Resistance under the jasmine tree

Le texte qu’on va lire, à la croisée du témoignage, de la poésie et de la réflexion politique, rend hommage à la résistance culturelle palestinienne face à la guerre et à l’exil. Il s’articule autour de la mort du poète Refaat Alareer, figure emblématique de Gaza, tué avec sa famille lors d’un bombardement israélien en décembre 2023. Son poème prémonitoire – “If I had to die / Then you have to survive” – devient un manifeste : même dans la mort, la parole et la poésie doivent survivre pour témoigner.
À travers cette mort symbolique, l’auteur s’interroge sur ce que signifie « résister » quand tout, corps et maison, est détruit. La poésie devient alors une arme spirituelle : survivre, c’est raconter la mémoire des ruines, des matins, du pain, des sourires, et du sang mêlé à la poussière. L’image de l’enfant qui fait voler un cerf-volant – pour communiquer avec son père disparu – incarne la continuité de la vie et de la tendresse au cœur du désastre.
Le récit se déplace ensuite à Taipei, où l’auteur met en scène un acte de solidarité : deux mères, Amel (originaire de Gaza) et Liu Min (Taïwanaise), se rencontrent pour interpréter un poème chorégraphié intitulé “The Children”, dédié aux enfants de Gaza. Leur performance, mêlant danse, peinture et récitation, devient un geste de résistance symbolique. La douleur des mères se mêle à celle des peuples : Liu Min évoque son propre père, soldat taïwanais enrôlé dans l’armée japonaise, soulignant que la guerre abîme toutes les générations, partout.
À travers cette mise en scène, l’auteur tisse un parallèle entre les traumatismes collectifs : Gaza, Taïwan, la Corée (Jeju 4.3), et même le Japon impérial. Tous portent la marque de violences d’État et de guerres coloniales. La psychologue Amel, épouse de l’auteur, Hazem Almassry, explique que le traumatisme palestinien n’est pas individuel mais collectif : un peuple entier vit sous l’oppression, privé du droit à la vie et à la mémoire.
Hazem, exilé en Taïwan, est lui-même l’auteur du manuscrit Under the Jasmine Tree, dans lequel il raconte la destruction de sa maison et la mort de sa mère, écrasée par un mur après un bombardement. Sa voix, entre recherche politique et poésie intime, incarne la dignité de ceux qui continuent à témoigner malgré tout.
Lors d’un forum pour la paix à Taipei, il dialogue avec un militant israélien. Hazem, tout en respectant l’échange, exprime la contradiction fondamentale : comment parler de paix quand une partie a tout – puissance, territoire, soutien international – et que l’autre n’a rien ? Il souligne que la paix ne peut venir sans justice, ni reconnaissance du génocide en cours.
La fin du texte revient à la métaphore du jasmin, symbole de la vie palestinienne écrasée sous les bombes mais toujours odorante, vivante. La question demeure : le printemps reviendra-t-il à Gaza ?
Sous le ciel, des milliers de tombes imaginaires flottent comme des cerfs-volants, chaque nom devenant un vers du grand poème collectif palestinien.
I&A

1.
First of all, I want to start writing with a poem that is unbearable to continue reading but must be read publicly. The lines of the poem are as follows :
If I had to die
Then you have to survive
Survive to tell my story
December 7, 2023 is a memorable day. On this day, the well-known poet, 44-year-old writer and scholar Leifat Reyfat, known as "a piano in Gaza". Refaat Alareer, who died in an Israeli airstrike with his wife and children, not only shocked and angered all Palestinians, but also lamented and lamented by the overseas literary circles.
In a poem he wrote before his death, he seemed to have predicted his own death.

This is how the killing unfolded, how can we say resistance ? The defenseless body is constantly threatened by exterminating weapons ; And right in front of their own doors, the invaders openly exterminated civilians, old and young, women and children, land and homes in the name of sweeping away terrorists.

The poet is dead. However, he left a line of poetry : using very everyday and plain words, he decided that his death was necessary to die, who made him have to die ? Why do you have to die ? Everything was only because he had to be poisoned to death by the invaders in order to defend his home and motherland, and finally the executioner took it seriously, not only coercion, but also buried his wife and children along with the poet in the ruins of the explosion ! He wrote this poem, as if we were witnessing his soul bleeding, and at the same time, the soul also earnestly expressed that the body is dead but the spirit exists, not just survival, which requires someone to continue to write Palestinian poetry, just like the testimony !

