Briefly off-message: from Leonard Cohen’s Book of Mercy.
January 7, 2009As an American Jew watching with horror what is being done in Gaza in the name of “defending Western values” and the “war on terror,” not to mention the “defense” of the Jewish people, I feel compelled to share this piece of Leonard Cohen’s, from his 1984 “Book of Mercy.” It should be nailed on every telephone pole between here and Ashdod – and Khan Yunis and Gaza City, too – a la Martin Luther.
Shalom rav, al adamah am’cha. (Adonai,) grant peace to all mankind, your people.
* * *
Israel, and you who call yourself Israel, the Church that calls itself
Israel, and the revolt that calls itself Israel, and every nation chosen to
be a nation – none of these lands is yours, all of you are thieves of
holiness, all of you are at war with Mercy. Who will say it? Will America
say, We have stolen it, or France step down? Will Russia confess, or Poland
say; we have sinned? All bloated on their scraps of destiny, all swaggering
in the immunity of superstition. Ishmael, who was saved in the wilderness,
and given shade in the desert, and a deadly treasure under you: has Mercy
made you wise? Therefore the lands belong to none of you, the borders do not
hold, the Law will never serve the lawless. To every people the land is given
on condition, Perceived or not, there is a Covenant, beyond the
constitution, beyond sovereign guarantee, beyond the nation’s sweetest
dreams of itself. The Covenant is broken, the condition is dishonoured,
have you not noticed that the world has been taken away? You have no place,
you will wander through yourselves from generation to generation without a
thread. Therefore you rule over chaos, you hoist your flags with no
authority, and the heart that is still alive hates you, and the remnant of
Mercy is ashamed to look at you. You decompose behind your flimsy armour,
your stench alarms you, your panic strikes at love. The land is not yours,
the land has been taken back, your shrines fall through empty air, your
tablets are quickly revised, and you bow down in hell beside your hired
torturers, and still you count your battalions and crank out your marching
songs. Your righteous enemy is listening. He hears your anthems full of
blood and vanity, and your children singing to themselves. He has
overturned the vehicle of nationhood, he has spilled the precious cargo, and
every nation he has taken back. Because you are swollen with your little
time. Because you do not wrestle with your angel. Because you dare to live
without God. Because your cowardice has led you to believe that the victor
does not limp.
