i am Palestinian yesterday, today and tomorrow by Michael Hall

I am Palestinian



Every free man and every free woman

Everywhere you are found

From the Antarctic to the Arctic, Australia to California

You are Palestinian



Say what you will and work where you till

Debate your neighbor and choose your government

Drive where you might and dream what you deem

You are Palestinian



For an ugly darkness is in the middle east spreading like a disease around the globe

It surrounds the cage of Gaza and around the apartheid wall of Bethlehem

It is over the steel mesh hanging in the markets of Hebron, and in the capital of the world; Jerusalem

Outside the souls of 11,000 rotting within the prisons and jails of Israel



As i live in corn country thousands of miles away

Within spring valley and upon my front yard a pole with a keffiyeh with a photo of the Miva Marmara

But my heart mind and soul are in the soil,air and taste of Palestine

For i am Palestinian, yesterday, today and tomorrow



How i marvel by the betrayal of silence

From those great patriotic intellectuals, those boastful and proud warmongering freedom lovers who nary whisper or acknowledge their treason by acquiesce to what they say they worship and believe in

How homicide,kidnapping and piracy on the high seas is lauded as exceptionally above the law

A stab in the back twisted in all who say they are free and brave yet are completely caged and afraid



i call and write my 'public servants'to inform them that Americans have been murdered,robbed,shanghaied and beaten

But they ignore me or send me form notes that dance and sing a spin like a opera singing ballerina

And the media, prostituting its journalistic integrity as it calls premeditated homicide 'self-defense'

As it dons the dress of double-standards and then drinks until their drunk with hypocrisy





While today in the land of the free the high court announces that it is now illegal and a war crime to talk of peace or human rights

For only the government can legally decide whom i can and cannot talk to

As they decide who are the good guys and who are the bad guys as they terrorize and war

This anti-terror law will now terrorize those seeking peace,dialogue and justice and where is the outrage?





To follow suit in God's land one group suppresses another as it steals what they possess

Because a great crime was done to them by others 70 years ago

They believe that they are then justified to can do whatever they want to any no matter how odious or vile

As their edification is slip sliding down a slippery slope to perdition

And i stand here, with my little candle,hanthala, a Palestinian, yesterday, today and tomorrow