Palestine: ‘I saw who paid the price’

Mahmud Darwish, one of the leading Palestinian poets of the 20th century, alongside Nazim Hikmet and Faiz Ahmed Faiz, wrote a remarkable heart-wrenching poem. A poem that expressed pain, sorrow and grief of those exiled in their own country. Not only did it depicted the plight of the people of Palestine but expressed the agonizing suffering of the entire Global South turned into slaves in their countries under the yoke of metropolitan capital— sometimes called imperialism.

“I don’t know who sold our homeland” Mahmud writes, “but I saw who paid the price”. Trying to be humble, Mahmud Dervish, pretended to be naïve; otherwise who else could have known the traitors better than him. For more than half a century, he along with his people, endured the tyrannies of a brutal enemy that occupied his land.

Edward Said once stated, “1917 was the worst year of my life,” when Balfour — a staunch anti-Semite — issued the Declaration that cleaved Palestine, the only Arab country denied even the fake right of self-determination. Incidentally, it was the same year when the world proletariat was celebrating the Russian Revolution. This was no coincidence. The Western imperialism weary of rising communist power altered its colonial designs to suit its interests. Zionism screamed hoarse to fulfil them.

It wasn’t only Britain which sought to secure its multiple future interests— especially maintaining its absolute control on the Suez Canal, the US also found in Israel as its “aircraft carrier” in the Middle East. Once Nasser eclipsed the US overthrew the entire secular, semi-socialist and anti-Israeli Arab leadership. They were replaced with tin pot dictators and monarchs and the Arab question relating to its independence from the US hegemony became inextricably tied to the Palestinian question—a deviation from Ghassan Kanafani’s position, who argued it otherwise.

Today, the world is watching a live-streaming of genocide not only through the continuous bombing of F35 on the unarmed people of Gaza and West Bank but also through the sheer arrogance of starving the entire 2.3 million people of Gaza. The latter has already lost nearly 30% —if not 50%— of its population. Netanyahu urging to ethnically cleanse “the sub humans” of Gaza is sending in reservist to multiply Auschwitz several folds.

The plan is to herd the remaining population into al-Muwasi’s concentration camp near Rafah and either let them perish or force them to evacuate to Libya or South Sudan. It’s useless to talk about the striptease of Western civilization— dismissed by Gandhi as “a good idea”. For who else could have seen the scourges of this civilization, which scared the soma and psyche of entire Indian population, especially Bengalese? There, much like Gaza, British under Churchill deliberately induced the 1943 famine that left behind 4-6 million corpses — a number much bigger than the Jewish Holocaust.

Despite watching the gory images of decapitated charred civilians, infants and children slashed into smithereens and the cadavers of the pregnant women with slit bellies, the Western leadership continues to wear Perseus’ magic cap –not to slay the Israeli monster but to deny its crimes and its criminal existence.

The two-year-long genocide has stirred the conscience of only a handful of notable figures. Dutch Foreign Minister Caspar Veldkamp is one of them. After failing to secure cabinet support for additional sanctions against Israel over its onslaught in Gaza, he chose to resign. How many such examples are there? Very few because conscience as Marx suggests has become a commodity.

Meanwhile, the so-called Gaza Human Fund—a guillotine masquerading as relief—is an illegitimate body with no link to the UN, no previous record of humanitarian work, and, reportedly, staffed by IDF soldiers. It is not feeding Palestinians, but massacring those who come in desperation to receive food. Its source of funding remains opaque. As former Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman told Haaretz, he was convinced that Israel’s defence ministry and its intelligence service, Mossad, were financing the NGO.

Here the game of death and profit reveals itself nakedly.

“Overawed by the enormity of their task, people don’t act”, Marx says and adds, “until a situation is created which makes all turning back impossible. …” Humanity has now reached a point where people demand action from their leaders. The days of John Lennon singing and challenging the authority of Nixon’s war machine are echoing once more. At the height of the Vietnam War tens of thousands of people-especially the youngsters- marched after him cheering, chanting and singing “Give Peace a Chance” on the streets of the US.

History is repeating itself, but for Marx it is the pre-history of humanity, since humankind has yet to overthrow the exchange society. The beginning of a real history presupposes a world free of exploitation.

From the last 96 weeks people of Australia are on the streets in nearly every city calling its leadership to stop arming Israel and its genocide. It is not a coincidence that Albanese in Australia, Carne in Canada, and the regressive Macron in France have been forced — under pressure — to issue timid criticisms of Israel and to announce recognition of a Palestinian state in September. Their timing is cynical: they hope by then no Palestinians will remain alive to recognise a state long endorsed by the United Nations — an institution that has proven itself impotent, a vestigial organ better suited to a morgue than to the struggles of the living.

Leaving the heroic efforts of Iran (a non-Arab state), and Yemen the entire Arab world and its people are in a state of coma. Where are those who once chanted revolutionary slogans in Tahrir Square? Have they become People of Cave put to slumber or has “custom hath made in them the property of easiness”?

During my recent visit to Europe, I suspected my cab driver in Vienna was Arab. Initially reluctant, he finally admitted his Palestinian origin when he sensed my solidarity and obsession with Palestine. It was in vivid contrast to Darwish who proudly declared, “Put it on record/I am an Arab”.

He told me of his sister, who had managed to cross the border with her three daughters while her husband and son remained trapped in Gaza. An educated woman fluent in English, she now lives in a dungeon-like existence: as a Palestinian in Cairo, she cannot get a job or even open a bank account. The conflict hasn’t come to an end but as Darwish says, “the girl is waiting for her beloved husband”. This is the Ummah we are told to be proud of.

Incidentally, the Palestinian consulate was across from my hotel on Josefsgasse. Their phone was permanently out of order. When I visited, I immediately realized I was the most unwelcome guest. The consul general, a flabby middle-aged woman sunk into her chair, would not even meet my eyes. Questions, if any, had to be emailed. I told her I had more answers than she could imagine, and more questions than she could ever answer.

For the success of a revolutionary movement Gramsci stressed the need for “organic intellectuals”. For its failure, it requires only “organic traitors”. Those were the ones I encountered in PA consulate.

We, as outsiders, sitting on the fences have no right to suggest what course of action Palestinians—enduring the inferno in their fight for a dignified life—must take. Yet in our humble opinion, unity is the key to victory.

The Palestinians’ struggle of liberation must free itself from these “organic traitors” led by Mahmud Abbas. Only through a single, unified revolutionary organization, forged under the hierarchy of dynamic and principled leadership, can Palestinians hope to win the decisive battle and “eat the flesh of their usurper” as warned by Darwish.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2025