Vox Populi

A curated webspace for Poetry, Politics, and Nature with over 20,000 daily subscribers and over 8,000 archived posts.

Tracey L. Rogers: Palestinian Lives Matter | We Must Reject Crimes Against Humanity

Just as Black Lives Matter, so do Palestinian Lives Matter. We cannot campaign for racial healing and justice on stolen land in our own country while simultaneously backing a campaign to occupy and displace people abroad.

May 21, 2021 · 2 Comments

Amira Hass: Israel Is Wiping Out Entire Palestinian Families on Purpose

The numerous incidents of killing entire families in Israeli bombings in Gaza—Parents and children, babies, grandparents, siblings—attest that these were not mistakes. The bombings follow a decision from higher up, backed by the approval of military jurists.

May 20, 2021 · 7 Comments

Patrick Gathara: Colonial Powers Have Long Demanded the ‘Right to Self-Defense’ Against the People They Have Colonized

Colonial occupiers have long claimed a “right” to defend themselves from the resistance of native communities, including by committing mass murder.

May 19, 2021 · 1 Comment

James L. Gelvin: As the Palestinian minority takes to the streets, Israel is having its own Black Lives Matter moment

As in the United States, a brutalized minority group, facing systemic racism and discriminatory acts has taken to the streets. And, as in the United States, the only way out starts with serious soul searching on the part of the majority.

May 17, 2021 · 3 Comments

Lena Khalaf Tuffaha: Lullaby

We want things smaller than we know.
A vessel strong enough
to lift you into tomorrow,

May 14, 2021 · 1 Comment

Emily De Ferrari: Saturday January 16, 2010, revisited

This is not security, this is not madness, this is a concerted effort to rid the land of Palestinians.

May 14, 2021 · 5 Comments

Angele Ellis: In Lebanon, 2000 June

It was the summer the Israelis withdrew, leaving
behind
a landmined no-man’s-land of phosphorus orange groves,
blighted with white like the kingdom of the Snow Queen.

September 16, 2020 · 4 Comments

Abby Zimet: Israeli Soldiers Kill Autistic Man For No Discernible Reason

Israeli soldiers shot and killed at point-blank range Iyad Khairi Halak, a severely autistic, 32-year-old Palestinian man as he cowered on the ground, bleeding, terrified and uncomprehending, behind garbage cans.

June 18, 2020 · 2 Comments

Kathleen O’Toole: Starlings (corrected version)

My mind suddenly shifts
to tally one week’s arithmetic of grief:
eighty children among the hundreds killed
in a fine-tuned cone of shrapnel

September 23, 2019 · 2 Comments

John Lawson: O King

The president recently promoted himself as “like the King of Israel… the second coming of God.” Poet John Lawson gives the president his due.

August 24, 2019 · 4 Comments

Naomi Shihab Nye: To Netanyahu

My Palestinian father named his donkey after you…
Now I think he insulted the donkey.

August 16, 2019 · 7 Comments

James J. Zogby: Most Democratic Candidates Still Afraid To Criticize Israel’s Violations Of Palestinian Rights

Benjamin Netanyahu and his policies are viewed negatively by most Democrats. This shift in opinion has placed many Democratic presidential candidates in a bind.

June 26, 2019 · Leave a comment

Abby Zimet: We Know What Hate Looks Like — Standing With Ilhan

Amidst the ongoing, breathtaking hypocrisy of rabid charges of anti-Semitism – aka daring to criticize America’s toxic complicity with Israeli war crimes – heedlessly leveled against her, often from down-and-dirty bigots, Ilhan Omar is all done apologizing.

March 7, 2019 · 1 Comment

Abby Zimet: They Took My House, They Took My Life, They Took Everything.

Israeli police forcibly expelled a Palestinian family from their home in the occupied East Jerusalem’s Old City on Sunday and promptly turned it over to right-wing Jewish settlers, who raised the Israeli flag over it as family members wept.

February 22, 2019 · 2 Comments

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