[RSCT] Song for Gaza

[BBPDX at aol.com]

Dear Rethinking Schools friends,

It's often hard to know what to do when a crisis breaks out somewhere in the 
world and we're in the midst of teaching about other issues. The Israeli war 
against Palestinians in Gaza has a complicated history, so we may be tempted to 
avoid dealing with it in class. Ruth Shagoury, a colleague in Portland, 
shared this powerful YouTube video with me, "We Will Not Go Down (Song for Gaza)" 
by Michael Heart: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dlfhoU66s4Y

No one song can provide the kind of context that students would need to grasp 
the issues of a struggle like this, but this song might be one way to alert 
students to some of the human dimension of the ongoing Israeli invasion and 
bombing and help students raise some questions. Below are the song's lyrics.

On Thursday, Bob Peterson forwarded to this list two articles that Hofstra 
professor Alan Singer distributed. There was a line in one of those that is one 
of the most telling quotations I've read about Israeli government objectives 
in their current and historic treatment of Palestinians. It's from Moshe 
Yaalon, then the Israeli Defense Forces chief of staff, in 2002: “The Palestinians 
must be made to understand in the deepest recesses of their consciousness that 
they are a defeated people.” I suppose that this is the objective of all 
colonizers vis a vis the colonized.

If you are teaching about Israel-Palestine issues, and especially about Gaza, 
please post your experiences to the Rethinking Schools critical teaching 
listserv.

For peace and justice,

Bill Bigelow
Rethinking Schools
www.rethinkingschools.org

We Will Not Go Down (Song for Gaza)
by Michael Heart

A blinding flash of white light
Lit up the sky over Gaza tonight
People running for cover
Not knowing whether they're dead or alive

They came with their tanks and their planes
With ravaging fiery flames
And nothing remains
Just a voice rising up in the smoky haze

We will not go down
In the night, without a fight
You can burn up our mosques and our homes and our schools
But our spirit will never die
We will not go down
In Gaza tonight

Women and children alike
Murdered and massacred night after night
While the so-called leaders of countries afar
Debated on who's wrong or right

But their powerless words were in vain
And the bombs fell down like acid rain
But through the tears and the blood and the pain
You can still hear that voice through the smoky haze

We will not go down
In the night, without a fight
You can burn up our mosques and our homes and our schools
But our spirit will never die
We will not go down
In Gaza tonight

We will not go down
In the night, without a fight
You can burn up our mosques and our homes and our schools
But our spirit will never die

We will not go down
In the night, without a fight

We will not go down
In Gaza tonight


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