Special Feature: Selected Poems for Reflections on Israel's Elimination Project and Full closure of Occupied West Bank

Democracy Now, September 16, 2026: “The Elimination Project”: Israel’s Systematic Dismantling of Palestinian Life in West Bank: B’Tselem" (Israeli human rights group)

A major new report by the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem titled “The Elimination Project” accuses Israel of “dramatically intensifying its attacks on every aspect of Palestinian life in the West Bank.”

B’Tselem Executive Director ,Yuli Novak: Israel is dismantling the basic conditions needed for collective Palestinian existence in the West Bank. Our new report “The Elimination Project” shows how this mechanism works and how over the past three years, it has become more lethal, violent and explicit. Come with us to the West Bank to see for yourself. The Elimination Project in the West Bank operates through five domains of action that work together and reinforce each other: killing, violence, intimidation, movement restrictions, economic strangulation, social and political destruction, ethnic cleansing and territorial takeover. These are all parts of a system with one aim: to ensure Jewish supremacy and eliminate the Palestinian collective.

Against the Drowning Noise of Other Words, CXIX: "olive harvest in the West Bank"

the sun glints

on a settler's M-16 ...

olive harvest

NeverEnding Story, October 22 2024

Against the Drowning Noise of Other Words, CCL: "a Palestinian doll"

twisted rebar heap

a Palestinian doll's eyes

jammed open

NeverEnding, November 15 2025 

Against the Drowning Noise of Other Words, CCXIII: "Christ's thorn"

dew clings

to Christ's thorn leaves

                 each drop

                         a window

to the war-torn sky

NeverEnding Story, August 4 2025

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."

Against the Drowning Noise of Other Words, CCLXXIV: "the Nakba"

The Nakba pictures in black and white; now this week in the color of smoky red.

fire's mouth

consumes the last farmhouse ...

settlers' roaring

NeverEnding Story, January 26 2026

Al Jazeera, October 23, 2026: Israel imposes full closure of occupied West Bank after Hebron shooting kills two soldiers

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel is preparing for a large-scale operation. Israel’s military says it killed two Palestinian suspects.

Israeli bulldozers demolished a three-storey building in Hebron, with families given five minutes to collect their belongings. 

The closure means nearly 1,000 checkpoints and gates across the West Bank will be closed, affecting millions of Palestinians.

Mustafa Barghouti, Secretary General of the Palestinian National Initiative, says incitement from far-right Israeli ministers is making the situation worse. 

He says the closure turns every city and village into “a small prison”, with checkpoints and gates blocking health care, the economy and education, and warns that collective punishment will lead to explosions.

Against the Drowning Noise of Other Words, CCCXXIV: "encaged"

stirred by Israel's "Elimination Project"( Israeli human rights group B’Tselem's report title) and full closure of occupied West Bank

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

the dead

among the living

smoky rubble 

To the Lighthouse: Two Haiku, Two Responses to War: Grief, Peace, and the Silence of the News

In a war situation or where violence and injustice are prevalent, poetry is called upon to be something more than a thing of beauty.

-- Seamus Heaney, Ireland's most renowned poet since Yeats, playwright and translator who received the 1995 Nobel Prize in Literature

Consider the thematic, emotional, and sociopolitical differences between these two haiku:

afterwards

nothing else matters

white poppy

Blithe Spirit, 34:2, 2024

Brendon Kent 

In contrast:

afterwards

anything matters?

news on mute

NeverEnding Story, October 18, 2026

Chen-ou Liu

Although both haiku begin with the same word, “afterwards,” they diverge sharply in their emotional trajectories and underlying concerns. Kent employs a minimalist, symbol-driven approach, grounding the poem in a culturally resonant image of peace. Liu, by contrast, adopts a contemporary gendai sensibility, exploring psychological alienation, media saturation, and the emotional toll of witnessing distant suffering.

1. Thematic Differences

Kent — The White Poppy

The central themes are loss, mourning, and the yearning for peace. Traditionally, the red poppy commemorates military personnel who died in war, while the white poppy represents remembrance of all victims of war, opposition to militarism, and a commitment to peace. Through this image, Kent connects individual grief to a broader aspiration for a world free from armed conflict.

Liu — News on Mute

Liu's haiku explores media saturation, emotional exhaustion, and the impulse to withdraw from the relentless stream of disturbing news. Rather than offering a symbol of hope or reconciliation, the poem captures a moment of psychological disengagement: when confronted with seemingly unending tragedy, the observer questions whether anything matters and resorts to muting the news.

2. Emotional Differences

Kent — From Despair to Reverence

The emotional movement begins with the crushing finality of “nothing else matters” and culminates in the quiet appearance of the white poppy. The flower offers a fragile but meaningful focal point for grief, transforming an expression of despair into a gesture of remembrance and a yearning for peace. The poem's restraint lends the image a sense of solemnity, allowing the symbol to carry much of its emotional weight.

Liu — Existential Uncertainty and Exhaustion

Liu's emotional trajectory is more unsettled. The question mark in “anything matters?” destabilizes the apparent certainty of Kent's “nothing else matters.” Rather than declaring that everything has lost its significance, Liu's speaker questions whether anything retains it.

The final phrase, “news on mute,” suggests withdrawal from the emotional demands of witnessing suffering. Muting the news may be an act of self-preservation, a symptom of compassion fatigue, or an expression of helplessness. The poem leaves the speaker's precise motivation unresolved, capturing the uneasy tension between the desire to remain informed and the need to disengage.

3. Sociopolitical Differences

Kent's haiku evokes the aftermath of war through a symbol associated with remembrance and peace. The poem may be read as an expression of solidarity with those who suffer, as well as a plea for the prevention of future wars. Its perspective is collective and aspirational: from the devastation implied by “afterwards,” the white poppy emerges as a quiet emblem of non-violence.

Liu's haiku, by contrast, places the reader in the position of an observer confronting tragedy through the media. The phrase “news on mute” evokes the technological means by which suffering enters domestic life—and can be silenced without the suffering itself being alleviated. The news continues beyond the speaker's immediate awareness, exposing a troubling divide between witnessing a crisis and having the power to change its course.

