Showing posts with label war. Show all posts
Showing posts with label war. Show all posts

Wednesday, September 10, 2025

Special Feature: Selected Poems for Reflections on Israel's State Terrorism

State terrorism’: Qatar PM leads Arab world fury at Israel for striking Hamas leaders in Doha

Illegal and unethical for ‘rogue player’ Netanyahu to target ‘negotiators from the other side’ being hosted by the mediator, says PM Al-Thani; Saudis ‘deploying all capabilities’ to support Gulf ally


"Israel's oldest dailyHaaretz," which was was sanctioned by the Israeli government on Nov. 24, 2024

Analysis, September 10, 2025: With Doha Strike, Israel Signals a Strategic Shift and an Indifference to Consequences

The target of Israel's strike in Doha was a meeting of Hamas' negotiating team, led by the group's chief negotiator, Khalil al-Hayya. The officials had gathered to discuss the latest U.S. cease-fire proposal as part of ongoing talks on a hostage deal.

And Editorial, September 10, 2025: Israel's Attack on Hamas Chiefs in Doha Is Death Sentence for the Hostages

Israel has further cemented its reputation as a war-mongering state. Its strike on Tuesday in Qatar's capital, Doha, was among the most dangerous, unnecessary and harmful military operations it has ever conducted. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government confirmed what had long been suspected: it doesn't want any cease-fire deal in Gaza that would also secure the return of hostages held by Hamas, as their fate is of no concern. The attack's sole objective is the continuation of the war and, if possible, its expansion to new fronts. 


never again rolling tanks (n)ever again bomber after bomber


anything new
under Gaza's smeared sun?
smoky rubble
beyond smoky rubble, and yet
again smoky rubble


word after word
squeezed out of the PM's mouth
in broad daylight
this daily "banality"
of dying, of death in Gaza

(FYI: L4 alludes to Jewish philosopher and political thinker Hannah Arendt's ground-breaking book, , Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil)

it’s peaceful now

M-16 rifles are blooming, 2000-pound bombs singing, and Merkava tanks sweeping the streets.

Gaza is cleaner than ever, clean of blood-covered children. Yet, somewhere among the rubble the only moving thing is a boy’s eyes that look up to Heaven.

a mural
on the separation wall
of the West Bank:
in midair a girl grasps
a bunch of rainbow balloons

Contemporary Haibun Anthology 20


To conclude today's "Special feature" post, I would like to share with you the latest entry of Against the Drowning Noise of Other Words, CCXXV: "smoky darkness"
written in response to the commissioner general of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), Philippe Lazzarini's September 1 2025 statement: Gaza is “becoming the graveyard of international humanitarian law.” 

smoky darkness ...
God's name slips further
into it


Added: Against the Drowning Noise of Other Words, CCXXVI: "the world(s)"

The World(s)

half awake
to the call of a muezzin ...
in and out
of this cracked window
an Israeli sniper drone

smoky darkness ...
the world
within this hushed silence
and yet is there a world
where no fireballs fly

Saturday, September 6, 2025

Biting NOT Barking: Old Bed Tanka by Kirsty Karkow

English Original

nothing
can match this feeling
bone-deep
the child who went to war
sleeps in his old bed

Eucalypt, 8, 2010

Kirsty Karkow


Chinese Translation (Traditional)

沒有任何事物
能比得上這種感覺
如此地深入骨髓
那個參戰的孩子
仍睡在那張舊床上

Chinese Translation (Simplified)

没有任何事物
能比得上这种感觉
如此地深入骨髓
那个参战的孩子
仍睡在那张旧床上


Bio Sketch

Kirsty Karkow lived in Waldoboro, Maine, where she wrote haiku, sijo, tanka, and other short forms. Lyrical, poignant, and spare, her poetry reflected a rich and deep sense of place and spirit. Her haiku have won the Mainichi and the R.H Blyth Award and placed in other contests. And she had two best-selling books in print: water poems: haiku, tanka and sijo and shorelines: haiku, haibun and tanka , published by Black Cat Press.

Tuesday, September 2, 2025

Special Feature: Selected Poems for Reflections on the International Association of Genocide Scholars' Resolution: Israel Is Committing Genocide in Gaza

(FYI: Haaretz, September 1 2025War Against Journalism

Over 250 global media outlets from over 70 countries staged an unprecedented coordinated "blackout" to protest the killing of journalists in Gaza by Israeli forces.

The initiative, organized by Reporters Without Borders alongside campaign platform Avaaz and the International Federation of Journalists, saw newspapers around the globe publish black front pages, broadcasters interrupt programming, and digital outlets darken their homepages in a show of solidarity with Gazan journalists who have been killed since Israel's military campaign began over a year and a half ago...

The message also resonated among journalists in Israel itself. On Sunday, over 130 Israeli journalists signed a petition calling to stop the killing of their colleagues in Gaza, end the war, and secure a hostage deal.

Among them were 50 Haaretz reporters and others from Calcalist, Time Out, and The Hottest Place in Hell. The petition condemned Israel's record as "the country responsible for the highest number of journalist killings in 2024," and criticized domestic media for failing to cover the human toll of the war.

Outlets such as Local Call and +972 Magazine participated in the RSF blackout campaign, joining what organizers described as the largest global editorial protest in recent history.)



Haaretz, September 1 2025: Israel Is Committing Genocide in Gaza, Scholars' Association Says

The world's leading genocide scholars' association has passed a resolution saying that the legal criteria have been met to establish Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, its president said on Monday.

Eighty-six percent of those who voted among the 500-member International Association of Genocide Scholars backed the resolution declaring: "Israel's policies and actions in Gaza meet the legal definition of genocide in Article II of the United Nations Convention for the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (1948)."

The 1948 UN Genocide Convention, adopted in the wake of the mass murder of Jews by Nazi Germany, defines genocide as crimes committed "with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such."


