By Michael Krape
So, you don’t like Jews?
What a surprise.
You’re just too thoughtless to realise
that Jews like me will never forget
that your arrows are impervious to regret.
You detest the Jews.
Who’d have thought?
But did you ever question what you’ve been taught?
We’re not the monsters you say we are,
and we’ll NEVER AGAIN wear a yellow star.
Jews aren’t worthy.
Who taught you that libel?
Proclaiming that myth is genocidal.
Was it your mother, your father, or the parish priest
who fed this deceit about the Middle East?
Jews are spineless.
Forgive me for saying,
but we’re pretty good at fighting and praying.
They’re two sides of an ancient coin
that predates the Romans before Christ was born.
Jews are blind.
We’re like lambs to the slaughter,
naked and shamed, our blood flows like water.
That was never the case, but it suits you to lie
and accuse us of deicide; God only knows why.
Jews own everything;
we’re obsessed with wealth,
Determined to get it by fair means or stealth.
We invented possession being nine tenths of the law
and enrich ourselves while crying poor.
Poor Jew me.
I can play the clown;
and at the first hint of trouble, I’ll fall face down.
I’ll dip my hat and say ‘thank you’ and ‘please’,
ask forgiveness for being an unwanted disease.
Jews are good that way.
We want to be liked, we want to fit in
but you can shove your arrogance in the rubbish bin.
We didn’t survive longer than you
by walking passively into the barbeque.
Jews like schmoozing,
we sing, dance and act.
We find humour in agony, after the fact.
Theatre gives us a place to pretend
that the world is the way it’s often penned.
We have a homeland
that’s been promised in Law;
Like it or not, we own the key to this door.
Every inch of that earth is a sacred space;
a speck in the desert that we’ll never replace.
We’re done with ghettos
and your claims so perverse
that we infected mankind with the ‘Zionist Curse’.
Do you even know or care who we are?
We’re descendants of King David and his shining star.
So, suffer your Jews.
We really don’t care.
Your marching and chanting are only hot air.
If you weren’t so obsessed about people like me
you’d open your eyes and be surprised what you see.
The People of the Book;
Chosen by decree
for giving God our loyalty.
We’re no better than you, we just accept Reason
while you dismiss it as a form of high treason.
Here is my hand,
in friendship I reach.
There are many lessons you could learn and teach.
Like October 7, when you mocked our pain,
and December 14, with its indelible stain.
You may never like Jews;
that’s in your DNA.
But for sake of our kids let’s find a way
to protect them from this existential pain
where there is so much to lose and nothing to gain.
This ancient hatred
fuelled by fear,
will never end if we’re insincere
about setting our needs as a shared enterprise
or claiming we deserve the Nobel Peace Prize.
Michael Krape has been an actor, puppeteer, journalist, travel writer, and public relations consultant. He has written for theatre and radio, and produced both fiction and non-fiction works. He and his family sponsored an eco-friendly toilet in the Hula Nature Reserve in northern Israel (The Krape Convenience – When Nature Calls). He is president of Kew Hebrew Congregation In Melbourne, Australia.
