“Holocaust”?

This not-Jew Zionist in my clothes-closet / asks: what business is this of mine / to concern myself / with nakhba and ethnic-cleansing, /with the cruel crimes of empire / no longer “holocaust” nor “shoah”

“Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who substitute darkness for light and light for darkness, who substitute bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter.” (Isaiah 5:20)

 

This not-Jew Zionist in my clothes-closet

asks: what business is this of mine

to concern myself

 

with nakhba and ethnic-cleansing,

with the cruel crimes of empire

no longer “holocaust” nor “shoah”

(nor the desperate delusions of the dispossessed?)

 

what business is this of mine?

 

…with savagery and sadism and the laughing soldiers

(their sharp-tongued-metal filled with hatred and fierce fire)

with women’s underwear on their heads

and the child’s stuffed toy under the thief’s arm

and always alwasy the fucking phone-camera

 

the one who laughs

with friends and family

at home or on holiday

beyond the blooded barbed wire.

 

My business?

Maybe not.

 

Maybe no longer now

none of our once-collective business, i suppose,

we who were all almost-still-born

in the gutter;

 

for now

look how “humanity” spreads its shiny metal wings,

spreads its poison everywhere it touches

 

and with our stomachs well fed

we soar high over our own forgotten history

of nightmare and cruelty.

 

None of it my business, you say, nor yours,

but in my dream i still wake too often

with the uniform’s hand wrapped round my throat

with the baton still beating off my blistered back.

 

Hatred is a language we have learnt young here.

 

But of course, my cancelled-friends,

none of it is any of our business.

 

And so you would offer me more

popcorn and apple pie,

you would stuff our grief with TV adverts

and tranquilisers

with the rhetoric of politicians and criminals

while the images of burning bodies

light up

 

not just your screen,

not just you in your closed-and-darkened-rooms

but this whole fucking world

 

its Now-New-Age-Murderous Self…

 

Our immeasurable and unforgivable

silences!

 

séamas carraher

15 February – 7 April, 2025

https://seamascarraher.blogspot.com/

 

Images, Etc.

Genocide in Gaza through the eyes of Israeli soldiers | The Listening Post

Al-Jazeera, March 3, 2024

How Israeli soldiers are livestreaming war crimes | The Take

Al-Jazeera, October 8, 2024

 ‘Stop posting your war crimes on social media’ – Israeli army orders soldiers |

Al-Jazeera – The Listening Post – January 11, 2025

 

Notes

Isaiah 5:20 quote, taken from: from Richard Rohr, “The Tears of Things” (2025)

Kenny’s Bookshop

 

(Alternative quote?) “Fascism is the ultimate code of the hoodlum;”  (George Steiner) from ‘The Writer & Communism’ in Language & Silence, (1958)

 

References

How did the Nakba happen? | Al Jazeera English

Al-Jazeera – 2018 

 

(nor the desperate delusions of the dispossessed?)

“Trump won 77,284,118 votes, or 49.8 percent of the votes cast for president. That is the second highest vote total in U.S. history, trailing only the 81,284,666 votes that Joe Biden won in 2020. Trump won 3,059,799 more popular votes in 2024 than he won in 2020 and 14,299,293 more than he won in 2016. He now holds the record for the most cumulative popular votes won by any presidential candidate in U.S. history, surpassing Barack Obama. Running three times for the White House obviously helps.”

Council on Foreign Relations, December 2024

 

look how “humanity” spreads its shiny metal wings,

spreads its poison everywhere it touches

“At least 100 children are reported killed or injured every day in Gaza, since the strikes resumed (on 18 March), according to UNICEF.

Young lives cut short in a war not of children’s making.

Since the war began 1.5 years ago, 15,000 children were reportedly killed.

Philippe Lazzarini, UNRWA, 4 April, 2025

 

this one who laughs

with friends and family

at home or on holiday

behind the blooded barbed wire…

“Amid the genocide in Gaza, Israeli soldiers carve out a resort filled with candyfloss and popcorn…”

Middle East Eye, December, 2024

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