Poem: Kinship

I wrote this poem some time after the assault on Gaza, then read it in December at the Poets Against War! event I co-hosted with Norman Nawrocki. Andrea from Canadian Dimension was there and asked if they could publish it. Et voilà. KINSHIP

I finally know why I feel a kinship with the Jews:

They have made me one of them.

My Palestinian family live where they are not wanted,

my father was exiled for no reason other than all of a sudden what was his

was not.

Just like the Jews

we wear our ethnicity like a target

and an entire country has decided we need to be rounded up.

Just like the Jews

the walls built to crush us can barely contain us.

And now just like the Jews

we are being blamed and vilified

and hounded and hunted

and exterminated.

For centuries the Jews were alone in the world;

Lucky for them, they have made us in their image.