And on July 28, 2025, Israeli human rights groups already published their reports on Israel's genocidal war on Gaza:

The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, B’Tselem:

July 2025 Report: Our Genocide

And Physicians for Human Rights, Israel:



never again rolling tanks (n)ever again bomber after bomber


each bombed-out house:
an album with no photos
but with people
living, wounded and dead
pressed between its pages


anything new
under Gaza's smeared sun?
smoky rubble
beyond smoky rubble, and yet
again smoky rubble


"Relocation Plan"

summer odors  ...
nowhere to go, no way
to get pieces of bread

ghost town
a Gazan's mind a labyrinth
of dead bodies


another day
another refugee tent
another baby 
with loose skin over bone
starves to death with eyes open


word after word
squeezed out of the PM's mouth
in broad daylight
this daily "banality"
of dying, of death in Gaza

(FYI: L4 alludes to Jewish philosopher and political thinker Hannah Arendt's ground-breaking book, , Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil)


To conclude today's "Special Feature" post, I would like to share with you the latest entry of Against the Drowning Noise of Other Words, CCXXII: "famine and a food aid truck"

mud-stained bodies
on sweat-drenched bodies on bodies
on a food aid truck


Added: Against the Drowning Noise of Other Words, CCXXIII: "mind view"

Gazan girl's mind view:
mostly smoke and ruins
yet her lifeworld
still bears death and rebirth
on the wings of a dream


Added: Against the Drowning Noise of Other Words, CCXXIV: "The Voice of Hind Rajab"
inspired by The Voice of Hind Rajab, a Gaza film that earned over twenty minutes of standing ovation after its premiere at the Venice Film Festival 

trapped in a car
among six dead relatives
Hind struggles for hours ...
chants of Free Palestine echo 
through the theater and our hearts


FYI: Palestinian-Canadian actress Saja Kilani read a statement on behalf of the cast and crew:

"Hind's story carries the weight of an entire people... Her voice is one amongst 19,000 children who lost their lives in Gaza in the last two years alone… Let Hind Rajab's voice echo in every theatre, let it remind you of the silence the world has built around Gaza."

Thursday, August 28, 2025

A Room of My Own: (N)ever Again Haiku

Against the Drowning Noise of Other Words, CCXX: "never again, (n)ever again"

never again rolling tanks (n)ever again bomber after bomber


Added: Against the Drowning Noise of Other Words, CCXXI: "[paradoxical] state of denial"
written in response to +972 Magazine, August 22, 2025: How Israelis turned atrocity denial into an art

...either it is all fake, or else the Gazans deserved it. Often, paradoxically, it is both at once: “There are no dead children in Gaza, and it’s good that we killed them.


[Paradoxical] State of Denial

smoky twilight ...
will starving babies in Gaza
heal the broken heart
of an Israeli mother
whose children were kidnapped

word after word
squeezed out of the PM's mouth
in broad daylight
this daily "banality"
of dying, of death in Gaza

to save a life
is to save this broken world
a rabbi laments ...
TV debate back and forth
about the new body count

is a mother
cradling a dead baby?
no, it's an actor
holding a life-like doll
it's all fake, Gazans deserve it


FYI: L4 of the second tanka alludes to philosopher and political thinker Hannah Arendt's ground-breaking book,  Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil 

And Ls 1&2 of the third tanka refers to Jerusalem Talmud, Sanhedrin 4:1 (22a):

Whoever destroys a soul, it is considered as if he destroyed an entire world. And whoever saves a life, it is considered as if he saved an entire world.


Added: This Brave New World, CXXIV

The Ritual Continues

a load of hot air
after shooting after shooting ...
the bell rings
mourners kneel in prayer
then an outburst, where is God?

God doesn't give you
more than you can handle ...
in dim light
these "thoughts and prayers" sharp
like a thousand bullets

the wooden Jesus
drips droplets of red
in gathering dark
with an ear-to-ear smile
a young man finger-gunning


FYI: The Independent, August 28, 2025: ‘Don’t just say this is about thoughts and prayers..these kids were literally praying’: Minneapolis mayor on school shooting

The New Yorker's daily newsletter, August 27There Will Be a Next School Shooting

If parents in Minneapolis are inconsolable tonight, if parents across the country are afraid that their children’s school might be the next one—and there will be a next one, and a next one after that—that means our nation is working according to our current leaders’ wishes. They wrote it down. It’s how we know we’re truly free.

And Time Magazine, May 25, 2022: School Shootings Confirm That Guns Are the Religion of the Right, 

Sometimes calls for America to return to God are couched in the language of consolation. Especially after a mass shooting..

What’s needed is a coalition of American politicians and citizens—secular and religious—who value the protection of innocent human life above power. Without that, the ritual will continue: Horrific deaths, followed by thoughts and prayers, calls to return to God, and no change.


Added: This Brave New World, CXXV

In This Country

"We have more guns than people," the school pastor says in a trembling voice. "Please don’t just say this is about thoughts and prayers..." he pauses for a moment to take a deep breath, "these kids were literally praying when shattered stained-glass windows rained down on them."

armed guard outside ...
one active shooter drill
after another

Saturday, August 23, 2025

Special Feature: Selected Poems for Reflections on UN-Declared Gaza Famine, A Famine on all of Our Watch

(FYI: +972 Magazine,  independent, non-profit media initiative, Israel-Palestine

August 21, 2025: In a joint investigation by Israel's  +972 Magazine and Local Call and UK's The Guardian, Yuval Abraham reveals that: "Israeli army database suggests at least 83% of Gaza dead were civilians")



My Dear Friends:

Democracy Now, August 22, 2025: U.N. Declares a Famine in Gaza, Where Over 500,000 Face “Starvation, Destitution and Death”

The U.N.’s top humanitarian official, Tom Fletcher, spoke from Geneva earlier today:

