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Have you ever........

Have you ever.......

 

Have you ever been strip searched in public?

Have you ever been beaten by a rifle butt?

Have you ever been spat on as you pray?

Have you ever been dragged out of your own home?

Have you ever seen your home burned?

Have you ever seen members of your family shot in the back?

Have you ever been forbidden from going to church?

Have you ever felt ill and weak from hunger?

Have you ever been forced to drink dirty water?

Have you ever seen your family buried alive?

Have you ever been shot at leaving church?

Have you ever seen family members in surgery with no anesthetic?

Have you ever endured daily air raids with no shelter?

Have you ever been interrogated and then beaten?

Have you ever waited for hours at road blocks?

Have you ever been indefinitely without power?

Have you ever been denied medical treatment?

Have you ever shared a toilet and shower with 800 other people?

If you have ever had any or a few of these then you must be a

Palestinian.

◄ Emptiness

The Armchair ►

Comments

Uilleam Ó Ceallaigh

Fri 26th Jan 2024 11:34

Thank you Keith,
Having been led astray by liars on many occasions, I now attempt to question everything, and to assume nothing-and there is nothing more tedious than the repetetive lying of some arrogant politicians.
The insistent, questioning nature of your poem, far from being tedious, is an assertive and compelling quest for truth.
Hopefully, the answers to many of your questions could well form the basis for prosecutions in the International Court of Justice (ICJ).

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M.C. Newberry

Tue 23rd Jan 2024 15:54

The provision of the "Comments" facility is a way to lodge an opinion about construction and/or content of any contribution.
These are occasionally clearly personally linked to the author of the material when there is a "history" of connected contributions.
The different views and their reasons that are either apparent or
suspected form part of the educational process about what is
created and put forward for our consumption. Poets should not
be shrinking violets in their chosen garden of creativity.

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Graham Sherwood

Mon 22nd Jan 2024 15:51

Telboy,
for me it wasn't the fact that you found the poem tedious, it was the fact that you made a personal comment about Keith that I thought was inappropriate. I suspect that was the sentiment that angered Greg somewhat too.

Best keep the commentary about the work eh?

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kJ Walker

Mon 22nd Jan 2024 15:45

Well said Keith.
This hard hitting poem is a reflection of what most right minded people think.
The format suited the message that you were putting across, so in this instance was just right.

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Telboy

Mon 22nd Jan 2024 15:42

Thank you Keith. I feel vindicated by your gracious acceptance of my comment. I stress once again that I entirely agree with the sentiment, it was only the format I disliked.

Greg jumping on my case is nothing new...he has done it a couple of times previously and that in itself is becoming tedious. I know he is a senior member but that does not give him the right to pick on others.

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keith jeffries

Mon 22nd Jan 2024 15:01

Thank you to those who read this poem and expressed their likes and comments. I wrote it hurriedly in a moment of passion having recently received a telephone call from friends in East Jerusalem. I must agree with Telboy that the format is tedious and repetitive but I was in full flow, fuelled by anger. I always welcome constructive criticism and the right to free speech. Let's hope this dreadful nightmare is soon brought to a halt.
Thank you again,
Keith

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M.C. Newberry

Mon 22nd Jan 2024 13:56

An interesting array of comments. When first reading this I
found myself reflecting that Jewish people could identify with
all and more of what is written here. The terrible irony of war
and its causes is ongoing in human history, seeming to exist
somewhere in this world at any given time. It was recently
reported that Israel's team of border-watchers (many of them
women) had reported suspicious ACTIVITY from Gaza
within their various areas but this had apparently gained no
action/response from the Israeli government. When the attack
came, the victims included border watchers. One can only
wonder if a long-game was being played, using the "sudden"
assault as a political excuse to launch a decisive all out
reply to reduce Hamas to a non-effectual entity once and
for all in a next-door land that was enabling it to exist.

Uilleam Ó Ceallaigh

Mon 22nd Jan 2024 08:37

"...this sort of poem format...":
the kind of language increasingly used to dress up objections to an author’s message as literary criticism.

Let’s just have the cojones to say something like:
“I don’t agree that all human life is equally worthy of respect, regardless of nationality and race; however, if only you had written your poem in the style of Wordsworth’s Daffodils, you might just have ignited in me a spark of human empathy”.

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Telboy

Sun 21st Jan 2024 20:35

Okay Greg, you've got the last word!

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Greg Freeman

Sun 21st Jan 2024 20:11

Fair enough, Telboy, I apologise for misinterpreting the level of your compassion for the suffering of the Palestinians. But I still take issue with the word 'tedious', which oversteps the boundaries of constructive criticism. In my opinion.

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Telboy

Sun 21st Jan 2024 19:36

Greg you have, deliberately I think, misinterpreted my comment. It's not the subject I find tedious - far from it as I expressed in my first line - it's the format. Just my personal opinion, which is the point of the comments facility after all isn't it?

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Steve White

Sun 21st Jan 2024 18:51

Thanks Keith (and Greg).

These are things that we need to keep saying, and poetry sometimes has a reach that polemic lacks.

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Greg Freeman

Sun 21st Jan 2024 18:22

Telboy, you're quite right. I'll give you some stick straight away. Keith has chosen a hard-hitting format to express his empathy for Palestinians, which forces readers to face up to the fact that such things are going on out there. You prefer not to face up to them. You find such a list 'tedious'. I would like to think you are better than such a comment.

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Telboy

Sun 21st Jan 2024 16:12

There's a strong message here.

I'm sure I'll get some stick for this, but I have to say that I find this sort of poem format quite tedious. Sorry Keith but you're better than this.

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