Unraveling Religion’s ”The Cry of Life,’ Palestinian Realities in Gaza and The West Bank; Cost, Record, and Directions: A Talk with Naomi Shihab Nye and Five Time Nobel Peace Prize Nominee Dr. Izzeldin Abuelaish’
May 23, 2025
Naomi Shihab Nye opens the talk reading a new, recently penned poem, Current Affairs.
Dr. Izzeldin Abuelaish then introduces himself and segways into the realities of his experiences growing up in Gaza, the Jabalia Camp, what he has seen and witnessed, the loss of his three daugthers and niece in 2009 from an Israeli tank shell (i.e., I Shall Not Hate) and his pride in his Palestinan heritage, family, and community.
He shares his deep belief and conviction ‘nothing is impossible in life.‘ He also expresses:
- Medicine as a great human equalizer
- Toward human rights, once people step away from the border of the hospitals, they become categorized and labeled ‘Palestinian’ or ‘Israeli’
- If you believe in Humanity, we must all stand for all
- Human Rights is deeply tested in Gaza, people must stand up for human rights
- Advocate not for peace but for dignity, justice, freedom, and human rights for all: peace will follow when these conditions are cultivated
Naomi shares her family history and the experiences of relocating after the Nakba. Naomi also shares:
- As a poet, every voice is important in the world, every voice represents humanity.
- Regarding Gaza, this is an overwhelming tragedy of sorrow
- The importance of actions based on one’s convictions
- The power of the military industry complex to overide the voice of the majority and humanity’s collective voice
- How can we be heard, how can we be listened to?
- Who is listening?
The idea, our obligation is to our humanity, looking within our selves we recognize our humanity
Dr Abuelaish shares his experiences as an author.
The priority of Palestinians toward education.
Human Rights, respect and dignity for all.
What is our modern sense of responsibility and obligation toward our fellow humans, what is our modern sense of meaning, mission, and purpose.
A human being is a human being [only] through another person.
Truth telling as means of healing.
The situation is Gaza and West Bank harms Israel deeply as well.
Naomi shares Hibu Abu Nabab‘s poem, Not Just Passing.
The political power and politics contrbuting to the crisis in Gaza and the West Bank.
Dr. Abuelaish reviews the history of Gaza since 2000.
And, Naomi closes with her poem, For Gaza
The children are still singing
They need & want to sing
They are carrying cats to safe places
Holding what they can hold
Red hair brown hair yellow
They will wear the sweater
Someone threw away
They will hope for something tasty
You won’t be able to own them
Their spirits fly to safer worlds
They planted seashells in the sand
They never committed a crime
A president pardons turkeys
He pardons his own son
He doesn’t pardon children
The children are still singing.
Naomi Shihab Nye was born in St. Louis, Missouri. Her father was a Palestinian refugee and her mother an American of German and Swiss descent, and Nye spent her adolescence in both Jerusalem and San Antonio, Texas. She earned her BA from Trinity University in San Antonio. Nye is the recipient of numerous honors and awards for her work, including the Ivan Sandrof Award for Lifetime Achievement from the National Book Critics Circle, the Lavan Award, the Paterson Poetry Prize, the Carity Randall Prize, the Isabella Gardner Poetry Award, the Lee Bennett Hopkins Poetry award, the Robert Creeley Prize, and many Pushcart Prizes. She has received fellowships from the Lannan Foundation, the Guggenheim Foundation, and she was a Witter Bynner Fellow. From 2010 to 2015 she served as a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets. In 2018 she was awarded the Lon Tinkle Award for Lifetime Achievement from the Texas Institute of Letters. Nye was the Poetry Foundation’s Young People’s Poet Laureate from 2019-2022.
Dr. Izzeldin Abuelaish, MD, MPH, is a Palestinian medical doctor who was born and raised in Jabalia Refugee Camp in the Gaza Strip. He is a passionate and eloquent proponent of peace between Palestinians and Israelis and has dedicated his life to using health as a vehicle for peace. He has succeeded despite all odds through a great determination of spirit, a strong faith, and a stalwart belief in hope and family. He has received a number of awards and nominations in recognition of his promotion of peace through health, and has been given seven honorary degrees. He has been nominated three years consecutively for the Nobel Peace Prize, and support for his candidacy keeps growing exponentially every year. He is the recipient of the Stavros Niarchos Prize for Survivorship, and was also nominated for the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought. Since 2010 Dr. Abuelaish has also been named one of the 500 Most Influential Muslims by the Royal Islamic Strategic Studies Centre in Amman, Jordan for three consecutive years, and was the first ever recipient of the Mahatma Gandhi Peace Prize. Dr. Abuelaish’s book, I Shall Not Hate: A Gaza Doctor’s Journey, an autobiography inspired by the loss of his three daughters Bessan, Mayar, and Aya and his niece Noor to Israeli shelling on January 16, 2009, has achieved critical acclaim. Published in 2010, it has become an international best-seller and has been translated into 23 languages. The book has become a testament to his commitment to forgiveness as the solution to conflict, and the catalyst towards peace.
Naomi Shihab Nye’s poem Current Affairs
I don’t want to be
one of those modern people
who reads about Gazans
being crushed wholesale
entire blocks
extended families
invisible kitchens
then continues scrolling.
We will not delete you.
We would give you
anything we have.
Your pain is not money.
Feel us from a far place.
Howling in darkness.
What are you supposed to?
No one should have to bear.
I love you so much I can smell
the garlic in your shirt,
the dirt on your shoes,
the smoke in your air.
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