POEM: The Beirut Jokebook, June Jordan, 1982

Editors, The Black Agenda Review

25 Jun 2025

“What did the Arab lady say to the Israeli tank?”

The United States made the zionists, their most important asset in West Asia, take the lead in brutally attacking Iran, targeting civilians and committing war crimes, per usual. But within a week, the zionists were begging for their master to come help them. The U.S. then launched and dropped megabombs on Iran’s nuclear sites. All of this was unprovoked. And all of it was illegal. But what is legality in this world run by the white supremacist west? Nevertheless, with Iran’s continuing retaliation against the zionist entity, depleting its arsenal while causing major physical and psychological damage, and with its threat of a major retaliation on other US assets in the region, those who instigated the war begged for a ceasefire.

But the U.S. and the zionist entity “ceasefires” are never about peace or diplomacy. They called a ceasefire in the middle of their genocide of Palestinian people and their bombing of Lebanon. The bombing of Lebanon hasn’t stopped, the genocide of the Palestinian people continues into the 21st month. (According to a new report, almost 400,000 Palestinians, half of them children, are believed to have been murdered by the zionists, and tens of thousands more are injured.)

Indeed, a “ceasefire” in the US-zionist playbook is terror; it is targeted assassinations, ground invasions, missile strikes, ethnic cleansing. “Ceasefire” talks are always blown to bits by zionist rockets. We should always assume US-zionist calls for “ceasefire” are a bad joke. Indeed, writing in 1982, during the US-zionist assault on Beirut, Lebanon, the immortal poet, June Jordan, accurately described the depravity racist settler terror covered in the language of “negotiations” and “ceasefire.” US-zionist strategy in West Asia, she argues, comes from a “jokebook.” She enumerates the jokebook’s bullet points in caustically humorous, but deadly serious, fashion.

Don’t be deceived by the proclamations of the spray-tanned buffoon in the White House and his unhinged, social media posts. The US-zionist butchers’ call for a “ceasefire” is coming from the same jokebook – hiding the treachery and violence unleashed in West Asia by genocidal settlers.

We reprint June Jordan’s “The Beirut Jokebook” below.

The Beirut Jokebook

June Jordan

1. June 8, 1982: This is not an invasion.

2. July 9, 1982: This is a ceasefire.

3. July 15, 1982: This is a ceasefire.

4. July 30, 1982. This ceasefire is strained.

5. August 4, 1982: This is not an invasion.

6. As a gesture of humanity we ask you to please pile all of your clothes and food and pots and pans and furniture and children on a bicycle and leave your homes. Our planes will be along, shortly.

7. You could go to the Sudan.

8. As another humanitarian gesture we have turned off the water and the electricity in order to see peaceful negotiations.

9. What has 500,000 people and flies?

10. This is a ceasefire.

11. Ronald Reagan lost his patience a long time ago.

12. Menachem Begin is constantly losing his.

13. What did the Arab lady say to the Israeli tank?

14. Knock! Knock!

15. Who’s there?

16. Heroic!

17. Heroic who?

18. Heroic Philip Habib!