So, how to survive, how to continue to live if you die... Having to die also means having to live is extraordinary. Because we must survive and continue to tell the daily memories that Palestine picks up from the ruins and the rubble : the streets, the morning, the bread, the singing and the smiles of the friendly neighbors ! Of course, in the cruel season, blood climbs along the accumulated sand and dust, climbing through the cracks of the bricks, singing the lamentations and elegies of the end times, but there is also the morning light shining into the dark tent, revealing the rebirth of a new day !

Gaza residents who are forced to leave their homes, young and old, women and children, are all at the critical point of the hunger line, and the next step will be towards possible death ; Therefore, death in Gaza must be the beginning of a new life, using one’s own skinny chest as a bloody imprint, engraved with words or lines of poetry, as an accusation and testimony buried in the memory of the killing by the displaced !

Therefore, the poem continues :

Please sell my things
Then buy a piece of cloth
and some cord

White cloth made into a long-tailed kite
Somewhere in Gaza, there is a child
will gaze into the sky

She was looking
Father in heaven
Her father died in the fire
It’s too late to say goodbye to anyone
It’s not even too late
Say goodbye to your own body

When this child sees
The kite you made for me flies in the sky
She would believe that the angel was there
Bring love back to her

Reading the poet’s lines, I also responded with a few lines of poetry. I describe so-and-so I record certain lines of poetry like this, transcribed as follows : The servants of Allah walk carefully on the road The ignorant call out to them They turn back and answer :
"Peace (Al-salam)" Quran, Chapter 25, Verse 36 This poem should begin like this :
Because we are all ignorant people
Ignorance looks out through its own eyes
Under the veiled dust
Amid exploding bombs
Among the ruins of broken walls
Within twisted exploitation
In deceptive propaganda
Through manipulations of hegemony
We find ourselves becoming ignorant beings
Al-salam is Peace
Peace is Al-salam Recitation : "If the poet must die You must survive !"
A voice calls : Stop being ignorant
Those who survive, go search for the remains of children’s mothers and fathers
Follow the souls of their families
And read aloud with them
The lines of poetry drifting under Gaza’s sky
At this moment, the cat joins in the recitation
As if seeing the kite left by the poet Hovering over the eaves of every home Al-salam Al-salam
The voice never ceases
Commemorating the poet, looking at the sky
The sky of Palestine
The poet’s figure flies like a kite
2. At Huashan [Arch Hall], four concrete pillars seem to convey the sounds of people in the changing seasons ; yet, this space imagination, belonging to Taiwan’s folk drum formations, seems to have already lost all traces of life amid the distant ruins ! On this day, I arranged for two mothers to rehearse a poem I wrote : "The Children." This poem is dedicated to the children of Gaza, who continuously lose survival and hope during bombings ; naturally, when writing about children, one must also write about mothers. In the poem, three lines read : Yet the child’s biological mother Is buried beneath the rubble In the instant explosion of an incendiary bomb Here, the mother may be a woman kidnapped by Hamas, or a child in the tunnels discovering this mother, feeding the starving woman the only remaining sip of goat’s milk, because the child recalls their own biological mother, whose country, the mother who was kidnapped, gathered destructive weapons, exploded pulverizing all without a trace ! The child does not understand hatred, nor is conquered by it ; they simply feel that the mother is the voice of all things, so they prevent the enemy mother from suffering hunger and despair ! The poem is written this way ; when poetry is so graphic, Gaza has once again become a graveyard that once held beautiful memories ! At noon, Amel—the mother from Gaza—came to rehearse under the four pillars of the "Arch Hall," while the Taiwanese mother—Liu Min—arrived earlier to prepare, changing into convenient dance clothes. The meeting of these two mothers unveiled the act of reciting poetry as a cultural action, showing deep concern for Gaza from a Taiwanese theater and poet. They shared the checked scarves draped over their shoulders ! I recall, a few days before the recitation, I contacted these two foreign mothers : "Come dance for the children suffering in Gaza !" In the message, I wrote to the Taiwanese mother, Liu Min. She quickly replied : "We need to meet and discuss this thoroughly. "How do we start ? she asked. I said : The mother from Gaza – How do we get started ? She asked. I said : Amel, a mother from Gaza – I have taken drama lessons with her daughter several times this spring. I asked her to translate a poem I wrote : [Child] into Arabic, and her rhythmic reading voice was full of ups and downs, beautiful and moving !
I said to Liu Min : It will be danced by a dancer’s mother ; Another mother read the hymn aloud ! We can also add simple ritualistic bodies ! She asked : Is this a show ? I said, let’s use poetry and dance to launch a cultural action for the displaced Gaza !
After discussion, rehearsal, and washing with tears ; In addition to dancing, Liu Min also created a mural : "Mother and Child", a ritual of blessing and silent resistance !
Originally, when we met at a café ! She took out another painting. A Japanese soldier with a bandage on his leg bone stood in a space of unknown time. She said : "I painted my imaginary father who was injured in battle in the jungle.
Her father was a Taiwanese Japanese soldier ; Identity has always been sensitive. who are victims of conscription and mobilization ; Or on the battlefield, the perpetrators who serve the military ? She didn’t tell me, I’m afraid she has been greatly shocked and shocked as a father for a long time !
I just say : This is the tragedy that war has brought to the world. So, what kind of collective trauma is this for the civilians in Gaza who have been bombed, killed, expelled, discriminated against, starved and humiliated for a long time ? She happened right in front of the eyes of the world...
Writing like this now, I feel so powerless. What we see in the video is a 16-story building, which collapsed in an instant, is a residential building in Gaza, with a hospital, temporary school classrooms, and emergency evacuation facilities ; They say they want to destroy masked terrorists – called Hamas, and they are terrorists in military uniforms – called Israeli soldiers ; However, they do not admit their crimes because they are supported by international democratic hegemons. They claim to launch an offensive against Gaza, but in fact they are committing genocide, not war.

