Monday, September 30: 51 Weeks
We're staring down the barrel of a full year of genocide in Palestine
Don’t look now, but the apartheid state of Israel killed more civilians in Lebanon in one day last week than Russia has in Ukraine all year. We’re witnessing a truly remarkable commitment to genocide, like seeing Babe Ruth in his prime, if Babe was a murderous butcher and his sport of choice was ethnic cleansing.
Presently, the apartheid state is dropping bombs on Gaza, Lebanon, and Yemen, sparing no expense, with the United States providing support in the form of bombs being dropped on Syria. If that wasn’t enough, the architects of Palestinian genocide secured an additional $8.7 billion in military aid, courtesy of US taxpayers, to support their ongoing efforts to eradicate those supporters of Palestinian liberation. It’s the ruinous tag-team duo that absolutely nobody asked for.
According to the Lebanese prime minister, as many as a million people have already been displaced after just a few weeks of Israeli airstrikes, to say nothing of the hundreds of innocent Lebanese civilians that have lost their lives. But the apartheid state expertly and routinely ignored any collateral damage, parading the murder of Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah as justification for their indiscriminate bombing campaign. All this escalation and not a peep from the so-called leaders of the free world.
At this point it's kinda funny that Biden is still thought of as the president. To be completely transparent, I don't even think of that demented old Mr. Magoo genocidaire as being alive anymore. Ever since Kamala entered the presidential race Ol’ Joey has much more time to do what he loves; namely eat ice cream and putter aimlessly around the white house, spending quality time with his high school buddy, the ghost of Abe Lincoln.
When I say that Officer Kamala and Joey Biden are complicit in genocide, I don’t mean they’re connected in some vague, intangible way. I mean they are directly responsible for the unimaginable and constantly climbing death toll. Leaked documents from USAID and the state department’s refugees bureau revealed what anyone paying attention already knew; namely that the apartheid state of Israel deliberately prevented food and medicine from getting into Gaza while they bombed and starved the besieged population. Yet secretary of state Tony Blinken maintained a blatant lie to congress claiming the exact opposite, for the sole sake of not interrupting the flow of weaponry.
According to USAID, "Lifesaving food was stockpiled less than 30 miles across the border in an Israeli port, including enough flour to feed about 1.5 million Palestinians for 5 months". But the apartheid loving clowns "prohibited the transfer of flour" because it would be distributed via UNRWA, an organization baselessly labeled as problematic. The Foreign Assistance Act should’ve been followed months ago, thus freezing hundreds of millions of dollars in military aid, but this would’ve required those in power to admit what any average observer could conclude. In any credible society, Blinken would face criminal charges or impeachment at the very least. Instead, we live in an immoral hellscape where he can simply pretend he’s “working tirelessly to establish a ceasefire”.
The Lancet medical journal published an estimate of deaths in Gaza back in June from several respected scientists, who laid out their process of estimation (mostly using comparison with similar conflicts) and final numbers. They estimated that ~186,000 total deaths could be attributable to the ongoing genocide in Gaza, which would be ~8% of the total population. If deaths continue at this rate – about 23,000 a month – there would be an additional 149,500 deaths by the end of the year, six and half months from the initial mid-June estimate. Using their method, the total deaths since the genocide began would be estimated at ~335,500 in total.
At the end of the day, in the eyes of colonizers, the only truly moral thing a colonized people can do is suffer and die in silence. Fear is the only thing that preserves the loathsome “order” we see around us. I continue to ask what else folks are supposed to do to make their outrage heard and understood and respected? We’ve witnessed 51 weeks of genocide, next Monday will be October 7 again, and it’ll undoubtedly feature a long line of politicians and celebrities lamenting the loss of Israeli lives. But somehow they’ll skip right past the countless Palestinians murdered.
The same people “standing with Israel” are the ones with political power refusing to engage in any meaningful way (other than supplying more weaponry for the genocidal Israeli military). People have protested, called and written letters to their elected representatives, resigned from jobs, been fired from jobs, camped on university property, been attacked for camping on university property, lost degrees, filed for court rulings, demonstrated beyond any reasonable doubt Israel's genocidal intent, and still, the killing machine churns on.
There’s a limit to how much bloodshed people can idly watch, eventually the reactions can’t just be peaceful. For over 11 months the apartheid state has made abundantly clear that unless the US compels it to accept a ceasefire, they will expand their campaign of brutal violence into an all-out war in Lebanon and beyond. Now that day is here.
At what point do we collectively accept that our mass awareness, our social media posts and our peaceful rallies and our pacifistic campaigns are entirely ineffective? When do we acknowledge the hard truth that other tactics are required of us to achieve change? I’m not sitting here fantasizing about some faceless mob we can eventually let off a leash to save us. Nobody will save us except us.
Side Items
Hurricane Helene: Nothing illustrates just how little this country cares about its citizens quite like hurricane season. Every year there are a number of powerful storms, and every year without fail the official approach from the government boils down to, “evacuate if you can afford to, or die”. No preventative measures put in place beyond a vague "evacuation order”, no additional funding to improve infrastructure, just a blatant “every man for himself” mentality. As a result, entire towns in western North Carolina were submerged last week, with a yet-unknown number of people losing their lives. The US state department can somehow afford to offer chartered flights to Americans out of the apartheid state, but can’t even manage evacuating American citizens trapped in life-threatening danger on American soil
Adams Indicted: The mayor of New York City and human/turtle hybrid Eric Adams was hit with heavy charges last week, in a hilariously karmic turn of events. Adams is being charged with bribery, campaign finance, and conspiracy offenses, none of which should really come as a surprise. As one Twitter user put it, “It's insane that Eric Adams is the first sitting NYC Mayor to be indicted on criminal charges, that's like being the first sitting mayor of Mouse City to eat cheese"
Marcellus Khaliifah Williams: The state of Missouri executed an innocent man last week. Marcellus “Khaliifah” Williams was on death row for the 1998 killing of a woman, a crime he continually denied committing. Despite an overwhelming lack of evidence and millions of people opposing the execution, including the prosecutor's office that secured his murder conviction 21 years ago, the state chose to ignore calls to spare his life. Williams was a devout Muslim and a religious leader at his correctional center, and his last written statement was, “All praise be to Allah in every situation!!!”
“In the face of apex arrogance
and ethnic cleansing by any definition…
still your laughter can be heard
and somehow you are able to smile
O resilient Children of Palestine.”
-Excerpt from a poem titled “The Perplexing Smiles of the Children of Palestine” by Brother Marcellus Williams