Real?
Is Israel real,
Or is it just a smoke-and-mirrors Fata Morgana
Shifting with the sandstorms, these past sixty-two years,
Insubstantial as mirages lifting off the Sinai,
Ambivalent, ambiguous, and conflicted as a Talmudic pilpul?
Is Israel real,
Or is it a Judeo-Christian-Islamic shell game
Up for grabs, to whatever factions happen to be the greediest,
Most duplicitous, sycophantish, flimflammish,
At any given intersection of accidental history and fate?
Is Israel real
Or merely one more worshiper of false gods,
A nation of outliers, outsiders, pariahs — the reviled —
Rejects from the world beyond that ancient Fertile Crescent
Gone barren, fallow, a land whose promise God forgot He made?
Is Israel real,
Or is it a dream of the oppressed and the dispossessed —
Halutzim, kibbutzniks, Nazi Germany refugees, Hasidim,
And Jews making aliyah, from their yearning hearts, to Zion,
Hoping to defy the odds that are betting on their annihilation?
"Is Israel real?"
Is such an unreal question that I can't answer it,
Since I perished at the hands of Pharaoh, Nebuchadnezzar, Haman,
Hadrian, Torquemada, Luther, Hitler,
And am now being targeted by Ahmadinejad's nuclear Koran.
02/24/10
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