Israel war

Israel’s 9/11

/ Greg Asimakoupoulos

Yes, October 7th
is Israel’s September 11th.
Their Ground Zero
was a ground offensive
by Hamas
that blindsided innocent concert goers
giving a human face
to inhumane terror.

It was a kind of
Woodstock Festival
punctuated by rivers of blood
instead of puddles of mud.

Hostages were kidnapped.
Lives were stolen.
Babies were beheaded.
Evil assaulted the vulnerable.
It was a day the music died.

The Land of Promise
promised revenge.
And rightly so.
Untold wrong
had raped the region.
Retaliation was a given
in light of what was taken.

And Gaza
bore the brunt
of a nation
whose pride
had been bruised
and whose heart
had been broken.

Eye for eye!
Tooth for tooth!
Innocent for innocent!
War for war!
Death for death!

Lord, have mercy!
Lord, bring peace!
Lord, forgive!
Lord, restore!
Lord, bring the hostages home!
Lord, hear our prayer!

**This painting is by Udi Merioz, an Israeli artist I met in Jerusalem five years ago. It pictures the IDF at the Wailing Wall praying for peace.

Praying for Peace

/ Greg Asimakoupoulos
A calligraphy by Timothy Botts

The city is peace
is an oxymoron.
Christians, Moslems and Jews
trace their history there
amid cobblestone streets stained with blood.

The sons of Abraham
have fought like brothers
(for centuries)
jealously killing one another
without regard for
innocent lives
or the destiny to which they were called:

To love the LORD your God
with all your heart,
soul, mind and strength
and to love your neighbor as yourself.

May we continue to pray
for the peace of Jerusalem
and Gaza
and the West Bank.

O God of Abraham, Ishmael, Isaac, Jacob and Jesus,
breathe your breath of shalom
over the graveyard of peace
that dry lifeless bones may live. Amen.

Israel’s Children

/ Greg Asimakoupoulos
Israel’s children through the perspective of artist Gordon Wetmore

The children screamed.
The children cried.
Denied their rights,
the children died.
As terror stalked the promised land,
the innocent were stilled.

And since they cannot
voice their plight
(these victims of Hamas’s blight),
we speak for all whose blood calls out
for justice with a price.