Poetry from Pat Doyne

RIGHTS, WRONGS, & REAL ESTATE

President Donald Trump on Tuesday continued pressing his

plan for the United States to take ownership of the Gaza Strip

and displace the 2.1 million Palestinians living there…

— Independent, 2/12/25

How do you dislodge a population?

Remove them from their homes, ancestral lands?

Make sure they don’t sneak back, or interbreed?

There’s masterful, if ugly, precedent.

When Hitler sought to extirpate the Jews,

he studied U.S. Indian Bureau schemes

to wipe out native tribes with laws and lies,

with broken treaty after broken treaty.

Read about the “Trail of Tears,” the march

that moved all Cherokees from homes and farms

to live or die out of invaders’ sights.

What happened to the promised aid and land?

If reservation land had fertile soil,

or copper mines, or silver, or black gold,

Natives were moved out, their grant replaced

by landscapes of bleak beauty, but no water.

So Trump suggests that Netanyahu end

the Gaza war by drastic ethnic cleansing.

This policy, pursued for many years,

has led to all this killing, solving nothing.

We need Solomon, not a real-estate agent,

to deal with grievances, be fair and wise.

Making millions into refugees

is not the recipe for lasting peace.

SYNCHRONIZED CHAOS