Op-ed in PA daily implicitly compares Israeli government to Nazis, says “All of Israel is occupied Palestine”
Headline: “Those who pass between fleeting words”
Op-ed by Jihad Al-Khazen, originally published in the London-based Al-Hayat newspaper
“The terrorist [Israeli Prime Minister] Benjamin Netanyahu promises not to give up the Golan. I say to him (through a third party because I cannot speak with him) [parentheses in source] that Tel Aviv is not his. The Golan is part of Syria, and all of Israel is occupied Palestine… What I say is that the occupation of Palestine is an evil thing that will end with the return of the occupiers to the place from where they came. I do not expect that the justice will include putting the members of the Israeli government on trial as the Nazis were put on trial after the fall of the Nazis, but just that they will leave, as Mahmoud Darwish requested when he said to them that they ‘pass between fleeting words’ and that they should take their names and get out from on us. All of their news is a crime or lies. The Jewish holiday of Passover falls on the 22nd of this month, and it marks the anniversary of the exodus of the Jews from Egypt. According to information I have received from two university professors, which was verified by my friend, the archeologist Zahi Hawass, this whole story is a biblical myth. I challenge them to bring me one archeological remnant from Egypt or Sinai, as I challenge them daily to bring me one Jewish archeological remnant from Jerusalem, or to show us a rock from the alleged Temple.”
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Mahmoud Darwish is considered the Palestinian national poet. He published over 30 volumes of poetry and 8 books of prose and has won numerous awards. He joined the Israeli Communist Party in 1961 and the terrorist organization PLO, in 1973, becoming a member of the PLO Executive Committee in 1987. He left the PLO in 1993 because it signed the Oslo Accords with Israel.
Many in Israel see his poetry as inciting hate and violence. One poem he wrote in 1988 at the height of the Palestinian wave of violence and terror against Israel (the first Intifada, 1987-1993) calls to Israelis: “Take your portion of our blood - and be gone… Live wherever you like, but do not live among us… Die wherever you like, but do not die among us… Leave our country, our land, our sea, our wheat, our salt, our wounds, everything, and leave the memories of memory.”
He also wrote “Silence for the Sake of Gaza” in 1973, which many see as glorifying terror: “She wraps explosives around her waist and blows herself up. It is not a death, and not a suicide. It is Gaza's way of declaring she is worthy of life.”
His defenders have claimed that Israel misinterprets his poetry and that he sought reconciliation with Israel. One wrote in 2017: “Darwish arranged meetings between Palestinian and Israeli intellectuals, and published essays on their discussions. He was optimistic that, through mutual understanding, the two sides could eventually reconcile.” [https://www.bcalnoor.org/]
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