As I have engaged with the ongoing horrors in Gaza, my mind keeps going back to this poem which I wrote some years ago—but which seems directly relevant.

Shame’s echo

Imagine the inferno billowing inside

the ashen cheeks of an American

German

as she first heard of the Shoah,

took her first shower

after learning of gas-gushing plumbing.

Imagine her rueful shame

that she had not known,

not spoken against Hitler

while time yet remained,

perhaps at her having sent pennies

to plant a tree in Heidelberg.

Imagine her guilt,

fellow daughters and sons

of the Jewish American diaspora,

who support the Right of Return

for those who are entitled,

who support the bantustans,

barbed wire,

and impending ethnic murders

in what you call Yeretz Israel

but millennia of Palestinians

have called

“home.”