It is a famine in 2025, a 21st-century famine, watched over by drones and the most advanced military technology in history. It is a famine openly promoted by some Israeli leaders as a weapon of war. It is a famine on all of our watch. Everyone owns this. The Gaza famine is the world’s famine.


smoky twilight ...
will starving babies in Gaza
heal the broken heart
of an Israeli mother
whose children were kidnapped


in memory of the philosopher and political thinker Hannah Arendt, author of Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil 

word after word
squeezed out of the PM's mouth
in broad daylight
this daily "banality"
of dying, of death in Gaza



"Israel's oldest dailyHaaretz," which was was sanctioned by the Israeli government on Nov. 24, 2024

August 21, 2025: "Starvation Is Everywhere," Virtual Tours of Gaza Clinics Expose the Scale of the Horror


a dull-eyed baby
with loose skin over bone ...
red glow of Gazan skies


                      aid
out of reach            air            ops
                                       dr 

and a dead child’s stare


thousands of Gazans
pressed against one another ....
in the dusty air
one man cries, do I have to pay 
with my life for a sack of flour?


her gaunt face 
swollen and covered in burns ...
this one-legged girl
the luckiest one while others are
buried under the smoky rubble



And August 22, 2025: Starvation, Destitution and Death' | In First, UN Says Over Half a Million Gazans Suffering From Famine; Netanyahu: 'Outright Lie'

For the first time since the war in Gaza started, the UN food security agency's report found that residents of Gaza City and nearby areas are suffering from the highest level of hunger. Netanyahu rejected the report as a 'modern blood libel' and accused Hamas of 'stealing aid' and staging a 'starvation campaign'


To conclude today's "Special Feature" post, I would like to share the following latest entry of Against the Drowning Noise of Other Words, CCXIX: "UN-declared Gaza famine"

a roadhouse
burnt-out and half ruined ...
under the roof
a patched tent and children
with thin arms and bloated bellies


FYI: The latest news about Israel's genocidal war against Palestinians:

Haaretz, August 22, 2025: Israel's Foreign Ministry Says West Bank Is Israeli Territory, Contravening International and Domestic Law

On Thursday, 25 countries – including the United Kingdom and France –issued a joint declaration against Israel's decision to approve construction in the E1 area, a plan designed to bisect the West Bank, calling the plan a "flagrant breach of international law" that would undermine the idea of a two-state solution. 

Friday, August 22, 2025

A Room of My Own: Smoky Silence Haiku

smoky silence
crater after crater
rainbowed with oil


Added:

elbows up, elbows down ...
the PM's mouth opens and closes
in summer heat


FYI: CBC News, August 22, 2025: Unfortunately, there may not be a hockey analogy for the challenge Canada faces: Are Mark Carney's elbows up or down? Does it matter?

"There is a time in a game, in a big game — and this is a big game — when you go hard in the corners with your elbows up. There's a time in the game when you drop your gloves in the first period and you send a message. And we've done that, pretty uniquely in the world," Carney responded, attempting to broaden the hockey analogy.


Added:

berry picking
I lick the stains
off her fingers


Added:

after our picnic
the heat comes on
between us
the honey melon juice
dripping off the table edge

Saturday, August 16, 2025

A Room of My Own: Skin against Skin Tanka

Yellowing Memories, VIII
written in response to The Telegraph, August 15: Putin prepares nuclear missile tests in veiled threat to West

we ducked and covered
like Bert the Turtle at school
as sirens howled ...
decades later, I still feel the heat
of our skin against skin


FYI: "Duck and Cover" staring Bert the Turtle is a 1951 "Civil Defense film"/propaganda, as the cornerstone of the government's "duck and cover" public awareness campaign.



Added: Trump Empire, Inc, LII
written in response to The New Yorker, August 15, 2025: Trump’s Self-Own Summit with Putin
Even the puffery-prone President couldn’t alchemize his non-deal with Russia into Trumpian gold.

Staging/Self-Owning

on a red carpet
the Convicted Felon
and the War Crimial
shake hands with pats on the arm ...
both grin broadly to the World

President Putin
will you stop killing civilians?
with a dead-eyed look
he shrugs before entering
Trump's bulletproof Beast


FYI: Highly customized and heavily armored, the presidential limo, officially known as the presidential state car and nicknamed “The Beast” in 2001 by President George W. Bush, is more a tank than a limousine for the President.


Added: Trump Empire, Inc, LIII

warm handshakes 
on a red carpet 
and a joint limo ride
as fighter jets fly overhead ...
made-for-Fox-News non-event


FYI: Fox News, August 16: Putin ‘got away without doing anything’ at summit with Trump

The Daily Beast, August 14: Longtime Trump biographer Michael Wolff: Trump Circles Drop F-Bomb After Failure Trump-Putin Summit

And NPR, August 16: Government papers found in an Alaskan hotel reveal new details of Trump-Putin summit.


Added: Trump Empire, Inc, LIV

Epstein files news
the rasp, rasping
of cicadas


Added:

gathering dark
beyond the barbed wire fence
a shrill squealing


Added:

the long strip
of neon-lit roadside motels
a woman in red

Saturday, August 9, 2025

Poetic Musings: Kamikaze Mother Haiku by Fay Aoyagi

fireflies --
a Kamikaze mother whispers
her son's name


Fay Aoyagi

Commentary: when evaluated in the socio-cultural context of Japanese literature, the contrasts, thematic, emotional, visual and symbolic, of fireflies and the tie between a Kamikaze/suicide pilot and his mother are poignantly effective. 

And the image of a heartbroken mother in a patriarchal wartime/militarized society whispering, not crying out, her dead son's name adds extra emotional weight and psychological depth to the haiku.

