By Mamoon Alabbasi
 
They are poor AND they are honest

Yes, they need a hand, but not your arms

Help not their oppressors with your weapons

You could join in the fight by cultivating their farms

***

Let us all declare a united ‘war on want’

Claim not that you are free of poverty

I’ve seen the look in your eyes when you visit their land

There’s plenty of theft committed in the name of charity

***

There’s enough to go round, of milk and honey

We all could share this earth; land, sky and sea

You need not take it all and leave next to nothing

And then later return to ‘buy’ their liberty

***

As you feed her hungry mouth

Force not yourself onto her dying body

And should you give aid, then – with kindness – leave out

All talk of what you call ‘holy trinity’

***

No more of those ‘two-for-one’ deals

With the Bible in one hand, aid in the other

Instead of the ‘good word’, let us unite in spreading good deeds

Surely the Lord will reward you in one way or another

***

There’s so much to be built

In your home and theirs

Be not so bent on destruction

Leaving them with hatred and tears

***

Global solutions could be found

But they need not be available at the World Bank

Or even at the IMF, WTO, and their likes

Where there’s more transparency in a septic tank

***

As our ‘masters’ get bigger and richer

Our peoples become more desperate and poorer

We share the same cause, we should be on one side

So, why are we tricked into thinking that we hate each other?

– Mamoon Alabbasi contributed this poem to PalestineChronicle.com. Contact him at: alabbasi@middle-east-online.com