Where Kent invokes a symbol of peace, Liu presents a gesture of disengagement. The former directs attention toward an ethical ideal; the latter interrogates the psychological and moral implications of consuming reports of distant suffering. Although Liu's poem can be read as a critique of media saturation and the normalization of tragedy, it does not necessarily condemn the speaker. The act of muting the news may reveal not indifference but the limits of emotional endurance.

Conclusion: Remembrance or Withdrawal?

Kent's haiku functions as a quiet monument to grief and peace. By stripping the scene down to a single symbolic image, it leaves the reader contemplating the human cost of war and the possibility of a more peaceful world.

Liu's haiku, meanwhile, holds up a mirror to contemporary society's uneasy relationship with mediated suffering. Its closing image captures the impulse to silence the news when the accumulation of human tragedy becomes unbearable, leaving unresolved the tension between emotional self-preservation and moral engagement.

The shared opening word, “afterwards,” establishes a common temporal threshold, but the poems move in different directions. Kent's “nothing else matters” leads toward the white poppy, a symbol of remembrance and peace. Liu's “anything matters?” leads toward silence, where the significance of what has been witnessed becomes uncertain.

Ultimately, Kent offers a symbol through which grief may find expression and peace may remain imaginable; Liu confronts the possibility that, in a world saturated with images of suffering, even the capacity to respond can become exhausted. One turns toward remembrance and the hope of peace; the other toward the troubling silence that can follow the witnessing of war.

Biting NOT Barking: White Poppy Haiku by Brendon Kent

English Original

afterwards

nothing else matters

white poppy

Blithe Spirit, 34:2, 2024

Brendon Kent 

Chinese Translation (Traditional)

之後

其他一切都不重要了

白罌粟

Chinese Translation (Simplified)

之后

其他一切都不重要了

白罂粟

Bio Sketch

    

Brendon Kent lived in Botley, an old English village in the southern countryside, dating back to circa 890 AD. Born in the late 1950s, he wrote poetry for many years, with a particular fondness for short forms. His haiku and senryu appeared in leading books and journals worldwide. He was a member of the British Haiku Society.

Poetic Musings: Fireballs Rising and Falling Haiku by Chen-ou Liu

Against the Drowning Noise of Other Words, CCLII: "ceasefire" airstrikes

heavenward

                     rising

fireballs

               fireballs

                              falling

heavenward

NeverEnding Story, November 19 2025

Chen-ou Liu

Commentary: This visual haiku utilizes concrete poetry techniques to transform the page into an active canvas of conflict. By breaking away from traditional left-aligned metrics, the stepped indentation forces the reader’s eyes to physically mimic the kinetic arc of warfare.

• The initial staircase step from heavenward to rising creates a literal ascent.

• The staggered drop from fireballs to falling mirrors a terrifying, gravity-driven descent.

By mapping the text to the physical movement of the ordnance, the poem transcends static text, becoming a cinematic vector of a live airstrike.

Grammatically, the piece collapses traditional sentence structure into an innovative, non-linear reading experience. It can be deciphered as a continuous loop:

The observer gazes heavenward at fireballs rising, and fireballs falling back toward earth—only for the gaze to be pulled heavenward once again.

By stripping away articles and connectors, the word heavenward serves a dual purpose: it is both the baseline perspective of the vulnerable witness looking up, and the destination modifier for the rockets launching up.

The most haunting element of this haiku is its structural bookending. Opening and closing with the exact same word—heavenward—creates a cyclical, closed loop.

There is no structural resolution or final resting point for the eye. Instead, the end of the poem immediately feeds back into the beginning.

FYI: My haibun below could be read as its sequel:

To Save a Life

The finale of the Israeli award-winning documentary NAZA, a Hebrew acronym for "collateral damage," captures a father trapped in a furnace of grief. Heat radiates from the tangled grid of collapsed iron and melted plastic. Coughing through blinding smoke, he drags broken blocks of drywall away, his cries echoing off the smoldering rubble that traps his children.

calm between fireballs

an armless girl gazing 

heavenward, yet ...

The New Verse News, October 8 2026

Note: The title invokes Jerusalem Talmud, Sanhedrin 4:1 (22a): “Whoever destroys a soul, itis considered as if he destroyed an entire world. And whoever saves a life, it is considered as if he saved an entire world.”

The concluding word " yet ..."opens a painful gap between the ideal and the reality.

If every life is an entire world, yet a child can be left maimed by war, what becomes of that world?

If saving a life is an act of immeasurable significance, yet lives are destroyed amid the rubble, what meaning can we give to that teaching?

If the girl gazes heavenward, yet ..., what can follow? Hope? Prayer? Accusation? Silence?

Furthermore, the ellipsis refuses to answer. It leaves the moral and spiritual contradiction unresolved.

Without it, the haiku ends with “heavenward,” a word that can suggest transcendence, faith, or hope. The image is poignant, but it permits a relatively consoling interpretation.

And

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

October 7, 2026: Bearing Witness: Websites Document Gaza's Catastrophe for the Ages

These efforts are laying bare the humanitarian disaster and Israel's suspected war crimes, preserving evidence for courts and 'the day Israeli society has the desire or courage to look in the mirror'

Special Feature: Selected Poems for October 7th Reflections

CBC News, September 24, 2026: Netanyahu rejects genocide allegations in Gaza after mass walkout at his UN speech

Against the Drowning Noise of Other Words, CCCXI: "wordbombs"

row upon row

of nearly empty seats

beneath harsh lights

the war criminal's wordbombs

echo back from walls to strike him

NeverEnding Story, September 17, 2026

Democracy Now, September 16, 2026: “The Elimination Project”: Israel’s Systematic Dismantling of Palestinian Life in West Bank: B’Tselem" (Israeli human rights group)

A major new report by the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem titled “The Elimination Project” accuses Israel of “dramatically intensifying its attacks on every aspect of Palestinian life in the West Bank.”

