36 year-old, Palestinian poet Dareen Tatour, has been sentenced to five months in prison by an Israeli court over a poem. The Arabic piece, written in 2015 urged Palestinians to continue resisting the brutal occupation. Tatour had already served three years under house arrest after first publishing her poem titled ‘Resist, O my nation, resist them’ in October 2015 on her social media profile.[1] During her time under house arrest, Tatour, an Israeli by citizenship was barred from using the internet or from publishing her poems. Tatour’s lawyer, Gaby Lasky, told Al Jazeera,
“It’s regretful that a country that believes in a democracy, will sentence to jail a poet because of a poem that she wrote. The prosecution wanted to send her to jail between 15 and 26 months [but] the judge decided to send her for five months which is still a long time in prison.”[2]
The following is Dareen Tatour’s poem translated into English,
“Resist, O my nation, resist them
In Jerusalem I healed my wounds
And I surrendered my worries to my Lord
And I carried my soul on the palm of my hand
For the sake Palestine, an Arab land
I will not accept the ‘peaceful resolution’
I will never lower my nation’s flag
Until I evict them from my land
And subdue them in a time to come
Resist, O my nation, resist them
Resist the appropriation of the settler
And follow the convoy of martyrs
Rip apart a shameful constitution
Carrying overburdening humiliation
Stopping us from restoring rights
They burned sinless children
And Hadil, whom they sniped in the open
They killed her in the brightness of day
Resist, O my nation, resist them
Resist the coloniser’s oppression
Do not listen to (cowardly) tails
Fastened to the frailty of submission
Do not fear the (Israeli) Mirkava
For the truth, in your heart is stronger
So long as you resist in this nation
Long live the great men and victory.”
On her part, Tatour asserted that,“on entering the Israeli court, I kept in mind that it is a court of the occupation. The whole case was politicised purely because I am an Arab Palestinian, who expresses herself in the Arabic language… this is but a continuation to the Nation State bill that was approved (by Israeli parliament) this week, and an attempt to eradicate the Arabic language from Palestine…they mistranslated martyr to ‘vandal’ and portrayed ‘resistance’ as an expression of violence and killing.”[3]
It is noteworthy to mention that the recently passed Nation State law, dubbed a racist law, removes Arabic as an official language and affords exclusive rights to Jewish people including a clause explicitly encouraging and promoting settlements.[4]
Dareen Tatour will serve for a literature piece about resisting an ‘occupier’ and ‘coloniser’ nearly as long as the Israeli soldier, Elor Azaria, guilty of executing Abdul Fatah al-Sharif by shooting him in the head as he lay incapacitated on the ground. Azaria will walk out of jail in May 2019, after serving a reduced nine month sentence.[5]
Source: www.islam21c.com
Notes:
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R1qnlN1WUAA
[2] https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/07/dareen-tatour-sentenced-months-prison-poem-180731084215893.html
[3] http://www.alghad.tv/ فيديو-الشاعرة-دارين-طاطور-محاكم-الاحت/
[4] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jul/19/one-more-racist-law-reactions-as-israel-axes-arabic-as-official-language
[5] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/israel-soldier-convicted-manslaughter-sentence-cut-shooting-dead-palestinian-elor-azaria-a8263246.html
Ahmed Hammuda is a regular contributor at Islam21c. His interests lie in Qur’anic Tafsir and the field of Middle East Affairs and how they reflect on Muslims living in the West. He is an Electrical Engineer by trade and has been involved in various Da’wah activities over the course of his education and working life. He has transferred the same analytical approach required in engineering into a careful and measured approach in his views and positions.