3.
That meeting took place at a small café behind the historical section of Treasure Hill. The tiny space was quiet on a Sunday with no one else around. I had a warm and thoughtful conversation with the mother and daughter in front of me, who had once lived through the daily bombings in Gaza.

After returning, I wrote in my notebook : That year, in bombed Gaza, a mother held her daughter, who had just turned one, never letting go…。 The mother reminisced, deeply furrowing her brow. When she looked up, I continued listening to how she recounted their life-and-death experiences in Gaza to me, in front of her daughter. She said that, for Gazans, death is something they must face every day.

"No matter what, I only want to share life and death with my child," she said resolutely. I kept in mind the words : ’No way to retreat.’ Yet, when I looked at her, I could read her unwavering determination in every moment of silence. This reminded me of the Korean writer Han Kang, who, in "Never Let Me Go," wrote lines reflecting on the Jeju 4.3 massacre :

In fact, death saved those who were alive.

At the same time, in my mind flashed the last few lines from the poem "Child" :

Will the world start again ?
When will the world start again ?
Has the world reached its end ?

What about the stone in my hand ? the child asks.

I have always thought Han Kang’s words carry deep meaning. My lines perhaps question Han Kang’s confrontation with death. Because death often accompanies despair, and despair prompts reflection on rebirth. Summoning courage, I asked Amel : In Gaza, has death saved the living ? Her answer was both warm and sharp. She said : Believing this is precious, of course, but in my husband’s hometown – Gaza – the number of people who died of hunger far exceeds those who perished from bombings, suffering more torment. Can the gradual suffering of their deaths awaken the living to reconsider this cruel world dictated by political dominance, leaving behind bloody crimes ?

"How can one see the light through darkness ?" I asked.

Amel, as a mother, said : That year, in the bombings of Gaza, she held little Malak’s hand day and night, during both waking and sleeping moments, because the only involuntary decision was to face life and death together. I also learned that Malak’s father, Hazem, lost his house in Gaza last year during a missile attack, reduced to ruins. Even worse, Hazem’s mother had already died in a bombing...

