with them one day” tale for the sake of fame and a shoulder pat from “conditional-supporters”, while giving the Zionist usurpers a right to my land which they stole and continue to colonize… a right to my home which they destroyed and continue to destroy…. a right to my village which they ethnically cleansed and continue to do so to the rest of Palestine… a right to Palestine, the Palestine they raped and continue to rape for over 63 years, a rape they are proud of and celebrate very year while denying us even the tears and the memories and the names of the victims they massacred and the villages they erased. My Palestine is the home that is mine since the dawn of history till the end of history. My Palestine is the home of my ancestors, the home between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River.
Don’t call me a Palestinian of the Palestinian Territories, because I am a Palestinian from Palestine.

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Don’t call me a dreamer, because I refuse to surrender and I know that one day Palestine will be free.
Don’t call me unrealistic, because I refuse to surrender and I know that one day Palestine will be free.
Don’t call me crazy, because I refuse to surrender and I know that one day Palestine will be free.
I know that one day, Zionism will be defeated. I know that one day, occupation will be history. I know that one day, justice will prevail. I know that one day, the sun will shine again over Palestinian farmers working in Marj Ibin Amer. I know that one day, the sea will hear the whispers of Palestinian fishermen watching the sunset over Acca. I know that one day, the gentle breeze will race the laughter of Palestinian children along the streets of the old city of Jerusalem. I know that one day, Palestinian refugees will return to build their villages and their homes. I know that one day, Palestine will be free of the Zionist colonists, the cowards and racists that they are, for they don’t know justice, they don’t want justice, they fear justice and thus they have no place in this land. Those who destroy the land, will never be part of the land. Those for whom the land is the parent, the sibling, the child, the friend and the entire existence will always be part of the land.
Don’t act as if I don’t exist because I am here, and here I will stay, forever.
Don’t call me anything but Palestinian because there is only one home for me; Palestine.
Don’t call me anything but Palestinian because there is only one Palestine; from the River to the Sea.
Don’t call me anything but Palestinian because that is what I am: a Palestinian from Palestine.

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Found at THIS wonderful Website

Bill Mardo, a sportswriter for the Communist Party newspaper The Daily Worker who fought major league baseball’s color barrier in the 1940s when the mainstream American news media was largely silent on the subject, died Friday in Manhattan. He was 88.

The cause was complications of Parkinson’s disease, his companion, Ruth Ost, said.

In the years before the Brooklyn Dodgers signed Jackie Robinson as the first black player in modern organized baseball, Mr. Mardo was a leading voice in a campaign by The Daily Worker against racism in the game, a battle it had begun in 1936 when Lester Rodney became its first sports editor.

Mr. Mardo, who joined The Daily Worker in 1942, oversaw its sports coverage, together with Nat Low, during World War II, when Mr. Rodney was in the Army. Mr. Mardo had a deferment, having lost vision in one eye from a childhood virus.

The Daily Worker asked fans to write to the New York City baseball teams urging them to sign Negro league players at a time when the major leagues had lost much of their talent to military service. A milestone in baseball history and the civil rights movement arrived in October 1945 when Robinson signed a contract with the Dodgers’ organization, having reached an agreement with Branch Rickey, the Dodger general manager, two months earlier.

Mr. Mardo covered Robinson’s first spring training, with the Dodgers’ Montreal Royals farm team in 1946, and wrote of the hostility toward him in parts of segregated Florida.

As Robinson was concluding a brilliant 1946 season, Mr. Mardo wrote that racism would be smashed by the arrival of black players, which, he said, “in one fell swoop does as much to arm and educate the American people against this monstrous lie as do all the pamphlets in the world.”

After Robinson’s debut with the Dodgers in 1947, Mr. Rodney and Mr. Mardo called on the owners of the other 15 teams in the majors to sign black players.

Rickey had not acknowledged being pressured by The Daily Worker. But in recounting the campaign to shatter baseball’s color bar, Arnold Rampersad wrote in “Jackie Robinson: A Biography” (1997) that “the most vigorous efforts came from the Communist press, including picketing, petitions and unrelenting pressure for about 10 years in The Daily Worker, notably from Lester Rodney and Bill Mardo.”

Mr. Mardo was born William Bloom in Manhattan on Oct. 24, 1923. His interest in left-wing politics arose when he read a copy of The Daily Worker as a teenager, and he became a member of the Communist Party. He changed his name to Mardo as a tribute to his sisters Marion and Doris when he began his career in journalism.

Apart from reporting on baseball, Mr. Mardo wrote a boxing column for The Daily Worker, “In This Corner.” He left the newspaper to work as a Washington reporter for the Soviet news agency Tass in the early 1950s. He later worked in direct-mail advertising.

His marriage in the 1950s ended in divorce, and he had no children.

In April 1997, Mr. Mardo and Mr. Rodney (who died in 2009) spoke at a symposium at Long Island University’s Brooklyn campus marking the 50th anniversary of Robinson’s debut with the Dodgers.

Mr. Mardo noted that Rickey had not signed blacks when he ran the St. Louis Cardinals for more than two decades and suggested it was not idealism but pressure from black sportswriters, trade unions and the Communist Party that persuaded him to sign Robinson.