Her haiku below, also included in Chrysanthemum Love, 2003, could be read as a sequel:

intact Zero fighter
at the Smithsonian --
cherry blossom rain

(FYI: The Zero fighter, the most famous symbol of Japanese air power, was repurposed for a kamikaze attack in the latter stages of World War II)


Notes:

1 "In Japan, where [fireflies] are called "hotaru," they are beloved – a metaphor for passionate love in poetry since Man'you-shu (the 8th century anthology). Their eerie lights are also thought to be the altered form of the souls of soldiers who have died in war.
-- excerpted from "Why the Firefly (Hotaru) Is Important in Japan?," ThoughtCo, Feb. 5, 2019.

2 In World War II, a Kamikaze was a Japanese aircraft loaded with explosives and making a deliberate suicidal crash on an enemy target. The Japanese people, especially Kamikaze pilots, were indoctrinated to believe in the concept of "Bushido" (the "highest honor" for a man to die for the "Emperor"). The courageous tanka poet, Yosano Akiko attacked its concept in her in/famous poem, "Kimi Shinitamou koto nakare" ("Thou Shalt Not Die"), addressed to her younger brother.

Friday, August 8, 2025

Reading More and Writing Better: Daily Banality Tanka

written in response to  Haaretz, Aug 5, 2025: Large Majority of Israeli Jews Untroubled by Reports of Famine in Gaza, Poll Finds

A vast majority of Israeli Jews – 79 percent – say they are "not so troubled" or "not troubled at all" by the reports of famine and suffering among the Palestinian population in Gaza, according to a poll released Tuesday

And in memory of the philosopher and political thinker Hannah Arendt, author of Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil 

word after word
squeezed out of the PM's mouth
in broad daylight
this daily "banality"
of dying, of death in Gaza


Note: Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil is a 1963 book by the philosopher and political thinker Hannah Arendt. Arendt, a Jew who fled Germany during Adolf Hitler's rise to power, reported on the trial of Adolf Eichmann, one of the major organizers of the Holocaust, for The New Yorker. A revised and enlarged edition was published in 1964.

Arendt's subtitle famously introduced the phrase "the banality of evil." In part the phrase refers to Eichmann's deportment at the trial as the man displayed neither guilt for his actions nor hatred for those trying him, claiming he bore no responsibility because he was simply "doing his job." ("He did his 'duty'...; he not only obeyed 'orders,' he also obeyed the 'law.'")... 


For more about this then controversial, now classic book, see this fine essay, "Reflecting on Hannah Arendt and Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil" 

Abstract:

In this essay, we offer a modern legal reading of Hannah Arendt’s classic book, Eichmann in Jerusalem. First we provide a brief account of how Arendt came to write Eichmann in Jerusalem and explain her central arguments and observations. We then consider the contemporary relevance of Arendt’s work to us as legal academics engaged with a variety of problems arising from our times. We consider Arendt’s writing of Eichmann in Jerusalem as a study in intellectual courage and academic integrity, as an important example of accessible political theory, as challenging the academic to engage in participatory action, and as informing our thinking about judgement when we engage in criminal law reform. Finally, we consider the role of Arendt’s moral judgement for those within government today and how it defends and informs judgement of the modern bureaucrat at a time of heightened government secrecy.


And when evaluated in the context of Israel's genocidal war  in Gaza, the first daily televised genocide, my Ls 3-5 intend to transform the Arendtian concept of the "banality of evil as just doing one's job and obeying the law "behind the barbed wire/inside the camp into "the one, not a serious injustice but a normalized, everyday banality in broad daylight that loses its power to shock and inspire action or thought."


The intolerable is no longer a serious injustice, but the permanent state of a daily banality. Man is not himself a world other than the one in which he experiences the intolerable andvfeels himself trapped.  

Gilles Deleuze, Cinema 2: The Time-Image, pp. 169-70

"Gilles Deleuze's statement suggests that, in modern life, extreme "intolerable" events no longer stand out as exceptional injustices, but rather have become a normalized, everyday banality, losing their power to shock and inspire action or thought. This normalization implies a kind of societal exhaustion or desensitization, where suffering becomes so pervasive that it is accepted as a constant state, making even serious injustices seem mundane. "


FYI: "Israel's oldest dailyHaaretz," which was was sanctioned by the Israeli government on Nov. 24, 2024

August 7:Israeli Security Cabinet Approves Netanyahu's Gaza Takeover Plan, Ignoring IDF Warnings

The security cabinet also approved Netanyahu's plan for the IDF to take full control of Gaza City. Sources say that the evacuation of Gaza City residents to alternative areas is expected to be completed by October 7, and only afterward is the military takeover expected to begin.

And August, 7, Opinion: Israeli Leftists Say They Lost Compassion for Palestinians. But Did It Ever Exist?

The refusal to see Palestinians as human beings isn't a side effect of October 7. This phenomenon predates the latest war, the operations in Gaza, the terror attacks and the rockets. It's a fundamental element of Israel's national consciousness.


Added: Against the Drowning Noise of Other Words, CCXIV: "starvation death"

another day
another refugee tent
another baby 
with loose skin over bone
starves to death with eyes open

Monday, August 4, 2025

A Room of My Own: Ceasefire Talks Haiku

sliver of moon 
behind the rain clouds
ceasefire talks


Added: No More Fairy Tales, XLVI

scorching heat
blanket after blanket 
of wildfire smoke


Added:

shapeless and untimed
the fear of my refugee friend
sparked not by gunshots
but by my casual dry cough
that echoes like a crack of fire


Added: Against the Drowning Noise of Other Words, CCXII: "famine and war"

alive yet alone
on this fresh morning
famine and war
two oceans away
and a world apart


Note: Ls 1&2 allude to the following poem:

...
it is a serious thing

just to be alive
on this fresh morning
in the broken world.
I beg of you...

