By Ramzy Baroud 
Palestinian author and intellectual Ramzy Baroud wrote this brief poem in response to the question: “Where is God from everything that is happening in Gaza right now?”
No, we don’t worship the same God,
For mine walks barefoot through Jabaliya’s streets,
His wounds unhealed, bleeding into the earth—
Staining his olive skin, marking him forever.
My God is the wail of mothers,
Bereaved in al-Mawasi,
Praying still for salvation,
Kissing the ashen faces of their dead children.
My God is two children,
Hauling their parents’ remains on a donkey cart,
Frantically seeking empty earth,
To bury their beloved before the soldiers return.
My God is courage, patience, justice—
The sumoud of a people
Whose spirits cannot be confined
To a headline or a scholar’s theory.
My God is the stubborn refugee girl,
Refusing to abandon her search for home,
Unyielding, despite the storm,
Her heart still yearning for the place she calls her own.
And above all,
My God is freedom—
A fire no power can quench,
A flame that cuts through oppression,
A light that guides the way.
My God is a Gaza refugee,
Fighting to free us all
From all the false idols
That keep us shackled in deafening silence.
– Ramzy Baroud is a journalist and the Editor of The Palestine Chronicle. He is the author of six books. His latest book, co-edited with Ilan Pappé, is “Our Vision for Liberation: Engaged Palestinian Leaders and Intellectuals Speak out”. Dr. Baroud is a Non-resident Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Islam and Global Affairs (CIGA). His website is www.ramzybaroud.net
Ramzy, I like your God.
Dear Ramzy,
The silence here in the ‘civilised’ west is so ear-shattering that I feel I am in a state of perpetual shock and disbelief. Family and friends whom I love feel no connection to the Palestinian mother cradling her dead child., feel no need to respond, to take action. They do not see that, through their inability to walk in the shoes of this mother, to melt with the pain of unbearable grief, into the earth, they enable the slaughter. All who do not speak, who do not act when faced with such cruelty and evil, enable its existence.
I love your website. But as a Muslim, this kind of poetry alienates me.
Sadly, Americans are conditioned to thinking the worst about Arabs, Palestinians in particular. More Americans are waking up to the grim reality that Palestinians experience, but there are still people who shout “Anti-Semitism” whenever Israel gets criticized. We don’t even recognize Palestine. We should, and help with its recovery.
I’m of Irish ancestry, but what the Irish experienced during British misrule pales in comparison to what Palestinians experience from Israeli atrocities.