_________Men Die, Lions Rise by Jonathan Azaziah _________

Is the sky falling, are there pigs flying…
I mean, is this still the same doomed reality…
Yes, because there’s still Iraqi, Afghani, Somali, Pakistani and Palestinian kids dying…

And yes, your eyes are truthful about this cruel brutality…
Peering through the fallacy…
They’ve put a mask on it, so its easier to consume the savagery…
Why they’d take him, he was a brother of peace, like harmonious music and love…
They are the sons of the beast, executioners and Lucifer’s thugs…

Vittorio Arrigoni, it’s so hard to grasp that you are gone…
But you left here as something different than what you were when you were born…
At birth you were a man, but in death you became a lion…
A martyr, a hero who in life gave a voice to those living in pain and silence…
A beacon of courage who gave everything to expose
how deep the occupation’s reign of crime is…
You sought to have truth rain on the baneful tyrants…

We know that they hated you, we know that you were a target of heavy hate…
We know that they watched you, moving and marking your every place…
Now they want to convince us that your Palestinian family murdered you with their own hands…
Like we aren’t familiar with the usurping entity’s cold plans…

As if the ritualistic and brutal way you were murdered didn’t give all of the clues…
As if we would let justice slip away, as if we would be okay with them slaughtering you…
If so, they were dead wrong, we would never believe the liar’s wisdom…
We know damn well that Vittorio Arrigoni is a violent victim of Zionism…

He joins the martyrs of the Freedom Flotilla, murdered on the vibrant seas…
Murdered in cold blood for striving to break the occupier’s siege…
He joins Rachel Corrie, when monsters bulldozed her, humanity wept…
She was the definition of a pure soul, her passing made us all wonder how much of the world’s sanity’s left…

He joins Juliano Mer-Khamis, who fought for Palestine’s struggle via film…
Jenin went black when he was killed…
Masked militants, please, your stories are old…
We refuse to let your vicious hasbara taint the memory of Vittorio’s soul…

We know that IOF trains special units to pose as terrorists…
You can bulldoze our sister but you cannot bulldoze her memory or bulldoze our reverence…
Bassem Abu Rahma, and his sister Jawaher…
Heroes murdered by Israeli tear gas, stood up to vile tyrants with not a drop of fear…

These are the lions that Vittorio rose up to join…
Their martyrdom and bravery is the cure to the Zionist entity’s colonial poison…
He was a lion who stayed with Gaza during Cast Lead…
A lion who pitied IOF, showing them their humanity was past dead…

A lion who was tasered and imprisoned but remained in the Strip…
Remained to expose Zionist crimes and to show Israeli democracy is a dangerous myth…
A lion who protected children as phosphorus fell…
A lion who walked through Israel’s tanks, bombs, rockets and shells…

To defend the Palestinian babies of Gaza, now I want the media to say again…
That Palestinians murdered a man they considered their own, what a lie, a falsehood, a dose of propaganda from hellacious men…
They can print their lies Vittorio, through their TV shows and Zionazi papers…
But the truth will emerge, for al-Haqq is a force that cannot be vanquished…

And when it does, the world will see…
That you lost your life at the hands of men who hated you most, Israel is on an international murder spree…
Your mother is coming to Gaza, we will pray for her…
And when we will see her beautiful face, this is what we will say to her…

Your precious son didn’t meet death, you see he is still alive…
And when the tears fill her eyes…
We will ball too, right next to her, kneel and cry…
Umm Vittorio, men die but lions roar and rise…
And your child was a lion in every sense, you can see his face shining in Gaza’s gorgeous skies…

Your child fought for us, and for him, we will never lose hope or flee…
Umm Vittorio, you’re not alone in burying your son because so did we…
Humanity was the language Vittorio spoke to his last breath, he stayed fluent…
He taught us that division was nothing more than a strained illusion…

Rest in peace brother, we know that you will eternally “Stay Human…”
“Al-Shaheed Vittorio!” shakes Gaza as the battlecry…
The spirit of a lion, forever wrapped in the flag of Palestine…

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