[Opinion. I don’t read a lot of poetry these days but these two really moved me. Jews for Tikkun Olam is a Toronto group of social workers.] Written in response to the Walk with Israel event in Toronto, June 7 Karine Silverwoman Jews for Tikkun Olam: 7 Jun 2026 No, I won’t walk with Israel. Instead I sit, a weighted blanket over my heart, grief stitched through each square. You embarrass me. You anger me. You shame me. Sixty thousand walked today, fewer than the children murdered by your silence their voices, our haunting, our inheritance. We should be walking for Sam Fahd Abou Haikal, Hind Rami Iyad Rajab, Maysa Mahmoud Farid Zarab, but instead you lead us towards the next Nuremberg trials. How can we share the same history? How can you refuse to see the human. Must we wait for revised textbooks before the dead become visible? I am an empty cup, worn thin as a river stone. I have tried compassion, reason, patience, kneeling in prayer with you. I have read your perspectives and swum in your algorithms. I have protested, sat in grief circles. I have engaged in hard conversations, held my tongue and searched for the right words. I have tried to find the shadow before the fear. Dayenu. Do you condemn the largest orphan crisis in history Do you condemn entire communities being erased in our name. I read Ordinary Men at sixteen. Too young, perhaps, to study how people learn to look away. Too young to understand that my ancestors were not far away. They were in the forests, in the pits, in piles in the silences between pages. I thought I was studying history, I did not know I was studying us. [For those who don’t know it, Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland, Christopher R. Browning, 2017.] ################# In Response to the Removal of “If I Must Die” by The Toronto Public Library from a Display on the “Israel-Palestine Conflict” Karine Silverwoman 15 Feb 2025. Refaat Alareer was a Palestinian poet who died in an Israeli military airstrike. When I die May we all cover our mirrors sit shiva for generations When I die May it be known you turned our most sacred tears to walls of grey What happened to you? What happened to us? You have twisted the most bloodied knife of our history My ancestors did not die in concentration camps for us to murder another people My grandma was not forced to make coffins for germans at 17 years old for me to bow down to your cult of supremacy When I die May you sit with a thousand torahs on your backs knowing I thin my hair and hide our star because of you May you cease to speak for us May our mouths be filled with maror May the salty tears of all the peacemakers’ exhaustion leaven you and may you live in the shoes of a Palestinian child for a day, an hour When I die cloak my jewish body with a keffiyeh What happened to you? What happened to us? May our ancestors lay our fear to rest from the river to the sea May you be forced to read Khalidi and watch Bisan May you be with the footage of Hind her screams the same ones buried in our cells Say her name. May you face every court and tremble before god May you rot in the rubble of what you have caused
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