You who were the 'Chosen', <br />you who suffered long. <br />You who wore the yellow star, <br />The victims of great wrongs. <br />You who lost six million dead, <br />slaughtered for a creed. <br />You who for centuries have been <br />the whipping boys of greed. <br />You who watch the old ones come, <br />to scan the lists with dread, <br />with tattooed arms and memories, <br />to say kaddish for their dead. <br />Has the pain and grief, <br />your race endured, <br />stopped your ears and eyes. <br />Does the horror of the Holocaust, <br />Silence Palestinian cries. <br />Are the camps across the Jordan, <br />with their dying diseased and pained, <br />less real than those your fathers knew <br />and by which humanity was shamed. <br />Though you've never had the peace you crave, <br />and your children still are lost, <br />Can you really want to add the blood, <br />of other innocents to the cost. <br />The things we see your soldiers do <br />and hear your politicians state, <br />can they really be the deeds and words, <br />of refugees from hate? <br />Can oppression be the practice, <br />of those who bear its scars. <br />The use of fear and naked force, <br />when your history it mars. <br />How far apart Salaam - Shalom, <br />'Peace’, in both your tongues. <br />This land has held you in its palm <br />in truth you both belong; <br />Arab, Jew semitic both, <br />your histories entwined. <br />Can you not find a middle ground <br />with differences that fine. <br /> <br />To Arab, Jew, and Christian <br />this land has long held sway. <br />In Gods name, yours, theirs, and mine, <br />can peace never find it's way<br /><br />Bill Mitton<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-chosen/
