October 24, 2025

Palestine, Not Zion

by Su Hwang

This Mizna Online exclusive feature is published as part of Mizna 26.1: Kindred, link to purchase HERE.

— Nour Eldin H., assistant editor

. . . no empire needs to endure beyond the decree 
of honeybees.

—Su Hwang

Palestine, Not Zion

I SAID I LOVED YOU AND I WANTED
GENOCIDE TO STOP

—June Jordan

Zion, how easily it rhymes with the almighty lion. Growling,
fanged snarl of oppressor; its seismic roars & slippery slopes
that signify nothing but the grandiose, manufactured tropes
of apex predators. Listen, the Divine does not peer through
the crosshairs of an AK-47, nor gnarl a twisted crucifix into
riven stars—to declare sovereignty like some virtuous alibi.
Warlusting acolytes assert their righteousness by Hail Mary
detonations; the histrionics of might to genocide entire
bloodlines & ravage ancient olive groves. Staking sole claim
on the Levant as fair or holy only leads to catastrophe: Nakba.
Let us beseech for the swift collapse of gruesome ideologies
& demagogues; no empire needs to endure beyond the decree
of honeybees. From the river to the sea, the sky to every
hive—the earth pollinates loss just as much as it does love.
White phosphorous rained onto rubble ossuaries singeing
skin to bone, bone to ash, ash to air, purely for spectacle, by
god, why must we weather the gluttony of such abiding fear. 

Su Hwang is a poet, stargazer, and author of Bodega, which received the 2020 Minnesota Book Award in poetry and was a finalist for the 2021 Kate Tufts Discovery Award. Born in Seoul, Korea, she currently lives in the unceded land of the Dakota and Ojibwe people and works with the Minnesota Prison Writing Workshop.