They say that their poetry is political and speaks with war. Is that the case? It's hard to find the word war in my poetry. In the European Union, people prefer to create categories. Exile writer, immigration writer, war writer -- but they're nothing but writers. 90% of the world's migrants have been white, such as those from
Argentina and New Zealand, who have not been called leakage writers. They talk about literature and poetry in the media, but they ask me about trajectory and life.

In war-bearing countries, but like Palestine, war determines local literature. Israel's damage to Palestine is terrible, but among the elders
are our art and literature. Instead of working the same writing or writing about other things, like any other writer, Palestinian writers direct literature and art to struggle, because it's reality. They try to participate in the fight against the occupation of 75 years, thus giving a new direction to our literature.

"We are things you've seen on screens and in the press, and if you tried to merge the pieces, as a puzzle, you'd get a
clear picture, so clear you wouldn't be able to do anything," he says in the poem We. That is what is happening in Germany. They do not support comparisons with the German past. They have silenced the Palestinians and many Jews and others defending the Palestinians. It cannot be said that “this has already happened here”, because it seems that it would compare what is happening today with the Palestinian issue with the German situation of the 1930s. And that's not allowed.

What is the situation of artists in Germany? In the last six months, there have
been 129 cancellations. Well, those are the ones who made it public. There's also a second group of silent artists. If the news were given, they would be accused of anti-Semitism in Germany and lose jobs and careers.

How does cancellation occur? The third group consists of those who do not know that they have been cancelled. Event organizers telephone artists and ask them if it is the right time to show their works. Sometimes they get calls several times until the artist says, "Well, maybe it's not the right time." So the artist is annulled.

What will happen? They do not invite us to acts, plays and shows. The truth is that it is already
very clear. Since they annulled me in one act, I have not been invited by any other in the West. My cancellation was the greatest nonsense. It was not an anthology or such anthology about Palestine; it was Arabic poetry. I was annulled because I am a Palestinian. The situation is new to me.

We're not in poetic readings, anthologies or debates on the stage, nor are we invited to poetic festivals. Now I live from my savings. There will soon be no possibility of refuting anyone’s work, as we will be missing. Today they avoid the Palestinians, they avoid the Jews who speak of Palestine. I don't know of any Palestinian artist involved in art related jobs or events in the West.

Outside Germany, in other Western countries, the situation is: in the United States, for example, or in Sweden, the government is against the Palestinian cause, but the citizens are
with Palestine. In Germany, the people and the government are against it.

Has German society changed
its attitude to the conflict during all these months? None.

Germany became an icon of memory and reconciliation. There has also been much talk about the Germans' guilty complex. But lately it seems that immigrants who want to be Germans are given the role of criminals, not potential victims. I do not believe the guilt complex of the Germans. It's a selective fault. For example, six million
Jews were systematically murdered by the Nazis. It was so terrible, exaggerated and absurd that it was even incredible for discerning people like Hannah Arendt. Now, 90 years later, in Germany, there is talk of “imported anti-Semitism.” In Germany most anti-Semitic attacks have been carried out by white European Christian men. Yet they talk about imported anti-Semitism. In addition to these six million Jews, 28 million Soviets, 10 million soldiers and 18 million women and children died in the war. Was there guilt or compensation fund for them? Where is the money and the complex fault with Poland?

Some have been absurd. Germany is at the top of the pyramid of white superiority. Those who once denied the holocaust now deny Nakba. Last month they asked that in Neuköll (Berlin district) leaflets describing the Nakba as
a myth be distributed in schools to avoid, apparently, the “anti-Semitic narratives” existing in the school’s educational field. It is a very difficult subject, but you will feel regret and shame about what is going on with the Palestinians in the future.

Can we hope in Western governments and institutions? The Arabs and the Muslims, since the time of colonialism, have been taken away by mankind and Israel remains in that firm position against the Palestinians. Arabs, Muslims, refugees, immigrants… are “the others”. Israel is not now considered "other". It is a
continuation of the history of colonialism, Israel is a European project in the Middle East. It will never change by being connected to the nature of power. The same happened when the Arabs conquered the world.

Do you talk to German friends and colleagues about this? Speaking for a ceasefire in Germany’s “free” country or saying “free Palestine” leads you to lose your place in academia. We should ask ourselves what they are, how we can define it, these actions that are
taking place in Europe at this time.

I have a lot of experience with dictatorships. Al-Assad's family could not be criticized in Syria. The same was true of Libian Gadaffi or Stalin in the Soviet Union. It can be criticised in Germany, but not in Israel. One example: my friends don't miss my Instagram posts if they're from Palestine, afraid someone will see. But in the stories that leave no evidence, that's it. They're in shock. We are living what I lived in Syria, but in democracy.

Continaldrift: Das Arabische Europa (Unheading Continents: Arab Europe) was the chief curator and editor of anthology at the House of Poetry in Berlin, but in October he learned that the October presentation event was suspended. After Persian Europe and Black Europe, in
2021 the director of the House of Poetry asked me for Arab Europe to deal with anthology. We intended to include 34 authors, but as a result of the censorship suffered we ended with 31. Months later, the director, who had been in office for 30 years, retired.

A new group took over and at the first meeting I was informed that they were going to include a new paragraph in the contract. 34 Arab writers in anthology should sign two writings expressing their opposition to the BDS. BDS is a non-violent Palestinian-driven movement, a boycott of Israel that promotes disinvestment and economic sanctions. I said no, that was discrimination. That has never been requested in other anthologies. We could include all entities banned in Germany (such as the Ku-Klux-Klan or New Nazi in Germany) or none. The clause was withdrawn from the contract. My recommendation was then that in all contracts the House of Poetry should go against homophobia, anti-Semitism, racism, sexism and Islamophobia. They put everything in, except Islamophobia, of course.

The contract clause was excluded but several parts of the anthology were censored. Without consulting me, as editor and curator, they erased ten poems that left poetry out of anthology. It was a work of over a year and a half, eight translators -- they insisted it was for quality, but of course more
than half of those poems were related to Palestine, Judaism and the history of Germany. It was an act of censure. I tried to get out of the project, but the contract said that anthology was going to be published in my name. I shut up. I felt defeated.

You just published a collection of cut hands. In late February, my fifth collection of Arabic poetry came out of the oven in Beirut. The English version will be published in four or five months. In German, I don't know. Five years ago we agreed on the contract, but I do not know what will happen. Publishers and editorials are
good people, but I don't want to push.

What do your poems say? It's mostly love poetry, but you have to dig hard to understand it. The backdrop is made up of terror and nightmare. I'm fine, but my books are
sick. I've survived, but my books contain TOEN, a guilt complex for survival. I'm very lucky because all this happens to my books and not to me. But at the base is love poetry. All my poems are love poems.