By Paul J. Balles
Paul J. Balles reminds those who keep silent in the
face of crimes, whether by Israel, the USA or some
other, that eventually their silence may rebound
on them with a vengeance.
In a poem by Maurice Ogden, a hangman comes to town
and builds a scaffold in front of the courthouse.
The poem's narrator says:
And we wondered whenever we had the time,
Who the criminal? What the crime?
Till one cried, "Hangman, who is he,
for whom you raised the gallows-tree?"
Then a twinkle grew in his buckshot eye
and he gave a riddle instead of reply.
"He who serves me best," said he
Shall earn the rope on the gallows-tree."
And he stepped down and laid his hand
on a man who came from another land.
So we gave him way and no one spoke
out of respect for his hangman�s cloak.
After hanging the "alien",
the hangman stayed in the village and told the people
that he was there for more than the alien.
"Do you think I've gone to all this fuss,
to hang one man? That's the thing I do."
One voice said "Shame" and the hangman hung him.
After that no one spoke out of fear. Next he hung a "usurer",
a Jew, and then a black, and then another and another until
everyone in the village was gone except the hangman
and the narrator.
Just before hanging the narrator, the hangman says:
"First the alien ... then the Jew.
I did no more than you let me do."
At one time or another, the hangman's prey in America
have been native Indians, Mexicans, Jews, blacks,
southerners, British, Germans, Italians, Irish, Japanese,
Communists, North Vietnamese, North Koreans,
anti-war protesters, Serbians, Russians, civil rights
protesters, and now, Palestinians, Arabs and Muslims.
As one commentator has said, "The poem can be seen as
an indictment of those who stand idly by while others
commit grave evil or injustice, such as
The Holocaust or McCarthyism."
That being the case, many should be indicted
for standing idly by while:
Palestinians in Gaza are the victims of devastating
treatment by the Israeli hangman
Hamas is labelled a terrorist organization but not Israel
The theft of Palestinian governance from a
duly elected Hamas
Fingering Hezbollah as a terrorist organization when it
has committed no terrorist acts
The support of Israel by the US, UK and now
France no matter what crimes against
humanity they commit
The destruction of Iraq by America while failing
to capture the bearded old man hiding securely
in caves in Afghanistan and Pakistan
Israel continues as an apartheid state
Lobbyists control the US government and media
Israel's possession of over 200 nuclear warheads while
objecting to Iran's development of nuclear power
The terrorism and crime of Guantanamo
America's violations of human rights while pretending to
be the icon of freedom
The erosion of the US constitution and
its intended protection
of personal freedom and liberty
America's support of dictators like Musharraf �
the latest in a series of exemplars
America and Israel threatens to bomb Iran
Designating Iran's Revolutionary
Guard a terrorist organization
Zionists label any criticism of Israel anti-Semitic
US protects American corporate
interests destroying the environment
America gives free rein to mercenary cowboys in Iraq to
murder and maim without control or punishment
for their crimes�
DO NOT KEEP SILENT when your own ideas and values
are being attacked. .If a dictatorship ever comes to this
country, it will be by the default of those who keep silent.
We are still free enough to speak. Do we have time?
No one can tell." �
Ayn Rand, Philosophy: Who Needs It.
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