It's Up to Us Not to Heed the Call-Up
by Laura King-Irani
Dissident Voice
January 7, 2003
A bleak Christmas Eve, bringing news of despair in Bethlehem
and killings near Jenin, has been made even bleaker with the news that Joe
Strummer, the lead singer for the legendary British punk band "The
Clash," has died at the early age of 50.
Ironically, he
and the original members of the group, which infused punk with a searing
political poetry during the dull and mediocre right-wing political era of
Thatcher's UK and Reagan's US, were to reunite for a performance next month
marking the group's induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Just as
ironically, the daily news from the Middle East reads like the titles of The
Clash's songs: "Washington Bullets" are flying in Afghanistan, Jenin,
Ramallah, and Rafah and will soon be flying, perhaps tipped with depleted
uranium again, in Iraq. "Somebody got murdered" -- today, yesterday,
and everyday in Occupied Palestine.
So many
headlines in the news today echo the political situation of twenty years ago.
The same unpalatable people are back in power in the US: Nicholas Negroponte,
Richard Perle, Dick Cheney, Admiral Poindexter, and Elliott Abrams are once
again "honorable men" advancing US policies eerily akin to those
which angered and horrified progressives in the early 1980s. The "Star Wars"
strategic defense initiative, disregard for human rights in pursuit of
unilateral US policies across the globe, and American alliances with thuggish
leaders are all back in fashion.
And in 2002,
just as in 1982, the US is once again standing by, complicit in its silence,
while Ariel Sharon commits war crimes using US tax dollars and US-provided
armaments to pursue a policy of incremental ethnic cleansing in the West Bank
and Gaza.
But nowadays, we
rarely see or hear protests as eloquent, powerful, pithy--or as dance-able--as
the songs of The Clash, which remain remarkably undated, sounding just as
fresh, energizing, and subversive today as they did upon first hearing two
decades ago.
Everytime I
listen to the Clash's album "Sandinista!" I automatically remember
the day that I learned of the Sabra and Shatila massacres. In August 1982, I
had just returned from my first-ever trip to the Middle East--an archaeological
expedition to the southeast Dead Sea area of Jordan, with memorable trips to
Israel, the West Bank and Syria afterwards.
On the way home,
I spent a week in New York City, and with the few dollars remaining from my
summer adventure, made one purchase in a record store in Times Square:
"Sandinista!" -- a remarkable, three-album set of powerful protest
songs set to reggae and rockabilly beats as well as clever spoofs on Motown
riffs. Every song on the three albums of "Sandinista!" makes pointed
commentaries on race relations in the UK, US adventurism in Central America,
and the then-looming threat of a US-USSR nuclear showdown.
Returning home
from college classes one Friday evening in September 1982, I was met at the
door by my roommate Janine. "I don't think you should watch the
news!" she said somberly as I walked into the house. The first reports and
images of the massacres in Sabra and Shatila were spilling across the
television screen.
In 1982, lacking
e-mail, a cell phone, activist list serves, or websites like this one, the best
outlet for my horror, sorrow and anger at what had happened in those camps in
Beirut was to crank up The Clash to full volume as I cleaned the house in fury.
One song in
particular brings that dark day into sharp focus for me: "The Call
Up," probably one of the most eloquent anti-war, anti-killing ballads ever
penned. The song goes beyond merely decrying war and killing; it emphasizes
where the responsibility for atrocities lies: each individual must refuse to be
complicit. This could well be the anthem for the courageous Israeli
"Refusniks" -- the 500+ Israeli soldiers who have refused to be
complicit in Sharon's war crimes and the daily US-sponsored killings in the
Occupied Territories.
In honor of the
late, great Joe Strummer, and as a warning of what may be coming in Iraq as
well as in Israel/Palestine in the near future, here are the lyrics of
"The Call Up" to remind us of what we must do in the coming, probably
frightening, new year:
The Call Up
It's up to you not to heed the call-up
and you must not act the way you were
brought up
Who knows the reasons why you have grown
up?
Who knows the plans or why they were
drawn up?
It's up to you not to heed the call-up
I don't wanna die!
It's up to you not to hear the call-up
I don't wanna kill!
For he who will die
Is he who will kill
Maybe I wanna see the wheatfields
Over Kiev and down to the sea
All the young people down the ages
They gladly marched off to die
Proud city fathers used to watch them
Tears in their eyes
There is a rose that I want to live for
Although, God knows, I may not have met
her
There is a dance an' I should be with her
There is a town - unlike any other
It's up to you not to hear the call-up
and you must not act the way you were
brought up
Who give you work an' why should you do
it?
At fifty five minutes past eleven
There is a rose...
Yeah!
Laurie
King-Irani, former editor of Middle East
Report, is a co-founder of the Electronic Intifada and is the North American
Coordinator for the International Campaign
for Justice for the Victims of Sabra & Shatila. She currently teaches Social Anthropology in
British Columbia. This article originally appeared in the Electronic
Intifada website.
Posted with author’s permission.