An Open Letter to My Cousins in Israel Lyrics

We are live in the belly of the beast

A two-headed monster

I'm a child of the East

Africa, my family were all refugees

Scattered round the planet over continent and seas

Some of us landed in land that just wasn't free

Found contradiction where we tried to find peace

Real ground friction, that'll make you find a piece

It sounded so different, they were selling us a dream

Some of us were force-conscripted into beef

To become the face of another person's grief

Some of us in homes to which others hold keys

We're not treated equally

We are not here peacefully

We repeat everything

That is unhealed here

Victims are us and we victimize others

At the same time

With the same line they used on us

Occupied Palestine

Where the soldiers show up and they look like us

All of us got our own blood-stained hands for something

While the same state would just kill us for nothing

Here on stolen land there can never be justice

Like a rock in a slingshot

The last hope when your options are all gone

Against an army and a twenty-foot wall

Under all these apartheid laws

My cousin's a different kind a second-class citizen

The worst kind of warden in this prison

He'd be locked up if he isn't

Their enemies are not different

Life in the belly of the beast

A two-headed state, way they operate and think

We are separated now by continent and sea

And over here they talk about "the land of free speech"

Until you critique Zionism or police

You can boycott something based on your beliefs

But if you're talking Israel, then they got beef

They even passed laws against organizing meets

That mention BDS, just depending where you be

We pay all these taxes to build a war machine

That takes Palestinian land and ways of being

I know it's depressing

They say it's a different oppression

But a story is the most potent form of a weapon

They create fear to keep us all in suspension

While they made the whole world's biggest open air prisons

Listen, this isn't religion

This is just capitalism

And if our oppression's connected

Then our freedom is too, so let's get it

Like a rock in a slingshot

The last hope when your options are all gone

Against an army and a twenty-foot wall

Under all these apartheid laws

My cousin's a different kind of second-class citizen

The worst kind of warden in this prison

He'd be locked up if he isn't

Their enemies are not different

If we want to get free, then Palestine must be

If we want to get free, then Palestine must be

If we want to get free, then Palestine must be

If we want to get free, then Palestine must be