Advertisement

Delivering Community Power CUPW 2022-2023

A poem by Leila Marshy: ‘Kinship’

Middle EastWar ZonesHuman Rights

The Wall, photographed here in the Bethlehem Aida refugee camp, is largely built on Palestinian territory far inside the Green Line (1967 border) and cuts off many villages and olive orchards as it snakes through the landscape and turns both Gaza and the West Bank into walled prisons. Photo by Rianne Van Doevern/Flickr.

I finally know why
I feel a kinship with the Jews:
They have made me one of them.
My Palestinian family live
where they are not wanted,
my father was exiled for no reason
other than all of a sudden what was his
was not.
Just like the Jews
we wear our ethnicity like a target
and an entire country has decided
we need to be rounded up.
Just like the Jews
the walls built to crush us
can barely contain us.
And now just like the Jews
we are being blamed and vilified
and hounded and hunted
and exterminated.
For centuries the Jews were alone in the world;
Lucky for them, they have made us in their image.

Leila Marshy is a Montréaler of Palestinian-Newfoundland heritage. Her stories and poetry have been published in literary journals and anthologies in Canada and the United States. Her novel, The Philistine, was published in 2018.

Advertisement

URP leaderboard January 2025