Omar Suleiman – One Year of Genocide – Dallas Gaza Protest
AI: Summary ©
The speaker thanks everyone for showing up for an entire year and mentions a anniversary. They also discuss the need to show gratitude to all those who have stayed on the streets for an entire year. The speaker then talks about the history of the Memorial of the hero and the need for graduation to write history.
AI: Summary ©
As-salamu alaykum.
As-salamu alaykum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh.
In the name of God, the most compassionate,
the most merciful.
I want to thank you all for braving
the heat, for braving the despair, for continuing
to show up for an entire year.
I know some of you have been out
in these streets week by week, sometimes multiple
times a week, for an entire year.
And while we all know that we will
never be able to equal the price that
has been paid by our people back home,
it's still important to show gratitude to all
of you who have been consistent, to especially
the students that have been on the front
lines, to especially the UTD 21, to all
of the organizations.
We appreciate you.
Now there's something strange about this particular anniversary.
And there's something strange that we have in
this country about memorializing tragedy in the first
place.
I was once having a conversation with a
person who was telling me that their hope
was that one day in Israel, this was
supposed to be a kind comment, in Israel
that their children would read in their textbooks
about the Netba.
And I responded and I said, I'd much
rather that our children would be reading about
the story of liberation in their Palestinian textbooks.
Tragedy is often memorialized after the fact.
They wish to extinguish us, to make sure
that we no longer pose a threat to
their colonial project, and then perhaps they'll throw
us a bone and talk about the crimes
that were committed against the indigenous people.
We see it done here in the United
States all the time.
We see it done in Canada.
After the fact, let's build a statue, so
long as we can continue to assault your
bodies.
Let's put a street sign up, so long
as we've stolen your street.
Let's mention the tragedy after it's been committed,
and after there's no chance of that trauma
resurfacing and transforming the present or the future.
And as Palestinians, we wish to remind all
of our enemies and all of those that
stand with our enemies that we still have
the keys to our homes from 1948, and
we don't intend on relinquishing our claims.
I was sitting with my father last week,
last Saturday.
My father witnessed 1948.
He witnessed 1967.
And I asked him how he was doing.
And admittedly, he was down, like many of
us are, when we see the brutality committed
against our people in Palestine and Lebanon and
beyond.
And he responded, and he said, 1948, 1967,
2024.
1948, 1967, 2024.
And it dawned upon me, hearing that from
him, and someone who was alive in 1948
and 1967, how consequential the moment that we
are in right now actually is.
We don't have time to memorialize the martyrs
and the children of yesterday because it's an
ongoing genocide.
We don't have time to talk about the
crimes of the past because we're still tuned
in to the crimes of the present.
Last year, in our first protest, in our
first demonstration, as the genocide began, as I
was getting down from the stage, I got
the news of the beheading of Wadhir al
-Fayoumi, a six-year-old child, in Illinois.
Literally, the very first protest.
And so we're not talking about the past
as if it is distant.
We're talking about the present so that we
can continue to show these Zionist liars that
we will not back down to their PR
machine or to their war machine or to
anything else, that we are not afraid of
them.
...and make saying Palestine illegal.
But know that the memorial that we will
have will be one of commemorating liberation, inshallah.
That our children will go to the Lala
al-Dakhoor School of Journalism.
That they will go to the Hind Rajab
School of Humanities.
And that history will write that Palestine did
not just free itself, but it freed everything
and everyone around it and beyond, inshallah.
May God write us down amongst the liberators.
Ameen.
Peace be with you all.
Ameen.