That was the first day of the drama workshop ; but we did not do any drama exercises. We delved into many discussions. Malak, the daughter at the café table, at eleven, already had the intelligence and maturity of an eighteen-year-old, which I think is closely related to her need to find the truth of survival amid uprooted life. We had last met at the Ximen MRT Station in support of Palestine, where she gave a fluent, moving, and sharp speech in Chinese. After stepping down, we met again. She said drama had been her favorite since childhood, so she turned to pencil drawings depicting her passion for drama. Together with her mother, I planned her drama courses.

Malak’s mother, Amel, married Hazem, a scholar from Gaza living in Taiwan. She herself is a psychologist, and in Algeria…Malak’s mother, Amel, married Hazem, a scholar from Gaza who came to Taiwan. She herself is a psychologist and earned her PhD in psychology in Algeria. Her hometown is in North Africa. She said : generally, ordinary people acknowledge that Gaza is an independent and autonomous country and they do not reject Palestinians in the least ; however, as for the authorities, under the push of international powers, it is difficult to act independently... Amel speaks with confidence, naturally full of the delicacy of a woman and a mother. In my conversations with her, I occasionally think of Franz Fanon, the Third World resistance psychologist, who may have profoundly influenced her. Because even when talking about child-rearing experiences, she often approaches the issue from the perspective of social oppression or immigration, leading into issues of collective trauma.
She said : she strongly identifies with Augusto Boal’s "Theatre of the Oppressed" ! I think that must be so ! I look forward to seeing the mother-daughter Gaza chronicle written down and incorporated into the rehearsal schedule of Malak’s theater workshops. I always think : Malak can use her body to tell the story of her childhood in Gaza ; allowing more people to feel how her growth transformed disasters into moving cultural actions. This will be an unforgettable memory for Malak in her youth : although there is still some distance before she can perform on stage, the theater has always been a process of opening her body to the world ! The world now is spring, yet an incredibly cruel spring ! Because Malak can never return to her hometown Gaza again ! Once, during a conversation, I inadvertently brought up this sensitive topic ! She, with her precocious youth, replied in standard spoken Chinese : "From the moment I was born, this was destined ! We are just like this, moving from here to there, without a fixed life ! "Spring ? What about the spring in Palestine ? I asked. At this moment, her father Hazem also entered the circle of people we both knew !
This sadness revolved around a Gaza family living in Taiwan, and I began to communicate with the family’s father, Hazem ; Because, during a rehearsal, Amel told me that her husband had a book about his hometown of Gaza and wanted to publish it in Taiwan. In this way, I received the manuscript of "Under the Jasmine Tree" from him one after another, writing about his sadness as an international political scientist in Taiwan, and now he is exiled overseas and can no longer return to his hometown ! Hazem and his family are a family of five I have ever seen with the courage of displaced people, delicately treating love and hate in this world, and never retreating or compromising ! Their unquenchable love for the world makes me proud to know their family and proud of their existence !

Hazem, Chinese pen name An Haizheng. I hope he will write an article tracing how his home was reduced to pieces under artillery fire, as a testimony before the manuscript was published ; He sent several photos with heartbreaking scenes, especially when he talked about his mother, in which he wrote :

December 5, 2023. That day, the wall fell on her. The Israelis bombed a mosque near our home, and the shockwave knocked down part of our garden wall. My mother was outside, checking her plants like every morning. The concrete crushed her ribs and pierced her lungs. She didn’t scream—my brothers later told me that, and their voices were broken as they came through the choppy phone connection. Even though blood filled her chest, she tried to comfort them instead.

When their hometown is in ruins under artillery fire, their beautiful family turns the experience of their distant homeland into a life-and-death struggle into an action of cultural resistance... Whether it is writing, theater or poetry recitation, every moment is fleeting and distant... I thought so.

