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Does Jesus Love Me, a Palestinian Child?

by Nakba

Does Jesus love me?
How would I know,
when his disciples
torture me so!
     I'm only a child
     but they say I'm defiled
     while God is beguiled
     by each child who's a Jew.
           How about you?
           What do you say?
           Is Christ a bigot?
           Are his feet racist clay?
     Please tell me, Christian —
     is God a bigot?
     Does his grace flow for you
     through an open spigot
     while his favors are showered
     on Israelis who steal
     my poor father's land?
     Is your Jesus a heel?
Does Jesus love me?
How would I know,
when his disciples
abuse children so!
     Does Jesus love me,
     dripping with blood —
     his and mine mixed
     in a bright crimson flood
     while people like you
     claim his grace and ignore
     the angel who came
     and expired at your door?
Does Jesus love me?
How would I know,
when his disciples
crucify us so!

For more than sixty years, since the Nakba (“Catastrophe”) of 1948, American Christians have dutifully and blindly supported Israel, while Israel has cynically stolen land and water from increasingly destitute Palestinians. Millions of those Palestinians are completely innocent women and children. Are American Christians emulating Jesus, or practicing racism and injustice against people who increasingly live on the margins of existence? How can Christians appropriate the name of Jesus Christ, then practice racism and injustice, blaspheming everything he stood for: compassion for the suffering, justice for the poor, help for weak, hope for the downtrodden? Please consider the facts in this article:

FREE THE CHILDREN OF PALESTINE!
by Zahi Damuni

According to Israeli police, 1200 Palestinian children have been arrested, interrogated and imprisoned in the occupied city of Jerusalem alone this year. The youngest of these children was seven years old.

Children and teen-agers were often dragged out of their beds in the middle of the night, taken in handcuffs for questioning, threatened, humiliated and many were subjected to physical violence while under arrest as part of an ongoing campaign against the children of Palestine. Since the year 2000, more than 8000 children have been arrested by Israel, and reports of mistreatment are commonplace.

Further, based on sworn affidavits collected in 2009 from 100 of these children, lawyers working in the occupied West Bank found that 69% were beaten and kicked, 49% were threatened, 14% were held in solitary confinement, 12% were threatened with sexual assault, including rape, and 32% were forced to sign confessions written in Hebrew, a language they do not understand. Minors were often asked to give names and incriminate friends and relatives as a condition of their release.

Such institutionalized and systematic mistreatment of Palestinian children by the state of Israel is a violation international law and specifically contravenes the Convention on the Rights of the Child to which Israel is supposedly a signatory.

TAKE ACTION!

Al-Awda, the Palestine Right to Return Coalition calls on its members, supporters and all people of conscience to please take a moment to read and sign our petition at: http://www.gopetition.com/petition/41467/sign.html

Please ask your friends and contacts to do the same.

The petition demands that President Barak Obama direct Israel to release all Palestinian children detained in its prisons and detention centers immediately, and to end all forms of systematic and institutionalized abuse that it practices against the children of Palestine. What the Israeli state is doing to Palestinian children amounts to psychological terrorism. No person of conscience can live with this stain on their lives.

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