Lee Diamond – Cry Wolf
A dear friend
Recently accused me
Of overreacting!
“There are more important
Matters than searching
With a feather and candle
For anti semitism today in
Trumps selection of his right wing
Potentially Fascist government.”
Overreaction it would seem is the “sin
And it has the opposite reaction!”
It’s simply “much ado about nothing”
Says my friend,
Sorry my friend! We don’t have that liberty.
–Jews of the 20th and 21st century, —
must be on our guard daily
“We” means all Jews everywhere!
“We” means Israelis under threat
And “we” means Jews world over
We learned the lesson of silence
In the face of Jew hatred
We failed to call it as it was:
-a deep seated passionate-hatred of us!
It’s repeated itself throughout our history
And we hid from it
We didn’t catch it in time
We assumed it would pass
After all we were civilized
Living amongst the civilized.
‘Never here!”
“Those days are gone!
The world is healed of this
Disease of Jew hating
Called politely-anti semitism.”
A match dropped in a dry forest
Can destroy an entire country
A moment of avoidance, of silence
In the face of real potential danger
Can lead to a new Auschwitz
Jew hatred survives
I’m afraid
And we are burdened by its weight
For we are the guardians
The protectors
The power- laden
Army of the Jewish future.
Israel and the IDF are the front line in this defense force
As in Entebbe and in Argentina
Russia and Ethiopia
Israel will lead the battle of the Jewish People
No doubt about it!
Jews everywhere have power now
The ADL and like minded organizations
Are the intelligence corps
The “wolf criers” —if you will—
For an international people —
Who sometimes prefer to believe that
The deep seated disease is of the past!
We carry the burden to be on guard
And never surrender to the temptation
Of believing that we’re accepted
And that “Jew hatred is a 20th century
Phenomenon”
A speech or an utterance made years ago
By an Ellison
A subtle advertisement with dollar signs
For a campaign
A KKK public declaration of joy on the election
Of a Trump
A David Duke support for a president Elect
White supremacists cheering for a “pure”
Ethnic cleansing of America
All wear ‘ white pointed hoods”
That hide JEW HATRED in their dunce caps
Reveal them now!
All Jews!
Don’t fear standing out
Don’t fear crying wolf”
Don’t hide and hope for a better day
Look in all directions
Sweep up the crumbs with your
Candle and feather
For you
Your family
For you
And for humanity
As Hillel said
‘If I am not for myself
Who will be for me?
And if I’m only for myself
What am I.
And if not now
Then “When?”
