People not places

PEOPLE NOT PLACES
Lyrics by Invincible, Suhell Nafar (DAM), and Abeer

Prepare for take off
Touch down Ben-Gurion

 

This references Ben-Gurion International Airport, named after Israel’s first Prime Minister.

Strict search make sure nobody enters with bombs
Blue white flags
For the Birthright Tour I'm on

 

Birthright Israel is a program that grants any Jewish youth a free 10-day tour of Israel. These tours encourage participants to believe that they, as Jews, have an exclusive “birthright” to Palestine.

Learn more about Birthright Israel by watching the “Definitions” video.

Never mention three villages the airport is on

 

More than 400 Palestinian villages were destroyed during the creation of the state of Israel. See All That Remains: The Palestinian Villages Occupied and Depopulated by Israel in 1948 by Walid Khalidi (Institute for Palestine Studies).

Recent history buried
But it speaks through the sand
All Jews: Law of Return

 

Israel’s Law of Return guarantees access to and citizenship in Israel to all Jews throughout the world–no matter whether they have ever been there, have family there, or whether they want this right. Palestinian refugees who were expelled during the creation of Israel are denied the right to return.

Learn more about the Law of Return by watching the “Definitions” interview video.

I don't seem to understand
"A land without a people for people without a land"?

 

Zionist ideology promotes the idea that Palestine was "a land without a people for people without a land," thereby denying the very existence of the indigenous Palestinian population, and masking the harm done by Jewish colonization.

Learn more by watching the “Definitions” interview video.

But I see a man standing with a key and a deed in his hand
First stop: museum of the Holocaust

 

Yad Vashem, Israel's official memorial to the Jewish victims of the Nazi Holocaust is located only a stones throw from the destroyed Palestinian village of Deir Yassin, site of one of the most notorious massacres of Palestinians in the 1948 war. Yad Vashem recently fired an instructor who compared the trauma of Jewish Holocaust survivors with the trauma experienced by the Palestinian people.

Walkin outside—in the distance—saw a ghost throwing a Molotov

 

Deir Yassin was a Palestinian village near Jerusalem. It was depopulated after a massacre of around 107 of its residents on April 9, 1948 by Zionist paramilitaries from the Irgun and Stern Gang. More info.

Houses burnt with kerosene
Mass graves
Couldn't bear the scene
It wasn't a pogrom—it was the ruins of Deir Yassin
Next stop: shopping at the Kenyon Malcha

 

The Kenyon Malcha is a shopping mall in Jerusalem whose name was stolen from the destroyed Palestinian village Al-Malha.

Built it on the back of the town Al-Malha

 

Watch a tour of the remains of Al-Malha, led by Zochrot, a group of Israeli citizens working to raise awareness of the Nakba, the Palestinian catastrophe of 1948.

Wishing we could call it its name
Uphauled by the change
And now a mall full of chains
Is all that remains

 

This line is a reference to the book All That Remains: The Palestinian Villages Occupied and Depopulated by Israel in 1948 by Walid Khalidi (Institute for Palestine Studies).

HOOK:
My Ima misses people not places
Has she seen the towns with names in Arabic the Hebrew replaces?
The policies are evil and racist, deceitful and heinous
You'l never be a peaceful state with legal displacement

[Abeer - translated from Arabic]
Remember the names of our cities before you came and replaced it
Remember and tell me how am I supposed not to miss a nation living within us?

 

This line is inspired by a famous Palestinian saying, “Most people live in a nation, we have a nation living within us.”

At the Wailing Wall I'm rollin a wish
Then stick it in between the hole in the bricks
I'm feelin more than melancholy
This used to be the Moroccan quarter

 

On the evening of 10 June 1967, several hundred residents of the Moroccan Quarter in the Old City of Jerusalem were given two hours notice to vacate their homes. Those who refused the orders were forcefully evicted from their places of residence, as bulldozers and floodlights were mobilized to raze the area. So suddenly came this dictate that one woman from the quarter who did not hear the calls to vacate was buried alive beneath the rubble that evening. Her body was found the next morning under the ruins of her home.

To learn more, see “The Moroccan Quarter: A History of the Present” by Thomas Abowd (Jerusalem Quarterly issue 7).

Until we stopped em short and
Now their grandkids is the ones that's throwing rocks at borders
I aint one to play and I don't pray often
So I'm AWOL'n

 

Invincible applied to refuse her Israeli military service in 2004. The process for her was rather simple because she was living in the U.S. But most refusers in Israel face jail time or worse. More info.

While you making native sons
Feel like a stranger in they own land like James Baldwin
This aint about a Qur'an or a synagogue or Mosque or Torah
The colonizer break it into acres and dunums

 

One of the early strategies of Zionist colonization was to buy up Palestinian land and displace the current residents. Most of this land was purchased from non-Palestinian absentee landlords.

The word “dunums” used in the song refers to a unit of land measurement used in Palestine.

