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As our twisted world prioritises silencing the messengers over ending genocide, we once again turn to the artists, the writers, the poets, the journalists who continue to clarify the world to us, knowing full well they are being hunted down, assassinated, erased. It is happening in Gaza, it is happening in Sudan, it is happening wherever resistance movements and people of conscience challenge oppression.
Today, in particular, we pay homage to the men of Gaza (and all intractable conflicts) who are not even worthy of being a statistic. At best, we lament the death of women and children, but men, it appears, are never innocent and do not deserve to be mourned. But they are fathers, brothers, sons, they are doctors, they are journalists, they are ambulance drivers, they are poets. They dig the ground with their bare hands, they carry the wounded, they are shot while seeking food for their families, they die while holding their babies in their arms.
—
By Ghassan Kanafani
I wish children didn’t die
I wish they would be temporarily elevated
to the skies until the war ends.
Then they would return home safe,
and when their parents would ask them
Where were you?
They would say we were playing in the clouds.
Ghassan Kanafani was a Palestinian poet, writer, freedom fighter from Gaza, considered to be a leading novelist of his generation and one of the Arab world's leading Palestinian writers. Kanafani's works have been translated into more than 17 languages. Kanafani was born in Acre, Mandatory Palestine in 1936, but his family was forced out of their hometown by Zionist militias in 1948. He was assassinated by Israel in 1972 in Beirut. [Source: Wikipedia]
—-
Don’t Show Them Our Wounds
By Fadi Quran
Stop.
Don’t show them the ribs
of our starved children
again—
not their eyes,
vacant
like desert moons.
Don’t show them our grandmothers
kneeling by graves,
white shrouds
trembling
in their arms,
thirsty with memory,
another Nakba,
tears sealed in their veins.
Don’t show them
torn toddler limbs—
limbs that once danced,
now limp
strewn on stone.
Nor the surgeon, hands trembling,
threading stitches with fear,
as another hospital
chokes on drones.
We have poured rivers of blood into cameras.
Laid our grief bare—
each missile archived,
each scream captioned,
each blackened body
filed into another
Instagram story.
Still,
they sip our sorrow
like fine wine.
A spectacle.
A passing phase.
They do not see us.
They turn our ache into
Fuel for algorithms.
They watch genocide
and call it “complicated.”
They see our babies,
charred in incubators—
and say,
both sides.
No more.
Bury the camera
with the last child we kissed cold.
They will not hear us
when we plead—
but they will tremble
when we rise.
Build.
Build not your sorrow,
but your strength.
Find your people—
gather them like
seeds
in a clenched fist.
Organize.
Read the land like scripture.
Trace the veins of the oppressor’s machine—
and know exactly where to cut.
Gather tools.
Not just weapons,
but minds forged like steel.
Build the school that outlives the bomb.
Build the clinic,
the barricade,
the broadcast,
the blueprint.
Dismantle Them.
Resist
with wisdom honed to a blade,
with joy carved from the cage,
with silence that plots thunder.
They burn our orchards?
Plant forests of defiance.
They bulldoze our land?
Till martyrdom into seeds.
They rape, bomb, bury?
We birth nations,
and glory.
Don’t give them your wounds—
give them your shadow
as you rise.
This is not the hour
for drowning
in sorrow.
This is a liberation
struggle.
Act like it.
Move like it.
Fight
like your soul
is on trial.
Because it is.
And if you carry only one truth from this genocide,
Let it be this:
Power is the only language they understand.
So seek it
Speak it—
like thunder
on a moonless night.
Fadi Quran is a Senior Campaigner at Avaaz and a Popular Struggle community organiser. He previously served as UN Advocacy Officer with Al-Haq’s legal research and advocacy unit. Apart from his work in advocacy and international law, Fadi is also an entrepreneur in the alternative energy field, where he has founded two companies bringing wind and solar energy to Palestine and other countries in the region. Fadi holds degrees in Physics and International Relations from Stanford University. [source: Al-Shabaka]
Perfect Victims, Mohammed El-Kurd.
‘Mohammed El-Kurd on Gaza.’ The Palestine Festival of Literature. Watch here.
‘Writing Poetry in a Time of Genocide,’ Mohammed Moussa, Gaza Poet Society, 3 June 2025. Read here.
Gaza Poet Society: https://gazapoetssociety.substack.com/.
Passages Through Genocide: https://www.gazapassages.com/.
‘Writers Demand Immediate Gaza Ceasefire.’ Open Letter signed by over 300 writers, read it here.
Discover Sudan Through Literature: 14 Must-Read Books by Sudanese Writers, 30 December 2024, Books Africana. Visit here.
Sudan Sounds: https://www.rights-studio.org/journal/sudan-sounds
Words from the Congo: https://www.rights-studio.org/journal/words-from-congo
Resisting Erasure: https://www.rights-studio.org/journal/resisting-erasure
“Our strategy should be not only to confront empire, but to lay siege to it. To deprive it of oxygen. To shame it. To mock it. With our art, our music, our literature, our stubbornness, our joy, our brilliance, our sheer relentlessness – and our ability to tell our own stories. Stories that are different from the ones we’re being brainwashed to believe.” — Arundhati Roy
Conversation (n.): oral exchange of sentiments, observations, opinions, or ideas; an informal discussion of an issue by representatives of governments, institutions, or groups.
“Wherever they burn books, they will also, in the end, burn human beings.” — Heinrich Heine
“You belong anywhere you can flee to and return from in one piece” ― K. Eltinaé
“"Poetry is about freedom of articulation and affirming the truth of our experiences. I think of my writing as joining a long line of women’s resistance poetry that exposes the social and political conditions of women’s existences.” — Sarah Lubala
