[HCCN] Fwd: GAZA poem/with prayers

[Judith Robbins]

Thank you to Patricia Ranzoni for sharing this poem for Gaza/Palestine.


>
> GAZA. QUESTIONS FROM AN AMERICAN ELDER. 2008. 2009. 2010.
>
> by Patricia Ranzoni
>
> And so we ask: what has the Jewish “return” to Zion wrought?....  
> Could there possibly
> be a way that both peoples might realize their respective dreams of  
> return?
>      – Rabbi Brant Rosen, “Jewish Liberation and Palestinian  
> Liberation,”
>        “Four More Questions for Pesach,” Jewish Voice for Peace  
> 2010 Passover Insert
>
> If I tell you I’ve studied a lifetime on my own to learn what my  
> father left our childhoods
> to fight for will you grant me the right to ask what I must ask?
>
> If I tell you I grew up suffering (as much as any safe child could)  
> for the suffering Jews
> so have believed in their state will you help me understand what I  
> cannot now grasp?
>
> Why through the years were we not told what happened to the  
> Palestinians
> to give the Jews a place?
>
> Is Gaza a ghetto? Why isn’t that word being uttered?
>
> Is an evil Israeli-fortified refugee camp anything approaching an  
> evil German
> concentration camp with its spiked wires, impenetrable walls and  
> armed guards?
>
> Is Israel a democracy? Does Israel’s requirement for ethnic purity  
> have anything
> in common with Germany’s back then?
>
> Are the Palestinians being eradicated? How is this Just?
>
> Do Israelis believe they are victims of Palestinians the way Germans
> believed they were victims of Jews?
>
> Is Israeli contempt, annihilation and acquisition of Palestinian  
> culture and resources
> anything close to the German contempt, annihilation and acquisition  
> of Jewish
> culture and treasure?
>
> Is the closure of neighboring countries to fleeing Palestinians  
> anything near
> the refusal of countries to allow the entry of escaping Jews?  
> Someday will there be
> an award-winning film on a Palestinian _Exodus_? Will there be a  
> Palestinian
> _Schindler’s List_ honoring saints who tried to help? Will  
> Palestinians ever
> be allowed safe haven on God-given ground, too?
>
> Does the minority Israeli occupation and treatment of the majority  
> Palestinians
> on Palestinian ancestral ground constitute apartheid?
>
> Do newly arrived American Jews have more right to ancient  
> Palestinian ground
> than indigenous Palestinians?
>
> Why do Israelis continue settling on Palestinian ground? Uproot  
> their olive trees?
>
> Do Israelis truly believe that the worries of their privileged  
> children practicing
> in colorful, well-stocked shelters where they sing and play is  
> comparable
> to the suffering of starving, ill, orphaned, rubble-living,  
> traumatized, wounded,
> bleeding, dismembered and dying Palestinian children? Why are News  
> networks
> and Jewish spokespeople obligated to try depicting it as  
> equivalency when it only
> highlights the contrast? Do they think we are blind and deaf? Are we?
>
> Are Jewish children more sacred than Palestinian children?
> Are United States presidents’ children more sacred than Palestinian  
> children?
>
> Why such Silence from Peace and Justice activists?
>
> Why must Americans who abhor the slaughter of these interned people  
> fund it,
> being forced into complicity? Why doesn’t the American Congress  
> debate it? Are not
> the Palestinians, like the Jews, entitled to defend themselves?
>
> If there are Jewish peace activists criticizing Israel, as some  
> say, why isn’t the press reporting it?
>
> Is Israel off limits? Not accountable in the ways other countries  
> are? Given cover
> and comfort by America? Why?
>
> When Israeli/US planes drop flyers warning the trapped Palestinians  
> that it is going
> to get worse, what are the Palestinians supposed to do to save  
> themselves and
> their beloveds? Run and limp shrieking with their aged and young to  
> the other side
> of their cage? Would flyers from German planes warning the Jews in  
> the Warsaw ghetto
> have helped or been obscene?
>
> Why are international reporters not allowed in? Why no witnesses?  
> Why does the world
> allow this? Why doesn’t the Israeli military come to its faith and  
> refuse?
>
> What do you suppose the Palestinian Anne Frank, scribbling  
> testimony right now
> before she dies, if she hasn’t already, will be named? What do you  
> imagine school children
> years from here will say about her and what she endured and told?  
> Are the Israelis blind and deaf?
> What do they tell their young about what they do to Palestinian  
> children? Do Israeli
> children believe they are superior? What will they think of their  
> country if they learn
> the truth? What will ours?
>
> Is it anti-Semitic to even ask questions?
>
> Will we never climb out of the Hell of Ignorance and Revenge as  
> religion?
> Crawl, begging forgiveness, into the light of Knowledge and a  
> twenty-first century
> of religion as Refusal?
>
> Is this Revelation, then, how Israel is being shown that through  
> Gaza they, at last, answer
> their own old questions: What kind of monsters do such things?  
> Where is God? How
> can people of conscience do nothing?

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