The Dispossessed of Gaza--and Canada

 

Mahmoud Darwish

In a poetry group, as a prompt, one member quoted a poem by Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish, which ends:

You stole my forefathers' vineyards
    And land I used to till,
    I and all my children,
    And you left us and all my grandchildren
    Nothing but these rocks.
    Will your government be taking them too
    As is being said?
So!
    Put it on record at the top of page one:
    I don't hate people,
    I trespass on no one's property.
And yet, if I were to become hungry
    I shall eat the flesh of my usurper.
    Beware, beware of my hunger
    And of my anger!

To which I responded, before submitting a poem: 

Being dispossessed of one’s livelihood and land is a rather common human experience. It is especially common among those who have populated Canada. We are, in Cohen’s phrase, “Beautiful Losers.” The Acadians were expelled from their lands in Tantramar, in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. The Huron were expelled from their lands by the Iroquois, and found refuge in Quebec. Then the Iroquois were expelled from their lands by the Americans, and sought refuge in Ontario. The UE Loyalists were expelled from their lands and possessions in the 13 colonies, and landed mostly penniless and without shelter in New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Ontario, and Quebec. The Irish, my own ancestors, were expelled from their lands: “to Hell or Connaught!” Many did not survive the passage; many died on the docks. The Scots were expelled from their lands in the Highland Clearances, so that today there is more Scots Gaelic spoken in Cape Breton than in Scotland. The many Jews came here from Eastern Europe to escape pogrom; they risked loss of life as well as property. After the Second World War, there was a great influx to Canada of what were then called “displaced persons” from the shifting boundaries and regimes from that war.

Many of us have, at some time in our lives, lost everything. Many of us can thank God there is a new life here in Canada. This was a common vision of our founders: of Louis Riel, of Wilfrid Laurier, of John A. Macdonald, of Guy Carleton. “A home for all the world’s peoples.” A home for the homeless—for, notably, English orphans, the “home children.”

The sine qua non was to be prepared to start again. Gregory Clark suggested there should be a monument erected on Grosse Ile, outside Quebec City, with the legend “Leave all your hates behind. Bring us only your loves.”

This was of course a dig at the Palestinians. Their grievance is the creation of the state of Israel. That happened in 1948: 77 years ago. Longer than a human lifetime, in that part of the world. Few living Palestinians have been dispossessed; yet as a group they have not moved on. Surely by now they bear some responsibility for their state?

This is not to address the Israeli claim that no Arabs were actually dispossessed by the creation of Israel; that it was their choice to leave. Twenty percent of the Israeli population is still Arab.

The guy who posted the original poem did not take this disagreement well. He declared me a racist and an imperialist because, in my list of the dispossessed in Canada, I did not mention the Canadian indigenous people dispossessed by settlers.

Which is ironic. The indigenous people are arguably the only group in Canada who have not been dispossessed of their land or forced to move. That is what “indigenous” means. 

Were their lands stolen? What lands? 89% of Canada is still crown land. By treaty they are free to roam and hunt and scavenge all over it, just as their ancestors always did.

As for the other eleven percent, they sold it and were compensated for it. It was not seized.

But the poet of the Palestinian prompt did not wait around to hear this. He had already quit the group, because in conscience he could not be in the same poetry group with a racist.