The Flood
Power and Truth of the Name Al Aqsa Flood
What happened on this day two years ago is referred to by most people ( colonizers more than anyone else) as “October 7th”.
A “terror” attack that disrupted something “peaceful”. Something unprovoked and deserving of punishment. A threat to be eliminated.
I prefer to take another chance to center the people and resistance, and use the name we use
طوفان الأقصى
Tufaan Al Aqsa
Al Aqsa Flood
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In understanding this name and contemplating its meaning, I’m always clear about the dynamics of the moment we are in, as well as the larger context and motives of the past 100 years.
Al Aqsa
Our north star
The beacon
for those nearby and for the millions forcibly scattered across this planet
The heart of our sacred land
The symbol of what is besieged and will never be forgotten
The mother of our struggle for liberation and return
The beaming source of inspiration to fight for what’s bigger than us
To elevate above the individual and blend in the waters of the collective
The weeping eye that witnesses the boot on our neck
The beautiful elder in the chokehold of a soldier that we weep for
The prize for our offering of a waterfall of blood
What consoles grieving mothers in the dark of night
Al Aqsa is why we will never stop
The Flood
Is the breaking of boundaries
What happens when the little raindrops accumulate
and become a force unstoppable
The embodiment of nature’s way
Movement towards the whole body of the sea
The source of all life
Unstoppable
Unstoppable
Al Aqsa Flood is a Resistance Movement
The sacrifice of the free fighters of Ghazza is a response to long standing, ongoing, violent, injustice
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Resistance against 17 years of large-scale imprisonments of an entire indigenous people, already uprooted from the lands that nurtured countless generations of their ancestors
and brutally imprisoned
In a strip almost the exact size of Settle (750 thousand residents)
Two million people are concentrated
53 percent in poverty
52 percent unemployment - with much higher rates for youth and women
Surviving three savage air, ground, and sea Israeli/US assaults.
People had nowhere to escape the rain of fire
*Everyone* was a target. Not just the fighters
Thousands of beloved toddlers, parents, siblings, grandchildren, grandparents, best friends, neighbors.
Murdered. Their families forever in grief.
Large swaths of cities and refugee camps in rubble.
Rolling blackouts and contaminated water.
A people forced into desperation
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The people of Ghazza, under blockade for 17 years, were denied most of the rights you consider fundamental
No recognition of their dignity and humanity
No self-determination
No freedom of movement to other parts of Palestine or elsewhere in the world
A restriction of every single item that crosses the walls of the prison
Fuel. Water. Electricity. Internet. Imports
Restricted
Their calories counted, and their food dolled out just enough to keep them alive enough to suffer in hunger, illness, and scarcity
Their ability to grow and forage their own food restricted
Deprived of the ability to self-sustain.
Largely reliant on the throttled charity of complicit governments. Or the maligned imperial NGOs
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Two million humans surveilled under the most advanced technology in the world .
Their children, teens, and young adults abducted by their Israeli colonizers
without any legal rights. Held hostage for years
Sadistically tortured.
A systematic, explicit, deliberate attempt to massacre and erase
To remove an obstacle between greed and precious land
To ethnically cleanse
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No one is spared
Nothing is sacred
No taboos
No inhibition of the ugliest impulses that a traumatized collective can inflict
Enabled and armed by US, EU, and Arab governments
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17 years of apartheid. Occupation. Imprisonment. Humiliation. Dispossession. Murder. Desperation.
Genocide.
Terror
And Yet
And yet
We persist
And we fight back against the might of empire
Against the full brunt of the most advanced military in the world
Under the watchful, feckless eyes of all who yield power and privilege
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We are not victims
We are victimized
We are not powerless
We are fighters in the struggle
Oppression and injustice breed resistance
Justified resistance
Honorable resistance
By all means necessary, resistance
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Resistance that came in all forms imaginable
Peaceful, diplomatic, collaborative, mediated, compromising,
and yes, violent
With weapons turned into medicine to heal, reclaim, and liberate
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Al Aqsa Flood is revolution
A flag for ALL the free people of the world to rally under.
Not just to liberate the besieged
But more importantly, to rid the world of this source poison
To break the spine of settler colonialism
The oppressor of every single creature on this planet
After Two Years
Of the naked reveal of how empire operates
A reveal of how media is an arm and a weapon
Of shameless display of white supremacy and racism
Of an exposure of what is true
Of offerings of evidence and rights to claim
Anyone who still doesn’t fully support the resistance
Does not support a Free Palestine
And I Grieve
I grieve
I grieve
With tears. Agony. Numbness. Anxiety. ٍSong. Sadness. Sorrow. Movement. Writing. Mediation. Prayer. Curses. Avoidance. Reclusion. Bitterness. Cynicism. Quiteness. Freeze. Rage. Fake smiles. Rants. Love.
All that has been lost
Soil buried under concrete
Waters poisoned for generations
Ecology mangled beyond recognition
Olive and fig and palm obliterated
Relations disrupted
Ancestors desecrated
Soft hands and feet and arms and legs
dismembered
Lineages and traditions silences
The taking of our brightest and most brilliant
The farmers. Poets. Dancers, Builders. Healers. Teachers. Wisdom keepers
And all their homes. Creations. Play spaces. Gardens. Dreams. Aspiration
I grieve the degradation of our sense of worth and our dignity
The scattering of our bones
I grieve how the world claims helplessness and watches our obliteration
while they sip their coffee
With zero privilege to claim ignorance
The Power of Words
So, when I call it Al Aqsa Flood
I honor the sumud, th’abaat, resilience, patience, persistence, creativity, dignity, sacrifice, and power of the resistance
I honor our right to return to our homeland
I reject the shifting of narrative and obstruction of truth
I reject the exploitation of struggle into a weapon of massacre
The lie of terrorism
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Chest up. Head high
Long live the resistance
Free Palestine
Not an ask
A promise
راجعين