Hazem participated in the "Taipei International Peace Forum" hosted by the "Long Yingtai Foundation". For him, this is another day to launch a protest discourse on the recent full-scale invasion of Israel. His conversation partner was Roi, director of the Israeli Peace School ; On this day, I went to listen in particular.
Before the forum started, Hazem came to greet me ; I talked to him about his new book, "Under the Jasmine Tree", which needs to be reintegrated with some Chinese translations. He said thank me for my concern, but his eyebrows revealed a little anxiety. He said : "When today’s conversation is over, I can safely treat the publication of books." He said that he didn’t sleep well last night because he got up to revise the speech of this peace dialogue, changing the original story of his mother and family who lost their lives and displaced in the bombing to the issue of how Gaza as an invader, how to face peace initiatives.
During the conversation, his cheeks, which were originally smiling, became furrowed... Thus, a peace forum unfolded in a diverse or pluralistic manner, and finally it was the turn of the finale chapter, a dialogue between Roi, an Israeli peace worker, and Hazem, a Gaza scholar, writer and activist.
This conversation unfolded in a state of mutual respect and trust, yet charged with a sense of urgency ; this description is by no means an exaggeration. Roi, whether out of habit or deliberately relaxing, would either cross his legs or stretch his legs widely ; beside him, Hazem appeared more careful and contemplative in his posture. One could sense a subtle mutual consideration in their interaction. The first moment of tension in the conversation arose when Roi, speaking as an Israeli peace worker, mentioned that ’peace dialogue’ is a process in which both sides continually participate ; Hazem’s expression did not naturally convey agreement with this statement. He earnestly said : ’It’s not that I want to block the possibility of dialogue, but what I want to say is that our situation is extremely difficult and complex. One side has everything, and the other has nothing—what kind of dialogue can we even have ?’

As a Palestinian ; as someone displaced and oppressed, losing his life and homeland beyond measure in Gaza ; Hazem’s words were heartfelt and gut-wrenching ! They led him to express a crucial stance regarding whether the two could collaborate for peace. Hazem resolutely stated : ’I cannot, because this matter can only take place in Israel. Being from Gaza, I must face more immediate problems. How can you talk about peace to people in Gaza who are in the midst of war ?’

After the meeting, I attended the host’s dinner with Hazem’s family. We sat around a table. His wife, Amel, in a gentle tone, asked Hazem why he expressed that he could not collaborate with Roi in peace initiatives. Hazem told me : on a personal level, he is always willing to cooperate ; but in a public forum, Palestine is a country invaded by Israel, and in reality, meaningful cooperation in their peace mission is very difficult to achieve !

I recalled a passage from his own writings :
’This biased framework strips Gazans of their humanity, reducing them to statistics or threats, rather than people with families, dreams, and the same basic desire for safety that motivates everyone. Such reporting distorts the realities of occupation, shaping public opinion in ways that hinder meaningful advocacy for justice and allow governments to more easily ignore their responsibilities.’

This made me more deeply understand what it means to have no way out in displacement… I thought about getting to know Hazem, because I had the opportunity to spend some days with him, his wife Amel, and daughter Malak, during theater rehearsals and performances. In the preface to his soon-to-be-published book, ’Under the Jasmine Tree : Gaza Memoirs,’ he thoughtfully wrote :

’Before the massacre shattered all our notions of a normal life, Gaza had an almost sacred rhythm. Daily life carried a quiet harmony constructed by traditions, community, and the subtle beauty only someone who had lived in one place for several generations could create.

