I am going to take everything from you. Your job, your dream career, your school, All the opportunities to lift yourself out of poverty. I am going to take your family away from you. They will be dispersed all over the world and you’ll never get a reunion. 9 months to see your sister. 15 years to see your mother. 6 months to be in the same place at the same time so you can actually marry your fiancé of 10 years. Your brothers will be imprisoned for breathing too loudly. I am going to make you sick. I will take your medicine. I will take away your healthcare centers. I will make it impossible for doctors to get to you. The life-saving machines in the hospitals won’t work anyway because I will take your electricity. I will take your TV, your internet, your stove, your washing machine Even though you touch the sun every morning I will prevent you from building solar panels. I am going to take everything from you. Every cloud, every inch of sky You can’t move, you can’t breathe, you can’t eat, you can’t drink, you can’t read, you can’t escape Unless I say so, unless I feel a little generous that day. I will steal or destroy your lands that are suitable for farming so you can’t feed yourself. Instead, you must pay me a lot of cash for some decent food or stay dependent on overseas humanitarians for the rest of your life. I will prevent you from building… anything. You can’t have anything. Your sea, your only temporary escape from me, will be polluted with your own garbage And you will swim in it anyway, you will get sick, and then I’ll tell everyone “Look how disgusting they are” and everyone will believe me It’s not even your sea. I was here first. This random passage in the Bible says so. I will close every border around you, I will shut down every factory I will impoverish you to the point of schizophrenia, and then you will hurt yourselves and one another Then I will say, “Look at those animals killing one each other” and everyone will believe me Food, healthcare, education, clean water, a job; I will make all the obvious basics seem like privileges It’s your fault I shut down the road through Jericho that you used to take to get to Ramallah once a millennium. You fought back for a little while. You did not submit enough. I will bomb you so much that you think it’s normal, that you can recognize what kind of death machine is flying overhead. Your family in Beit Lahem that you haven’t seen in 10 years will know that I am coming to hurt you because of the sounds in the sky. I will deny you democracy and then say, “Why can’t you have a democracy like me?” I will make the UN your second government, and God help you if there’s a massive refugee crisis next door because then your food packages will decrease. Speaking of which, just look around you, look at your neighbors. Aren’t you grateful that things here are better? You really should be thanking me. I will take the air from your lungs, the sight from your eyes, the skin from your bones, the enamel from your teeth, the roof from your house, I will take everything. Over and over and over. Everything. Everything. Everything. Because… I’m scared of you. Because… No one stops me. Because… I can. …so we spoke to a lovely young mother from Gaza today over Skype. Finally, a hijabie
Posted on: Tue, 01 Jul 2014 15:04:08 +0000