I just want to rant a lil' about Palestinian poetry and because honestly for all the insanity there have been moments of lucid reflection in this conflict.

I'm specifically talking about Mahmoud Darwish, the national poet whose writings reflect, a better way forward
Darwish, whose village was razed down by Israeli forces in '48, lived in the newly found Israel until his expulsion after he joined the PLO. He then went everywhere, from Lebanon to Paris. He never managed to go back to his home village, and considered himself a permanent exile
What makes Darwish unique, in addition to the beautiful lyricism of his writing, is that despite all the shit he had to put up with, he never dehumanized the other side . This was a man who lived through the hell that was the Siege of Beirut, yet he didn't resort to rabid anger
For example, take Rita. () This poem, later turned song by M. Khalifa, was a story about a Jewish girl he fell in love with and how the war broke them up. Contrary to the racist nationalistic nonsense we get taught as children, this was different
He wasn't trying to romanticize the breakup as a 'sacrifice for the motherland.' On the contrary, he just strikes me as sad. He's mourning how the war took away someone he loved. He didn't see Rita as an Israeli soldier or a 'Zionist enemy,' he saw her as someone he cared for.
My absolute favourite is 'A Soldier Dreams of White Lillies.' ( http://www.identityofthesoul.com/Media/WhiteLilies_English.pdf)

It is supposedly based off an actual conversation he had with his friend Yossi in the IDF.

On the poem, which proved controversial, Darwish said: 'I will humanize even the enemy'
He questions his motivations, asks him what he wants out of life. The soldier shoots down all of Darwish's suggestions of a glorious death or of a 'fascist moment of victory'

Instead, he tells him he dreams of returning home by dusk to his mother's coffee.
But the thing is, Darwish wasn't a hippy. He wrote many famous pieces, many of them incendiary in nature, asking the army to 'take its share of blood and leave.'

(Bibi BADLY misread this poem once, and ironically used it as an example of how Palestinians don't want peace)
That's my point: although he was touted as an idealist, I find him a pragmatist. He knew the brutality of the occupation well, yet he categorically refused to turn into a monster. He believed in peace, and famously asked why we remembered the names of OUR dead but not theirs?
His friendship with Jews was well known, and his poetry has been frequently likened to that of Yehuda Amichai (whom he greatly admired and had a personal rivalry with I believe)

His was one of the rare voices that managed to see the human element behind a brutal ethnic conflict
The fact that the national poet, the man whose poems are a symbol of the nation, saw the other side as people gives me some hope, at least.

People tend to be awful all round but it helps to celebrate kernels of decency. What else can you do? Otherwise you end up depressed.
In his own words: 'The first teacher who taught me Hebrew was a Jew. The first love affair in my life was with a Jewish girl. The first judge who sent me to prison was a Jewish woman. So from the beginning, I didn't see Jews as devils or angels but as human beings.'
You can follow @ZeezoTeezo.
Tip: mention @twtextapp on a Twitter thread with the keyword “unroll” to get a link to it.

Latest Threads Unrolled: