Skip to main content

From the River to the Sea

 

A song for Palestine


From the river to the sea

Lord, someone hear our plea

Sometimes it feels like we will drown

The tides keep pulling us down


We are awash in a flood of pain

That keeps falling down like rain

Is there no ship, to sail away

Towards the dawn of a new day?



From the river to the sea

One day we will be free

We will walk hand in hand

Return to our motherland


From the river to the sea

Wallah, this land is holy

When we’re made whole as one

A new day will have begun



For this river is made of tears

shed over 76 years

Flowing into a dead sea

Can we stay afloat in this misery?


Oh water, wash over these lands

And wipe the bloodstains of our hands

We’ll sleep peacefully in the lion’s den

The olive tree will grow again



From the river to the sea

We still hold the key

To break free from these chains

We will rise again


From the river to the sea

Lord have mercy on me

When love will reign

There’ll be an end to all our pain



From the river to the sea

Wallah, listen to me

Together let us pray

That we may find a way


From the river to the sea

May there no longer be

Oppression, hate and war

We’ll find peace, Inshallah

Comments

  1. Jazz GijsSeptember 24, 2024 at 8:09 PM

    Every peace movement needs some songs. I was reminiscing of the great protest songs of the olden days, and wondered why i hadn't encountered any good protest songs for peace in Gaza. I don't know if my musical talent can pay tribute to the old masters, but at least i thought i'd give it a try.



    Gaza is on my mind a lot, and i feel it's important to try to give a voice to the enormous suffering and at the same time find love and hope amidst of all the terror.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Happiness is overrated

  A plea for lives built on ethics I don’t seek for happiness.  I don’t bother about whether I am happy or not.  I do what I feel as true and good and I don’t care about whether it brings happiness or unhappiness.  Only the mediocre mind seeks for happiness.  A truly cultured mind seeks for higher values like truth, beauty and goodness and it will seek it even if it leads to much pain and suffering.    Albert Einstein Personal happiness seems the ultimate goal for many in modern society. However, this is a very individualistic value. In a world filled with injustice, we too easily ignore our conscience, which may well be the reason so many of us are unhappy. Let's try to refocus our lives on living ethically and virtuously, and we may find this may end up giving us a much more profound kind of happiness. True happiness is not an individual, but a collective and a moral matter. The cult of the individual It seems like our Western society today is obsessed with being happy. Not only
Post a Comment
Read more

Meditation: A Practice of Privilege?

  I have been meditating regularly for about ten years now. I have attended and facilitated meditation groups and retreats, in various places in Europe, North America, and Asia, in different (mostly Buddhist-inspired) traditions. I feel very fortunate to have had the opportunity to do so and have experienced great benefits from this practice. However, one thing has kept bothering me all those years. The Buddha claims – and I deeply believe – that his teaching can liberate all beings, yet when I join meditation groups, I often see myself surrounded by rather socially privileged people (just like myself 1 ). W hy does (Buddhist-inspired) meditation in the West seem to attract mainly an academically educated, 2 (upper) middle class audience? Is meditation not relevant for other social groups, or is there something else at play here? (I will focus on class privilege in this article. Gender and white privilege fall beyond its scope. I believe others  to be far better qualified than me to
1 comment
Read more

What's the matter with foreign aid? (1) Development as colonialism

This is the first part of a three part critique of our aid and development model. This first part of this essay is a brief look into the historical context of our current development paradigm. (1) I grew up believing that something changed after WWII, there had been a global awakening, and the start of a period marked by international collaboration and respect for human rights, advanced by such historic achievements as the founding of the United Nations, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the independence of former colonies. Based on these new foundations, there would be a steady progress towards, peace, freedom and equality, thanks to a process called 'development'. I am a bit older now, and have worked for nearly 7 years in this field of development. My optimism has faded, and I am starting to fear it may have been a naive childhood illusion. Has anything really fundamentally changed? Development as we know it today started after the second World War. At the end of
Post a Comment
Read more