Dyab Abou Jahjah​

It is a bit odd to me that Leonard Cohen passed away few months ago without me writing about it. The man has composed a big part of the soundtrack of my life.  But above all, and more than his music that is at times over-harmonic to be enjoyable, Cohen the poet is what interests me the most. Together with that of Mahmood Darwich and Nizar Kabbani, his poetry influenced me both politically and spiritually.  Cohen was very political, and I am not speaking about that moment in his life when he went to sing for the Israeli troops during the 1973 war in Sinai. That Cohen who thought to rediscover his Jewish identity by posing on a picture with a mass murderer like Ariel Sharon was just a short lived phase in the existence of a more sophisticated soul. 

​J’avais 4 ans lorsque j’eut ma première conversation politique. Ma mère et moi étions assis sur la terrasse de notre maison à Hanine, un village situé au Sud-Liban. C’était une journée ensoleillée et nous nous reposions à l’ombre de notre figuier. Par moments, les sons paisibles de la nature étaient interrompus par le bruit des hélicoptères qui vrombissaient derrière les collines. Ma mère voulut que l’on rentre à l’intérieur. Je protestais. « Dyab, insista-t-elle, les hélicoptères israéliens se rapprochent, c’est plus sûr à l’intérieur. » Je me souviens d’avoir demandé pourquoi. « Parce ce sont de mauvaises personnes, qui pourraient nous tirer dessus. », me répondit-elle. Quelques mois plus tard, ces mauvaises personnes nous prenaient effectivement pour cibles.

​The first political conversation that I ever had was at the age of four. I remember myself sitting in in the porch of our village house in Hanine, south Lebanon, together with my mother. It was a sunny day, and we were resting in the shade of our fig tree.  The peaceful flow of natural sounds and sun rays was only disturbed by the thrumming noise of helicopters coming from behind the surrounding hills. My mom wanted us to go back inside, to which I objected. She then said, “ Dyab, the Israeli helicopters are coming nearby, it is safer to be inside”.  I remember asking her why? Why is it safer? And my mom answered “because these are wicked men, and they might shoot at us”. Few months later, the wicked men did shoot at us.

By Dyab Abou Jahjah​

​A truck ran over Israeli occupation soldiers in occupied Jerusalem yesterday. Four soldiers died and some others were wounded. The driver was a Palestinian father of three. If you would read western newspapers and news outlets, the general tone is that this was a “terrorist” attack that targeted Israelis. Fake news are obviously not something that is limited to social media, it is also often being vented through the bias of the dominant news. That version of the story is not just occulting the reality of the occupation, it is defending it by establishing a link between the resistance of the Palestinians and terrorism. I reacted to this by stating that the Palestinian people has the right to liberate its occupied land by any means that it deems necessary. This was immediately taken by forces who are supportive to Israel in the Flemish nationalist right wing and presented as an endorsement of terrorism. Even Theo Francken, a secretary of state in the federal government, was tweeting about it hysterically. According to him I was glorifying ISIS terrorism and I should be fired from my position as columnist in the newspaper I write for. People who liked my Facebook post were also being threatened and intimidated. Therefor I want to clarify the following 10 points and I hope that this will be helpful to all the people that are confronted with these questions.

  Ik dacht eerst om niet te reageren op de laatste repliek van Etienne Vermeersch aan mij gericht in DM van 22 januari. Eerst en vooral omdat ik geen enkel inhoudelijk nieuw argument erin zag. Hij snapt het nog steeds niet, en blijft maar afkomen met halve waarheden gebaseerd op google, en één boek in zijn boekenkast. Vermeersch blijft niet begrijpen dat mijn stelling over het begrip Jihad IN de KORAN, als zijnde voor meerdere interpretaties vatbaar, niet kan weerlegd worden met schrijfsels, van buiten de koran. Maar omdat zijn stelling niet alleen vals maar ook gevaarlijk is, daar dat veel jonge moslims en niet moslims de discussie volgen en conclusies kunnen gaan trekken dat Jihad als agressie om het geloof te spreiden wél een main-stream lijn in de islamitische leer is, terwijl dat niet het geval is, heb ik besloten om toch nog een keer een aantal zaken duidelijk te maken.

​In zijn repliek tegen mij (DM 19/1) haalt Etienne Vermeersch een boek van de 14de eeuw aan om te bewijzen dat het concept van de Jihad in de 21ste eeuw niet interpreteerbaar is maar eerder vast ligt en dat het niet louter defensief maar ook offensief kan zijn. Daarin maakte hij één fundamentele denkfout, en twee kleinere denkfouten. Eerst de kleine fouten:

Dyab Abou Jahjah
(Published also in French in the Newspaper Le Soir)



As I sat behind my desk to type these words, my wife and two daughters were preparing to go for a walk in the city, and suddenly, all I could feel was one emotion: Fear.
I was afraid that while in the metro, or while enjoying the new pedestrian parts of the city, or while sitting on the terrace of a café, some Daesh terrorist, blinded by hatred and fascist ideology, will open fire and kill my family. I was also afraid that some far-right extremists will see my Arab looking family and decide to take revenge for the Paris attacks.