HUNGER (& the HATRED)
“There is no food to feed my children nor is there any bread… we came to the point where we are eating tree leaves we are eating the food of this donkey … you are asking me why did I come here I came because I want to take flour …look my leg is broken and I came to take flour I came to take flour … I came yesterday and people stepped over me I came today… even if I were to die I want to take a bag of flour because I can’t feed my children I don’t have anything to give my children to eat even if I die I will stay…”
(Democracy Now Interview, 1’56” – February 28, 2024)
“Israel has announced its intention to destroy the Palestinian people in whole or in part, simply for being Palestinian. In my view as a human rights expert this is now a situation of genocide.”
(Michael Fakhri, UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food)
1
Hatred
like a wildfire
stalks the machinery of
my mercenary chest.
The blood,
well-armed in its rage
likewise pleads for revenge.
Night soon settles like
a smokescreen over this murderous heart
where a million mute massacres cry out
for redemption.
Who lit this fire that
sweeps whole worlds away?
Who forged these cruel contracts
signed in blood and retribution?
What bitter Bible blesses their ruthless laws?
And who, each day, lights the spark
on such senseless suffering?
And, tell me, Mr. Netanyahu
what merciless mother
would feed her children
on famine and starvation?
2
“I’m wishing for my child’s death
so he can’t ask me
for a loaf of bread…”
These pictures
in their mindless malice
tells me who.
This heartsick heart
in its sinking
tells me who.
These hungry children
laying siege to my mind,
tell me who.
Your criminal silence and
the poisonous lies of the powerful,
they, also, tell me who.
Here is where we will all burn.
All the birds of night and heartache,
in their futile flight, their fierce
falling, have shown me how
and here, too
this single starving mother
calling out for bread
to my overfed stomach.
Why? And How?
And how much longer?
Only this simple prayer may
reach its tormented fingers
into her searing ache, the
desolate-scorched-earth
of what was once both
body and soul.
All these assassins of my peace
are now summoned here
like messengers, or angels,
of sorrow and despair:
here the flood.
Here a nameless river crying for revenge.
Hatred like a wildfire withers me in its wrath.
My blood grows cold counting the corpses.
And still night will spread its hunger
everywhere, like a siege.
i’m telling you, people of Israel,
people of Palestine,
it will take more than 30,000
godforsaken funerals
to calm these troubled waters.
séamas carraher
Image
News Report – “Mahmoud Fattouh – a 2-month-old baby, dies from starvation in Occupied Gaza”
Al Jazeera Newsfeed – February 27, 2024
Note
“I’m wishing for my child’s death / so he can’t ask me /for a loaf of bread…”
Al Jazeera – 27, February 2024
“…this single starving mother / calling out for bread …”
Democracy Now – 28 February, 2024 (3’03”)
Links
Israeli IDF Soldier Video – “Genocide in Gaza through the eyes of Israeli soldiers”
“Here we are, at the end of February, with at least 576,000 people in Gaza, one quarter of the population, one step away from famine; with one in six children under two years of age in Northern Gaza suffering from acute malnutrition and wasting… in Gaza City residents have described dire conditions where children have no food to eat …”
Democracy Now, February 28, 2024 (@ 1’56”)
“We Are Dying Of Hunger, Not Bombings…”: Displaced Palestinians Grapple With Starvation In Gaza
India Today – February 29, 2024
As 2-Month-Old Starves to Death in Gaza, Mosab Abu Toha Says His Own Family Is Eating Animal Feed:
“A famine is unfolding in Gaza, where hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinians have resorted to consuming animal feed amid soaring prices and dwindling supplies of food… “Israel is not allowing food into the northern part of Gaza so people would regret not having left,” says Palestinian writer Mosab Abu Toha, who fled Gaza for Cairo in November and has been attempting since then to secure safe passage for his extended family members…Abu Toha urges international actors to take action and end Israel’s siege of Gaza. “They are killing us every day,” he says. “Where is the mind of the people in the world? How could you let this happen?”
Democracy Now – 25 February, 2024
* Fonte/autore: il manifesto
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