The Ungrateful by Cesar Chelala

 The Ungrateful

How ungrateful Palestinians are

We gave them money

We gave them food

And they don’t even say thank you!

Why should we continue to give them anything?

Oh, I almost forgot

We also sent weapons

Thousands of weapons

To massacre them

And they don’t even say thank you!

We sent bombs to destroy their houses

And kill all those inside

We destroyed their schools

Their churches

Their mosques

And they don’t even say thank you!

We made their land uninhabitable

Chased them away from their homes

Left them no means to escape the horror

And they don’t even say thank you!

We attacked their hospitals

We deprived them of basic medicines

And supplies

We made them walk for miles

The young, the old and

The infirm

Without food or water

And they don’t even say thank you!

We gave them hundreds of millions of dollars

And they don’t even like us

Then we said

Why the hell are we giving them money anyway?

So, we stopped it

And now they complain

But we will continue

Pummeling them

Until they cry

Uncle.

Dr. Cesar Chelala is a co-winner of the 1979 Overseas Press Club of America award for the article “Missing or Disappeared in Argentina: The Desperate Search for Thousands of Abducted Victims.”