Mary Oliver, "Invitation," Red Bird, 2009


Added: Against the Drowning Noise of Other Words, CCXIII: "Christ's thorn"
written in response to Haaretz, August 4, 2025: U.S. House Speaker Says West Bank 'Rightful Property of the Jewish People' at Settler Conference

According to Marc Zell, the chairman of Republicans Overseas Israel, Johnson said that "the mountains of Judea and Samaria [West Bank, the internationally used name for Israel's Judea and Samaria Area]are the rightful property of the Jewish People" while criticizing countries calling to recognize a Palestinian state.

dew clings
to Christ's thorn leaves
                 each drop
                         a window
to the war-torn sky


FYI: "the Christ's thorn, also known as the crown of thorns, is a pretty succulent plant that can bloom almost year-round, even indoors. According to a religious legend, the crown of thorns worn by Jesus Christ at the crucifixion was made from the stems of this plant, therefore its common name...It thrives in bright light, requires minimal watering, and is highly drought-tolerant, making it easy to care for."

And +972 Magazine, August 1 2025 Newsletter: The Largest West Bank Expulsion Since 1967 Is Happening Now


Added: Trump Empire, Inc, XLIX

shimmering heat
People First spray-painted 
over America First

Wednesday, July 30, 2025

Special Feature: Selected Poems for Reflections on Israeli Human Rights Groups' Report Conclusion: Israel Is Committing Genocide in Gaza

(FYI: Haaretz, Aug 5, 2025: Large Majority of Israeli Jews Untroubled by Reports of Famine in Gaza, Poll Finds

A vast majority of Israeli Jews – 79 percent – say they are "not so troubled" or "not troubled at all" by the reports of famine and suffering among the Palestinian population in Gaza, according to a poll released Tuesday)


The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, B’Tselem:

July 2025 Report: Our Genocide

And Physicians for Human Rights, Israel:



"Israel's oldest dailyHaaretz," which was was sanctioned by the Israeli government on Nov. 24, 2024

Gideon Levy, Opinion, July 27, 2025: Denying Gaza's Starvation Is No Less Vile Than Denying the Holocaust


July 28, 2025: For the First Time, Israeli Human Rights Groups Say Israel Is Committing Genocide in Gaza, Call for International Intervention

Genocidal intent throughout': According to the reports by B'Tselem and Physicans for Human Rights – Israel, the Israeli attack on Gaza caused 'massive, indiscriminate bombardment of population centers' and the 'starvation of more than two million people as a method of warfare' against the Palestinians.

...The report concludes that the combination of the reality in Gaza and statements by senior Israeli officials led them to "the unequivocal conclusion that Israel is taking coordinated action to intentionally destroy Palestinian society in the Gaza Strip … and committing genocide against Palestinians."

..."The evidence shows a deliberate and systematic dismantling of Gaza's health and life-sustaining systems through targeted attacks on hospitals, obstruction of medical aid and evacuations, and the killing and detention of healthcare personnel," PHRI's report says.

To date, numerous organizations and legal experts have concluded that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. Among those reaching this determination are Amnesty International, the European Center for Human Rights, the International Federation for Human Rights and Doctors Without Borders.

Human Rights Watch has also said in a report that Israel is committing crimes of extermination that may amount to genocide.

Several Israeli legal scholars and genocide researchers have also arrived at this conclusion, including Holocaust and genocide experts Daniel Blatman, Omar Bartov, Shmuel Lederman, Amos Goldberg, Raz Segal, legal scholar Itamar Raz and historians Lee Mordechai and Adam Raz, among others.


[decades-long
inhuman occupation compressed]
to one-day attacks
reponding with the red glow
of missiles in Gaza's night sky


this endless loop:
October 7, October 7 ....
[and yet 
the decades before
and the day after...] bloodshedding


each bombed-out house:
an album with no photos
but with people
living, wounded and dead
pressed between its pages


anything new
under Gaza's smeared sun?
smoky rubble
beyond smoky rubble, and yet
again smoky rubble



And Analysis, July 29: Famine by Design: How Israel Ignored Warnings Over Hunger and Starved Gaza

"I've worked on this issue for four decades, and since World War II there has been no case of famine as carefully planned and controlled as this one. Every stage was foreseeable," said global famine expert Alex de Waal.


a dull-eyed baby
with loose skin over bone ...
red glow of Gazan skies


                      aid
out of reach            air            ops
                                       dr 

and a dead child’s stare



+972 Magazine, July 28 2025: Israel’s aid concessions merely offer Gazans survival on a leash

To deflect international outrage, Israel’s strategy is clear: maintain enough control to kill with impunity, and enough relief to look humane while doing it.


We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.

-- Elie Wiesel, Holocaust survivor and Nobel Peace Prize laureate


To conclude today's "Special Feature" post, I would like to share with you the latest entry of Against the Drowning Noise of Other Words, CCX:
written in response to The New Yorker, July 28, 2025: Israel’s Zones of Denial
Amid national euphoria over the bombing of Iran—and the largely ignored devastation in Gaza—a question lurks: What is the country becoming?

Tel Aviv's beach party
the faint boom, boom, boom
from Gaza


FYI: Tel Aviv ranks among world's top ten beach cities (and party cities)  in  new National Geographic poll


And here are relevant excerpts and remarks taken from  The New Yorker, July 28, 2025: "Israel’s Zones of Denial:"

When we go to the beach, you can hear the booms from Gaza. When you eat a lollipop or an ice cream, you hear things being blown up... Not only is reality horrible, you also don’t know what the real story is.

Etgar Keret, Israeli writer and Tel Aviv liberal

What we are doing in Gaza now is a war of devastation: indiscriminate, limitless, cruel and criminal killing of civilians.

-- Ehud Olmert, former Israeli Prime Minister.

... the war in Gaza has produced a people “who have lost everything and feel only humiliation and abandonment—and despise hypocritical Western moralism. This will feed future militants, and how they behave will be shaped by old grievances and new technologies—which Israel masters today, but they could master, too.” In the familiar pattern, today’s resolution is tomorrow’s tinderbox.

-- Malley Agha, who was once a peace negotiator for the Palestine Liberation Organization.


