With Love to Isaac and Ishmael
Beloved Israel.
Time is breathing out
as you lie at the moment
between the last inspiration
and the next taste of sweet Jerusalem air.
Centuries of abuse and victimization
by a world of double standards
has left you stiff-necked and confused.
Brothers separated by the foggy veil of suspicion.
Partners at odds being swallowed by the same whale.
Oh, Isaac,
reach across the unknown, and take the hand of Ishmael.
Not like an innocent child
nor like Nations short on perspective and narrowed in vision,
but as a family with choice between extinction and light.
Turn aside the next page of history
and re-write the scenario.
Imagine the Middle East as the center among civilized nations.
A path for the prophets of the future.
Take this opportunity
to exist alongside each other in collective pride.
In time there will be trust, and one day love will follow . . .
as an artifact cleared and awakened by desert winds.
Gary F. Gordon
From "WOMEN OF STRENGTH... MEN OF HEART: Poems by Gary F. Gordon"
(C) Copyright 1994, Priory Books, Duluth, Minnesota
ISBN 0-936773-09X
The Last Israeli Prime Minister
I know who you are
bearer of the of the great shandreh.
A scoundrel by virtue of your enormous ego
A poster boy for students of Freud.
For you were handed peace, hope and optimism
By warriors turned peace-makers.
One more step in the right direction and
Israel would again be a light to the nations.
But it is your plan
to let go of our beloved Israel.
To destroy the hope of Semites, both Palestinian and Israeli.
And blame your failure on the Arab people.
For the sake of the settlers, and the Heredim,
you have strengthened the hand of the enemies of peace,
and raised Hamas and Hizbullah to the status of a deity.
For one cannot simultaneously destroy hope and make peace.
Neither can respect be forsaken, and consensus reached.
Like none other before, you have set in motion, the wheels
Har Megido. Galvanizing the Arab nations who support terrorism.
In Iraq, Iran, Syria, and Libya they are singing your praises,
For you have made their case as your predecessors could not.
The course you are traveling is evil and dangerous.
Its focus is on the pride of intransigence,
and small, insignificant victories.
The cost is too great to bear,
the destruction of dreams, by Israeli and Palestinian parents
For the future of their children.
But it is not too late.
For this is the Middle East, a land of paradox.
Change in this global village can take centuries or minutes.
The key is to trade hope for despair.
To form partnerships in nation building and
divest ourselves of pertinacity.
If we give them the opportunity, Jewish and Arab children will
live in security, prosperity and mutual respect.
If not, the seeds of Abraham will be scattered at the mercy of
the Hamsin.
Machatunim! (Inlaws) Sons and daughters of Abraham
Children of Sara and Hagar
Go forward with dispatch
Look not backward in your haste.
There will be time
to reflect
To shake your heads in collective disbelief
At the shrine of common guilt.
For how could the seeds
from the Father of Nations
have done this to their God.
Trampled indigenous populations
in the nightmare of colonialism,
Expressed the arrogance of racial purity
in the Pogroms and killing fields
of Europe and the Middle East.
Converted each other by force
Denying the mutual respect
That each birth right demands.
Turn from the past
For it exists only in minds and museums.
Focus on the current as it passes beneath your feet
gather the future to your heart
as you walk with the prophet of peace.
Gary Gordon is a founding member of Building Bridges, Jews, Muslims, and Christians in Duluth, Minnesota, who learn together and hold workshops on their belief in the inevitability of peace in the Middle East. Gary can be reached by e-mail at ggordon@css.edu.
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