Thursday, November 21, 2024

Special Feature: Selected Poems for Reflections on International Criminal Court (ICC)'s Arrest Warrants for Benjamin Netanyahu, Yoav Gallant and Hamas Leader

NBC News, Nov. 21: ICC issues arrest warrants for Israeli PM Netanyahu and ex-defense minister Gallant over alleged war crimes in Gaza

The International Criminal Court has issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, former defence minister Yoav Gallant and Hamas official Mohammed Diab Ibrahim Al-Masri, also known as Mohammed Deif.

In its announcement Thursday the ICC rejected challenges from Israel to its jurisdiction. It said the warrants issued for Netanyahu and Gallant were related to "crimes against humanity and war crimes committed from at least 8 October, 2023 until at least 20 May, 2024," including "the war crime of starvation as a method of warfare; and the crimes against humanity of murder, persecution, and other inhumane acts." It also said reasonable grounds were found to believe they bore criminal responsibility as "civilian superiors" for the war crime of "intentionally directing an attack against the civilian population."

Netanyahu and Gallant were accused of having "intentionally and knowingly deprived the civilian population in Gaza of objects indispensable to their survival, including food, water, and medicine and medical supplies, as well as fuel and electricity."


And Israel's oldest daily, Haaretz:

Opinion, Nov. 19: Israelis Must Oppose Ethnic Cleansing in the Gaza Strip

Israel has perpetrated ethnic cleansing in the northern Gaza Strip. Through starvation, denial of health care, bombings and the destruction of both homes and the schools where the displaced sought shelter, Israel has forced the vast majority of residents of the Jabalya refugee camp, Beit Hanoun and Beit Lahia to leave their place of residence. 

Opinion, Nov.19: Israel Is Gaslighting the World by Diverting Blame for the Humanitarian Disaster in Gaza

According to the figures published by the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories, COGAT, the quantity of goods entering in October is the lowest since the start of the year, and in effect the lowest ever – even less than in November 2023.

Aid delegations are delayed in the Gaza Strip by IDF checkpoints while on the way from the south to the north. In many cases soldiers in the area prevent their movement, so that aid delegations are forced to turn back. Many of the organizations' workers have lost their lives, after their crossing was coordinated with Israel, but despite that they weren't given protection on the ground. That's how Israel diverts the blame from itself and directs it at the aid organizations, disavowing its own responsibility.

In addition to the fact that international law requires Israel to enable the entry of humanitarian aid into the Strip – an obligation that it is failing to meet – because it is a party to the combat and an occupying power, its obligations, as determined by the International Court of Justice in The Hague, are not limited to the entry of aid for the Palestinian side, but are met only when it reaches the protected population that is in need of it.


My Dear Friends:

I would like to share with you some of my published poems for reflections on the Israel-Hamas War and the WAR CRIMES committed by Israel.


First Casualty

a time for peace
a time for war only...
a twist to PM's mouth

remember, remember
what Amalek did  ...
fireballs burst skyward

(FYI: The title alludes to the following remark:

The first casualty, when war comes, is TRUTH. 
-- Hiram Johnson (1866-1945), a Progressive Republican senator in California

And Anadolu Agency, Nov. 1, 2024: South Africa reminds ICJ of Netanyahu's Amalek rhetoric to invoke genocide against Palestinians)


smoky rubble
a bullet-riddled helmet
marked PRESS


Aftermath

blot out Amalek ...
clutching his bible a rabbi 
lost in thought 

Holocaust Remembrance
Together We Will Win
[peace... peace only]

candlelight virgil
a tattooed survivor holds
a Stop the War sign


Home, Sweet Home

boom, boom, boom
outside the steel safe room
with his ears covered
a boy sings, If I had wings
like Noah's dove to fly up...

siren piercing the haze ...
a Gazan girl holds onto
the cracked clay pot
that keeps memories of smells
from her mother's kitchen


smoky ruins ...
each day a new battle
for water and food


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


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


hospital raid ...
a dead man watches his blood flow
into his children's blood


please bury me
with no casket, no prayers
face down, away
from this shrapnel-filled world:
the note in an aid worker's hand


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


The War Shrinks Our World

past suffering
spills into the present war
of fireballing rage
which shapes future kamikazes:
Promised Land of blood and honey

Free the Hostages
the yellowing sign hangs limp
on my neighbor's fence ...
from the street corner the chants
of Free, Free Palestine ring out



We Cannot Be Bystanders to Genocide.

Chen-ou 


Added:  Against the Drowning Noise of Other Words, CXXV:

lying on ruins
an armless boy's thousand-yard stare
in smoky darkness ...
the ICC's arrest warrent
for the P/Crime Minister

FYI: "The thousand-yard stare or two-thousand-yard stare is a military phrase coined to describe the limp, unfocused gaze of a battle-weary soldier, but the symptom it describes may also be found among victims of other types of trauma."

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