B’Tselem Executive Director ,Yuli Novak: Israel is dismantling the basic conditions needed for collective Palestinian existence in the West Bank. Our new report “The Elimination Project” shows how this mechanism works and how over the past three years, it has become more lethal, violent and explicit. Come with us to the West Bank to see for yourself. The Elimination Project in the West Bank operates through five domains of action that work together and reinforce each other: killing, violence, intimidation, movement restrictions, economic strangulation, social and political destruction, ethnic cleansing and territorial takeover. These are all parts of a system with one aim: to ensure Jewish supremacy and eliminate the Palestinian collective.

Against the Drowning Noise of Other Words, CCLXXX: "wall of fire"

In four minutes, a farmhouse in the West Bank village enveloped in a wall of fire.

blood-stained olive leaves

cinder through the smoky air

laughter greets laughter

NeverEnding Story, February 6 2026

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:

July 2025 Position Paper:  Destruction of Conditions of Life: A Health Analysis of the Gaza Genocide

The first casualty, when war comes, is TRUTH. 

-- Hiram Johnson (1866-1945), a Progressive Republican senator in California)

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

NeverEnding Story, December 22 2023 

Reprinted on My Haiku Pond, Nov. 23 2024

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

              the

           bloodied

             man

nailed to a wooden cross

               in

               a

             press

              vest

NeverEnding Story, December 28, 2024

2026 Haiku Canada Members’ Anthology 

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

Opinion, October 6, 2026: What the IDF Won't Say About Civilian Casualties in Gaza

There's a sweeping denial in the response to the film "NAZA" (a Hebrew acronym for "collateral damage") released by the Israel Defense Forces Spokesperson's Unit – that a strike resulting in 200 civilian casualties was never either "approved or carried out" in the Gaza Strip, and that "no credible claim has been made that a strike on any military objective caused a comparable number of casualties....

Until now, it has generally been claimed in Israel's public conversation that civilian casualties of more than 100 were never approved. Now, the ceiling has shifted to 200. Less than 25 years ago, the country was in an uproar over 14 people, most of them children, being killed in the assassination of Salah Shehadeh, then-head of Hamas' military wing. But since then, we've grown accustomed to that "slight bump on the wing," as a former air force commander once said when asked what he felt when he launched an airstrike on a residential area.

Who decided that it was acceptable to kill 200 women, children and elderly people in order to kill a wanted man? Is killing a Hamas truck driver worth 20 children? And who are we kidding? In the Israel of 2026, is there even any suitable public debate over these decisions?

And what has happened in practice? In the assassination of Ibrahim Biari in Jabalya in late October 2023, at least 126 civilians, including 68 children, were killed, according to the organization Airwars, while another 280 were wounded. In other words, a single attack caused more than 400 civilian casualties. And according to testimony from soldiers that Breaking the Silence collected and cross-checked, the collateral damage approved for that attack was 300.

Around a month later, the assassination of Wissam Farhat, commander of Hamas' Shujaiyeh Brigade, erased an entire residential complex, killing at least 300 civilians, according to Airwars. At least 118 civilians, including 48 children, were killed in Gaza City's al-Taj Tower in October 2023. And in his book "6:29," Haaretz's Amos Harel described an attack in March 2025 that killed around 400 Palestinians, most of them civilians....

...But the problem is even worse than that. In my research into the "chosen blindness" of AI systems, two characteristics came up over and over: They can generate an almost unlimited number of targets, and there's no way to reconstruct their "judgment." One can question an officer about why he marked a particular man as a target, but it's impossible to ask an algorithm.

Moreover, the Washington Post reported that at the start of the war, the criterion for verification was lowered from two sources to one, and that sometimes, an attack was carried out without verifying the system's recommendation at all....

This is the first war in which AI was used on such a large scale to select targets. The machine shattered the human bottleneck that limited how many targets it's possible to locate and approve at the very moment when Israel was marinating in pain and anger, with a deeper desire for revenge than ever before. And that is the context that the IDF's response prefers not to touch.

Against the Drowning Noise of Other Words, CCCVIII: "smoky clouds"

where tents were

a tornado-twist

of smoky clouds

NeverEnding Story, September 17 2026

Against the Drowning Noise of Other Words, CCCIX: "attack drone"

in smoky twilight

a mule-drawn flatboard wagon 

with wounded Gazans ...

an attack drone flying past

silences everything below

NeverEnding Story, September 17 2026

Against the Drowning Noise of Other Words, CCXI: "beach party and booms"

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

NeverEnding Story, July 30 2025

FYI: 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.

To conclude today’s Special Feature post, I would like to share the following poem, written in response to the video clip Dreams of Palestinian Children, in which children, playfully jostling one another, crowd around the camera and call out their dreams.

Against the Drowning Noise of Other Words, CCCXV: "jagged crescent and sky"

Dust settles as the night folds the playground into shadow.

each classroom window

its jagged crescent

jagged Gazan sky

Added: Against the Drowning Noise of Other Words, CCCXVI: "one-minute silence and fireballs"

in Tel Aviv

traffic blocked on the highway 

for one-minute silence ...

forty miles away, fireballs

burst open in morning air

Added: Against the Drowning Noise of Other Words, CCCXVII: "waiting for water, or nothing"

this day like others

before the transient light 

on the horizon ...

lines of Gazan children

waiting for water, or nothing

Added: Against the Drowning Noise of Other Words, CCCXVIII: "bombed-out houses 

and mounds of rubble"

a one-armed boy

stares out the tent window

at something ...

yet still bombed-out houses 

and mounds of rubble

Added: Against the Drowning Noise of Other Words, CCCXIX: "glint of a Tavor"

West Bank teen limping ahead of his shadow glint of a Tavor 

Added: Against the Drowning Noise of Other Words, CCCXX: "witnessing"

roaring attack drones

drown out midnight screams --

surrounded by fire

a Gazan girl in red

witnessing her mother ...

