Monday, October 16: When War Comes Home
Whoever thought this genocide would stay overseas was sorely mistaken
This genocide was never going to be contained in Gaza. With western leaders and media outlets parroting the propaganda of an apartheid state, the brutal violence was never going to remain in Palestine or even the Middle East.
Yesterday, a 71-year-old man in a Chicago suburb stabbed his female Palestinian-American neighbor and her 6-year-old son dozens of times, wounding the mother and killing the child. The mother and her son were stabbed by their landlord in Plainfield Township, about 40 minutes outside of Chicago. Investigators were quickly able to gather that Joseph Czuba, a bigot and a coward, targeted his victims because they are Muslim, due to the ongoing genocide in Gaza.
Wadea Al-Fayoume, was a Palestinian-American boy who had just turned six a few weeks ago. Now, because of the actions of a hateful and murderous extremist and the rhetoric of almost all western media, Wadea will remain six forever. Wadea’s mother left the West Bank 12 years ago to come to the US, in hopes of avoiding the violence overseas that continues today. But this violence, which the US has funded and endorsed for decades, doesn’t recognize or abide by international borders.
Czuba was charged with one count of first-degree murder, attempted murder, and aggravated battery, along with two counts of committing a hate crime. This sort of murderous hatred is a natural by-product of a 24-hour news media hell-bent on framing all Palestinians as equally responsible and deserving of the ongoing violence. When the president and news outlets spent the past week stoking the flames of bloodlust with ridiculous and unfounded claims of “baby beheadings” and “mass rapists”, we can’t be too shocked when violent maniacs in the US start to act like the genocidal settlers in Israel.
By now the death toll in Gaza has climbed to ~3,000 including at least 1,030 children, 440 women, and 11,250 injured. For those needing a further breakdown of those figures, the apartheid regime has killed 14 Palestinians every hour for 9 days, or 5 Palestinian children every hour for 9 days. 50 families have been wiped out entirely. You might read that and think of small families, two parents with perhaps one or two kids, the western concept of the “nuclear family”. In reality that means 50 entire bloodlines have been removed from civil registries: every single living generation, every last person, has been murdered.
We can’t overlook or stop speaking against the ongoing ethnic cleansing and genocide unfolding in Gaza, but not limited to Gaza. Elsewhere in Palestine, bloodthirsty Israeli settlers in the West Bank, armed and backed by the military, are also taking this opportunity to escalate their attacks on Palestinians. Illegal Israeli settlers and soldiers have killed 51 Palestinians in the West Bank in the past week. At least two Palestinian villages, Al-Qanub and Wadi Al-Sik, have been entirely depopulated as a result of the ongoing violence by Israeli settlers. This is a continuation of the ongoing zionist expansion project, murdering Palestinians to occupy their land and incorporate it into the apartheid state of Israel.
If you need an idea of what a defensible response to this genocide looks like, the nation of Colombia has threatened to break all relations with Israel, with President Gustavo Petro saying, “If foreign relations with Israel have to be suspended, we suspend them. We do not support genocide.” This comes after a week of Petro consistently denouncing Israel’s total blockade of Gaza. I imagine it must be nice to have a political leader willing to speak out against genocide, meanwhile we have grandaddy Biden in the midst of evident cognitive decline serving as both a benefactor and a mouthpiece for the Israeli military. Truly the bar for a public servant could not be any lower.
Friends have told me they’re running out of words to describe what’s happening to their families. They turned to social media to try and educate their friends and colleagues, only to find their content shadow-banned and limited in its exposure. We should’ve known that Instagram was meant for pictures of food, not descriptions of genocide. Personally, I wouldn’t say I’m running out of words, just running out of ways to politely describe what’s happening and what has been happening in Gaza for years. I recognize my own biased perception as someone deeply opposed to the occupation, so if you’d prefer another voice on the topic, here’s Daniel Day-Lewis describing his brief time in Palestine back in 2005 and how the Israeli illusion of a free society quickly evaporated.
I urge you, dear reader, don’t stop talking about what’s happening in Gaza. Don’t look away just because it’s easier to distract ourselves with the trivialities of our day-to-day lives. Speak up against occupation, speak up against apartheid, speak up in defense of Palestinian liberation.