“A mile away in the night I had heard the bombs
Sing and then burst themselves between cramped houses
With bright soft flashes and sounds like banging doors;” ~ Roy Fisher, from “The Entertainment of War”
Making beauty out of the blasphemous (reblobbed from an article by Damien Gayle in The Daily Mail):
A Palestinian woman waters dozens of plants near her desert home, each growing from used tear gas canisters collected in years of clashes with Israeli soldiers.
Her curious garden, photographed today, is in the village of Bilin, near the West Bank city of Ramallah, the de facto capital of the State of Palestine.
Much of the territory is disputed. Israel continues to expand settlements in the West Bank which the international community have long ago ruled to be illegal.
Disputed land: A Palestinian woman waters dozens of plants near her desert home, each growing from used tear gas canisters collected in clashes with Israeli soldiers during protests against the West Bank occupation
Poignant: The curious garden, photographed today, is in the village of Bilin, near the West Bank city of Ramallah, the de facto capital of the State of Palestine
Symbolic: The flowers, with their unusual pots, mark land Palestinians were able to reclaim two years ago after a court battle to re-route Israel’s controversial security wall
The flowers, with their unusual pots, mark land Palestinians were able to reclaim two years ago after a court battle to re-route Israel’s controversial security wall.
“A mother looks at another—
a sea of small bodies
burnt or decapitated
around them—
and asks,
How do we mourn this?: ~ Nathalie Handal, “Tiny Feet”
Still under construction, the Israeli West Bank barrier is a security wall that will eventually stretch 430 miles around the entire West Bank region.
Israel argues that the barrier is needed to protect its people from Palestinian terrorism, and since construction began the number of suicide bombing attacks have fallen significantly.
But critics of the policy object that the route of the barrier deviates substantially from internationally agreed boundaries into territories occupied since the 1967 Six-Day War.
They argue that it uses security concerns to mask an illegal attempt to annex Palestinian land.
A flower hangs from the barbed wire of Israel’s barrier: Still under construction, the Israeli West Bank barrier is a security wall that will eventually stretch 430 miles around the entire West Bank region
Beauty in the midst of horror: Israel argues that the barrier is needed to protect its people from Palestinian terrorism, and since construction began the number of suicide bombing attacks have fallen significantly
Surviving in adversity: But critics of the policy object that the route of the barrier deviates substantially from internationally agreed boundaries and uses security fears to mask an illegal attempt to annex Palestinian land
Music by Mogwai, “I Do Have Weapons”
The Diameter Of The Bomb
and the diameter of its effective range about seven meters,
with four dead and eleven wounded.
And around these, in a larger circle
of pain and time, two hospitals are scattered
and one graveyard. But the young woman
who was buried in the city she came from,
at a distance of more than a hundred kilometers,
enlarges the circle considerably,
and the solitary man mourning her death
at the distant shores of a country far across the sea
includes the entire world in the circle.
And I won’t even mention the crying of orphans
that reaches up to the throne of God and
beyond, making a circle with no end and no God.
Lola's Curmudgeonly Musings 