Friday, April 22, 2022

Oh Yes, the Victims, the Oppressors

 

Palestinians chant slogans and wave Hamas flags after Friday prayers during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan near the Dome of the Rock at the Temple Mount compound in Jerusalem's Old City, April 22, 2022. (AHMAD GHARABLI / AFP)

Scurillous, defamatory, hate-mongering

they embrace 'freedom of speech' as lawfully

permissive in their adopted homes far from their 

origins where there is no freedom to speak. 

As masters of language devices to marinate 

their enemies in acid baths of double-edged words 

meant to slice and to dice from a culture where 

anger is quick to fuse rage that leaps to violence 

they quickly discern that vicious rhetoric injures 

as deeply as stab wounds. In the land of their birth 

lethal violence between tribes and sects a cultural 

normalcy. Their diaspora homes value the soft tissue 

wounds of shunning, isolation, spurning injustice 

as a malady to be addressed with passion. And so 

address it they do, presenting themselves as victims 

who take their identity as Palestinians purloined 

from the originals transformed to Pharoahs whose

brutality has injured them so deeply they turn their 

venomous tongues to action in stabbing, projectiles

shooting, bombing, vehicular homicide. As victims 

they can do no wrong, assured the targets of their

lethal rage inspire no empathy among the moral just.

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