Today, my body was a TV'd massacre
Today, my body was a TV'd massacre that had to fit into sound-bites and word limits
Today, my body was a TV'd massacre that had to fit into sound-bites and word limits filled enough with statistics to counter measured response
And I perfected my English and I learned my UN resolutions
But still, he asked me, Ms. Ziadah, don't you think that everything would be resolved if you would just stop teaching so much hatred to your children
Pause
I look inside of me for strength to be patient but patience is not at the tip of my tongue as the bombs drop over Gaza
Patience has just escaped me
Pause. Smile

!We teach life, sir

Rafeef, remember to smile
Pause

!We teach life, sir

We Palestinians teach life after they have occupied the last sky
We teach life after they have built their settlements and apartheid walls, after the last skies

!We teach life, sir

But today, my body was a TV'd massacre made to fit into sound-bites and word limits
And just give us a story, a human story
You see, this is not political
We just want to tell people about you and your people so give us a human story
Don't mention that word "apartheid" and "occupation
This is not political
You have to help me as a journalist to help you tell your story which is not a political story
Today, my body was a TV'd massacre
?How about you give us a story of a woman in Gaza who needs medication
?How about you
?Do you have enough bone-broken limbs to cover the sun
Hand me over your dead and give me the list of their names in one thousand two hundred word limits
Today, my body was a TV'd massacre that had to fit into sound-bites and word limits and move those that are desensitized to terrorist blood
But they felt sorry
They felt sorry for the cattle over Gaza
So, I give them UN resolutions and statistics and we condemn and we deplore and we reject
And these are not two equal sides: occupier and occupied
And a hundred dead, two hundred dead, and a thousand dead
And between that, war crime and massacre, I went out words and smile "not exotic"; smile, "not terrorist
And I recount, I recount a hundred dead, two hundred dead, a thousand dead
?Is anyone out there
?Will anyone listen
I wish I could veil over their bodies
I wish I could just run barefoot in every refugee camp and hold every child, cover their ears so they wouldn't have to hear the sound of bombing for the rest of their life the way I do
Today, my body was a TV'd massacre
And let me just tell you, there's nothing your UN resolutions have ever done about this
And no sound-bite, no sound-bite I come up with, no matter how good my English gets, no sound-bite, no sound-bite, no sound-bite, no sound-bite will bring them back to life
No sound-bite will fix this

!We teach life, sir
!We teach life, sir
!We Palestinians wake up every morning to teach the rest of the world life, sir