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If This Cruel Thing Bleeds


Two Palestinians have been deported to the Gaza Strip from Israel, raising fears that more expulsions could follow under a controversial new Israeli military order.
After nine years in Israeli jail, Ahmad Sabah, a 40-year-old Palestinian, was sent to Gaza, instead of being released to the West Bank where his family was waiting for him.
Israelis sent him to Gaza because he had a Palestinian ID issued there.
His family said that Sabah, who was arrested in 2001 for "security offences" against Israel, has no connection to Gaza and he has refused to leave the border crossing in protest at his treatment. "It is my right to return to my wife and family," he said.

He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty, he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself.
__Thomas Paine

Human beings are so made that the ones who do the crushing feel nothing; it is the person crushed who feels what is happening. Unless one has placed oneself on the side of the oppressed, to feel with them, one cannot understand.
__Simone Weil

The worst government is the most moral. One composed of cynics is often very tolerant and humane. But when fanatics are on top there is no limit to oppression.
__Henry Louis Mencken


If this cruel thing bleeds unrestrained; the wicked hydra grown again in the dry air as children weep under rolling metal, am I, the silent and free, not the oppressor?

The unspoken sin is mine to bear, my wordless thoughts fetch nothing, prayers, unheard like the child’s howl.

Like those who are suffering will throw their hands skyward in search of agonies release, I imagine my empathy to be enough.

Yet what do I imagine for myself if I but yield within my frozen flesh?

The unspoken sin is mine to bear, my wordless thoughts fetch nothing, prayers, unheard like the child’s howl.

Silence moves like one drop of rain in the sea and prayer, even less, when fear is king.

To move now, to raise my voice is not surrender, not cowardice, but an ocean of rain…


© 2010 by mark prime

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