IF (with apologies to Rudyard Kipling)

by Esther Pollard - Justice4JP Release - September 1, 2004

If you can keep your head when Prime Ministers and Presidents
     Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can keep your dignity while the US double-crosses you,
     And make allowance for Israel's double-dealing too:
If you can languish 2 decades in prison and not give up on justice,
     Or being falsely accused, don't yield to despair;
Or being reviled, don't give way to hating,
      And yet don't look too healthy, nor feel too well;

If you can fight for freedom -- and not make battle your life;
     If you can seek justice -- and not make vengeance your aim,
If you can meet with The Conference and The Knesset
     And treat those two impostors just the same:
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
     Twisted by enemies to serve the political agenda of fools,
Or watch the principles you sacrificed your freedom for, sullied,
     And continue to treasure'em with time-tested faith;

If you can make one heap of all your legal merits
     And risk it all on one more round of judicial pitch-and-toss,
And lose in court on technicality, and start again at the beginning,
     And never waiver in your cause:
If you can retain your emunah and bitachon
     To serve HaShem long after logic and reason are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
     Except Trust in the Almighty which says to you: "Hold on!"

If you can live among criminals and keep your integrity,
      Or walk with the Holy Rav Mordecai Eliyahu shlita -- nor lose your humility.
If neither self-serving foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
     If only G-d counts with you, but mortal man not too much:
If you can fill the endless night of Exile
     With sixty seconds worth of heart-rending Tefillah,
Yours are the Heavens and everything beneath it,
      And -- what is more -- you are the man we are proud of:
Jonathan Pollard - Ohev Yisrael!