Raised On The Street

The government wants us to think that the problem is with us. If only people would do their jobs better, if only people would work harder, if only people would stop littering, if only, if only. While people have indeed reached new heights of slumber and dismay, it is apparent that this is not entirely of their own doing. They have been catalyzed, pushed and even hypnotized into heading into that direction by none other than the governments themselves. To make matters worse the government installs a sense of hopelessness that things cannot be bettered and this is the exact ingredient to stabilize the state of dismay. Things of course aren't bad for everybody, they're worse for the people and better for the government who will soon run out of people to rob and oppress and will look amongst themselves for preys to feast upon until they've destroyed one another and present us with another outright dictator who will govern a hopeless and non existent people.

They say that if we had the energy of those who fought the war back in '73 or if we had the energy of those who won the African cup twice in a row, we'd turn this place around. But I tell you, if only the government had that same spirit, and when I say the government I'm not talking about 80 million people, I'm just taking about a couple of thousand, if they had that same spirit we'd be on the verge of fixing things.

But these days all anyone wants to do is preach. All anyone wants to do is hand out burdens to people that he himself cannot carry. It's easier to tell people to do things better, but can you tell yourself to do things, not even better, just differently? It's a near impossible task, it takes effort to stop drinking your tea or coffee in the morning. It takes effort to change things that have been instilled in you for a very long time and the fact of the matter is that all the horrible things have been instilled in us since birth. Not only does the government not provide what we need to overcome natural obstacles of ugly habits, but they devise ingeniously obstacles that hinder each individual from progress. In order to actually progress just a little bit, a tiny bit that other developed countries may consider as insignificant, you need to be a great person. This seemingly little progress should not be evaluated of itself but in the context in which this progress was made. For to go one step forward rather than ten steps back is to overcome the immense boulders designed by the government to set you back. That kilometer you've walked is worth thirty of those walked by others who have real governments and countries.

We've been brought up on a vicious street and not a home. It's the survival of the fittest and punishment of virtue and the hindering of any progress that might endanger the pact leader even if it benefits the others. It's like a den of thieves where honest people are the real outsiders. It's not a home where we feel safety in everything we do, guilty when doing wrong. It's a jungle where we have to turn into carnivores in order to get to the top of the food chain. We need to eat each other alive and we have no real protectors but each other.

And to top it all off, they tell you the problem is with you. "Come let us talk," they say, don't revolt, it's a democracy. But when we go and talk, they arrest us, beat us and torture us. The perfect servant of theirs is one who is happy to be enslaved. But a hundred years from now who knows what can happen, whose children will be where. They're trying to ensure our children and theirs a life that's not worth living and a country that's not worth dying for.

One Canvas

What lives have we to live to try out all we do. So obstinate do we act fueled by foolish pride. And years go by and years go by with a voice inside us telling us how sad we feel, asking us to change our ways and demanding of us to be happy, but our pride feels compelled to clamp that voice. By time our cries become attenuated whispers and none but our foolish years remain, none but they stand proud. Our pride goes old, it goes weary and remorseful over wasted time. It has not gained a thing by it's obsolete reslience, on the contrary it has caused all around it to lose.

One day we find the many lives we dreamed inside our heads have shrunk to only one, and one we lived. It does not look much like any of those we have inside our heads, we wasted all of those and wasted the remaining one too. We waste our lives because in the midst of our obstinacy we do have that mental image that things weren't so, that history had not been unkind, that time had not been so unforgiving. We think of times that were, and think what if things could change and nothing of that had been done ever was. What if we could forgive, what if we could forget, we think of this all in the midst of all our anger, sorrow and pride, but the king of fools steps in, pride, and though it be foolish, it's nevertheless a king. The king commands that all our childish dreams be vanquished to that high lonely tower labeled dignity.

Our hearts are foolish and are strong, they overpower the mind at times and delude us. The mind exists to please the heart, that's true, but sometimes a mind must win to give the heart what it doesn't know that it wants. The heart has tricked us all to think that we have more lives than one or that perhaps the life we live can give us years that are long.

One canvas is all we get and every stroke cannot be undone. One life is all we get with wasted minutes spent in anger and dismay. Countless minutes we spend hating those we love, pushing away those we need, forgetting who remember us. Countless days awaiting a change that can only be given by ourselves.

