Yin Yang, Raouf Halaby 2003.
To escape from the Gaza and Lebanon 24/7 genocide news reports, since October 2023 I’ve had to find a safe and serene space in which I could drown all the misery and carnage orchestrated and perpetrated by Netanyahu and senile Genocide Joe, his criminal co-partner, his secretaries of State and Defense, AIPAC, a subservient Congress, and all the merchants of death getting rich off the Ukraine and Gaza/Lebanon/Iran wars.
In my 50′ x 55′ therapeutic safe space, a place of serenity, peace, and harmony with nature, I’ve harvested bushels of 3 varieties of cucumbers, 5 varieties of tomatoes (42 plants total), Romaine lettuce (green and purplish), broccoli, cauliflower, bell peppers, green beans, purple hull peas, yellow and zucchini squash, asparagus, and eggplants. An expansive carpet space of winter turnip greens is thriving and should be ready for a New Year’s side dish. To stay away from the apocalyptic tv scenes of Israeli heinous brutalities, a meat grinder of surrealistic and viciously gargantuan slaughter of epic proportions, I’ve been toiling myself to exhaustion so as to avoid despair and heartache.
All, to no avail.
In my garden, my safe and serene space, the Yin of my life meets the Yang of my life in a counterbalancing perpetual struggle, an ongoing skirmish to attempt to believe that yes, the world is not full of villainous characters, that in the long run good will always win, that faith traditions are anchors of peace, hope, justice, goodness, and harmony.
Twenty-three grateful neighbors, families, and friends across town have been and continue to be, even in late October, the beneficiaries of this bounty.
And daily I’ve wondered how I could, aside from monetary contributions, help feed the starving Palestinians, especially the helpless and destitute children, children whose gaunt faces and emaciated bodies haunt me throughout the day and the sleepless nights. Why should they pay dearly for someone else’s egregious behavior? And their fate today is but a continuation of their having lived, their entire lives, in the largest modern-day concentration camp – a camp run by those who want to remind us “Never, again.” Palestinian Children’s starvation, dismemberment, bombardment, disease, dispossession, amputations, orphan hood, and death are Israel, America, and the Western (so-called Christian) nations’ malevolent exacting vengeance to appease a Messianic Hebraic/Judeo-Christian God, created in their own image, by Netanyahu, the Evangelicals, and their ilk. Fellow believers, God is not a paleolithic, angry God you’ve fashioned in your own grotesquely hateful image – a psychopathic, Fascistic image that periodically creeps out of his dingy lair to remind us that the curse of Cain lingers, even to this very day.
And to the sorry so-called Arab brothers, a theocratically thuggish, tribal group of despots: Shame on you.
And to you, courageous members of the Jewish faith who’ve condemned (in words and actions) Israel’s genocide; you’ve earned yourself a place in the Shamayim. And to you, Evangelicals, shame on you for hailing this genocide as a countdown to Armageddon. When did you last read Christ’s eloquent delivery of the eight blessings, better known as the Beatitudes?
One of the highlights of the 2024 summer was the observing and videotaping of my bees on the day the eclipse cast its dark shadow on my neighborhood and garden, a garden to which eight years back I ascribed a nomenclature to remind me of my Palestinian roots. Little Palestine, the little parcel of land which no Israeli settler dare steal from me, is part and parcel of every Palestinian’s DNA. It exemplifies our love for the land, the soil, the olive trees, the rocks, the landscape, the rolling hills, the valleys, the citrus groves, the promontories, the cactus plants, and the dirt from which we emerge and to which we are returned.
And unfortunately, by the end of July two of my beehives succumbed to the parasitic varroa mites. The virus was so severe, I had to burn the entire hives, including all the boxes, frames, hive covers, and bases. And a virus called NetaBiden is incinerating Gaza and Lebanon’s homes, schools, hospitals, ambulances, all the Gaza mosques and churches, every single Gaza university, and every area to which Gazans have been ordered to flee.
For centuries now, you, my Palestine, my forever dearly beloved land, old and modern-day marauding crusaders and aggressors have coveted your beauty, your culture, your bounty, and your history. History has not been kind to you; you’ve been repeatedly raped, defaced, and dismembered.
It took 400 years to free African Americans from the bondage of slavery. Will Palestinians ever be freed from the bondage and scourge of the Zionist Anglo-American Colonial Settler genocide?
Soon after hitting the send key, I will don my garden attire and head to my garden, my therapeutic, safe, serene space where I shall ponder more deeply the struggle between the serene harmony in my safe space and the distant dissonances of world discord, a state of forever wars where the strong will always prey on the weak.
And I teeter between a soothing Yang and its cacophonous Yin.
And I ponder and listen to the recitation of the words delivered by the Palestinian Jew, killed for his message of love, harmony, and peace. His words, scribed in Matteo 5: 3-12, herald to the world the Blessed message:
Blessed are the poor in spirit
for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.
Blessed are those who mourn,
for they will be comforted.
Blessed are the meek,
for they will inherit the Earth.
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness,
for they will be satisfied.
Blessed are the merciful,
for they will be shown mercy.
Blessed are the pure in heart,
for they will see God.
Blessed are the peacemakers,
for they will be called the Sons of God.
Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness,
for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.
Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of Me.
Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you…
