A State of Hope

The disconnect in priorities is alive and well in Israel. Someone e-mailed me today:

Just FYI:
I was watching Mabat - the main news program in Israel (channel one or two - don't know as I watch it on the net), and they were in middle of a live interview with the Northern Command Commander (General udi adam) - the program cut out in middle of his words, as they had to get an update on the Mondial.

Why, oh why do I have to be right in these things.

This country is so screwed up it sickens me.

Oy. Meanwhile, I teared up reading this poem, which I discovered while looking for a prayer for the previous post. It's by a teenage girl named Eva from Kenmore, NY. It's amazing:

A state of hope for many

A religious paradise

For those who believe,

A place where peace causes war

In a never-ending battle for commonwealth.

It's a site

Where the sweet melodious songs of birds

Chirp of freedom,

And everyday on the battlefront

A piercing sound of bullet is heard

As it whistles a different tune.

The air smells like innocence

Filled with warmth and sunshine,

While in the battlefield the horrid fetor of gun powder

Never ceases to exist.

It's a place where a tan little boy tells his mother

That he can't wait to grow up,

As his older brother dies a gruesome death

In a stranger's hands.

And sounds of tourists are heard

As they come to experience the magic

Of the cerulean dead sea,

As a soldier get emerged in the bleeding sea of death.

And the Western Wall

Stands a spiritual climax for all Jewish people,

While somewhere on the field

A soldier says last prayer facing to West,

As a bullet pierces his homebound heart.

Israel

A merger of two worlds

Happiness and despair

A perfect place

Which like many others did before me

I would die to protect.

Amen.