What is this ancient impulse gifts impart,
To crowds, currying favor, hearts to sway?
Did not the Gracchi brother’s wealth depart,
Spreading it wide to gain power’s bright array?
Did Cleopatra not her rivals thwart,
Robbing the few, the many’s needs to lay?
Such deeds of old, how echoes still remain,
In time’s vast stretch, this urge we can’t restrain.

What is this timeless urge, these rallying cries,
Against the elites, the masses to incite?
Did Cleisthenes not from high ranks arise,
Bringing down nobles, wielding his own might?
Did Jan Žižka, with peasant voices wise,
Challenge the enterprising, stir the fight?
So Socrates might ask, with wisdom keen,
Are these not truths we’ve ever plainly seen?

In shadows of vast numbers, one state, brave,
Four hundred million against a smaller enclave.
Once seventeen million, now reduced by hate,
Memories of Holocaust echo a fearful fate.

Nine million dwell in Israel, a complex brew,
Two million Arabs, and the Jewish crew.
Surrounded by nations, twenty-two to one,
In the Great Assembly, Arab voices spun.

Six times war danced, since forty-eight unfurled,
Acquiring buffer zones in a hostile world.
Land returned for peace, Gaza’s gate set free,
Yet in twenty-three, terror proclaimed its decree.