Saturday, November 4: Children of the Rubble
We hardly ever talk about the rose that grew from the concrete
Did you hear about the rose that grew from a crack in the concrete? How about the child that grew from the rubble where his home once stood?
With each passing day it becomes harder to wrap my head around the level of evil and sadism being displayed by the Israeli regime and endorsed by the western world. Hospitals, churches, mosques, universities, apartments, and now we can add ambulances to the list of places the apartheid state is willing to target and destroy.
Yesterday the apartheid regime bombed an ambulance and a crowd of people around Al-Shifa Hospital, killing dozens of people. There’s simply no better way to prove you definitely didn’t bomb a hospital in Gaza than by bombing three other hospitals and an ambulance full of wounded civilians and their children. They really bombed a convoy of ambulances heading to the Egyptian border on a “humanitarian corridor” provided by Israel. It’s a level of wickedness that’s almost impossible to compute. They made these people believe they’d be safe on their travel south, then they bombed them anyway.
We can talk about the numbers of casualties in this ongoing nightmare of Israeli ethnic cleansing, but saying 10,000+ Palestinians are dead doesn’t capture the true extent of damage being done. The dead can rest in peace, God willing, but the living are forever broken. There are 1.1 million kids in Gaza who are traumatized forever. They could live until they're 100 years old and this trauma will never leave their bodies. Instead of living a normal childhood, these children of Gaza are being forced into a reality where they have to be stronger and more courageous than any adult on the planet. They deserve the opportunity to be children, but so many Palestinians don’t have the luxury of suffering from PTSD, because there’s no end to the trauma.
Many of today’s news headlines discuss how concerning it is that the youths are learning about Israel’s barbarism from Palestinians on the ground through social media like Tik Tok, but no word on why the kids are turning to these outlets for their news. I’m sure it has nothing to do with the fact that the typical mainstream media doesn’t appear remotely interested in telling the full story. In fact, the New York Times could only find space in their rag of a publication to wax poetics on what Matthew Perry’s untimely passing means for the people of Ukraine. No time or interest in interviewing a child who lost her home or her leg or her entire family.
Anthony Blinken, the secretary of state, was in Israel this week, ostensibly trying to negotiate those “humanitarian pauses” that the western world seems so intent on. Turns out he was actually telling his Israeli counterparts that agreeing to a “humanitarian pause” would help the American government play off any pressure they’re facing over their support of Israel's genocide in Gaza and in turn buy Israel more time for its brutal ground offensive. Unsurprisingly, the people in power have no interest in ending the bloodshed.
Politicians in the French senate, the true bottom-feeding scum of the Earth, took things a step further by proposing a new bill this week, stating: 'An insult committed against the State of Israel is punishable by two years of imprisonment and a fine of 75,000 euros.’ So if you’re wondering what stage of madness we’ve reached, it’s worse than you can imagine, and it’s not slowing down.
The international solidarity movement continued to grow yesterday, as Honduras led by President Xiomara Castro became the fourth country in Latin America to recall its ambassador from the apartheid state in protest of Israel’s ongoing genocidal attack on Gaza. In Oakland, California, Palestinian activists and members of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) stood together and prevented a ship carrying weapons to Israel from docking. This afternoon, a national solidarity march is scheduled in Washington DC, with tens of thousands of people expected to call for a ceasefire.
We’ve witnessed nearly a month of indiscriminate bombing of a 2 million person concentration camp, an endless stream of crimes against humanity, each more horrifying than the last. Thousands of children murdered, over a million people made homeless, but somehow we need another day or another week to debate whether saying "From the river to the sea" makes some snowflake zionist feel unsafe.
No matter what you’re capable of doing to resist the normalization of genocide, it’s your responsibility to do it now. Go join a protest, go call your elected representatives, go talk to the people in your life who are working tirelessly to avoid learning the truth of what’s happening. Author Arundhati Roy put it best when she said, "The trouble is that once you see it, you can’t unsee it. And once you’ve seen it, keeping quiet, saying nothing, becomes as political an act as speaking out. There’s no innocence. Either way, you’re accountable.” Go be great my friends.
Side Items
Shoutout to Anwar El Ghazi: We’ve reached my favorite intersection folks, sports and politics! Yesterday, German soccer club Mainz terminated the contract of Dutch/Moroccan forward Anwar El Ghazi after his social media post expressing sympathy for Palestinian people. Players are welcome to express their support for Israel, or Ukraine, or any number of other nationalist causes, but when Palestine enters the equation, all bets are off