In Celebration and Solidarity with Women’s History Month: Women Beyond the Divide
By Leila Diab
Editor’s Note: March is women’s history month, especially with the celebration of March 8th, the United Nations designed day to be in solidarity with Palestinian women, as they continue to bond with their global sisters in the world for equality, freedom and social justice.
What does it mean to survive in a narcissistic world that versus empathy with the abrogation of duty for the human race of women? The women’s global message in times of war, compounded by physical and mentally traumatic conflicts is to blaze trails of disappearing clouds, with all hopes and dreams that the sun will shine on the dynasty of culturally diverse women.
During this year’s 2016 women’s history month, it is equally important to magnify our voices of self-assertion, self-determination, affection, justice, and family values, with a universal belief that women’s causes for human righteousness, freedom and protection should be heard and resolved. And it has often been said by many worldly women peace activists who continue to raise their voices for justice today, ‘we are living in a world of different generations, different social realities, and different perspectives, but with similar oppression of women’s rights.’
As mothers, daughters, grandmothers and their children’s children living in the refugee camps of occupied Palestine, Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt, and Syria, and beyond all borders, have succumbed to the poisonous winds of war and pollution, famine, lack of pure drinking water and debilitating health conditions, amplifies women’s urgent desire and need for humankind to restore their human dignity and trust in the masked clouds of universal and fundamental human rights.
We should also ask ourselves, why is it that there are a limitless number of women and their families who have lost their homes and/or homeland, and women who have been subjected to honor killings, forced marriages, bridal executions (all for money and the chastisement of women), imprisonment without charges brought against them, and young women who have been denied their right to be educated, albeit, continues to rein in the clouds of world silence? Or do the world leaders pivot around the possibility that one definitive statement such as a quandary of women issues can be solved? Whether it is the many horrors of women’s oppression due to an illegal Israeli military occupation in Palestine, and numerous belligerent foreign policies in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and in many regions of Africa and the Middle East, or for that matter, throughout the world, there remains a rapid cooperative growth in the number of professional women and people of moral consciousness who have galvanized social, medical and economic programs that support women and their causes for freedom.
For example, there are many women poets, writers and human rights activist, such Rula Jebreal, Sahar Khelifa, Dr. Nawal Al Sadawi, Maya Angelou, Suheir Hammad, Samah Sabawi, and the internationally humane struggles for freedom and peace, to name a few among many, who have always been in the forefront to expose the unwarranted human sufferings and human cruelty against women via their writings and vocal protest marches. Women from all walks of life continue to stand tall in sisterhood demonstrations against the oppression of women and urge people of conscience to insure the preservation of women’s social-cultural identity and universal human rights.
There are many descriptive words and stories to be heard from the voices and actions of women this Women’s History Month, as people from all over the world recognize and celebrate the steadfast empowerment of women’s participation in their struggle for human dignity for themselves and for the future of their children. How can women erase all the scars of oppression from their lives? It can only be achieved rightfully so, without any mandatory exemptions in building the structural process of her society.
Women’s history month in March, as well as every day of the year is a time for the world community to unite with persistence, strength and efforts to implement moral resolutions on behalf of women all over the world. Then and only then can women’s lives embrace the real light of equality and justice with freedom.
The following poem by Samah Sabawi, a Palestinian poet, expresses only one of the struggles of many women in Palestine who yearn for their universal human rights, and the right to return to their homeland in peace, equality and freedom. Isn’t that what every women in the world wants?
Are your loved ones trapped behind the wall
Do they need the army’s permission
For their prayers to reach the sky
For their love to cross the ocean
And touch your thirsty heart
Are your loved ones trapped
Do you yearn to be in your family home
And when you call, do they always say
“we are fine, alhamdollelah”
Does it surprise you that they are whole
While you… are broken
Must they always worry about you
Urge you to have faith in your exile
Must they always pity you
For not breathing the air
Of your ancestors’ land
Must they always comfort you
Even when the bombs are falling
Do you ever wonder who is walled in
Is it you…or is it them
And when it finally dawns upon you
That their dignity sets them free
Do you feel ashamed of your liberty
Yes, women of the world are united together in a phenomenal global sisterhood.
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Sailing Glory
For all the world’s contentment,
Bridges succumb destructive links,
only ships without valor sink.
The epitome of justice will charter
our world on a stern course.
We are vessels riding the ebb of time.
Sooner or later the world will hear our chimes.
Riding with imagines of tempest waves
of glory,
rippling upon the shoreline of peaceful
serenity.
Imagine yonder over the horizon,
visions of the rainbows reflection.
Sailing through the cloudless journey,
Our fleet will encompass pride,
where the brave do not stumble
or fall,
regardless of our life story.
Navigators beware,
we are the captains of our ship
with valor.
Prepare to lower the anchor.
Leila Diab
Freelance Journalist