We shoot children too, don't we?

Most of these people truly desire

to harvest their olive trees

as they have for hundreds of years

Most of these people truly desire

to raise their kids

not to throw stones

or Molotov cocktails;

but to study in peace,

to play in peace,

and raise a flag.

A flag,

their own flag.

And facing that flag, to cry

as we did, that night, then, excited as we were.

And we have no, have no, have no

right in the world to rob them of this desire,

This flag,

these tears. These tears which always,

always come after all the others.

Let us start preparing our defense.

We will need it soon enough:

those who actually did it

and those who still do.

All those who hushed it up

and those who still do.

And those who said nothing

and those who clucked their tongues, saying,

"Something must be done, really;

(but not tonight. I have a concert, a gala event,

a birthday! ).

Indeed, we'll all get our summons one day

for the colonels' trials.

The colonels' trials are coming.

Their time will come, it must be so.

Their trials of the generals, the colonels,

and the division, the battalion,

and the platoon commanders.

There is no escaping it.

This is how history works.

What shall we say then?

What will the colonels, the captains, the corporals say?

What will they say-

of those terrible beatings,

the brutality,

of houses blown up.

And most of all, the humiliation.

That humiliation.

Of patients forced to wipe off the writing on the walls,

of old men forced to take down a flag

from an electric pole,

who were electrocuted, or fell

and broke their legs.

Of the old water carrier

whom soldiers ordered off his donkey

and rode on his back, just for fun.

We turned a deaf ear, we turned a deaf heart,

mean, arrogant, and dumb.

Who do we think we are?

Who gave us the right

To be so deaf, so dumb?

Ignoring the obvious:

They are as human as we are, as we are.

At least as we used to be.

only forty one years ago.

No less diligent, no less smart

as sensitive, as full of hope.

They love their wives and children

as we do, no less.

And our children now shoot theirs

with lead, plastic bullets, and gas.

The Palestinians' state will come to pass.

It will.

Not a poet wrote this.

History will.

and seasons will come and seasons will go

and life goes on as we very well know:

weddings and birth and death all the same,

but just the shame of it. The shame.