Salam Max'’s last couple posts inspired me to stay with the music theme and post this letter I wrote last week.

After we sent out our initial Bethlehem Bloggers Press Release we received a forwarded message from one of our colleagues who sent the release to a number of contacts in Israel and Palestine. The Press Release started with the line: “ "The shaheed (martyr) Tupac Shakur once wondered whether heaven has a ghetto. . .”"

Our colleague received a response from a man named Mark, a bureaucrat from the British Embassy in Israel. Mark’s e-mail was unsigned and formed all of one line:

"Why is Tupac a shaheed?"

Bethlehem Bloggers is happy to share views on politics and resistance, even when doing so requires us to throw a little light into the dark and stale prison of bureaucratic impotence. So I drafted the following note to our friend Mark:


Dear Mark,

Thank you for your interest in Bethlehem Bloggers and thank you for your considerate and elegant response to our Press Release. I am always more than happy to help friendly bureaucrats, such as yourself, understand some of the many nuances which color the world the rest of us live in. You ask, why is Tupac a shaheed? Let me try to explain.

Tupac Amaru Shakur was the son of a Black Panther . He grew up in a politically charged community in the poverty of ghettos from Brooklyn to Oakland. He died when he was 26 years old. His murder has never been properly investigated.

Tupac’'s lyrics are full of references to the ghetto. This was one reason that we chose to cite him in our Press Release. His experience as an African American growing up in US ghettos draws certain distinct parallels with the experience of many Palestinian kids growing up in Israel’i-created ghettos in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and Israel itself. But growing up in the ghetto does not, of course, automatically make someone a shaheed.

There are several ways to view Tupac’'s martyrdom . The first theory of Tupac’'s murder holds that he, like so many Palestinian martyrs, was killed by government security forces . Tupac is the most influential artist in recent US history. His lyrical skill has never been matched and he burst into popularity as hip-hop culture took over, not just in America’s ghettos, but in (mostly white) suburbs and small towns as well.


Two artists, two shuhada: Grafitti of Tupac Shakur in the Bronx, New York and Ghassan Kanafani in Deheishah Refugee Camp, Bethlehem

The immense popularity of hip-hop (which has always been an African American folk style) produced a backlash in “"well-bred”" (racist) white culture and Tupac was one of the main targets of “white fear. The danger that Tupac represented was never his irresponsible, party-all-night attitude, but rather his poignant and strong political consciousness. Songs like Trapped, Soulja’s Story, Brenda’s Got A Baby, Keep Ya Head Up, So Many Tears, Dear Mama, Life Goes On, White Man’'s World, I Wonder if Heaven Got a Ghetto, This Ain’'t Livin'’, My Block, They Don’t Give a Fuck About Us, Never B Peace and Panther Power, among others, tell stories of the ghetto war zone on America’s sensitive underbelly and portray a future where the people can rise up to overthrow the powerful and create the conditions for real peace.

Tupac, the most popular artist in the US, rapped about the ghetto, revolution and reconciliation. Three things that are very threatening to the US elite. For these reasons, many believe that a government counter-insurgency unit ordered and carried out the hit on Tupac Shakur, making him a shaheed in the fullest sense of the term. As usual, he said it best himself:

On the streets or on TV
It just don't pay to be, a truth tellin’ MC
They won't be happy 'til I'm banned
The most dangerous weapon: an educated black man
(Rebel of the Underground)

The second theory into Tupac’'s martyrdom posits that he was killed because of feuding in the hip-hop community and the East vs. West grudge match he fell into later in his career. This version is disputed by most rap artists and hip-hop historians, but let us give it the benefit of the doubt.

The East vs. West feud in hip-hop was purposely inflated by record companies in order to sell CDs. The companies used the animosity of the artists to swell their own pockets and blow the feud out of proportion.

In fact, the role of the record companies in the East vs. West conflict in hip-hop, draws certain parallels to the role of many western governments in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. If we examine closely the role of the US and British governments, for instance, we see that there are ample opportunities to end the occupation of Palestine and reach a just resolution to the conflict. These opportunities, however, have never been attempted. Not once has the US or Great Britian threatened to end military aid to Israel. Not once has either government threatened to cut diplomatic ties.

