Photo courtesy of FT
The math is simple. There are fifteen members
of the UN Security Council. Five are permanent,
the rest elected for two year terms. Together
they represent the enforcement wing of the world
body, carriers of the imperative to act, to intervene,
to stop conflict. On December 8, sixty one days
after Hamas attacks, and Israel responds, we
have stats: about 18,000 Palestinians dead,
seventy percent of them women and children,
1,200 Israelis dead, and more than a hundred
hostages still in Hamas hands, and several
thousand Palestinians, some uncharged,
beaten up, in Israeli jails. Meanwhile,
on the West Bank more than two hundred
Palestinians have been killed since October
by marauding settlers, usually young, late
at night, who enter Palestinian compounds,
break solar panels, gut water tanks, chase
away farm animals, and then give ultimatums
to the family. You have twenty four hours
to leave Or we will come back to kill you….
The math is simple: 15 Security Council
members, 13 voted for an immediate ceasefire,
one abstained, and one nation under God
vetoed the initiative. To that nation I pledged
allegiance, giving up citizenship of a country
where some of my people lay slaughtered
in their homes and on the streets. I became a
diplomat for my new country, honored
to represent the Stars and Stripes everywhere
the government sent me to build bridges
between American culture and the cultures
of the host. I have retired from diplomacy.
I left just in time. If I was on the payroll
now I would have been compelled by
ethics, morals, the spirit, to resign. Who
cares about one more resignation
or retirement? I care, and this poem
is about caring, about calling
the adoptive father out for miscreant,
shocking behavior, one veto in an echo
chamber, everyone repeating, whispering,
shouting, you and your Lady, your
huddled masses, deny the Palestinian
life, liberty and the pursuit of joy?
Really? Am I really writing these
words in the United States of
Criminal Association? Of Aid
and Abet? Of an Interested Party
to the Crime? Or is all of this
just a bad dream, a mistake,
that we are living still in America,
land of the free, of the brave, of
the pledge I would so like to affirm?