Erasing the culture
Changed Haifa to Chaifa
Changed Yaffa to Yaffo

 

Zionists have not only stolen Palestinian land, but have appropriated and Hebrewized the Arab names of these cities and villages

The old city left to haunt
Hummus pronounced chumoos, we ate in a restaurant

 

This refers to the Hebrew pronunciation of Hummus, the tasty mashed chickpea dip. As stated by Israeli food critic Gil Hovav to the BBC, "Humous is Arabic. Falafel, our national dish, our national Israeli dish, is completely Arabic and this salad that we call an Israeli Salad, actually it’s an Arab salad, Palestinian salad. So, we sort of robbed them of everything."

Next hit the discotheque
Yes we on the list of guests
Palestinians cant get in
Its blatant disrespect
Cops stop em for speakin they language
Its dangerous
To repeat it when
With history we disconnect

[Suhell Nafar (DAM) - translated from Arabic]
My life is like a flight from an Israeli airport
It means that you'll never see me with pink

 

At Ben-Gurion Airport, pink stickers represent low security.

And I know that I'm 1 but they say that I'm 5

 

At Ben-Gurion Airport, 1 represents low security and 5 represents high security

They're dying to talk talk to me
So the security wait in the entrance
Suddenly the whole airport flew and it became Tel Aviv airport
Even though its in Lydd

 

Ben-Gurion International Airport is promoted as being located in Tel Aviv, but is actually in Lydd

Dig the land of Lydd and you'll see resistance
Go to the houses you'll see hopelessness
The streets are called Tzahal and Hertzl

 

Tzahal is the Hebrew acronym for the Israeli Defense Forces. Hertzl is the founder of Zionist political ideology.

Not Salahadin

 

Salahadin led Islamic opposition to European crusaders in 12th century. More info.

Khen el Helu

 

Khen el Helu is the name of an ancient ruins site in Lydd. This line is a double entendre because "helu" is the Arabic word for “sweet.”

Became sour
A place for junkies and addicts
The carpets of the Dahamash Mosque
Is covering the wound that is still bleeding

 

Israeli fighters massacred Palestinians in 1948 in the Dahamash Mosque in Lydd. There are still blood stains on the floor.

Yehud Lod

 

Yehud Lod is a Jewish Settlement being built in the middle of Lydd in order to ensure a large Jewish population in that city.

Another project that drives you crazy
And its not the first and its not the last
We're an ocean and the Zionist project is a ship
We're rowing with the right and the left wing straight to the waterfall
When they fall the Holy Land will stop being a hell land

HOOK

200 year old olive trees
Uprooted the groves
To build a wall
Now their future enclosed
Settlements spreading like cancer and toxic sewage polluted the roads

 

In the Palestinian village of Artas, located southeast of Bethlehem, for example, the Israeli military has uprooted apricot and walnut trees in order to build a sewage channel that will pipe in raw sewage collected from four nearby Israeli settlements. More info.

Now full of checkpoints
I superimpose the truth and it shows
Village ruins overgrown with planted trees
Who'd have thought the "desert blooms" and Tu Bishvat

 

Israel celebrates that it has “made the desert bloom.” But forest-planting has played a role in the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. Forests in the Negev Desert have been planted to restrict Bedouin herding. Palestinians’ olive trees, an important source of fruit and oil, have been cut down and replaced by pine and cypress trees.

After the 1948 war, forests were planted on the sites of abandoned Arab villages whose inhabitants left or were expelled from their homes. These forests, planted by the Jewish National Fund (JNF), erase the traces of the Arab presence prior to 1948 and cover up the demolition of Arab villages. In 2008, in response to pressure by the Israeli Nakba commemoration organization Zochrot, the JNF announced that historical information plaques erected in JNF parks and forests will cite the names of the Arab villages formerly located there.

“Tu Bishvat,” referenced in the song, is the Jewish Holiday considered "New Year of the Trees." In Israel, this holiday is used as a time for mass tree plantings. Invincible was born close to the time of this holiday and was given the birth name Ilana, which translates as “Tree.” More info.

I cant believe
This aint environmental
Disguising lies, extincting lives like manatees
Callin it a transfer? Please—
More like a catastrophe!
Birthright tours recruiting em, confuse em into moving in
Claim its only names and words but denying the root of them
Power been abusing it
Our past never excusing them
60 years since 48 and 40 since Jerusalem
My boy Shadi wanted to visit it so badly
He lied he's diabetic to see it for five seconds

 

A friend of Invincible’s, who lives in Deheisheh Refugee Camp, told her that although he is only a 10 minute drive from Jerusalem (Al Quds in Arabic), he has only ever visited the city for a few hours. To do this he had to use a faked medical emergency card for diabetes to be allowed to cross the Israeli military checkpoint.

One Nine Four ruled the courts in the case

 

United Nations General Assembly Resolution 194 asserts the right of refugees to return to their homes:

"Refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbours should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date, and that compensation should be paid for the property of those choosing not to return and for loss of or damage to property which, under principles of international law or in equity, should be made good by the Governments or authorities responsible.” More info.

Mom, you can't disconnect a people from the importance of place

HOOK