Added: Against the Drowning Noise of Other Words, CCCXXI: "Gazan camp"

Gazan camp

a paper crane blown over

bodies on bodies

Added: Against the Drowning Noise of Other Words, CCCXXII: "fireball-lit sky"

fireball-lit sky

yesterday's bodies mingled

with today's

Poetic Musings: Reveille Tanka by Tracy Davidson

reveille

the bugler’s last note lingers

in the silence

as far as eye can see

rows of white crosses

Third Place, 2025 Sanford Goldstein International Tanka Contest

 

Tracy Davidson

 

Commentary by judges: We can’t help but hear “reveille,” the familiar military bugle call for all soldiers and other personnel to start their regimented day. With the bugle’s lively sound, we would expect lots of activity after the morning call. But then in line two, the word “lingers” catches our attention. With the next line, “in the silence,” the poet wants us to stop and think—setting us up for metaphorical wordplay, “as far as eye can see.” The word “eye” has a double meaning, both as “I” the poet, and “eye,” as witness of the vividly solemn “rows of white crosses.” The endless rows found in national cemeteries remind us of the fallen. Do we see the irony? Is there no end to the rows of white crosses disappearing on the sightline? Is “reveille” a wake-up call for us, the people, to remember, all over the world, the lasting effects of war? There are numerous eye-opening meanings in the poet’s affecting tanka.

Special Feature: Selected Poems for Reflections on Israeli "Gaza Genocide Documentary, NAZA"

(FYI: Haaretz, September 17, 2026: Netanyahu Vows to Revoke Israeli Citizenship Over Alleged IDF 'Defamation' in Response to 'NAZA' Film

Netanyahu said that he would also work to increase twentyfold the amount of damages people can sue for defamation against IDF soldiers: 'We will hit them both in the pocket and in citizenship, because they have no place among us'

And

Democracy Now, September 16, 2026: “The Elimination Project”: Israel’s Systematic Dismantling of Palestinian Life in West Bank: B’Tselem" (Israeli human rights group)

A major new report by the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem titled “The Elimination Project” accuses Israel of “dramatically intensifying its attacks on every aspect of Palestinian life in the West Bank.”

B’Tselem Executive Director ,Yuli Novak: Israel is dismantling the basic conditions needed for collective Palestinian existence in the West Bank. Our new report “The Elimination Project” shows how this mechanism works and how over the past three years, it has become more lethal, violent and explicit. Come with us to the West Bank to see for yourself. The Elimination Project in the West Bank operates through five domains of action that work together and reinforce each other: killing, violence, intimidation, movement restrictions, economic strangulation, social and political destruction, ethnic cleansing and territorial takeover. These are all parts of a system with one aim: to ensure Jewish supremacy and eliminate the Palestinian collective.

)

Last week in Venice, an Israeli documentary titled NAZA—a Hebrew acronym for the military term, "collateral damage"—concluded its premiere to a staggering, record-breaking 25-minute standing ovation, ultimately securing the Special Jury Prize at the 83rd Venice International Film Festival. By weaving together testimonies from anonymous IDF soldiers and intelligence officers, directors Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor laid bare "the SYSTEMS behind Israel's calculated mass killing of Palestinian civilians in Gaza."

The truth proved dangerous. Within days, Culture Minister Miki Zohar accused the filmmakers of treason and threatened to strip them of their citizenship, while opposition leader Avigdor Lieberman labeled them "enemies of Israel." Yet, even as official threats mount, a fractures of dissent have appeared: fourteen Israeli international law scholars have called for an independent war crimes investigation, and over a thousand local filmmakers have signed a petition warning that the vitriol against Abraham and Szor is fast approaching physical danger.

This collision between state narrative and systemic exposure brings us back to the words of US Senator Hiram Johnson in 1918: “The first casualty, when war comes, is truth.”

For too long, these realities have been ignored or enabled by Western powers, particularly the US. As a quiet resistance to that silence, I offer the latest two entries—one haiku and one tanka—from my writing project, Against the Drowning Noise of Other Words.

CCCVIII: "smoky clouds"

where tents were

a tornado-twist

of smoky clouds

And CCCIX: "attack drone"

in smoky twilight

a mule-drawn flatboard wagon 

with wounded Gazans ...

an attack drone flying past

silences everything below

To conclude today's "Special Feature" post, I would like to share with you the following penetrating remarks on "SILENCE"  by Martin Luther King Jr., who noted that "remaining quiet in the face of injustice makes people complicit in the harm."

There comes a time when silence is betrayal.

Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.

In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.

And

We will have to repent in this generation, not only for the evil words and deeds of the bad people, but for the appalling silence of the good people.

FYI: +972 Magazine, September 10, 2026: NAZA: Exposing Israel’s killing machine in Gaza written by Directors Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor

Over the past three years, we conducted night-time interviews on the rooftops of Tel Aviv with 24 Israeli soldiers who played an active role in Israel’s onslaught on Gaza. Most of them were intelligence officers, working behind screens and participating remotely in the mass killing of Palestinians. 

Their testimonies form the basis of “NAZA,” a new documentary we directed ...

This is a film about a system. It focuses on orders, policies, and patterns of operation, not deviations from them. The conclusion that we draw from the testimonies is clear: The mass killing of Palestinian civilians in Gaza was not a “tragic byproduct” of a war against Hamas, as it is commonly portrayed in Israel, but a premeditated, calculated, and intentional act. This is why a UN commission, the world’s leading human rights groups, and Palestinian, Israeli, and international scholars have described it as a genocide.

Added: Against the Drowning Noise of Other Words, CCCX: "Yom Kippur"

after the shofar's long blast

the Ark's curtain pulls closed ...

forty miles away

smoke column after column

climbing without end in Gaza

FYI: The final, absolute closure of Yom Kippur is signaled by a single, long blast of the shofar (the Tekiah Gedolah). This blast formally brings the fast to an end, representing the final "click" of the lock. Only after this blast is the physical curtain of the Ark pulled closed, and the community transitions into the evening service and Havdalah.

Added: Against the Drowning Noise of Other Words, CCCXI: "wordbombs"

row upon row

of nearly empty seats

beneath harsh lights

the war criminal's wordbombs

echo back from walls to strike him

Added: Against the Drowning Noise of Other Words, CCCXII: "smoke-smeared crescent"

smoke-smeared crescent

shoo, shoo, shoo 

piercing scream after scream

Added: Against the Drowning Noise of Other Words, CCCXIII: "Christ's thorns dripping blood"

glass shards 

in half-broken window frames —

by a Gazan home

fractured autumn moonlight

on Christ's thorns dripping blood

FYI: "Euphorbia milii, 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."

