Democracy and human rights organization DAWN honored Mehdi Hasan with the 2024 Integrity Award at their annual gala on Wednesday, October 2, at the National Press Club in Washington DC.
By the time we leave this gathering… many more Palestinian and Lebanese civilians will have been killed by an Israeli war machine, armed to the teeth by our government, just down the street from here, funded by our taxpayer dollars and protected by many in our media who choose to look away.
Over this past year there have been many things said, many quotes, many statements about Gaza that have haunted me but one stands out above the rest, it was when the lawyer for the South African government at the International Court of Justice in January talked about “the first genocide in history where its victims are broadcasting their own destruction in real time in the desperate so far vain hope that the world might do something.” And yet the world did nothing. Today the death toll in Gaza stands at more than 40,000 compared to 20,000 back in January. We have seen malnutrition, famine, starvation, ethnic cleansing.
Despite having spent the past few years watching the conservative movement in America hyperventilate over threats to free speech and the rise of cancel culture, the truth of the matter is that it has always been the supporters of the Palestinian cause who are the ones who get cancelled first and cancelled worst. That was true before October the 7th. It is certainly true since then.
Those of us who take great pride in our editorial independence, and in our true freedom of speech, will not allow our voices to be silenced… we will not bend the knee to those that say a Palestinian life, or a Lebanese life, is somehow less worthy, or less equal, to an Israeli life or an American life.
Mehdi Hasan accepts DAWN’s Integrity award in honor of Jamal Khashoggi.
i
After the air strike,
near a mulberry tree
and some wild plants,
they found the unmoving body of a boy:
An eye was completely closed,
the other was half open,
watching for any piece of shrapnel
that could kill him again.
ii
In my city, the army
rounded up all the men,
forced them to stand
against the wall
of the primary school.
The hands, raised,
touched the newly painted bricks
as if getting prepared
to play the piano
before the bullets drummed
on shivering heads and backs.
iii
During the air strikes, we sat on the tiled, dusty floor,
stock-still as pills in a bottle in a pharmacy in a town
where no one gets sick, where everybody is dead.
I look at his wrist.
It is crushed,
nearly severed.
And then at his shoulder.
A bone is fractured.
He is four years old.
I say to my wife,
Oh! Look how brave he is.
He is not crying.
No pain. No tears.
Even with no parents
beside him.
I set my eyes on his face.
His eyes are not moving.
His heart is not beating.
He is taking a rest.
A hand is no longer a hand
as long as it does not find
another hand to shake,
as long as it does not find food
to share with others,
as long as it does not find
a pen to write,
as long as it’s the only meat
a dog can find to eat,
and as long as it goes
missing, forever.
vi
Is this really it?!
Us waking up every morning,
tell you about a massacre
that happened overnight?
Is our only job to
report on our deaths,
film our cut-off bodies,
and ask you for help?
When do YOU wake up?
Is it ok with you to wake up
to find your house on fire?
to find your child charred?
to find your wife in a hospital
with no medicine?
to find your neighborhood
a heap of rubble?
to not wake up?
Wake up!!
Enough watching us while sitting
on a chair
or reclining on a couch.
We are drowning in your silence.
We are screaming
but you took off your ears.
You put them in your earbud cases.
We see the blood
as it gushes from the cases.
The blood is our cries, our tears,
our BLOOD.
vii
You get displaced.
You get wounded yet survive.
You jump off your cot
when a missile hits the hospital.
You shelter in a tent.
You get displaced again.
You get displaced again
and again on crutches
or a wheelchair.
You get Gazaned a zillion times.
ix
If we stay in our houses, they bomb us.
If we shelter in a school, they bomb us.
If we run to a hospital, they bomb us.
If we move into a tent, they bomb us.
If we go to a toilet, they bomb us.
If we run from an air strike, they bomb us.
If we do not do any of this, they still bomb us.
If we stay like a tree,
or temporarily leave like a leaf in the fall,
they bomb us.
But spring will come
and they, those who bomb us,
will find no bombs among
the flowers.
We will be on the trees bathing in the sun,
and they, those who bomb us,
will have no sun,
no place to rest,
no legs to run.
x
He never woke up.
I can see a juicer, a mattress,
a blanket, what remains of a closet,
what remains of a basket.
And maybe a potato or an onion.
The dust makes it difficult
to distinguish a potato from an onion.
But I can distinguish death.
I can see it in the open mouth,
in the closed eyes.
I can see every one of us
under the rubble.
unflinching 