Source Link: https://opensiddur.org/?p=37393
open_content_license: Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike (CC BY-SA) 4.0 International copyleft licenseDate: 2021-06-03
Last Updated: 2024-06-01
Categories: Conflicts over Sovereignty and Dispossession, Tishah b'Av
Tags: 2014 Israel–Gaza conflict, 21st century C.E., 58th century A.M., English vernacular prayer, Israeli–Palestinian conflict, Needing Translation (into Arabic), Needing Translation (into Hebrew), Palestinian Diapsora, Palestinian refugees, Refugee Crisis, ארץ ישראל Erets Yisrael, מדינת ישראל Medinat Yisrael, סליחות səliḥot, فلسطين Filasṭīn Palestine
Excerpt: A Tishah b'Av seliḥah for Gaza during the 2014 Gaza War. . . .
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A Lamentation for Gaza
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Gaza weeps alone.
Bombs falling without end her cheeks wet with tears. A widow abandoned imprisoned on all sides with none willing to save her. |
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We who once knew oppression
have become the oppressors. Those who have been pursued are now the pursuers. We have uprooted families from their homes, we have driven them deep into this desolate place, this narrow strip of exile. |
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All along the roads there is mourning.
The teeming marketplaces have been bombed into emptiness. The only sounds we hear are cries of pain sirens blaring drones buzzing bitterness echoing into the black vacuum of homes destroyed and dreams denied. |
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We have become Gaza’s master
leveling neighborhoods with the mere touch of a button for her transgression of resistance. Her children are born into captivity they know us only as occupiers enemies to be feared and hated. |
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We have lost all
that once was precious to us. This fatal attachment to our own might has become our downfall. This idolatrous veneration of the land has sent us wandering into a wilderness of our own making. |
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We have robbed Gaza of
her deepest dignity plunged her into sorrow and darkness. Her people crowd into refugee camps held captive by fences and buffer zones gunboats, mortar rounds and Apache missles. |
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We sing of Jerusalem,
to “a free people in their own land” but our song has become a mockery. How can we sing a song of freedom imprisoned inside behind walls we have built with our own fear and dread? |
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Here we sit clinging to our illusions
of comfort and security while we unleash hell on earth on the other side of the border. We sit on hillsides and cheer as our explosions light up the sky while far below, whole neighborhoods are reduced to rubble. |
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For these things I weep:
for the toxic fear we have unleashed from the dark place of our hearts for the endless grief we are inflicting on the people of Gaza. |
“A Lamentation for Gaza” was first published by the author on his blog on 1 August 2014.
Contributor: Brant Rosen
Co-authors:
Featured Image:
Title: 20140805_beit_hanun7
Caption: Ruins in Beit Hanoun, August 2014 (credit: btselem, license: CC BY)