Added: Against the Drowning Noise of Other Words, CCCXIV: "rows of small white coffins"

on the blood-dried square

rows of small white coffins

in pixels—

the weight of something

I cannot name inside me

FYI: This is a sequel to 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

NeverEnding Story, July 9 2025

Poetic Musings: Summer Grass Haiku by Chen-ou Liu

summer grass

on both sides of the border

rusted helmets

Highly Commended, Wales Haiku Journal Summer Competition 2026

Chen-ou Liu

Commentary: L 1, “summer grass,” immediately establishes the season and gives the haiku a quiet, natural surface. The image is simple and organic, evoking continuity, growth, and the passage of time.

L2, “on both sides of the border,” introduces a human-made division into this otherwise natural landscape. The line initially functions spatially, locating the grass in relation to a border, but it also introduces a sociopolitical dimension: the landscape is divided according to a human distinction.

Then, L 3, “rusted helmets,” provides the haiku’s decisive turn. It brings war, death, and the passage of time into the poem, while the helmets remain silent objects that bear witness to history. There is a compelling tension between the living grass and the rusted remnants of violence. The phrase “both sides of the border” suggests that death and the history of violence are not confined neatly to one side. The poem therefore acquires political and historical resonance without becoming overtly didactic.

Structurally, my haiku has an especially interesting relationship to Bashō’s:

summer grass

all that remains

of warriors’ dreams

It preserves Bashō’s basic three-part architecture while radically altering what occupies each structural position.

The identical opening, “summer grass,” is more than an allusion: it establishes an explicit intertextual frame. A reader familiar with Bashō is invited to recall the significance of the image before encountering the rest of my poem. Structurally, both poems begin with nature—specifically, vegetation associated with seasonal transience. In both, the first line establishes the enduring natural world before human history enters.

Bashō’s second line,

all that remains

is a meditative and interpretive statement. It tells us how to understand the grass: it is what survives after the warriors and their ambitions have disappeared.

My second line,

on both sides of the border

does something fundamentally different. Rather than interpreting the first image, it locates it spatially while introducing a human-made division. The border becomes the point at which the natural landscape encounters political history.

Bashō’s third line,

of warriors’ dreams

Mine:

rusted helmets

Both poems place their most explicitly human element in the final position, but the nature of that element is radically different. Bashō ends with an abstraction—“dreams.” My poem ends with a concrete object—“rusted helmets.”

This difference is structurally important. Bashō moves toward conceptual reflection on the warriors’ ambitions; I move toward physical evidence. The reader encounters the helmets only at the end and consequently has to retroactively reinterpret the first two lines. The summer grass is no longer merely scenery: it becomes grass growing around the material remnants of war.

Although I borrow Bashō’s opening and general three-part movement, I reject his final abstraction. My haiku ends not with what the warriors dreamed, but with what they left behind materially. In this sense, the poem moves from Bashō’s meditation on the disappearance of human ambition toward an image of its physical aftermath.

The phrase “both sides” also expands Bashō’s singular historical perspective. Bashō’s structure ultimately establishes a relationship between:

grass ↔ warriors’ dreams

My syntax establishes a three-way relationship:

grass ↔ border ↔ helmets

The border functions as a hinge between nature and war. The phrase “both sides” anticipates division before the helmets appear. When “rusted helmets” arrives, the reader understands that the poem is not simply about warriors, but about warriors belonging to opposing sides.

This produces a subtle structural symmetry:

summer grass

on both sides of the border

rusted helmets

The middle line contains the division, while the final line potentially collapses it. Whatever side the helmets once belonged to, they are now simply rusted helmets. Time and decay have erased the distinction that the border once enforced.

In short, my haiku is not simply “Bashō with different words.” Its structure deliberately transforms Bashō’s structure. I replace Bashō’s explicit meditation—“all that remains”—with the spatial and political phrase “on both sides of the border,” and I replace his abstraction, “warriors’ dreams,” with the concrete historical remnant, “rusted helmets.” The result is an allusion that functions as a structural conversation with Bashō rather than merely a quotation or homage. Bashō’s poem meditates on what remains after war; mine asks the reader to confront the material remains of war and the human divisions that produced them.

Reading More and Writing Better: Rubble Haiku by Cezar-Florin Ciobîcă

rubble ...

the wind browsing

through War and Peace

Haikuniverse, March 17, 2022

Cezar-Florin Ciobîcă

FYI: The significance of War and Peace in L3 is richer than it first appears, operating simultaneously on several levels.

A literal scene

The most immediate reading is straightforward: a copy of Tolstoy's novel lies among the rubble. Its pages have come loose, and the wind is "browsing" through them.

The irony of the title

Placed after "rubble," War and Peace becomes more than the title of a novel. The words themselves acquire renewed meaning:

war has produced the rubble;

peace has not yet arrived—or perhaps exists only as the second half of a book title.

The haiku never states this explicitly. It allows the title to carry the irony.

Culture amid destruction

Books often symbolize memory, civilization, and cultural continuity. Here, one of the greatest novels about war survives only as an object idly leafed through by the wind. Human readers are absent. That absence is poignant without becoming sentimental.

A meta-literary dimension

Tolstoy's novel is itself an exploration of history, violence, and the ordinary lives swept into vast political events.

The wind browsing through War and Peace suggests that history itself is being casually turned over. A novel that seeks to make sense of war now finds itself amid another war—or its aftermath.

The choice of "browsing" is particularly effective. It anthropomorphizes the wind just enough to make nature seem the poem's only remaining reader. At the same time, the word carries a contemporary echo of web browsing, subtly contrasting the routines of everyday life with the extraordinary devastation of the scene.

An illuminating comparison can be made with another haiku built around the same literary work:

leafing War and Peace

front to back, back to front

summer whiffle

NeverEnding Story, July 18, 2026

Chen-ou Liu

Although both poems revolve around War and Peace, they employ it to strikingly different ends.

The first poem is centrifugal: it expands outward from a concrete scene into history, politics, memory, and civilization.

The second is centripetal: it contracts inward toward an intimate sensory experience.

Agency

In Ciobîcă's haiku, the agent is the wind. Human presence is absent, perhaps erased. Nature becomes the only "reader" in the aftermath of catastrophe.

