we have become / the pharaoh

I have been so incredibly grateful for the leadership and energy of people like Jewish Voice for Peace who are making it abundantly clear that there are many many of us American Jews that do not support Israel at the expense of Palestinian human rights. The best time to make this clear would have been decades ago but the second best time is right now.

For years I have been called “antisemitic” by Jews who conflate Israel with the Jewish people. Not only do we not owe any loyalty to that colonial apartheid state, I believe Jews are actively harmed by their actions as Israel rightly becomes a global pariah and claims to be acting for US!

Tema Okun is a long-time anti-racist trainer and changemaker. She is the author of the widely circulated article “White Supremacy Culture” which was originally written and published in 1999 and continues to educate and transform the way white people understand ourselves and our impact in the world. Last week, Tema offered us this poem, “If our survival is to be Jewish.”

If our survival is to be Jewish

i

my tears are crying
I am drowning

no longer wandering
in the wilderness
we have become
the pharaoh

ii

centuries of
sacred celebration
and suffering
sunk into strident subjugation

the mirror is cracking

iii

my despair is desperate
I am trembling

our prayers
so full of longing
mock us

we chant
in the shade
of a homeland
shuttering for half a century
the lives of humans
we push out of sight behind
(prison) Walls

iv

my anger is angry
I am shaking

our silence grows deadly
with the deal we’ve made
to defend our hearts
from knowing
they love their children
their laughter their lives
as much as we do

v

my rage is raging
I am bent
over

Jewish godmother to
an exuberant Palestinian boy,
now a man

my love for him
a kind of genesis,
his love for me a kind of grace

he would hate us
otherwise

not any kind of anti-Semitism

consequences
for making of him a demon,
and discarding him daily in the dust
of so many, too many checkpoints

vi

my trauma is traumatized
I am broken

we condemn them
for making corpses of
our children
as we make corpses
of theirs

the math of it
is bleeding us

dry

vii

my people, my Jewish people,
I don’t know how to reach you

our fear is afraid
and forgets
we are the ones
settling, seizing, sequestering

we pile fear upon fear like
stacks of rubble from
houses demolished
dreams destroyed
for decades

viii

my grief is grieving
I am wailing

we did not outlive
the horrors of holocaust
to hoard survival
like this

to hollow ourselves out

ix

or did we

x

my people, my Jewish people,

tell me it is not too late
to choose another way.

Tema Okun, Oct. 26, 2023