Kamal Nasser. Singing Wounds.
By Fares Mansour, Artist/Designer/Photographer 2011.
Publisher: Bir Zeit University. Published in Palestine.

❶ Israeli forces detain 14 Palestinians across occupied West Bank
❷ Israeli forces blockade Bethlehem-area village after nearby stabbing
❸ PMO: Israeli politicians escalate rhetoric to dehumanize Palestinians
❹ Analysis: The disappearing politics of occupation
❺ Opinion/Analysis: ISRAELI  SETTLEMENTS  HAVE  CREATED  A  ‘STATE  WITHIN  A  STATE’
❻ Poetry by Kamal Nasser
` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` `
❶ MA’AN NEWS AGENCY
ISRAELI  FORCES  DETAIN  14  PALESTINIANS  ACROSS  OCCUPIED  WEST  BANK
Feb. 11, 2016
Israeli forces detained at least 14 Palestinians across the occupied West Bank during raids on Thursday, locals and Israeli sources said.
___In the northern occupied West Bank district of Jenin’s Qabatiya village, Israeli forces detained at least seven Palestinians during raids.    More . . .
❷ MA’AN NEWS AGENCY
ISRAELI  FORCES  BLOCKADE  BETHLEHEM-AREA  VILLAGE  AFTER  NEARBY  STABBING
Feb. 10, 2016
The Israeli army intensified its blockade on the village of Nahhalin west of Bethlehem on Wednesday morning, a day after an Israeli settler was wounded in a stabbing near the village.
___Locals told Ma’an via telephone that Israeli forces had sealed all Nahhalin’s roads, preventing residents from entering and leaving, including humanitarian cases.  More . . .
Related . . . ISRAELI  FORCES  SEAL  RAMALLAH-AREA  VILLAGE,  DEMOLISHED  STRUCTURES

❸ PALESTINE NEWS NETWORK
PMO:  ISRAELI  POLITICIANS  ESCALATE  RHETORIC  TO  DEHUMANIZE  PALESTINIANS
Feb. 11, 2016
The Director of Strategic Communications and Media at the Palestinian Prime Minister’s Office, Jamal Dajani, on Thursday said that Israeli politicians have increased their rhetoric and incitement towards Palestinians.
___Dajani was referring to a recent statement by Likud lawmaker Anat Berko, who said that there was no such thing as a Palestinian people, since Arabic doesn’t have the consonant “P.”  More . . .
❹ ALTERNATIVE INFORMATION CENTER (AIC)
THE  DISAPPEARING  POLITICS  OF  OCCUPATION
Hani Habib
Feb. 11, 2016
It seems that [UN Secretary General] Ban Ki-moon wants his name to go down in history . . . .
___I didn’t expect Ki-moon’s statement on the right of Palestinians to resist Israel’s occupation to affect people in the Jewish state so deeply. . . . Israeli politicians’ sense that his speech necessitated a sort of “review” of Israeli policy.
___The policy review takes place [against the backdrop of elections] which led to Netanyahu’s fourth government. The elections were not a political evolution or a coup – they were an ideological achievement. The elections created the most right-wing government in Israeli’s history.   More . . .
❺ Opinion/Analysis
+972 MAGAZINE
ISRAELI  SETTLEMENTS  HAVE  CREATED  A  ‘STATE  WITHIN  A  STATE’
Natasha Roth
Feb. 10, 2016
A primetime investigative news program revealed to all of Israel last week widespread forgery in the purchase of Palestinian land by Jewish settlers. . . .
___ But this is about more than forgeries, fraud and hidden cameras. . . . This is about the strange reality that comes to rest on a country when a project of the scale and scope of Israel’s settlement enterprise is itself based on illegality.
___The illegality is not just in terms of international law . . . . the government employs a system whereby it is ‘unaware’ that state funds are being poured into outposts that even Israel considers illegal.    More . . .

“O  GOD,  NOW  I  KNOW,”  BY  KAMAL  NASSER  (1924 – 1973)

O God, why have you inspired me? To rejoice and to suffer?.
Why have you baptized me with vision? To laugh and to cry?
Why have you imbued me with ambition?
To elevate me and to humiliate me
Why?

I wish I were heartless, soulless, aimlessly living life, observing it from a far. Approaching eternity with a new heart, a new soul which affirms my wandering, subdues my passions and crucifies me in the void.

O God, why have you tempted me, awakened me, inflamed my passions and with sublimity infused me?

Why have you cleansed me, aroused me?
Why have you crowned me with hope, plunged me in greed and recklessness. Why?

How I long for silence, for stillness
I am lost, questioning
Who am I?
Numb my heart is, lifeless, my visions blind
I drift in the darkness of futility and despair.

O God why have you nourished me, starved me and appeased my hunger
Why have you deprived me, defiling and cleansing me?
Why have you defeated my purpose?
Enlightening me, then leading me astray
Why?

I am both free and a slave amongst men
I am a grave and cradle in the hands of fate
Miserable in what I need
Born of reality
Born of chains
Led by wounds, by the years
Who am I?
And life cries out at God
Embarrassing Him in His heaven
Lips screaming:
You, have given me life – created me.
And I ask the void
Why O God have you created me?

Storms of life roar within me
Paths are flooded with blood
Our days shake with pain and helplessness and beauty wanders away from my paradise.
Crucifying my homeland in the wilderness

Wounded are hope and dignity
In my waking hours, deprivation rose, shaking me, pulling me from the depths of darkness.
Guiding me to goodness, devotion, self-sacrifice and giving.
My eyes are opened – I find the way
The raging conflict rests in my heart
The wounds are cleansed with my tears
And in my eyes, You rise, O God
For I know why You have created me!
― Prose translation by Tania Tamari Nasir

Tania Tamari Nasir is Kamal Nasser’s cousin. Unpublished translation.
A family memory of Nasser written by another of his cousins, at page 35 in her memoir:
Khoury, Samia Nasir. REFLECTIONS FROM PALESTINE: A JOURNEY OF HOPE – A MEMOIR. Limassol, Cyprus: Rimal Publications, 2014.
About Kamal Nasser