The Promised Land, Too Long Denied

Oh Palestine, ancestral home, now occupied land,
Generations displaced, exiled by brute force of hand.
Olives uprooted, villages bombed beyond recognition,
An indigenous people erased under false pretext.

Children who never knew a day free from oppression,
Who go to sleep to the sound of sirens and detonations,
Who wake unsure if still with families or standing,
This is the life Israel’s apartheid regime is demanding.

Mothers weep as lively homes are turned to rubble,
Fathers watch sons dragged away, bound and muzzled.
Sister hides brother when soldiers patrol narrow alleys,
Once vibrant markets, now hauntingly silent waifways.

Generation after generation, a people stripped of rights,
Caged in Bantustans, subsisting without respite.
But as darkness extends, the light of hope persists,
Alive in the stories elders recite to children with clenched fists.

They speak of an age before the Nakba took hold,
When melodies of the oud across hilltops rolled,
And families gathered in olive groves under starlit skies,
Before their world was shattered by militias and lies.

They pass down keys to homes that for them remain,
Sacred spaces stolen they’ll reclaim again.
They show artifacts, deeds, photos from their past,
And teach songs of the villages their grandparents passed.

The elders speak proudly of Sumud’s firm root,
A stewardship of land that cannot be uprooted.
Of resilience passed down, from mother to son,
From beginningless time till liberation is won.

So we stand in solidarity with you, Palestine,
Know your dream of freedom cannot be undermined.
Though darkness looms, your hope is more powerful still,
No prison walls or soldiers your indomitable spirit can kill.

May your homeland soon be free for all to return,
Family, neighbor and stranger together peaceably learn.
May the wounds of injustice finally heal and trust grow,
May the hearts of oppressors open to see the humanity they’d dehumanized, kept blind to.

May all children see justice and live free of fear,
The world awakened, no longer indifferent to voices unheard.
May this be the generation that ends blind hatred within,
When we realize our liberation is bound up together in the end.