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Naming<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n by Chris Norris<\/em><\/p>\n Pray tell us, you wise men and scholars all, What name should we deploy when \u2018genocide\u2019 \u2018Nakba\u2019: a word so singular, unique, On one point above all let\u2019s be quite clear: The State of Israel, then, a \u2018Jewish State\u2019 Some there\u2019ve been, Holocaust survivors, those We Palestinians suffer it, your ban, Naming by Chris Norris Pray tell us, you wise men and scholars all,Pray tell us by what law you take it ill,This usage of what we see…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":464,"featured_media":16527,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1660],"tags":[2884,2950,3019,3049,3050],"class_list":["post-16533","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-poetry-2","tag-genocide-in-gaza","tag-holocaust","tag-nakba","tag-netanyahu","tag-primo-levi"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16533","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/464"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16533"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16533\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16527"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16533"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16533"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16533"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
Pray tell us by what law you take it ill,
This usage of what we see fit to call
Our Holocaust, we whose life\u2019s-blood you spill.
How should we name it as the missiles fall,
As your IDF snipers aim and kill,
As children cower by the shattered wall,
Fear-frozen there to be picked off at will,
As smart bombs smash lives like a wrecking-ball
And the pretence of \u2018peace-talks\u2019 goes on still,
Though their \u2018negotiators\u2019 stick and stall
While thirty thousand victims pay the bill,
And the corpse-chewing ghouls of capital,
US-directed, wait to gorge their fill?<\/p>\n
Is likewise one its agents won\u2019t excuse,
Or when they so persistently elide
Those overlapping sets, \u2018Israelis\u2019\/\u2018Jews\u2019,
So that the \u2018anti-semite\u2019 charge can ride
The global airwaves and ensure the news
Gets round so fresh atrocities may hide
From such a charge as \u2018genocide\u2019, or use
That sacrosanct word, \u2018holocaust\u2019, applied
To one case only lest its usage lose
The needful force and have the case re-tried,
New victims this time rising to accuse
Those who\u2019d have their past victimage provide
Full cover when they wear the victor\u2019s shoes?<\/p>\n
So non-transferable that it might stand
As our equivalent: a word we speak
With awe, with sorrow for the lives and land
So brutally denied us, yet don\u2019t seek
To set up, by some God-endorsed command,
A shibboleth that then requires we wreak
Such vengeance in its name as now they\u2019ve planned,
Those Israelites who think it shows them weak
Or faithless if they fail to have it banned,
All usage of that word, and force oblique,
Evasive ways around on those they\u2019d brand
As cursed Amalekites who\u2019d dare critique
Their sacred land-grab as its bounds expand.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s to the State of Israel they\u2019re addressed,
These bitter words long bred of anger, fear,
Survivor-guilt, and need to speak out lest
Our witness-bearing voices disappear
And leave us \u2013 final insult! \u2013 dispossessed
Of freedom, land, and any future ear
Inclined to listen and to make its test
Of truth that stark reproof to every smear
Laid on us by their allies in the West,
The US and its satellites, whose sphere
Has long resounded to the wish expressed
By Netanyahu in his holding dear
Those tales of war, civilian slaughter stressed.<\/p>\n
But how so? culture, history, language, creed,
Or (spare us!) gene-pool \u2013 anyway some trait
Or mix thereof that\u2019s commonly agreed,
Amongst the faithful, somehow to create
Such bonds of comity as meet their need,
No matter how all tribes miscegenate,
Creed notwithstanding. Still we must concede
It shapes whole lifetimes, weighs on them like fate
Or lifts them like a future fit to feed
Millennial hopes with dreams that long await
The promised outcome \u2013 never guaranteed \u2013
Yet rarely, as at present, compensate
Hopes lost by taking Saul\u2019s atrocious lead.<\/p>\n
Like Primo Levi, who were quick to see
How it would go, how it so often goes,
With words made sacrosanct by state decree,
Or names whose unique resonance bestows
Full rights of use to holders of a key
Possessed exclusively by one who owes
Allegiance to that sole catastrophe
That seals its utterance. Then it\u2019s friends or foes,
The rightful users, those presumed to be
Its true custodians, licensed to disclose
Which creeds or tribes have bent the suppliant knee
And which new spawn of Amalek oppose
God\u2019s edict and invite calamity.<\/p>\n
Each time you or your US sponsors draw
That line again, so crucial to their plan
For \u2018Middle East\u2019 dominion that the law
Of usage be upheld, that nothing can
Henceforth be suffered to approach the awe
Its naming must evoke. Yet what began
At Amalek when raging Saul first swore
To God he\u2019d spare no member of that clan,
Man, woman or child, is what we see once more
In this our ghetto, this our Bantustan,
As your Apartheid state makes total war
On us last proxies of the Musselman,
That victim of all victims, to ignore
Whose mute appeal\u2019s to spurn the plea that ran
In blood down every shibboleth-bolted door.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"