The Genocide in Gaza Must Stop Now!

It is unconscionable for any person who cares about others' wellbeing not to spend every minute of their waking lives resisting the grotesque murder and starvation of the people of Gaza. Israel has proved itself one of the most brutal, dehumanising and violent states in modern history, ruled by genocidal tyrants. Of course there are many who live in Israel who do not support this psychotic act of state vengeance, and who would have sought a peaceful route through the horror. To constantly cite the violence of Hamas, its long-term militarism and cruelty, in order to excuse attacks on the Palestinian people, is part of an act of collective abuse that finds its roots in colonialism and underpins genocide. Hamas is not Palestine. What's more, the psychology of killing because others have killed (and killing in return on such a vast scale that extends back as well as forward on the timeline) is the destruction of humanity itself. Collective 'punishment' is overtly unjust by any measure, but to use vengeance as the basis for centralised actions is so far away from any sense of human rights as to be grotesque. The murder of people trying to reach food supplies, the inducing of mass famine to reduce a people to inability to act on any level, and then to see them perish, is genocide. It's such a severe situation that making analogies between the behaviour of the Israeli State/IDF and any other 'similar' crimes of history is pointless. This act of genocide will become in modern memory the basis for analogies of horror and wrongdoing for decades. And as for the vileness of the 'doing' or 'not doing' deals over what is so obscenely an unequal situation, it fits the endgame of capitalist over-reach in which capitalism becomes a question of whether an entire people mean value to the world marketplace rather than whether they are people. Everyone of us is obliged to act to save the people of Gaza — they are people, not representations on screens, not statistics, and not objects whose absence or presence is ultimately summed up in terms of the market place, in terms of what they are 'worth' to 'players' and vested interests. It must stop. Israel must withdraw. Israel must step back and let more humane agencies enter Gaza to bring some hope and physical and spiritual restoration to the people and land it has tried to destroy and steal. Israel must face up to what it is, end apartheid and share country with those whose country it is.

    John Kinsella and Tracy Ryan

Do Not Forget What is Going on in Gaza — It is Remorseless

Derelictions of Grammar and Rhetoric

 

‘...achieve all of the war goals in Gaza’

 

            latest official communiqué from the Israeli military government

 

 

Refrain of bombardment

and the oldest refrain of blockade

            and starvation insist anaphora

            is failing — from an outside

looking in, knowing a repetition

of death doesn’t add up to wisdom

            or even a beautiful if pitiless verse.

 

            The ‘goals of war’ are an intoning,

a grammar of removal. As cataphora

is to anaphora, why are they, the ‘citizen-soldiers’

            so ready to sing a song of killing,

            so ready to believe they will clear

a path through their consciences

with tanks and bulldozers?

 

 

            John Kinsella

Against the Ongoing Genocide in Gaza

Graphology Superscription 142: genocide phase 2 Gaza

 

The thin stretch of land Gazan Palestinians

have called home is more than a ‘sea view’.

 

But complicated by rubble and the odour of death,

the US will help decorate the guilty reminders.

 

And though it might be deft to say Trump’s

declarations are a real estate developer’s

 

sense of land-usage, of the profit

that will come from a glossy future,

 

it’s actually far more devious than going

eighteen holes (ready-formed by shell-

 

craters). In the sweeping aside of logger-

head turtles and jackals, in ensuring

 

contracts for Americans who make so many

of the weapons that have reshaped the past,

 

the endgame policies are energised

to drive the people out, to win history.

 

 

            John Kinsella

 

On the Attacks in Israel by Hamas and the ‘Vengeance’ Response by the Israeli State Against Gaza

            John Kinsella

 

 

I wrote this a few days into the ‘war’. Now, weeks later, I feel I must post it. The personal nature of it is a result of my trying to come to grips with the unfathomable, and is not intended as a ‘pronouncement’. I have no more right than anyone else to express a view outside a situation other than through my own humanity and responsibility to others.

 

As pacifist my position is always very clear.

I utterly condemn the horrendous crimes of Hamas (and the entire organisation — one that has ruled through the barrel of the gun), and I understand the need for people to see 'justice' over what happened (though, for me, justice never involves more killing). I also believe the Israeli craving for vengeance is wrong, entirely out of control and fed by powerful vested interests. I deplore violence in all its forms and only care for the sanctity of people in this. All people.

