Ye have become slayers, murderers of God and of His image

A poem, by Avrum Burg, author, activist, speaker of the Knesset (1999-2003)

"If God Were in the Heavens of Gaza"

A Biblical Wrath

If God were in the heavens of Gaza,

and His ears not deafened by the shattering of life,

by the cries of the bound upon the altar of Israel,

and if His prophets were true,

not deceivers of visions,

then thus would His word come unto you:

Woe unto the uprooters of olive trees who bow thrice in prayer,

unto the plunderers who bind the phylactery,

unto the bearers of arms wrapped in fringes,

unto the kissers of the mezuzah who profane the holy.

Who hath required this of you:

to ravage and to slay, to oppress and to despoil?

Was My land an abattoir, My cradle of faiths?

Are ye my believers?

I have loathed you utterly.

Upon your sword ye stand, and by it I shall let ye fall.

Turn from Me, and I will consume you,

blotting your remembrance from beneath the heavens....

Woe unto the ruler,

who sealeth decrees of death,

and goeth forth unto a banquet of fatness,

washing his hands in blood,

and mingling his wine with the tears of children.

Ye have become slayers,

murderers of God and of His image.

The blood of innocents ye have spilled;

the blood of war cleaveth unto your loins,

unto the sandals upon your feet.

Your voice is coarse as the voice of Esau,

and your hands are defiled with the blood of the hunted.

Of all the sons of Jacob ye remain but two:

Simeon and Levi accursed,

and the darkness of Cain is upon your souls.

Accursed be ye, armies of Cain’s successors

tormentors and rejoicers,

captains and beasts.

Even Jacob the naive hath perished by your hand;

his gentle voice is silenced,

his raiment reeks of field and slaughter,

your stolen birthright is cursed,

reeking with the stench of hunt and death.

Cursed be the night wherein your mother conceived,

and the day wherein ye were born.

no innocence abideth in your tents

I will not gather with your assembly

For your sword ye have lifted,

and the image of man and God ye have profaned.

Cursed be ye forever,

who rend your garments with a hypocrisy,

yet behold not the rivers of souls poured out like water.

Ye shall not see, nor hear, nor know, nor mourn.

Let your living messiahs perish,

as the gods ye slew again and again.

there is no God anymore in Gaza,

for He is buried beneath its ruins.

Only man shall require the blood at your guilty hands.

Unto your last day, and after it, ye shall not be cleansed.

Your time is come;

for he that sheddeth man’s blood,

by man shall his blood be shed.

***

A Kaddish, by Burg

"May His great Name be magnified and sanctified"

Not great and not holy is He,

for in His Name blood is spilled in vain.

Magnified and sanctified are only these:

the impulse of inciters and destroyers,

the heaps of ruin and the rows of graves,

the cries of terror and the silence imposed.

No greatness shall be found in the ruins of a sleeping neighborhood,

in the cry of a child in the darkness of his life,

in the weeping of a mother who warms with her empty breasts

the bodies of her children.

There is no holiness in this blood, no greatness in this bereavement.

And who shall say Kaddish after their beds and their deaths

the multitudes of human lives cut off

by the cruelty of spirits defiled?

***

My thanks to Peter Beinart.