Haaretz, July 31: The Victim Identity Israel Built Over Generations Now Fuels Its Denial of Genocide in Gaza

Genocide does not require a single, explicit directive; rather, it's the result of a process in which rhetoric, policy, political discourse, collective dehumanization and repeated patterns of action converge into mass acts of destruction.

But the saddest chapter in Israel's increasing tendency to deny the genocide in Gaza is reserved for Yad Vashem, The Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Authority. The historians who work there and devote days on end to investigating the events of the Holocaust are choosing to silence their mouths and pens when it comes to the horrors of Gaza. In light of the flood of statements at the beginning of the war by Israeli politicians calling for mass killings there, a group of local scholars turned to Yad Vashem chairman Dani Dayan and requested that the institution publish a public condemnation of the declarations, specifically those calling for genocide. But in January 2024 Dayan replied to Prof. Amos Goldberg, who initiated the move: "The six million Jews who were murdered in the Shoah are entitled to an institution that deals with them and with them alone. Therefore, Yad Vashem doesn't deal with genocide as such but only with its interface with the Shoah… Our area of activity is the Shoah, and only the Shoah."

The comments written by the Yad Vashem chairman are unsettling not only because of his silence, but also because his words are wrapped in a cloak of ostensible institutional integrity, while turning an arrogant back to the sense of historic responsibility that is supposed to inform the memorialization of the Holocaust. "Six million Jews are entitled to an institution that deals with them alone," writes Dayan – suggesting an exclusivity of the memory of murdered Jews as an excuse for hardheartedness, for closing one's eyes and maintaining silence in the face of ongoing war crimes and tens of thousands of slaughtered and starved people. All part of the terrible crime being perpetrated by the descendants of another genocide, the Shoah, among others.

Wasn't the murder of six million Jews also enabled due to many around the world washing away responsibility? Yad Vashem's entrenchment in the claim that their expertise are limited to the Holocaust is an act of moral bankruptcy, of disavowal of responsibility based on institutional convenience and the ideological adoption of a governmental policy responsible for horrific war crimes. It is a dire betrayal of the values of liberty, justice and the sanctity of human life, which the memory of the Holocaust is supposed to teach us.

For the past three generations Israel has been constructing an identity of victimhood, ranging from acts perpetrated during the Holocaust to those of Hamas on October 7. It denies its own crimes and is therefore living in a permanently distorted reality. Any attempt to speak about Israel's crimes against the Palestinians is seen as a threat not only to the image of the nation but to its very survival. The defensive narrative has become foundational to Israel's national identity, and any criticism of this narrative is met with the kind of institutional and public violence we are witnessing today

And Haaretz, July 31:  Americans Should Ask Not Only What War Has Done to Gaza, but Also What It's Done to Israel

Israeli TV debates have shown just how far the local media is willing to go to look away from Gaza. Since the war began, Israeli audiences have largely been shielded from the reality of Gaza's devastation. It's not just censorship – it's that most Israelis would rather not know. 

Tuesday, July 29, 2025

A Room of My Own: Prayers in the Smoky Air Tanka

Against the Drowning Noise of Other Words, CCVII: "prayers in the smoky air"

her prayers 
hanging in the smoky air ...
a bent woman
holds the Gazan night sky
on her bony shoulders


Added: Against the Drowning Noise of Other Words, CCVIII: "if only just a nightmare"

Gazan night sky
a ghastly shade of red ...
a white-haired man
murmurs, if only this were 
just a nightmare


Added: Against the Drowning Noise of Other Words, CCIX: "blood-stained bird cage"

smoky ruins ...
a blood-stained bird cage
with the door open


Added: Against the Drowning Noise of Other Words, CCX: "a headless doll"

smoky skies
between two skeletal houses
a headless doll

Monday, July 21, 2025

Special Feature: Selected Poems for Reflections on Israel Blocking 6,000 UNRWA Trucks from Entering Gaza

We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.

-- Elie Wiesel, Holocaust survivor and Nobel Peace Prize laureate

(FYI: The washington Post, July 26: The latest child to starve to death in Gaza weighed less than when she was born

More than 1,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces since May while trying to get food, mostly near those new aid sites, the U.N. human rights office says)


The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, UNRWA July 14, 2025: THE CLOCK IS TICKING FAST FOR STARVING CHILDREN IN GAZA

At UNRWA, we have over 6,000 trucks of food, hygiene supplies and medicines outside of Gaza waiting for the green light to go in. The aid will mainly help little girls like Ahlam. UNRWA also has more than 1,000 health workers who can provide boys and girls with specialised nutritional services.

Amid the daily livestream of horrors we get from Gaza on our screens, one cannot help but ask how many more Ahlam’s and Salam’s have to die before taking action?

How much longer until a ceasefire is reached so that bombs stop falling on emaciated and dying children....?

And Al Jazeera, July 20: 18 in Gaza die from starvation in one day amid Israeli blockade. Al Jazeera, July 22 2025: At least 15 people, including four children, have died due to famine and malnutrition in Gaza during the past 24 hours.


almost, with eyes closed
to this shrapnel-filled world ...
a Gazan newborn


Against the Drowning Noise of Other Words, CCIII: "loose skin over bone"

a dull-eyed baby
with loose skin over bone ...
red glow of Gazan skies

between his teeth
a piece of hummus-stuffed bread ...
maimed orphan's last meal



And

too much to ask YOU 
to see Gazans as humans? 
60, 000 deaths
silenced, forgotten, buried
under the weight of daily life

(FYI: The death toll was 50, 000 deaths on March 24, 2025. For more, see Special Feature: Selected Poems on 50,000 DEATHS in GAZA)


To conclude today's special post, I would like to share with you the latest entry of Against the Drowning Noise of Other Words, CCIV: "the luckiest one"

her gaunt face 
swollen and covered in burns ...
this one-legged girl
the luckiest one while others are
buried under the smoky rubble


FYI: "Israel's oldest dailyHaaretz," which was was sanctioned by the Israeli government on Nov. 24, 2024

July 21, 2025: While Israelis Are Watching TV Cook-offs, Israel Continues to Kill and Starve Multitudes of Gazans
Hala Arafat cried out to be rescued from the rubble for hours; the IDF targeted anyone who tried to help. An hour away in Tel Aviv, life goes on as normal as the Air Force carries out another war crime.

