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CC BY 2.0 Creative Commons licence
I am taking time off from things maritime to spare a thought for the children of Gaza. Palestine may be thousands of miles away, but in my mind I can hear their cries amidst the genocide being carried out by the Zionist colonisers. How can anyone ignore what is happening?
According to an Al Jazeera news update, at least 43,374 Palestinians have been killed as of the 3rd of Novemberr 2024 with more than 100,000 injured. The death toll includes 16,765 children. Palestinian children are not collateral damage. They are deliberately targeted by Israeli forces to rob the Palestinian nation of its very future.
“Blessed be childhood, which brings down something of heaven into the midst of our rough earthliness,” wrote the Swiss philosopher and poet, Henri Frédéric Amiel, in his 1893 journal. These are beautiful words, but don’t expect the rabid war dogs in Tel Aviv led by Benjamin Netanyahu to make sense of them. The world is dealing with cold-blooded psychopaths, the worshippers of Death and Destruction.
Backed by Western governments and their media stooges, Netanyahu and his New Army of Satan will continue with the slaughter until they are defeated by the forces of Good. The goal is not only to kill as many as possible, but to carve out a Greater Israel from conquered lands. The very people that went through Hitler’s Holocaust are now perpetrating their own upgraded version of it.
The world is dealing with cold-blooded psychopaths, the worshippers of Death and Destruction.
A poem riddled with pain
Hanan Ashrawi, a Palestinian politician and educator, gives voice to the suffering of Palestinian children in her undated poem, “From the Diary of an Almost-Four-Year-Old”. The poem is written from the point of view of a young child who lost an eye after being shot by an Israeli soldier. It is notable for combining images of innocence and horror and using simple but gut-wrenching language.
From the Diary of an Almost-Four-Year-Old
By Hanan Mikha’il ‘Ashrawi
Tomorrow, the bandages
will come off. I wonder
will I see half an orange,
half an apple, half my
mother’s face
with my one remaining eye?
I did not see the bullet
but felt its pain
exploding in my head.
His image did not
vanish, the soldier
with a big gun, unsteady
hands, and a look in
his eyes
I could not understand.
If I can see him so clearly
with my eyes closed,
it could be that inside our heads
we each have one spare set
of eyes
to make up for the ones we lose.
Next month, on my birthday
I’ll have a brand new glass eye,
maybe things will look round
and fat in the middle —
I’ve gazed through all my marbles,
they made the world look strange.
I hear a nine-month-old
has also lost an eye,
I wonder if my soldier
shot her too — a soldier
looking for little girls who
look him in the eye —
I’m old enough, almost four,
I’ve seen enough of life,
but she’s just a baby
who didn’t know any better.
Oh, I have suffered
With those that I saw suffer.
— William Shakespeare, The Tempest
~ Barista Uno
