because your side of the cease-fire was holding
since more than a year before
they said so
what
June Jordan, “Apologies to All the People in Lebanon”

Today, The New York Times (finally) thankfully revealed the truth we already know and have known: “Russia-Ukraine War Shows Cease-Fires Have Lost Meaning Under Trump”. For the past few years, we have watched Israel establish “ceasefires” with one entity and another, only to continue the devastation. The same goes for Russia in Ukraine. The same goes for Israel and the United States in Iran. The only problem with this “discovery”, with this truth is that it ignores a history of devastation masquerading as ceasefire and of the devastating ceasefire masquerading as peace.

In 1982, June Jordan wrote “Apologies to All the People in Lebanon”, first published in the Village Voice, July 20, 1982. This is the poem as it appeared in 1982 in its entirety:

“Apologies to All the People in Lebanon

I didn’t know and nobody told me and what
could I do or say, anyway?

They said you shot the London Ambassador
and when that wasn’t true
they said so
what
They said you shelled their northern villages
and when U.N. forces reported that was not true
because your side of the cease-fire was holding
since more than a year before
they said so
what
They said they wanted simply to carve
a 25 mile buffer zone and then
they ravaged your
water supplies your electricity your
hospitals your schools your highways and byways all
the way north to Beirut because they said this
was their quest for peace
They blew up your homes and demolished the grocery
stores and blocked the Red Cross and took away doctors
to jail and they cluster-bombed girls and boys
whose bodies
swelled purple and black into twice the original size
and tore the buttocks from a four month old baby
and then
they said this was brilliant
military accomplishment and this was done
they said in the name of self-defense they said
that is the noblest concept
of mankind isn’t that obvious?
They said something about never again and then
they made close to one million human beings homeless
in less than three weeks and they killed or maimed
40,000 of your men and your women and your children

But I didn’t know and nobody told me and what
could I do or say, anyway?

They said they were victims. They said you were
Arabs.
They called      your apartments and gardens      guerrilla
strongholds.
They called      the screaming devastation
that they created       the rubble.
Then they told you to leave, didn’t they?

Didn’t you read the leaflets that they dropped
from their hotshot fighter jets?
They told you to go.
One hundred and thirty-five thousand
Palestinians in Beirut and why
didn’t you take the hint?
Go!
There was the Mediterranean: You
could walk into the water and stay
there.
What was the problem?

I didn’t know and nobody told me and what
could I do or say, anyway?

Yes, I did know it was the money I earned as a poet that
paid for the bombs and the planes and the tanks
that they used to massacre your family

But I am not an evil person
The people of my country aren’t so bad

You can expect but so much
from those of us who have to pay taxes and watch
American TV

You see my point;

I’m sorry.
I really am sorry.”

Later, an epigram was added: “Dedicated to the 600,000 Palestinian men, women, and children who lived in Lebanon from 1948-1983.”

In 2024, Faisal Mohyuddin wrote “Ceasefire Haiku”. At the center of this sequence of haiku, these four verses:

“Shame: a legacy
Your descendants will decry,
Bemoan, be cursed by.
____

To remain silent
Is consent, is wrong, is more
Deadly than more bombs.
___

You can’t really see
Me, except as your conscience-
Cleanser, your blindfold.
___

When I condemn crimes,
You call me culprit, settle
My heart to scrub yours.”

Forty-two years separate those two poems. Easily half of Lebanon’s population have lived all of their lives in a “ceasefire” in which the guns never ceased firing and the bombs never stopped falling. In fact, easily three quarters of the world have lived their lives in the ceasefire, a ceasefire in which guns never ceased firing and the bombs never stopped falling. While Trump’s actions are egregious and worse and Netanyahu’s programme of genocide is a legacy our descendants will decry … they are not a new invention. They are merely the latest phases in this, the Age of Ceasefire. May peace be with you. I’m sorry. I really am sorry.

(By Dan Moshenberg)

(Aliaksei Lepik / Unsplash / LAist)