Thursday, November 2: Playing in the Clouds
Kanafani had it right, children have no place in war
I was reminded earlier this week of this poem by Ghassan Kanafani, a Palestinian writer and freedom fighter. This war, if you choose to call it a war, has disproportionately affected young children, more than any war I can recall.
When the ethnic cleansing becomes a daily fact, when the motivations of the occupier become impossible to deny, the western news cycle seeks to simply move on. The unfolding crisis becomes a secondary item, below the fold, an afterthought of a hazy war happening far away. Politicians are increasingly comfortable trying to fall back into their routines, pretending they haven’t actively helped fund and normalize the mass-slaughter of Palestinian children. Denialism is the name of the game for so many media companies and politicians.
How many Israeli public officials have to express genocidal intent on the record for it to be openly considered a genocide? Yesterday the apartheid state’s public diplomacy minister (presumably the minister in charge of being diplomatic publicly) said: "Erase all of Gaza from the face of the earth. That the Gazan monsters will fly to the southern fence and try to enter Egyptian territory or they will die and their death will be evil. Gaza should be erased…A vengeful and cruel IDF is needed here. Anything less is immoral. Just unethical." Like woah lady, that doesn’t sound very publicly diplomatic.
The cowardly Israeli military has been more than happy to oblige these genocidal wishes, keeping busy dropping bombs on Gaza and beginning their ground invasion into the territory. But they’ve also placed the West Bank, an area occupied since 1967, under tight and equally murderous restrictions. In tactics last seen during the second intifada, when Palestinian resistance uprisings began back in 2000, the Israeli regime has closed off most travel between Palestinian cities, blocked off the exits from some refugee camps, and sent troops into the heart of Palestinian cities such as Jenin and Nablus, seeking to preemptively destroy any fledgling Palestinian resistance.
This analysis by The Guardian examines footage and imagery of the Jabaliya refugee camp bombing earlier this week and sheds more light on the brutal attack in Gaza. The Gaza ministry of health said that at least 195 Palestinians had been killed in two rounds of Israeli airstrikes on Gaza’s Jabaliya refugee camp, on Tuesday and Wednesday, with that number certain to climb as Palestinian medical facilities continue to collapse. The total number of dead Palestinians is closing in on 10,000 in less than a month.
While the world is distracted by the endless bloodshed in Gaza, the Israeli regime is also silently awarding licenses to drill for gas off the Gazan coast. Palestinians who should’ve rightfully had a role in developing their own natural resources are instead usurped entirely, focusing instead on dodging the hellfire being rained down on them day and night. The Israeli energy ministry says a total of 12 licenses have been given to six companies, including British Petroleum, four of these companies are new to the exploration of natural gas off the Mediterranean coast.
Yesterday, Biden and vice president Harris announced the development of a brand new, first-of-its-kind US National Strategy to Counter Islamophobia. Not sure how much money they poured into the creation of this new program, but as an Arab and a Muslim AND an American, I’m happy to provide a little tidbit of guidance: The most effective way for the US to counter Islamophobia today would be to stop sanctioning and funding the rampant killing of Palestinians and other populations racialized as Muslim in the global south. A solid first step in fighting Islamophobia: perhaps consider getting your buddies in the apartheid Israeli regime to stop carpet-bombing children in Gaza for a few minutes. Just a thought.
But once again, Washington has shown its brilliance; instead of choosing to end its uniform support for the indiscriminate bombing of Gaza, the slugs in power chose instead to create a vague “strategy” to combat abstract prejudice that will most definitely just fund more pigs and feds. As always, The Onion continues to provide the best western coverage, albeit satirical, of the political approach to Palestine. Maybe one day we’ll live in a world when the satirical news site isn’t the one doing all the heavy lifting.
Side Items
Bobby Knight’s Dead: The famed college basketball coach best known for his raging temper died yesterday at the age of 83. Some people will say he was a complicated character or a polarizing figure, but in reality he was just a racist and misogynistic old white guy who managed to win some basketball games
Scamtos Survives: New York representative George Santos managed to survive a vote to remove him from office yesterday as most of his fellow representatives chose to withhold any punishment while both his criminal trial and a house ethics investigation continue. Other New York republican representatives are eager to distance themselves from a colleague who fabricating pretty much his entire life story and is also accused of stealing from his donors, lying to congress, and receiving unemployment benefits he didn’t deserve. Sometimes it’s nice to see a scammer win…sadly this is not one of those times