In fact, the opposite is true. The US and Great Britain have maintained ever warmer relations with Israel, selling huge amounts of weapons for use against Palestinian civilians in the ghettos of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The increasing amount of commercial ties between western nations and Israel benefits the corporate elite at the price of thousands of lives - both Palestinian and Israeli.

Like Tupac, who was caught up in a feud exploited by corporate interests for their own profits, thousands of Palestinian and Israeli youth are in the middle of a twisted game of world domination and corporate profit played by the world’'s economic and military powers. In my opinion, almost everyone that dies in this conflict is a martyr. We have only to look at the reality of the situation, however, to understand that Palestinians are paying the harshest price for US and British profits.

The primary reason we chose to reference Tupac in our Press Release, however, was not his martyrdom, but his message. The question we cited - whether heaven has a ghetto - frames the dire situation that exists in Palestinian ghettos such as Bethlehem. Tupac'’s lyrics speak of the struggles faced by youth growing up in the ghetto, but he also provides a potent vision of an alternate reality.

Tupac'’s classic track, Changes, is one of the most influential hip-hop songs of all time:

I see no changes
All I see is racist faces
misplaced hate makes disgrace to races
We under,
I wonder what it takes to make this
One better place,
Let's erase the wasted
Take the evil out the people they'll be acting right
'cause both black and white is smokin' crack tonight
and the only time we chill is when we kill each other
it takes skill to be real, time to heal each other. . .

We gotta make a change...

It's time for us as a people to start makin' some changes.
Let's change the way we eat, let's change the way we live
and let's change the way we treat each other.
You see the old way wasn't working so it's on us to do
what we gotta do, to survive. . .

The message of Changes is one of desperate hope and ultimate reconciliation. The song captures the kind of sentiment I have witnessed on countless occasions in Palestinian ghettos from Rafah to Bethlehem. I can’t say that Tupac was speaking for Palestinians when he wrote these words, but I am sure there is something shared in their experience which leads many to similar conclusions. For instance, Palestinian lyricist Tamer Nafer has this to say in the song Born Here:

This is a hunting season the prey is one more home
Of a dove trying to survive under the hawk’s regime
lets try something more optimistic:
each day I wake up and see like a 1000 cops
maybe they came to arrest a dealer…
(he’s over here, over here, oh no they came to destroy his neighbor’s home)
what is happening here?
A hate bubble surrounding the ghetto. . .
Anywhere I go, excuses are there to greet me
I broke the law?
No, no the law broke me

The frustration in Nafer’'s words also contains an implicit challenge to address him and his community in a different way. If the challenge is not met, there is a threat that he will be left to act in the only way he is allowed- as a criminal. In Everything They Owe , Tupac makes the same point:

Supreme ideology, you claim to hold
Claimin' that we all drug dealers with empty souls
That used to tempt me to roll, commit to violence
In the midst of an act of war, witnesses left silent
Shatter, black talon style, thoughts I throw
It remains in your brain then of course it grows
Maybe, even your babies can produce and rise
Picture a life where black babies can survive past five
But we must have hope, quotin'’ the reverend from the pulpit
Refuse to turn the other cheek we must defeat the evil culprit
Lace me with words of destruction and I'll explode
but supply me with the will to survive, and watch the world grow

In conclusion, I submit that we must all meet this challenge. The ghettos of Palestine are as much a creation of US and British corporate greed as they are of Israeli colonialism and racism. It is up to all of us to shift this paradigm and to create a reality where the ghetto can realize its hope instead of being forced to explode. Break your bureaucratic chains. Don’t reproduce exploitation, join us in fighting it.

End British support for Israel’'s occupation. Free Palestine. And get the hell out of Iraq!

Hutt Al Nasr-

Shihad
Bethlehem Bloggers


More Resources:

• Download Tupac Shakur’'s Changes
• Download music from Tamer Nafer, DAM and other Palestinian hip-hoppers
• View the trailer from the upcoming film Slingshot Hip-Hop: The Palestinian Lyrical Front
• Download music from Palestinian-American rapper The Iron Sheik
• Download music from Palestinian-American rappers The Philistines