 

There is no question of the colonial militarism and motivation of right-wing Israeli governments. I am fully aware of the dispossession and ongoing losses and oppression of the Palestinian people and believe this must be addressed in concrete and just ways. I believe in the right of Jewish people (and peoples) to share that space which is also their historic and spiritual homeland.

 

With all of this in mind, I deeply believe in the broader principles of shared space, in peaceful co-existence — this cannot exist under the present system of apartheid and the exclusionary control of space. I come at this as someone who refutes all notions of states and borders, and also all settler-colonialism. I have a lifelong, strong affinity with Jewish people, an association of which I am proud, and through which feel I have grown as a person. I also (always such a complicating word in the context) count friends on both ‘sides’ of the constructed divide. I also fully support the Palestinian people. I have seen direct evidence (from students and others) of the wrongs suffered by families — the loss of homes and lands, the loss of the very records of their lives.

 

I am horrified by the antisemitism I encounter in day to day life, in the press, online, and in disguised ways. I am equally horrified by the use to which some (if not many) are putting the vengeance retaliation approach within and without Israel. I am horrified by the mistreatment of the Palestinian people. I am horrified by the act of genocide the Israeli government, its war cabinet, the IDF, and the capitalist powers that support it are meting out to the Palestinian people.

 

I care for the people of Israel and the people of Gaza/Palestine and all of humanity. I care for the children and peace. I do not care for militarists and those filled with hate. People may not like my pacifist position, but I mean it and would stand between the murderers and their intended victims without lifting a hand — I speak with my body and soul. Many people I know directly and at a distance are being affected by this situation of abject horror and terror. I offer my support to all those who need it, and will never turn my back on anyone. The murder must stop immediately. This began with mass murder and continues with genocide — the blame and annihilation of a people being made guilty by association. Every code of human decency is being violated.

 

I will never agree (in any shape or form) with violence. Hamas is a violent organisation who deserve no respect on any level — they are murderers who control the people they purport to represent. The IDF murders as an act of destiny. The gap between the two is incredibly small and abstract. Flattening Gaza is NO ANSWER and becomes a murderous genocidal crime in itself. Hamas must be exposed for what they are — a destructive force to the people they purport to represent. Concurrently, the Israeli military and all those who enable their ‘vengeance’ (the so-called ‘right to self-defence’ scenario, when what is meant in the circumstances is the right to destroy people who are not attacking them) are equally culpable and pernicious. All militaries are, as are all military ‘approaches’. Always.

 

Humans need to deal with humans without violence. Humans need to share between themselves, appreciate and respect cultural difference.

 

I feel very passionately about justice and the sanctity of life. I have seen too much hate in my life and am fully committed to offering any other way through I can in my own minuscule way. I am for both Palestinians and Israelis, without regard to ‘states’, military structures, and martial control. And yes, I emphatically believe the Hamas attack was an attack against the very spirit of humanity itself, not a genuine attempt to overcome the wrongs and oppressions experienced by the Palestinian people for so long. But this grievous wrong does not justify a grievous wrong against innocent people — levelling a city is not right under any circumstances. Murdering children is murdering children. Benjamin Netanyahu and his supporters are right-wing killers and haters. The sick irony is that the Israeli state ‘speaks’ to Hamas, and Hamas ‘speaks’ to them. This is the absolute tragedy of it — speaking with no conversation, only death.

 

It should be remembered that hate is never far below the surface. Here in Tübingen as this horror started to unfold, someone violated stones from a former synagogue near the Dietrich Bonhoeffer Church on Berliner Ring. In damaging stones — the death-echoes of Nazism never far below the surface — there is an expression of a willingness to damage a people. This awareness should be taken into consideration at every turn with regard to how issues and wrongs are so easily broadened into generic patterns of hatred. It is a brutal reality in itself, and a ‘spectre of death’. Concurrently, bursts of Islamophobia segue with an uncritical support of the IDF. It’s nonsensical, brutal, and diminishes all humanity.

 

There are so many people working hard across communities to bring true justice and healing. Poetry is part of this, and I praise those poets who work so hard across languages and cultures, across Arabic and Hebrew, to bring dialogue, peace, and mutual growth.