Have we not learnt that much from all our past? Have we not learnt from all the others never had? Love knows no pride but what do we do when life and love collide?

European Guilt

Let’s talk about Israel. Israel is a land given to Jews by Europeans. This gift is a result of many years of persecution against Jews, and to say that Europe was not guilty of being anti-Semitic for a very long time would be a complete fallacy. Yes, Europe was guilty of and felt guilty for mistreating Jews and persecuting them for so long. To add salt to an already open and burning wound the Jews were persecuted by Hitler. The Nazi German regime persecuted Jews like no other, but to say that Germany alone persecuted Jews would be a great falsification. Nazi Germany only represented the extremity of persecution already suffered by Jews in Europe. Those persecutions, stove-piped, would not at all have offended other Europeans. However one thing must come to mind when thinking of the guilt that entailed after the extreme persecution of Jews at the hands of Hitler; that Hitler was aggressive against other Europeans.

Yes, that was the turning point and wake up call to Europeans. They were being annihilated and invaded by Germany and they were dubbed inferior to Germans. They felt a tiny tinge of the discrimination and/or persecution that they have been inflicting on Jews. It is only then when they felt that they were in the same boat and realized the horrors of what they had been doing to the Jews.

That is not to say that this guilt wasn’t lingering earlier on, it is evident that ever since the Balfour promise that there was some sort of obligation. However real guilt, the guilt that an entire continent felt was not fully mature till they experienced how horrible it was to be a victim of tyrant racists.

In Germany’s persecution of Jews, Europeans found themselves on the same side as Jews and were able to walk in their shoes for a while. The great sense of European guilt started to build as Hitler became an epitome of racism and persecution. They found that they had to fight against what he stood for and in a sense found out that they had to fight against… what they themselves had been doing for centuries. When they realized that their past itself was their own enemy, embodied in the shape of Hitler and fascism, a great sense of self awareness was born and along with it the guilt and horror of what their extremity might look like.

Perhaps this was the reason that a European and American endorsed Israel emerged. It seemed very appropriate to give back to this persecuted nation something after all the years of tyranny they have endured. However there is one little thing that might be wrong about all this, that in order to ease their guilt, the Europeans have persecuted Palestinians in effect. The real problem is that Europeans are still guilty about Jews and this makes them truly oblivious to the effect Israel has had on Palestinians. The Arabs have now become, in general, the new Jews, only without the current sympathy old Jews are shrouded with. They are looked down upon and persecuted and the great Europeans are making the same mistake over and over again.

Israel has become the biggest bully in the world, and this is not an overstatement. No other country has defied the UN so bluntly. Israel continues to persecute Palestinians systemically, despite being the one nation of all the people in the world that should understand what this means. The world stands by and lets this be.
Why does the world let this be? Is it their guilt towards Jews? Is it disinterest? I don’t have a clear cut answer. Maybe someday there will be another awakening for the world to realize what’s being done to Palestinians.

Do we need another Hitler to put Westerners and Arabs in the same boat so as to realize the shameful ways in which we treat each other? Do we need another wake up call to recognize that the world is falling into the same mistakes relentlessly?

In their discrimination against Arabs Europeans are building up a new guilt that may not take complete form within this lifetime, but they’re setting their children up for a fall. At the rate they’re heading towards a more humanitarian outlook at the other, they will soon realize that they are guilty of failing to practice what they preach. Today their hands are against their ears when it comes to the violations of Israel, but history sometimes, just some times, screams the facts much later on. As ironically as the Arabs have become the new Jews, Israel has become as discriminatory as their oppressors. The dead are screaming from beneath the earth for those living to take heed to what has happened to them.

What Right Had I

What right had I to fight those mouths that uttered insults at my existence, judging it crass and decaying? What right had I to deny the words they said even if untrue, for I deserved at least, a little bit of what they said. Why choose to win the battle of words when most of what's been said has struck the delicate chords. I have no right to anger or fight off those that have been struck no matter how wrong they are, for I have been guilty too of doing wrong at many other times and being struck and being fought. But at the same time they have no right to see me in a low and bent state, they have no right to move past my inner shell and extract my inner most confessions.