It’s raining in Gaza today. After nearly 40 days of nonstop bombing and destruction, the people in Gaza finally have access to drinkable water. Kids are outside, playing in the rain again, briefly able to forget the hell they’ve witnessed for the past month.
One out of every 200 people in Gaza have been killed so far, comparable to ~1,700,000 Americans proportionally, in one month. As of today, ALL hospitals in Gaza are no longer operational. Try and name one other modern day military operation where public officials made such an active choice to let NICU babies die in hopes of furthering negotiations. It’s not just babies either, elderly patients, people with disabilities in need of urgent help, those wounded in the unending airstrikes all have no reliable options for medical care.
Brosef Biden said yesterday that Gaza’s largest hospital (Al-Shifa) “must be protected,” and called for “less intrusive action” by apartheid Israeli forces. I reckon pretty much any action qualifies as “less intrusive” than bombing a hospital numerous times and surrounding it with tanks and snipers. Also, here’s an uncomfortable question: If Hamas really did have tunnels under this hospital (they don’t), wouldn’t bombing the hospital be useless, considering the targets for these bombs could’ve simply used the tunnels to escape elsewhere? The genocidal logic isn’t logic-ing for me on this claim.
But the US continues to sit comfortably, with its finger on the trigger, as dozens of newborn babies are losing oxygen and at increased risk of death with each passing day. I’m just saying, Lucifer himself could be up under that hospital, I don’t care, those babies still deserve to live. Witnessing this in realtime is without a doubt one of the most evil, repulsive, heartbreaking, and unforgivable things I’ve ever seen in my life.
If you’re unwilling or unable to see yourself in the people of Palestine, beyond lacking even a basic connection to your own humanity, you are endangering yourself with your naïveté. What is happening in Palestine will inevitably visit us back home, if perhaps in a different shape. Just yesterday in Atlanta, hundreds of protesters were marching in opposition to the construction of Cop City, when police responded with tear gas, rubber bullets, and flash bangs. To be clear, these protesters were unarmed, but that didn’t stop DeKalb County police from bringing in this weapon of war to ‘maintain order’. While our bridges and roads are crumbling and our schools are in shambles and our healthcare is outrageously expensive, we somehow have all the money in the world for guns, bombs, cops and war.
This is what I mean by direct action. This guy happened to sit across from a senator on the train and made it his sole mission to remind the representative from Delaware what’s happening in Gaza and who’s to blame. If you should find yourself in the company of an elected official by total happenstance, make it your job to ruin their day the way they’ve ruined our month and ruined Palestinian lives forever. The sheer audacity of senator Chris Coons to respond to someone pointing out that 4,600+ Palestinian children are dead by saying, “this is the quiet car”. Uhh no sir, it’s actually about to get real loud in this car.
Upcoming musical artist RedVeil used his stage and prominence at a music festival this weekend to bring attention to the children in Gaza. The musician projected a list of hundreds of names, all Palestinian victims under the age of four onto the stage as he performed. Yesterday, Jewish protesters shut down the Israeli consulate in Chicago. People also occupied the Oakland federal building last night, with hundreds risking arrest. This can be a time of hopelessness and despair, but it can also be a time of growth, resistance and radical change. If you’re boldly (and stupidly) claiming that we have to support a candidate who is actively financing genocide in Gaza and if we don’t democracy will die, then I’m sorry to report my friend, democracy is already dead.
Side Items
Fascist Atlanta: One quick look makes it clear that police in Atlanta just need a little more training to really perfect their fascist law enforcement methods. Protesters were tear-gassed and shot with rubber pellets at 11am yesterday while demonstrating against the construction of Cop City. I shouldn’t laugh, none of this is humorous, but the image of a little police dog wearing a specialized gas mask really tests the limits of what I’m prepared to witness
Disrupting Social Harmony: The government of Nepal decided to ban TikTok yesterday, saying it was disrupting “social harmony” in the country. In the words of the foreign minister, “The government has decided to ban TikTok as it was necessary to regulate the use of the social media platform that was disrupting social harmony, goodwill and flow of indecent materials.” I’ve been told I’m something of a disruptor of social harmony myself, so here’s hoping that doesn’t affect my chances of visiting the beautiful mountainous nation someday