And July 23, Opinion: For Israel's Top Court, Human Rights End at the Gaza Border

Such issues include starvation, denial of medical care, bans on Red Cross visits to security prisoners, barring journalists' access to Gaza, forcing civilians to move from place to place and environmental degradation, to name a few. The High Court has consistently chosen not to address such offenses or to restrain the state despite the many petitions submitted over the past 18 months by human rights organizations.


Added: Against the Drowning Noise of Other Words, CCV: "the entire town encaged"

the West Bank town
encaged with barbed wire ...
the red glow
of a soldier's Marlboro
against the borderless night sky


FYI: +972 Magazine, July 14 2025: The suffocation of Sinjil (close to Ramallah) 
Encaging the West Bank town with barbed wire, Israel has cut off residents’ land and left others exposed to settler attacks, including a recent lynching.

Earlier this year, the Israeli army erected a towering barbed wire fence that has turned the town into an open-air prison. Built along Route 60, the West Bank’s main north-south highway, the fence has virtually sealed residents off from the outside world and severed them from thousands of dunams of farmland, while leaving those on the other side of the fence totally exposed to settler lynchings like last week’s deadly attack.


Added: Against the Drowning Noise of Other Words, CCVI: "stop the war on children"

meter-by-meter photos
of skeletal Gazan babies
and sacks of flour ....
a man chants into a megaphone,
stop the war on children

Friday, July 11, 2025

A Room of My Own: Toy Forest Tanka

Against the Drowning Noise of Other Words, CC: "US-made bombs"

a toy forest
in his biscuit tin ...
the boy holds it tight
as US-made bombs drop
silencing the world below


FYI: The following entry could be read as its sequel

CLXXXI: "things hidden in ears"
inspired by Mosab Abu Toha's poem, "Things You May Find Hidden in My Ear"

doctor, you may find
these things hidden in my ears
a boy murmurs ...
buzzing of drones, roar of fighter jets
screams of Gazans, living and dead


And FYI: The Guardian, March 29, 2024:‘Ecocide in Gaza’: does scale of environmental destruction amount to a war crime? 

Satellite analysis revealed to the Guardian shows farms devastated and nearly half of the territory’s trees razed. Alongside mounting air and water pollution, experts says Israel’s onslaught on Gaza’s ecosystems has made the area unlivable.


Added: Against the Drowning Noise of Other Words, CCI: "green and red zones"

this shifting maze
of green and red zones in Gaza...
life and death 
measured in footsteps
across one rubble-lined "street"


FYI: The Nation, July 9, 2025: The Impossible Geography of Survival in Gaza
Israel has created “green zones” and “red zones” to distinguish between safe and dangerous areas. There’s little difference.


Added: Against the Drowning Noise of Other Words, CCII: "the Palestinian key"

a Gazan man
murmurs to himself
a dream, and yet ...
his ten-year-old bloodied son
holds the key tight and tighter 


FYI: Many Palestinians kept the keys to their homes when they were forced into exile in 1948. The Palestinian key is a potent symbol of their homes lost in the Nakba, often used in the protests. 

And "Israel's oldest and most progressive daily founded in 1918, Haaretz," which was was sanctioned by the Israeli government on Nov. 24, 2024

Editorial, July 16, 2025: As the Bodies Pile Up, the Israeli Public Remains Indifferent to the Daily Killing in Gaza

Since the end of the cease-fire on March 18, at least 7,261 people have been killed in the Gaza Strip.


Added: Trump Empire, Inc, XLV

tariffs today
TACO tomorrow ... in heat
a stray chases its tail 

FYI: Trump Always Chickens Out (TACO), also known as the TACO Trade.

Wednesday, July 9, 2025

Reading More and Writing Better: Cocked Rifle Tanka

life is so good
why am I dying for this?
on the hilltop
of the West Bank settlement 
he mutters with a cocked rifle 


Note: Ls 1&2 allude to the existential "question -- 'Existence is so good—why am I dying for this?'-- that reflects a sentiment often explored in Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace, particularly in the context of war and the characters' struggles with mortality and the meaning of life. It encapsulates the tension between the inherent value of life and the seemingly pointless sacrifice demanded by war. "


FYI: United Nations Press Release, March 18, 2025: Israel ramps up settlement and annexation in West Bank with dire human rights consequences

Haaretz, May 28, 2025: Israeli Cabinet Approves Construction of 22 New Settlements, Some Deep in West Bank

And +972 Magazine, June 19, 2025: With Iran war as pretext, Israel suffocates the West Bank
After striking Tehran, the army closed hundreds of gates to seal Palestinians inside towns and strand them on roads — proof of annexation in all but name.


The following tanka about Israel's genocidal war in Gaza could work as real life foreshadowing of what will happen to the doubting solider on the hilltop of the West Bank settlement:

Against the Drowning Noise of Other Words, LX: "suicide deaths"

the lingering smell
of blood-stained body parts
scattered everywhere
another soldier dies
by his own hand, and yet ...


Against the Drowning Noise of Other Words, CXI: "two deaths, Palestinian and Israeli"

One War Story and Two Deaths

a head
severed from the body
grits its teeth ...
moonlight luster on the faces 
of young Israeli soldiers 

back from Gaza
Ezra couldn't stop the war
in his head ...
our father holds his shroud tight
as he is being buried



Added: Against the Drowning Noise of Other Words, CXCIX: 'white coffin"

the white coffin
a gray-haired man balances 
on one hand ...
a child born after the war started
and buried  before it ends

Thursday, July 3, 2025

Poetic Musings: Bloodied Man Haiku by Chen-ou Liu

Against the Drowning Noise of Other Words, CL: "first casualty of war"

              the
           bloodied
             man
nailed to a wooden cross
               in
               a
             press
              vest


Chen-ou Liu

Commentary: 

Fist of all, the haiku's visual layout, the Cross, relates to its theme: the sacrifice (as implied from "bloodied" and "nailed" to a wooden cross) made by a wartime journalist, also known as a war correspondent (as indicated the bloodied "man in a press vest").  The words, typography, and arrangement of the haiku are integral to its meaning and impact. 


