Land Day Every Day

On March 30th, 1976, Palestinians held a protest. Back then, that was a rare occurrence. The reason it was a rare occurrence was quickly made clear by Israeli troops, who committed a massacre of the protesters. The Palestinians were protesting for the same reason Palestinians have been protesting since 1948 – because foreign invaders from Europe, North America and elsewhere, who later became commonly known as Israelis, were stealing their land.

The response of the Israeli military in 1976 was the response of an occupying army. An occupier that knows it's the thief, that morality is on the side of the aggrieved party, the Palestinians, and that what's more important than morality is who is stronger. And so the Israeli solution is always force, and more force. They have nothing else – but they have a lot of that.

On the anniversary of that massacre, on the date of the massacre which has become known in the Palestinian calendar marked by many such occasions as Land Day, last March Palestinian civil society marched in the direction of the fence that divides the toxic, bombed-out, besieged, outdoor prison they call Gaza from the occupying power that is besieging them, Israel. What transpired was yet another massacre of unarmed Palestinians, but this time with a much larger death toll.

Somehow undeterred by certain death, thousands upon thousands of Palestinians returned a week later, and again they were massacred. The first two times this happened, it was headline news in much of the world's press. But then the marchers returned every week and were again massacred every week, and as the months and the massacres passed by, the certainty that Israeli soldiers would massacre nonviolent protesters became as sure as the sun rising in the east, and the world's press therefore lost interest. Or perhaps they lost interest for other reasons. On CNN, NPR, BBC and so many other western media outlets, the word “massacre” never appeared. Soldiers gunning down children with automatic weapons is what they call a “clash.” “There were clashes today on the border.” But there were no clashes, and there is no border, and what they are reporting, therefore, are lies.

Land Day
Another day, another massacre of children
Children who have nothing good to show
Since their families became refugees so many years ago
When Zionists had launched their latest annexation
Which awakened the resistance of the Palestinian nation

And they called it Land Day
For the day the land was stolen by the new Crusaders

Another day, another massacre of children
With traumatized survivors of Nazi genocide
Killing traumatized survivors across a new divide
A divide that was created by killing kids and taking land
With a twisted kind of logic only Death can understand

Chorus

Another day, another massacre of children
Children they call terrorists for throwing stones at tanks
Children they imprison for refusing to give thanks
For the fact that no one is running gas chambers quite yet
Though it's hard to see how much more like a death camp this can get

Chorus

Another day, another massacre of children