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I'll start with this poem, I wrote this poem when the bombs were dropping on Gaza.

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And I was the media spokesperson for the coalition doing a lot of the organizing

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and we'd stayed up to about six o'clock in the morning,

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perfecting every sound bite and by the end

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If you're a Palestinian you know, most Palestinians get tired

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they start to spell 'p's as 'b's so we become Balestinians by the end of the day.

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So I was practicing my p's all night.

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And the next morning one of the journalists asked me:

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"Don't you think it would all be fine if you just stopped teaching your children to hate?"

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I did not insult the person,

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I was very polite but I wrote this poem

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as a response to these types of questions we Palestinians always get.

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Today, my body was a TV’d massacre.

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Today, my body was a TV’d massacre that had to fit into sound-bites and word limits.

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Today, my body was a TV’d massacre that had to fit into sound-bites

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and word limits filled enough with statistics to counter measured response.

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And I perfected my English and I learned my UN resolutions.

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But still, he asked me: "Ms. Ziadah, don’t you think everything would be resolved

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if you would just stop teaching so much hatred to your children?"

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Pause!

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I look inside of me for strength to be patient

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but patience is not at the tip of my tongue as the bombs drop over Gaza.

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Patience has just escaped me.

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Pause!

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Smile!

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We teach life, sir!

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Rafeef, remember to smile...

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Pause!

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We teach life, sir!

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We Palestinians teach life after they have occupied the last sky.

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We teach life after they have built their settlements and apartheid walls,

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after the last skies.

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We teach life, sir!

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But today,

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my body was a TV’d massacre made to fit into sound-bites and word limits.

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And "just give us a story, a human story.

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You see, this is not political.

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We just want to tell people about you and your people,

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so give us a human story.

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Don’t mention that word “apartheid” and “occupation”.

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This is not political!

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You have to help me as a journalist to help you tell your story

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which is not a political story."

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Today, my body was a TV’d massacre.

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How about, you give us a story of a woman in Gaza who needs medication?

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How about you?

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Do you have enough bone-broken limbs to cover the sun?

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Hand me over your dead

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and give me the list of their names in 1200 word limits.

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Today,

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my body was a TV’d massacre made to fit into sound-bites and word limits

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and move those that are desensitized to terrorist blood.

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But they felt sorry.

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They felt sorry for the cattle over Gaza.

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So, I give them UN resolutions and statistics

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and we condemn

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and we deplore

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and we reject!

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And these are not two equal sides: occupier and occupied.

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And a hundred dead,

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two hundred dead,

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and a thousand dead.

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And between that war crime and massacre,

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I vent out words and smile "not exotic",

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smile "not terrorist".

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And I recount, I recount a hundred dead, two hundred dead, a thousand dead!

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Is anyone out there?

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Will anyone listen?

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I wish I could wail over their bodies.

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I wish I could just run barefoot in every refugee camp,

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and hold every child,

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cover their ears

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so they wouldn’t have to hear the sound of bombing

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for the rest of their life the way I do.

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Today, my body was a TV’d massacre.

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And let me just tell you,

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there’s nothing your UN resolutions have ever done about this.

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And no sound-bite, no sound-bite I come up with,

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no matter how good my English gets!

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No sound-bite... no sound-bite... no sound-bite...

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no sound-bite will bring them back to life!

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No sound-bite will fix this!

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We teach life, sir!

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We teach life, sir!

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We Palestinians wake up every morning to teach the rest of the world life, sir!

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Thank you!