In Liu's haiku, the implied agent is human. Someone idly leafs through the novel, yet the action seems almost incidental. The emphasis is not on reading Tolstoy but on the tactile and auditory experience of turning pages.

The function of War and Peace

In the first haiku, War and Peace is inseparable from its title. The semantic weight of "war" and "peace" is activated by the opening image of rubble, making the title an essential part of the poem's meaning.

In the second, the novel functions primarily as a physical object—a thick book whose pages can be riffled "front to back, back to front." Its literary and historical significance recedes behind its material presence.

Movement

The movement of each poem also differs.

In Ciobîcă's haiku:

rubble → wind → War and Peace

The poem moves from destruction to an enduring artifact of culture.

In Liu's haiku:

War and Peace → leafing → summer whiffle

The movement is from an iconic literary work to something almost weightless: the whisper of turning pages echoed by the "whiffle" of summer air.

The role of "summer whiffle"

The phrase "summer whiffle" transforms the preceding action. The repeated leafing no longer feels like an attempt to read a monumental novel. Instead, it resembles listening to leaves rustling in a summer breeze. The pages themselves become foliage.

In this way, the haiku gently dissolves the distinction between book and landscape. It privileges sensory immediacy, lightness, and understated juxtaposition. The literary reference is absorbed into the season.

By contrast, Ciobîcă's haiku invites the reader to engage history and culture alongside direct perception. Its power lies not only in the image of rubble and wind but also in the way Tolstoy's title reverberates within a contemporary landscape of destruction.

IMHO, these two haiku make an excellent pairing because they demonstrate two very different possibilities for literary allusion in haiku. One uses War and Peace as a symbolic field that expands the poem's historical and political resonance; the other transforms the same novel into a tactile, seasonal object, allowing literature to dissolve into lived experience. Together, they show how a shared reference can generate entirely different poetic worlds.

Biting NOT Barking: Arms Deal Haiku by Simon Hanson

English Original

arms deal

prosthetic legs, too

Simon Hanson

Chinese Translation (Traditional)

武器交易

還有, 義肢

Chinese Translation (Simplified)

武器交易

还有, 义肢

Bio Sketch

Simon Hanson lives in forested Tasmania in the company of animals and birds and the sounds of a trickling creek. Formerly Secretary to the Australian Haiku Society he is currently co-editor of Echidna Tracks. He has an e-book collection; Desert Stones (Snapshot Press) freely available here for you. 

A Room of My Own: War and Peace Haiku

leafing War and Peace

front to back, back to front

summer whiffle

Added:

hillside and valley

flecked with cloud shadows ...

smell of sunshine

Added:

farmers' market

tasting a strawberry

then her lips

Added:

the ripe tangle

of wild strawberries ...

an urge to love 

Added:

overlapping hearts

on a summer train window

our reflections

Added:

first outing

after the breakup

on the beach

I trip on a heart

made of stones

Added:

alone again

on the moonlit shore ...

my shadow

stretches closer, closer

to lapping waves

Added: No More Fairy Tales, LVI

What has been will be again

Acrid black columns choke the morning sun. Trapped in a valley of smoke, cars barrel past leaping tongues of fire. Across Northern Ontario, wildfires burn hotter, bigger, and deadlier than ever. More than one thousand miles away, their smoke casts an orange haze over New York's crawling traffic.

Meanwhile, silhouetted against smoky skies, the Premier’s mouth opens and closes for the camera lights, broadcasting word after word into the heat.

tongues of forest fire

there is no Plan[et] B, the rest

blah, blah, blah...

FYI: Canada’s climate-change-charged wildfires are becoming a horrific annual event. 

Over 800 wildfires are burning across Canada, with one entirely destroying the northern Indigenous community of Namaygoosisagagun. 

Back in 2023, Emma Paling reported that the same Indigenous communities that gave early warnings against burning fossil fuels are among the first to be permanently displaced by climate change.

The Breach, August 24, 2023: First Nations say they’re not wildfire evacuees, but climate refugees

Indigenous communities that first warned against burning fossil fuels are now facing permanent displacement caused by climate breakdown

Reading More and Writing Better: War and Peace Tanka

Trump Empire, Inc., XCIX

written in response to The Washington Post, July 9 2026: 

Trump reopens the Iran war — and a political problem he can’t shake

firefly light on, off ...

the porch breeze leafing 

through a worn copy

of War and Peace

as Trump news is muted

FYI: Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace is famously vast, historical, and weighty. In Ls 2–4, the "porch breeze leafing / through a worn copy / of War and Peace" creates a striking paradox: a gentle force of nature effortlessly turns the pages of one of literature's great meditations on humanity's heaviest conflicts. The image also animates the book, as though history itself is quietly being revisited.

The "worn copy" carries additional resonance. It suggests a book returned to over many years, perhaps for solace, reflection, or perspective. Its physical wear stands in contrast to the fleeting, relentless cycle of contemporary news. By placing War and Peace within the scene, the tanka frames current events against the backdrop of history, implying that war, political upheaval, and struggles for power are enduring features of the human condition.

L5 firmly anchors the tanka in the present: "as Trump news is muted." Rather than announcing an escape from politics, the tanka simply records the act of muting the broadcast. The news remains present, but it is relegated to the periphery of attention, becoming another element of the evening rather than its defining focus.

This restraint is what gives the tanka much of its power. Had L 5 stated "to escape Trump news," it would have imposed a single interpretation. Instead, the juxtaposition invites readers to consider Tolstoy's exploration of war, power, and ordinary lives alongside the contemporary moment without insisting on a particular conclusion.

The tanka ultimately contrasts two ways of encountering conflict: the enduring, reflective perspective of literature and the immediate, incessant rhythm of modern news. It does not claim that one is superior to the other. Rather, it allows both to coexist within the same quiet evening, leaving readers to discover their own relationship between history and the present..

FYI: Here are some of the best-known War and Peace quotes:

If everyone fought for their own convictions there would be no war.

A battle is won by him who is firmly resolved to win it.

The strongest of all warriors are these two — Time and Patience.