Every morning began the same way. The aroma of freshly baked bread would blend with the salty Mediterranean sea breeze, and the scent alone could awaken half the neighborhood. Our mothers and grandmothers would rise before dawn to knead dough and tend the ovens, establishing the foundation for each day before most of us even opened our eyes.’
This sentence is breathtaking to read, because it was before "before the Holocaust was crushed..." ; So how can the world imagine : since this week, a large number of Israeli tanks have driven into Gaza and launched a ruthless sweep, leaving behind the scene of home destruction and ruined destruction ? For some reason, a strong image flashed through my mind at this moment :
A truck full of pans and worn-out household items, as well as children and ragged men and women in distress, got stuck on a ramp that had sunken after a shell exploded, seemingly immobilizing the horsepower... A bearded man who covered his forehead with the lid of the pot suddenly burst into the camera. He opened his voice excitedly and sobbed : 25 of my family members have died in the bombing, and last night my wife and three-year-old child died in my arms, with steel spikes and embers from shells ; Why didn’t I die ? Why ? Why didn’t I die ? He asked several times. Then, I cried : It’s not like I’m alive, it’s better for a bomb to fly into my body, leaving me to be shattered and unable to see the corpse...
I couldn’t bear to think about it anymore and turned off the video in my head. Returning my gaze to the forum pulpit, I thought : When opposing military action that involves Taiwan in brutal extermination, coming out to call for peace has become a risk ; This is really a great irony, the reason is nothing more than the stubbornness of those who support power, and they refuse to talk about anything that I confront and refuse ! The problem is : the earth revolves, just like objective reality, and does not revolve only around itself. The sad thing is that the appeal for peace is simple, but the power is always revolving around the hostile consciousness.
Peace certainly comes from appeals ; In addition to appealing, how can peace come ? Specific plans are needed to allow peace to defend the right to civilian life in the face of war crises ! Hazem (Ahn Hae-jeong) has a thought-provoking saying :
Taking Ukraine as an example, it reminds Taiwan that its military strength is limited, and the destruction brought about by war is far greater than the significance of victory. He called on Taiwan to expand channels for dialogue and peace, avoid war, and protect the safety and livelihood of its people. An Haizheng emphasized that the primary goal of applying international experience to Taiwan is to maintain peace, not to imitate other countries’ military models.
Continue, walk on the road. Chasing the jasmine tree that may have been lost in the artillery fire... Hazem’s wife Amel explores the collective trauma of Gaza in the video, which is the problem of genocide formed by long-term eviction, occupation and coercion, not a day’s cold ; She, her husband, and her children’s family bravely joined the fight to protect the Palestinian homeland. "What Palestinians suffer is a collective trauma, which is very different from the individual trauma commonly referred to in the West, mainly because it is not individual depression, but the trauma of living under an oppressive system... The mainstream media has long even dehumanized Palestinians..." This is her insight. Exterminating killings and individual retaliation, while mankind calls for the protection of human rights and freedom, how can it not only start from the individualistic concerns of Western human rights, but also under the premise of producing anti-colonialism and anti-hegemony, from the perspective of the third world, returning to the Gaza civilians who were deprived of the right to live by the war under the meaning of collective suffering, and find the resistance and co-creation of her/their homeland and country
Amel and I said : Since the beginning of this year, Busan theater workers and I have also opened the field in the memory of island-to-island killing against the violence of East Asian countries under the premise of theater creation. This experience made me rethink how to learn the difference between collective trauma and individual trauma she mentioned from visiting the White Terror disaster site or reading oral history experiences since the 1990s.

We once again interviewed the personal experiences of the political suffering of the White Terror at Liuzhangli Cemetery and Green Island Prison, mainly comparing such scenes with the experience of the suffering on Jeju Island with the physical performance of the theater. In 1993, the excavation of 201 graves on the Six Plow Burial Hill coincided with the reappearance of the bones in the cave on Jeju Island after more than 40 years of burial, which had the same structural connotation of the collective violence of the state caused by the anti-communist suppression of the Cold War.

In 2018, South Korean President Moon Jae-in said at the memorial ceremony for the 70th anniversary of the 4.3 Incident, which was thought-provoking ; Like the other side of time, the alarm bells thrown from every corner of Jeju’s suffering echoed :

Even a stone wall and a withered camellia know about the painful years in Jeju, and people have continued to search and ask in the past 70 years : Is there still spring in this land ? Is the spring in Jeju Island still in my memory ? What about the wild lilies in early spring and April in Green Island ?

Yes. Far from their hometown in the holy land of Gaza, Amel, Malak and Hazem, as well as more Palestinians we know or don’t know, may be asking right now :

What about spring ? Will spring in Gaza come again at this time next year ? In spring, what about the jasmine trees that have been smashed by artillery fire in their homes ?

I am reminded of Hazem’s words : How do I talk about peace with the people of my Gaza hometown who are dying from killing and expelling ? Peace, to question Israel’s genocidal shells, tanks and bullets...

I raised my head and seemed to see 65,174 tombstones engraved in Arabic floating under the clear sky in the distance, which were tombstones in the sky, commemorating the 65,194 suffering bodies and souls who lost their lives in Gaza ; Each one sings the ups and downs of Palestinian poetry. In time and space, it seems that there is also a Lefat. The last few lines of Refaat Alareer’s poem :

If I had to die
Then let it be
Bring hope, let it
Become a legend

Hazem Almassry