Pity The Nation

"Pity the nation that is full of beliefs and empty of religion.

Pity the nation that wears a cloth it does not weave,
eats a bread it does not harvest,
and drinks a wine that flows not from its own winepress.

Pity the nation that acclaims the bully as hero,
and that deems the glittering conqueror bountiful.

Pity the nation that despises a passion in its dream,
yet submits in its awakening.

Pity the nation that raises not its voice
save when it walks in a funeral,

boasts not except among its ruins,

and will rebel not save when its neck is laid
between the sword and the block.

Pity the nation whose statesman is a fox,
whose philosopher is a juggler,
and whose art is the art of patching and mimicking.

Pity the nation that welcomes its new ruler with trumpetings
and farewells him with hootings,
only to welcome another with trumpetings once again.

Pity the nation whose sages are dumb with years

and whose strong men are yet in the cradle.

Pity the nation divided into fragments,
each fragment deeming itself a nation."

-- Gibran Khalil Gibran
(The Garden Of The Prophet, 1934)


Photos:

1,2,3: Ultra-Orthodox Jewish men write on artillery shells and dance with Israeli soldiers as a mobile artillery unit fires into Lebanon, July 24, 2006. (REUTERS/Gil Cohen Magen)

4: Settlers from the New Tapuach Settlement steal the olive harvest of the Palestinian village of Yasuf, 3 October 2002.
5: Hebron settlers destroy the Palestinian wheat harvest at Yatta, 20 May, 2002.

6, 7, 8: Trophy photos; Israeli soldiers with Palestinian corpses.

9: Graffiti in Jerusalem ("Arabs to the Crematoria") by Shabtai Gold for Haaretz.
10: Graffiti in Hebron, 28 Dec 2002; by Christian Peacemaker Teams.
11: Gaza settlers attempt to lynch Palestinian teenager, Ziad Al-Majaydeh.

12: A mourner reacts at the funeral of IDF soldier Noam Goldman, Aug. 10, 2006. (AP Photo/Jacob Silberberg)

13: IDF soldiers stand guard as a Palestinian man and his daughters watch an Israeli bulldozer demolish their house (An-nahar, 20 Jan 2004).

14: Child holds a sign during a demonstration Jerusalem; April 14, 2004. (Enrique Marti/Associated Press)
15: Woman protests the evacuations of Jewish settlers from Gaza; Egypt Today Magazine ©2004.

16: Shimon Peres
17: Aharon Barak

18: Ehud Olmert
19: Benjamin Netanyahu

20: Yitzhak Rabin
21: Seeds of Peace

22, 23: Masked settlers burn an Israeli flag before burning it on the rooftop of a Palestinian-owned home where three Jewish settler families were squatting in the West Bank city of Hebron Friday May 5, 2006. (AP photo/Nasser Shiyoukhi)

http://lawrenceofcyberia.blogs.com/news/2006/08/pity_the_nation.html