October 2023
in october 2023, Netanyahu declared war
on Palestine's militant Hamas
after an attack that killed 1,195 Israelis
and took 251 hostages.
the deadliest day in Israel's history.

in the immediate aftermath
Netanyahu announced Israel was at war
threatened to turn to ruins all the places
where Hamas is organized or hiding .
that he did.
from the get-go he was hell-bent
on destroying everything Palestinian.
he hindered or rejected
ceasefire and hostage agreements.
under the guise of a hunt to dismantle Hamas
rather than boots on the ground
to hunt down the perpetrators and leadership of the Hamas.
rather than precision attacks using modern warfare
and targeted assassinations
he unleashed a blanket of relentless indiscriminate bombardments
raining death and destruction on the populace of Palestine
streaking the skies with rockets, drones, mortars, and bombs
streaking the night skies red and white with flares and flashes
blackening day skies with rising clouds of smoke
from leveled schools, clinics, hospitals, concrete tenements
in its wake, a wasteland of rubble and destruction.

for two years now the immediacy of television
has been feeding us daily harrowing images of his war.
the collateral damage of dead, dying, and maimed
thousands of men, women and children,
pulled out from the rubble of destruction
perhaps, an occasional Hamas militant
to justify the carnage.

the dead line the streets, wrapped in white burial shrouds
bearing messages of loss and love.
white symbolizing peace and calm
the dead deaf to the wailing dirge
of mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters.
there are no beatitudes of
blessed are those who mourn
blessed are those who hunger and thirst
blessed are those who are persecuted . . .
there are no such beatitudes in their holy book.
only anguished pleas to any god who might care.

but perhaps, those are the merciful deaths.
the short-lived wailing evoked by sudden deaths.
rather than the deaths that come
from the blockade of food, water and medical supplies
the horrifying graphics of slow ebbing of life
slow-motion-deaths of starvation, thirst, and disease
mothers watching children wasting away
wilting into cachectic agonal masses
fragile layers of skin clinging to ribs and bone
while flies like vultures hover about
awaiting the merciful coming of death.
and belying thousands of gruesome images
Netanyahu declares
there is no starvation in Gaza.

Munich Massacre, 1972
Black September, a Palestinian militant organization,
attacked Israeli's team lodging at the 1972 Munich Olympics,
killing 11 Israeli athletes and coaches.
War was not declared.
As a form of retaliation, there was an initial response
of air strikes on PLO bases in Syria and Lebanon.
then, Prime Minister Golda Meir
authorized Operation Wrath of God
a covert assassination campaign
for Mossad to hunt down those involved in the Munich attack.
a hunt that lasted more than two decades,
clandestine boots on the ground,
hunting in Athens, Cyprus, Lebanon, France, Rome
with purpose, patience, and precision
assassinating most, if not all, of those involved in the massacre
with minimal "collateral" damage.

Golda Meir
therein lies the difference between the two leaders.
Golda Meir, mother and leader,
she would have bade Mossad to hunt down Hamas.
one by one, boots on the ground, one by one.
she would be turning, rolling in her grave now
watching Netanyah commandeer his war
this slaughter of men, women, and children,
thousands of white-shrouded dead.
fathers, mothers and children clamoring and screaming
arms outstretched with empty pots and pans
begging for a slop of gruel or sliver of stale bread.
daily images of death and dying
wreaked by deprivation and starvation.
she would be feeding the children.

Netanyahu's Deus ex Machina
for Netenyahu, the Hamas massacre was a deus ex machina.
a reprieve from all that threatened his political survival.
the timely distraction from pending corruption cases.
a political lifeline.
a stay.
now, todah, an opportunity to be
the resolute leader
hero
savior
vengeful warrior
conqueror
to invade, vanquish, occupy and rule the rest of Palestine
culmination for the grail of the imagined "promised land".
his redemptory war.

Genocide.
Netanyahu is the author of this genocide.
his Palestinian holocaust.
the conductor of this orchestrated massacre
this carnage of the innocent.
charam. . . extermination.
Shoah.
ethnic cleansing.
that was, is, his intention.
to destroy the Palestinian motherland
to annihilate a culture and its people
to exterminate by bombing, starvation and deprivation.
to raze it to the ground.
the bloody agenda for his redemption.
His version of Zionism.

in the mathematics of deaths
the october 7 attack killed 1,200 Israelis, 250 hostages taken.
to date, more than 57,000 Palestinians have been killed,
138,000 wounded, nearly 14,000 hostaged.
in the mathematics of tonnes,
Israel has dropped more than 25,000 tonnes of explosives
on the Gaza strip, equivalent to two nuclear bombs.
(15,000 tonnes was dropped on Hiroshima
and destroyed everything within a one-mile radius.)

this is not a two-year war
rather, a recurring war since the Arab-iIsraeli war of 1948.
with respites of truces, ceasefires, and short-lived peace.
since September 29, 2000 to october 6, 2023
69,522 Palestinians have been killed, to Israelis 2,916.
20,351 Palestinian children to 178 Israeli children.
discrepant numbers, much during Nethanyahu's watch
while prime minister from 1996 to 1999, 2009 to 2021, 2022 to today.

Sadam Hussein was hanged for a crime less than this.
Although he systematically executed, tortured, imprisoned,
raped, terrorized Iraqi people, his own people,
it was for his role in the 1982 Dujail massacre
of 148 Iraqi Shi'ites who attempted to assassinate him
for which he was convicted and hanged
for crimes against humanity.

This is not a war to dismantle hamas.
this is Netanyahu's one-sided genocidal "war"
against the nation of Palestine.
waging with superior warfare and arsenal
blockades, bombings, starvation, disease and deprivation
his weapons of mass destruction.

and dismantle hamas, he did not.
and if he ever does
from the rubbled pieces of a Palestine that will survive
fathers and mothers, sons and daughters
witnesses to this genocide
from the planted seeds of anguish and suffering
a phoenix will rise, again and again and again,
another and another and another militant group
to  continue to fight in this ungoldly endless war
to reclaim their dignity
and right of homeland and nationhood.

the two-state solution or the forever war
the two-state solution remains the only solution
one bandied about since the 1982 Arab summit
now, again, but difficult to imagine, impossible to some
with Israel's continued occupation and settlement expansion
and their imagined historical or biblical right.
now, doubly impossible with Netanyahu holding Israel's reins
a man possessed, obsessed with this "promised land"
vowing a full "conquest" of Gaza
to raze down the last remaining buildings
where hamas could be hiding
under the pretext of a right to defend Israel
under the illusion of a biblical right
a forever war until all of Palestine is reduced to rubble.
until Gaza is razed for--what?---a  Miditerranean Riviera?
and how to trust a man
who sees no evil . . .
blind to the thousands of images that documents his war
children with faces sunken and limbs limp from famine
hears no evil . . .
the thundering rain of mortars and bombs
the wailing of mourning and hunger
but who speaks evil with bare-faced chutzpah
"there is no starvation in gaza."

and the world sits and listens, watches and wonders
mesmerized, paralyzed by daily servings of harrowing images
of the dead and dying, of deprivation and destruction.
a landscape of horror and hopelessness.
whence . . . and how much more of this evil and inhumanity?
and why? the deafening silence and immoral inertia
of nations, powers-that-be, and world leaders.

and deaths continue to mount.
now more than 60,000, a third under 18.
273 deaths from starvation, of them, 112 children.
more than 4,500 amputations.
the largest number of child amputees in modern history.
genocide, ethnic cleansing, famine, and destruction.
netanyahu's crimes against humanity.
again. . .
Sadam Hussein was hanged for a crime
much much less than this.