Praying with Poetry

A Lovesong for Is Ra El & Palestine

“Last Tuesday, Israel launched an attack on southern Beirut, the Lebanese capital, killing 7 and injuring 80 others, including 3 children and two women. The building the Israeli Air Force struck, using drones and missiles fired from fighter jets, was a civilian populated tower and was reduced to mere rubble. Tel Aviv’s primary target was a Hezbollah military leader called Fouad Shoukr, one of the groups most prominent military leaders, and he was killed alongside an Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) advisor in that building.

Only hours later, a shock report emerged from Iran. Ismail Hanniyeh, the head of the Hamas political wing, had been assassinated in a building located in Tehran, the Iranian Capital, after attending the inauguration of Iran’s new President Masoud Pezeshkian. Hanniyeh, who had been advocating strongly for a ceasefire in Gaza and even announced that Hamas would be willing to lay down its weapons if a two-State solution was reached only months earlier, had been eliminated, and with him, perhaps the final hope at a peaceful solution.”

~Last American Vagabond

The article details the strategy that has led to where we are politically, but it concludes with two options, neither of which I find acceptable. There are always more options than the ones deliberately or unintentionally put on the table as if there are no others. Einstein believed the Jewish people deserved to be able to live in their homeland, but alongside, equally learning from the Arabs who were already there at the time of the creation of the modern Israel. Einstein believed in a binational state of equal rights for all. He believed in peaceful co-existence in a spirit of mutuality and love of learning, through friendliness.

Fee free to pray this poem with me!

Peace

What if everyone just got along?

What if everyone just got along in peace and stopped trying to divide it piece by piece?

What if Is Ra El

Recognized its Egyptian influence

And it’s family ties to Islam

And what if everyone just got along?

What if Shalom

And Salaam

Learned to sing the same song

And forgive all that has gone so very, very wrong?

Jews and Arabs living side by side

Joyously learning from one another

Kindred, beloved, there is room for each other

Allah

Shema

Equal in one nation

A joyous Jewish Arab celebration

Instead of the degradation of one race over another

In the name of religion

Or safety

Look how many have lost their loved ones

Or their lives

Protecting old wounds

Just leading to more rounds

All the killing, it mightily confounds

The answer is our Oneness

And both religions teach the same

People of the book

Or people who don’t believe the book

We’re all still family

Living side by wide

Equal in every way when it comes to every human and legal right

Honoring uniqueness

In the way each shines their light

Finding way to nurture and support one another’s discoveries and traditions

Honoring those who love the truth

Instead of seeking their extraditions

The government for people

Instead of against it, using their bodies to defend atrocities

Living peacefully, in harmony

Wouldn’t require anything but to accept ones neighbor

To know that God loves them just as much as you

You are only special to help others real eyes

They are special too

Let’s real eyes

That Holy Land Within Us

A Place of Divine

Love

And Aloha Ma

The Divine In You

The Divine in Me

It’s the same Shekina

Let us share the land

Knowing Gaia is her own sentient Loving Goddess

Not ultimately ours to command

Is the living light of loving Shekina

What if Jews and Arabs lived as equals

In the Holy Land both claim

Children of the same father

What is Sarah forgave herself

And Hagar forgive Sarah

And the Great Nation of Islam

Recognized Rabia the Sufi

Whom original Muslims saw as the litmus

For True Faith

Surrendering World Power

The struggle

The Jihad

To become One with Allah

Not one with the Ryadh

To make a corridor

Or a Western Dyad

One with Allah

Who loves all Children

One with the Shema

For God is One

How can we not Love One Another?

Enough blood shed

Let’s love one another

And share the land instead

Shalom Salaam

~ Alicia Kwon

Half Jewish

Born in a Sufi Comune