Added: Politics of Distraction, XX

Power on, off, on, off— a heat dome buckles the grid.

my neighbor's TV

blasting Iran War news ...

one stray outbarks the rest

FYI: The Guardian, July 13, 2026: Oil prices leap and stocks fall as Trump reinstates Hormuz blockade on Iranian shipping

Brent crude rises 5% after US president says 20% toll will be imposed on key trade route to cover  "safety and security."

Added:

war news on mute

the drawn out cry

of a cricket

Special Feature: Selected Poems for Reflections on UN's Report on Israel Committing Genocide and Other War Crimes

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

Against the Drowning Noise of Other Words, CLXXXVIII: "A Gazan baby"

written in response to Haaretz, May 20, 2025: Opposition MK Says Israel Risks Pariah Status, "Sane State Doesn't Kill Babies as Hobby"

a Gazan baby

the glitter 

in a sniper's eye

NeverEnding Story, May 21 2025

first frost …

a Gazan baby’s face

in pixels

Commendation, 15th Polish International Haiku Competition 2025

a dull-eyed baby

with loose skin over bone ...

red glow of Gazan skies

NeverEnding Story, July 21 2025

(reprinted in Haikuniverse, July 26, 2025)

On June 18, 2026, the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry published a major report titled “The essence of childhood has been destroyed: Israel’s deliberate targeting of Palestinian children in the Occupied Palestinian Territory since 7 October 2023”. 

The paper describes the deliberate targeting and killing of Palestinian children, including post-ceasefire since the October 2025 Gaza peace plan. The Commission also examines a sharp increase in violence perpetrated by members of Israeli settlers against Palestinian children in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem.

Against the Drowning Noise of Other Words, CIII: "settler violence"

          under        slate-gray            skies

                                   |                          

a settler aims his gun | a boy throws his rock

                                   |

          tank track marks on the grass

NeverEnding Story, October 4 2024

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 online, 20:2, 2024

Contemporary Haibun Anthology 20

Against the Drowning Noise of Other Words, CXC: "ghostly memory"

inspired by a short documentary, Severed: The Story of a Boy From Gaza,  premiering on The Nation Magazine website this week for free.

awake alone

with the ghostly memory

of skeletal houses ...

this one-legged Gazan teen stares

into the borderless sky

NeverEnding Story, May 27 2025

Against the Drowning Noise of Other Words, CLXXXIX: "Heaven and Gaza's ruins"

an armless boy's stare

midnight lightning links Heaven 

and Gaza's ruins ...

NeverEnding Story, May 21 2025

The United Nations has officially placed and kept the Israeli military on its annual "blacklist" (formally known as the Children and Armed Conflict report annex) for committing grave violations against children, including killing, maiming, and attacking schools and hospitals

Against the Drowning Noise of Other Words, XLIV, "hospitals destroyed"

written in response to the destruction of Gaza's biggest hospital, Al Shifa

between blood of birth

and blood of death

a new life

on the hospital floor ...

a Gazan mother's last look

NeverEnding Story, April 4 2024

collapsed school wall

a butterfly

in shades of charcoal

First Place, 2025 Porad Haiku Award

To conclude today's "Special Feature" post, I would like to share the latest entry of Against the Drowning Noise of Other Words, CCXCIX: "Ceasefire: You Cease, I Fire"

Ceasefire: You Cease, I Fire

Boom, boom, boom ... trailed by intermittent night-piercing screams, near and far. 

an armless boy's stare

midnight lightning links Heaven 

and smoky ruins 

hazy day moon

an orphaned girl, her world

of paper cranes

There is no ceasefire in Gaza; the world has normalized the genocide of Palestinians.

-- Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur on Palestine and author of UN Report, "Anatomy of a Genocide"

And

There comes a time when silence is betrayal.

Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.

-- Martin Luther King, Jr.

Added: Against the Drowning Noise of Other Words, CCC: "one thousand cranes"

cherry blossoms

and yet Gazan children ... 

one thousand cranes

Butterfly Dream: Bombing and Doves Haiku by Tim Dwyer

English Original

bombing resumes—

the collared doves return

to our garden   

Tim Dwyer 

Chinese Translation (Traditional)

轟炸再次開始—

一群斑鳩重返

我們的花園

Chinese Translation (Simplified)

轰炸再次开始—

一群斑鸠重返

我们的花园

Bio Sketch

Tim Dwyer’s debut full collection of longer poetry, Accepting The Call (templarpoetry.com), won the Straid Collection Award. In 2025 he was among the Europe Top 100 Haiku Authors. His poetry appears in Irish, UK and international journals. Originally from Brooklyn, NY, he lives in Bangor, Northern Ireland.

A Room of My Own: Stock Ticker Tanka

Against the Drowning Noise of Other Words, CCXCVI: "stock ticker "

a bruised girl’s hand

clutches a slice of bread

in pixels—

a stock ticker flashes past

Lockheed Martin up red-hot

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

May 24 2026: Israel's Destruction of Gaza Mapped Using Digital Archive of Wartime Footage

Built from geolocated videos, photographs and social media posts, the website – called Genocide Live – compiles footage of Israeli airstrikes, military manoeuvres, and destruction from across Gaza, the West Bank and the wider regional war, including in Lebanon, Syria, Iran and Qatar.

May 25 2026: Humanitarian Conditions in Gaza Deteriorating Again, Aid Groups Warn

The groups report a resurgence in malnutrition among Gazan children, as well as deaths resulting from a failure to provide medical evacuations, collapsing sewage systems, a spike in pest infestations and a serious shortage of medical equipment, among other problems.

And Kavout, Stock Analysis: Is Global Conflict Driving a New Era for Defense Stocks

Key Takeaways

Global defense spending, now at an estimated $3 trillion, is surging due to escalating geopolitical tensions, creating a robust tailwind for defense contractors and drone technology firms.

Lockheed Martin (LMT) offers investors a stable, blue-chip play on this trend, benefiting from strong demand for its established platforms and a substantial backlog, despite its premium valuation. 

Added: Against the Drowning Noise of Other Words, CCXCVII: "Eid al-Adha"

Eid al-Adha

shrouded in smoky dust

armless Gazan child

FYI: Eid al-Adha (May 26–30) is the Feast of Sacrifice, the largest of the two main Islamic festivals celebrated worldwide. It is traditionally marked by clean clothes, festive meals, and charity.

