OPINIONS

Tue 28 Jul 2026 10:03 am - Jerusalem Time

Sweetness of spirit!

Dr. Ibrahim Melhem

Editor-in-Chief

Few words

The ultra-right-wing Zionist faction, clinging to the reins of power in Tel Aviv, continues to do everything imaginable and unimaginable to ensure its survival in power, which is slipping from its grasp, as indicated by opinion polls in Israel, and by the growing anger among secular Israeli parties towards the crimes committed by these fascists in Gaza and the West Bank, which are backfiring on Israelis, undermining systems and laws, prompting them to unite and mobilize for a day of reckoning at the ballot boxes on October 27th.

It is true that the Palestinian people are facing one of the most severe and dangerous periods since the Nakba of '48, but this time they possess an awareness, training, and will capable of confronting these rabble who embrace a fascist ideology, reminiscent of what Europe experienced at the beginning of the last century, before it rid itself of it and recovered from its evils after its demise.

Amidst this bleeding pain of losing loved ones and land, the spirit of the late poet Samih al-Qasim rises to strengthen us, soothe our hearts, and bless this legendary steadfastness, in his immortal words from his poem "O Enemy of the Sun":

Perhaps you will take away my livelihood as you wish

Perhaps I will offer my clothes and my bed for sale

Perhaps I will work as a stonecutter, a porter, and a street sweeper

Perhaps I will search, in animal dung, for grains

Perhaps I will sleep naked and hungry

O enemy of the sun, but I will not compromise

And until the last pulse in my veins, I will resist

Perhaps you will seize the last inch of my soil

Perhaps you will feed my youth to prison

Perhaps you will steal my grandfather's inheritance

Of furniture, utensils, and jars

Perhaps you will burn my poems and my books

Perhaps you will feed my flesh to dogs

Perhaps you will remain a nightmare of terror over our village

O enemy of the sun, but I will not compromise

And until the last pulse in my veins, I will resist

Perhaps you will extinguish a flame in my night

Perhaps I will be deprived of a mother's kiss

Perhaps you will raise a wall and a wall and a wall around me

Perhaps you will crucify my days on a humiliating vision

O enemy of the sun, but I will not compromise.

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Sweetness of spirit!

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