Rains White Phosphorous Here
1/17/12
Travel with me to the land of sad oranges.
Here children play in refugee camps. Grey, grey the buildings along the narrowest streets.
Stench of garbage, cesspools of sewage no sun, no trees.
Rains white phosphorous here where missiles fall.
White rain burns the skin and organs die.
I am haunted by their faces, eyes speak the unspeakable.
I have seen it all before.
I want to tell them soon it will be over
This tragedy for which there is no forgiveness.
They wonder who I am and so
I show a peace sign, as if to say I am a friend.
“Viva Palestina” they echo after me.
Imagine what it is like for me
Refugee from nazi madness,
To see AGAIN proud people
Demonized as evil, driven from their land, ripped from their roots.
Grimmest of war stories.
Unimaginable horror, collective punishment, life unsustainable
As if we did not know already, how nationalism in it’s cruelest form
Is born of twisted hate and ideology
To cloud all forms of reason.
Sometimes I feel I have lost all reason,
That I simply dream this nightmare of Israel, echo of “death to all Jews.”
Now, “Palestinians don’t exist.”
Magnificent. Jewish empathy has taken such a battering but its heart still beats though poems like this. And there will be no peace until the people of Gaza have justice and are treated as the equal of Jews under the law of Israel/Palestine .
Lillian does it yet again, so true, so compelling, so incisive, but so often falling on deaf ears.
Imagine what it is like for me
Thank you, Lillian. I do try to imagine what it is like for you, and for the Palestinians to be living in such a hell. But in truth it is impossible.