Added:

her only son's photo

as he was

Memorial Day

Added:

in breezy sunshine

tulip bulbs tucked in the earth

last autumn

begin to murmur awake ...

will our hope for peace take root?

FYI: Vision of Humanity: Highest number of countries engaged in conflict since World War II

Added:

the edge

of this dappled trail

shadow and me

Added:

gazing out

at this borderless spring sky 

thoughts pass through

Added:

kitchen secret

in the slanted moonlight

onions unpeeled

Added:

half-sleep, half-wake 

my hand across the bed

finds a hollow

Added:

sultry beach night

my body finds the spot

where hers once lay

Added:

solar eclipse

a church bell’s echo slips

into the dark

Poetic Musings: Gazan Baby's Face Haiku by Chen-ou Liu

first frost ...

a Gazan baby’s face

in pixels

Commendation, 15th Polish International Haiku Competition 2025

Chen-ou Liu

Judge's Comment: The first sign of winter is juxtaposed with a baby in Gaza, likely seen under terrible circumstances. Pixels are the tiny units – or pieces (a shadow word, surely) – that make up a digital image. News is always to hand, refreshed continuously if we choose to look, but the devices we use can make us feel remote, less empathetic. The author’s intent (to me anyway) is unclear, which adds another layer of interest.

My Response:

The emotional force of this haiku depends largely on the relationship between Ls 2&3. Without L 3, “a Gazan baby’s face” functions as a direct image of suffering. But L 3 — “in pixels” — radically reframes the image. It reveals that the speaker is not physically present with the child, but encountering the face through a screen: a phone, livestream, news clip, or social-media feed. 

That shift opens several layers of meaning.

1. Mediation and distance

“In pixels” foregrounds the technological mediation of suffering. The child reaches the speaker only as digital light — fragmented image-data transmitted across distance. The haiku creates tension between intimacy and separation: the immediacy of a baby’s face contrasted with the remoteness of screen-based witnessing.

The haiku quietly asks what it means to experience catastrophe through technology rather than direct human contact.

2. Fragmentation and dehumanization

Pixels are the tiny units that collectively simulate reality. Ending on “pixels” subtly suggests how modern tragedy is consumed as image — fragmented, streamed, and reduced to visual information.

L 3 therefore carries an implicit critique of contemporary spectatorship: human suffering risks becoming just another flow of digital content.

3. The contrast with “first frost” in L 1

The juxtaposition with “first frost” is crucial. Traditionally, first frost evokes seasonal transition, stillness, delicacy, beauty, and coldness. Placed beside the image of a Gazan baby, the frost acquires moral and emotional overtones: emotional numbness, chilling distance, fragility of life, even the cold glow of screens.

The ellipsis after “first frost …” deepens this effect by creating a suspended pause before the intrusion of geopolitical reality.

4. Why “in pixels” works

The restraint of “in pixels” is precisely what gives the haiku its force. It avoids overt political rhetoric, graphic imagery, and explicit emotional instruction. Instead, L 3 quietly transforms the haiku from simple observation into a meditation on mediated witnessing in the digital age.

And this haiku is a sequel to mine below:

Against the Drowning Noise of Other Words, CLXXXVIII: "A Gazan baby"

written in response to Haaretz, May 20, 2025: Opposition MK Says Israel Risks Pariah Status, 'Sane State Doesn't Kill Babies as Hobby'

a Gazan baby

the glitter 

in a sniper's eye

NeverEnding Story, May 21 2025

Special Feature: Selected Poems on Donald Trump's Attacks on Pope Leo XIV

We are growing accustomed to violence, resigning ourselves to it, and becoming indifferent, indifferent to the deaths of thousands of people.

-- Pope Leo XIV

peace talks stalled

I hold onto the long half

of a wishbone

NeverEnding Story, April 12 2026

Politics of Distraction, VI:

Make America Great Again

After the failed peace talks, leaning over the Resolute Desk toward the camera lights, the man vows with a meaty smile, "I'll block ships crossing the Strait of Hormuz."

block the blockade

to break the blockade ...

in the briefing room

silence broken only

by a buzzing fly

NeverEnding Story, April 12 2026

At a White House press conference, Donald Trump responded to a question on whether God supports U.S. actions in the war, saying, “I do because God is good, and God wants to see people taken care of"

God does not bless any conflict. Anyone who is a disciple of Christ, the Prince of Peace, is never on the side of those who once wielded the sword and today drop bombs... God does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war.

I have no fear neither of the Trump administration, nor of speaking out loudly about the message of the Gospel... I do believe the message of the Gospel—‘blessed are the peacemakers’—is the message that the world needs to hear today

-- Pope Leo XIV

Politics of Distraction, VII:

In Broad Daylight 

Any resemblance to current events or actual locales, or to living persons, is NOT coincidental. 

a poll sign

against the White House fence: 

"Pope vs Dope" 

a mangy stray corks its leg 

marks "Dope" with a yellow stream

FYI: The Nation Magazine, April 13 2026: Trump’s Deranged, One-Way Feud With Pope Leo: He’s finally met someone he can’t bully.

To conclude today's "Special Feature" post, I would like to share with you Pope Leo's post on X, April 14:

God’s heart is torn apart by wars, violence, injustice and lies. But our Father’s heart is not with the wicked, the arrogant, or the proud. God’s heart is with the little ones and the humble, and with them He builds up His Kingdom of love and peace day by day. Wherever there is love and service, God is there.

Stand with Pope Leo XIV. End the Iran War.

Added: Politics of Distraction, VIII:

Blocking the Blockade to Break the Blockade

      Donald Trump

            $ 20,28

          per gallon

White House entrance

         No Parking 

          all     quiet

              on

        frontal lobe

FYI: The third smol, “all quiet on the frontal lobe,” playfully echoes the iconic anti-war novel All Quiet on the Western Front, which depicts the realities of World War I. The idiom “all quiet on the Western Front” has since come to suggest that an outward sense of calm may conceal deeper, and sometimes troubling, underlying realities.