“Where were you looking all those years, Mr. Rickey?” Mr. Mardo said. “Istanbul? The South Seas?”

But on April 10, 1947, when the Dodgers announced they were bringing up Robinson from Montreal, Mr. Mardo, sitting in the Ebbets Field press box, could only exult.

“There’s time tomorrow to remember that the good fight goes on,” he wrote for the next day’s Daily Worker. “But, for today, let’s just sit back and feel easy and warm. As that fellow in the press box said, ‘Robinson’s a Dodger’ — and it’s a great day, isn’t it?”

In early January 2007, ten-year-old Abir Aramin held her sister’s hand and began her routine walk to school before a rubber bullet penetrated the back of her skull. She died in a nearby hospital shortly thereafter. Three and a half years later, in mid-2010, the Israeli-run Jerusalem District Court ruled that the State of Israel was indeed responsible for her death. On September 25, 2011, almost five years after the murder of an innocent young Palestinian girl, the Jerusalem District Court determined that Israel must pay NIS 1.6 million, or $430,000 USD, as compensation to the Aramin family. The two Israeli Border Guard officers involved in the shooting were never tried in court, but so goes the justice system from the seat of a Palestinian.

This entire situation — the murder, the investigation, the trial, and the subsequent rulings — exemplifies the hypocrisy and the exceptionalism so heavily defended in the court of law. Immediately after Abir’s death, her family hired a physician to perform an autopsy. According to the report, Abir had indeed been killed by a rubber bullet that caused both immediate and severe brain damage. Meanwhile, Israel’s police force dismissed the conclusion and argued that Abir was hit by a stray rock by a Palestinian rioter. With the help of Israeli human rights group B’Tselem, the Aramin family published the autopsy report to dispel any doubt that she was killed by the bullet of an Israeli Border Guard officer.

The publication of this autopsy report made it virtually impossible for Israel to set aside and ignore the investigation into Abir’s death. Four officers were questioned although each claimed absolutely no shots were fired. The officers also defended the theory that Abir’s death was a result of a stone thrown by Palestinian rioters. According to the police’s self-investigation, the Border Guard officers on duty at the time were dispersing “severe riots“. Eyewitness accounts contradicted these alibis, all of which saying that the officers were in fact following Abir as she approached her school. B’Tselem conducted its own investigation of the scene of the murder and concluded that no riots took place on that day.

After much deliberation and even more waiting, the court confirmed in 2010 that Abir’s death was due to negligence in the form of a bullet fired in violation of orders. A compensation was yet to determined and the involved officers received nothing more than informal reprimands.

Thirteen months later, the court decided on an adequate compensation determined by “the customary sum of compensation awarded in similar cases”, according to Ynet. Two of the four investigated officers were fined NIS 10,000, or almost $2,688 USD — the price of a used 1995 Toyota Camry.

What is most disturbing about the court’s ruling is not the fact that Israel’s apology comes only in the form of a check but rather, the unenthusiastic, lackadaisical, and irresponsible way the Israeli justice system handled the case. The court’s decision took over four and a half years to make although the evidence and testimonies was collected and verified only days after Abir’s death. The Border Guard officers lied under oath, telling investigators that they never fired a single bullet even though the evidence collected in the back of Abir’s head said otherwise. They were never charged with perjury.

And as a matter of fact, they were never charged with anything really. A petition made its way to Israel’s High Court demanding two Border Guard officers be tried in court for their involvement in the shooting of the ten-year-old child. The petition was rejected in July.

There have been many Abir Aramins in the past, and this entire case is only proof that any future cases like this one will be dealt with in the most inexcusable and carefree way possible. Clearly, doing justice for murdered Palestinians, even young schoolchildren barely as tall as their school desks, is not as urgent as one would expect.

The life of a child cannot be bought. It cannot be brought back either, but the check meant to appease the Aramin family is nothing more than dirty money. It comes from an establishment that refuses to practice complete responsibility of its actions. A child was left for dead while the individuals responsible for putting her in that condition skated away with measly fines that had more to do with their poor cooperation in the investigation than with their actual actions. Had the scenario been reversed, had an Israeli child been killed under jurisdiction of a Palestinian court, Israel would not have rested until justice was served complete with fines, jail time, and an assortment of other maximum punishments.

Tragically, Abir Aramin was Palestinian, and so the rule of justice grounded on equality never included her.

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Written For

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*Sam Kishawi is a Palestinian-American student and citizen journalist at the University of Chicago. He is an active member of various local and national grassroots movements dedicated to preserving the rights of the Palestinian people. He is currently pursuing a career in the health sciences and hopes to one day find the intersect between medicine and politics in Gaza City, his family’s hometown. His writing and photography has been featured on Electronic Intifada, Mondoweiss, KABOBfest, Islamic Horizons, and a small collection of related outlets. This blog serves to promote the Palestinian identity and to trace his own political understanding and development. In 2011, American Friends Service Committee awarded him with the organization’s annual Inspiration for Hope Award.

Thousands of Ethiopian Israelis protest racism in Jerusalem march