Secondly, the choice of action-packed verbs, "bloodied" and "nailed," shows that this is a target killing of a journalist for revenge, to warn other journalist (as implied from the act of being "nailed to a  wooden cross" for other journalists to see), or to conceal or suppress the truth ...  The intentional targeting of journalists is a WAR CRIME.  


Thirdly, sociopolitically speaking, the immediate consequence of this target killing of journalists is the DEATH of TRUTH.


The first casualty when war comes is truth.

-- Hiram Johnson, a reform governor of California (1911–17) and a U.S. senator for 28 years (1917–45)


As of June 16, 2025, CPJ’s preliminary investigations showed at least 185 journalists and media workers were among the more than tens of thousands killed in Gaza, the West Bank, Israel, and Lebanon since the war began, making it the deadliest period for journalists since CPJ began gathering data in 1992.


And last but not least, it's my intention to use the socio-religious symbol of the cross to spark the reader's emotions and reflection on why Israel's GENOCIDAL WAR on GAZA is still raging.


Notes:

1 This haiku is a sequel to the following: 
written in response to Democracy Now, "DECEMBER. 20, 2023:" [NewYork-based, American NGO] Committee to Protect Journalists: Israel Is Killing Media Workers at Unprecedented Pace

smoky rubble
a bullet-riddled helmet
marked PRESS


2 Israel's oldest and most progressive daily founded in 1918, Haaretz, was sanctioned by the Israeli government on Nov. 24, 2024

3 RSF's World Press Freedom Index, 2024: [so-called "first and only democratic country in the Middle East"] Israel, 101/180; Score: 53.23
(FYI: Reporters sans frontières'/Reporters without Borders' World Press Freedom Index aims to compare the level of press freedom enjoyed by journalists and media in 180 countries and territories)

Haaretz, July 2, 2025: Israel's Government Wants to Repress the Press at Home and Bury It in Gaza

Sunday, June 22, 2025

A Room of My Own: BombafterBomb and MurderafterMurder Tanka

Trump Empire, Inc, XXXIX

bombafterbomb
silencing everything below ...
D.C.'s skies explode 
with murderaftermurder
of shape-shifting crows


FYI: The Guardian, June 22: No matter what Trump says, the US has gone to war

Trump has fallen slap bang into the trap laid for him by Netanyahu. His reckless gamble makes a nuclear weapon for Iran more, not less, likely

And Sky News, June 22: For Trump, the performative presidency just got real - in this war the 'in' may be easier than the 'out'


This tanka could be read as a prequel to mine bewlo:

the butcher
throwing more meat
into his grinder 
the wall-mounted TV blasts
war after war ...

Ribbons, 20:1, Winter 2024

In "contrast" with the following tanka:

There's no gap or break
In the rank of those marching
Under the hill:
An endless line of dying men,
Moving on and on and on ...

Buddhist monk-poet Saigyo (1118–1190 AD)


Added: Trump Empire, Inc, XL
written in response to The Onion's Editorial: Members of Congress—now, more than ever, our nation desperately needs your cowardice.

winding through
the hallways of the Capitol
the thunderous snoring 
resounds with chants of USA!
outside in the gathering dark


FYI: Rolling Stone, June 22: ‘The Onion’ Mocks Congress’ ‘Cowardice’ in ‘New York Times’ Full Page Editorial

We teeter on the brink of collapse into an authoritarian state. That is why, today, The Onion calls upon our lawmakers to sit back and do absolutely nothing.

Members of Congress—now, more than ever, our nation desperately needs your cowardice.

Now is not the time for bravery or valor! This is the time for protecting your own hide and lining your pocket. Now is not the time for listening to your idiotic constituents drone on about what’s happening to their precious democracy. This is the time for getting down on all fours and groveling.”


Added: Trump Empire, Inc, XLI

the Midnight Hammer strikes 
the core of the Shia Crescent ...
in this village  
every one carries around 
a heart that's been broken


FYI: Haaretz, June 23: Netanyahu's Bet on Drama-loving Trump Has Paid Off With Iran

Netanyahu's post-October 7 mood is one of having nothing to lose. He had displayed unusual determination in hoping that a successful attack on Iran would blur the failure of that day. He waved aside the customary reservations from the military, which did not want to launch the attack without the U.S. taking part in it.

Netanyahu gambled that drama-loving Trump would find it impossible to stay out of the center of attention, certainly if the Israeli attack were successful. He assumed that Trump would not heed his intelligence community, which had publicly estimated that there is no Iranian decision to push forward to a bomb.


Added: Trump Empire, Inc, XLII
written in response to NBC News, June 24: Trump Slams Israel and Iran For Violating Ceasefire

in scorching heart
the Convicted Felon shouts, 
they don't know 
what the fuck they're doing ...
one stray outbarks the rest


Added: Trump Empire, Inc, XLIII

bellowing 
Convicted Felon Trump 
as the flame 
of Lady Liberty in heat haze...
this land of white noise


FYI: L5 alludes to White Noise, a 1985 National Book Award-winning novel written by Don DeLillo. In his novel, the "symbol of 'white noise' represents the pervasive, often meaningless, and overwhelming background hum of modern life, particularly the barrage of information and consumerism that characterizes contemporary society. It embodies a sense of dread and anxiety stemming from the fear of death, the artificiality of modern existence, and the difficulty of discerning truth from simulation."