Set aside for a moment critically important occurrences in the U.S. How do I sensibly communicate with you, or with anyone at all, about Israel’s genocidal violations of Gaza?

I have a distant friend I have never met in person. He sends me and many, many other people email a few times each week reporting on events in the Mideast. In that respect, Mazin Qumsiyeh’s consistency in addressing the Israel/U.S. genocidal assault on Gaza is incomprehensibly, incomparably and incredibly admirable. I recently got another message from him and I am moved to include it here.

His message goes like this. Mazin begins:

“The Extermination and Ethnic cleansing in the Gaza Strip is reaching unprecedented cruelty and the US government is sending another $517 million worth of bombs to the Israeli regime to continue it. On Monday June 30th, Israeli forces bombed the only still functioning cafe in the Gaza Strip. Surviving Intellectuals, journalists, academics frequented it to escape the relentless genocide. 32 were killed there instantly and dozens were injured (many critically and the lack of medical facilities means death or disability). An image of a stunned injured elderly man next to the body of his wife among the devastation haunts me.

“Then we heard today that the Israeli regime assassinated Dr. Marwan Al-Sultan, a cardiologist and director of an Indonesian hospital (only barely functioning hospital in Gaza City). The Israeli army knows his home perfectly well and sent him a missile killing him and his wife and their 5 children.”

Mazin continues by reporting that Mosab Abu Toha emailed him that ‘In the past three hours, Israel has savagely attacked over four school shelters in northern Gaza, resulting in a large number of casualties. As of this writing, hundreds of families are sitting or sleeping in the streets after fleeing the bombed shelters. The schools that were bombed are:  Al-Falah School – Al-Zaytoun neighborhood; Halawah School – Jabalia; Halimah Al-Sa’diyah School – Jabalia; a group of school shelters on Yaffa Street – Al-Zaytoun neighbourhood.’

Mazin noted: “Omar wrote from Gaza where he is trying to care for a group of 22 people to survive and his message continued: ‘Perhaps tonight is the last night I write to you. I hope it isn’t the last—or maybe it’s better if I don’t hope at all. This soul is weary; it craves peace. The tanks are near. Their roar sits heavy in my lap, rattling this exhausted body. Gunfire crackles without end, everywhere. The grinding of treads devours what little memory remains—I hear it so clearly, crushing my dreams. My dreams! What a hollow word. I don’t even know how it slipped through my fingers. 

‘A burst of bullets—first, second, third… Dear God, what is this madness?! My hand trembles again as Ahmed, my nephew, crouches like a hunted thing, clinging to his grandmother. Fear gnaws at him, crouching over his small body like a predator savoring its prey.

‘Children are easy meat for terror. The tanks roll closer. The wail of ambulances swells. And I wonder: Will another image emerge? A man burning, his body torn open, while the world feasts on his agony—only to forget him in two days? Has our suffering become a stepping stone for others’ success? I don’t know if morning will come. Not tomorrow’s dawn—but the dawn of the sky, when my soul rises to a place wrapped in peace, where love flocks like doves. A place untouched by this screaming violence.’

A day later, Mazin reports, his witness to horror wrote him: ‘The price of sugar in Gaza is extremely high, and the Americans involved in the American aid know this very well. What happened today is one of the worst crimes ever committed. Read carefully what I’m about to say: as soon as the first wave of American aid arrives, people rush to get sugar first. Today, the Americans deliberately placed the sugar in a separate area. Then, they dug a deep pit just before the sugar zone, covered it with nylon, and lightly sprinkled it with dirt so that no one would see it or notice. The starving reached the sugar first, and seven people fell into the pit. Then a bulldozer came and buried them alive. Meanwhile, a man in his fifties was returning from the aid area, nearly collapsing. I held him, and he said to me: ‘I’d rather die of hunger than go back to that aid—it’s aid of death.’

I am tempted to stop right there, after conveying that message from my friend and his friend. Do you not believe their report? I don’t want to believe it either. But I do. War is good for nothing, but this unfolding horrific nightmare isn’t even war. It is massacre. To intentionally shoot children and starve a whole population is god awful. To be ordered to do such things, and to then do them. It is worse than horrible.

As to believing it, do you live in the U.S.? Netanyahu and Israel learned from us. Consider Trump’s most recent step to cement his tyrannical fascism in place, his big murderous bill with its oft-described components that gut health, impose hunger, and ramp up coercive resources. Or consider Trump’s concentration camps, starting with Alligator Alcatraz. Will he soon offer alligator shirts for sale? Perhaps pet alligators too? An alligator eating an escapee? Alligators are us?

Alligator Alcatraz continues the mind numbing sequence of Trump’s fascist choices. It displays Republican’s abject cowardice and self serving submission. It displays most Democrats unwillingness to aggressively resist. Media will call the concentration camp an immigrant internment center or perhaps a rest stop, or maybe a holding center or something, but it is in fact a concentration camp. And Trump says he wants more such camps. He wants them all over the country. From sea to shining sea. And indeed, his recent disgusting bill provides massive funding to construct new camps all over the country. And provides massive funding to finance a domestic army to round up people to inhabit the camps. Ice marrying the Marines. It is time to escalate resistance. July 17th. If not now, as the saying goes—then when?

This is how Dachou and Auschwitz began. Build em. Fill em. Trump says I just need some more jail space. Budget that or suffer my wraith. I’ll use the space for convicted criminals of the most anti-social sort, of course—though not for myself and my cult of mass murdering sycophants, also called the Republican Party. But, hold on, wait just a minute. On second thought, perhaps I can also use Alligator Alcatraz for that alien maniac Mamdani. Alligator Alcatraz is to terrorize the public. It is to incarcerate anyone Trump finds annoying. This is dictatorship. One thug rule. It is fascism unfolding.  

I’ll bet you thought I was exaggerating above, mentioning Mamdani as a Trump target, but no, it’s true. The first notable candidate mentioned for Alligator Alcatraz was indeed Mamdani. Strip his citizenship, urges Trump. Ship him to our spanking new Everglades facility. Surround him with alligators. No need for big walls and lots of guards. Alligators are better. Ice agents need to quit. Marines need to disobey. ditto National Guard. And July 17, we all need to resist. And then again. And again. This is no joke. 

So can we all see that the pot is boiling. The stew is a mix of hypocrisy, cowardice, and narcissistic megalomania. The outcome, speeding from the pot toward us all, is entrenched fascism. Can we see it? Can we understand the need to fight it, to stop it, to reverse it?

Netanyahu has learned from the U.S.—everything that can shoot, against anything that moves—aka genocidal murder—taught Kissinger. To starve the Iraq population—aka genocidal murder—is worth it, taught Albright. Demolish the target’s schools. Incinerate the target’s homes. Blow off the heads of the target’s kids. Starve the target population. Make rubbish of the target’s health care. Dictate knowledge. Escalate arms. Wait, that’s the U.S. in the U.S. what next? We must organize to stop it all, to reverse it all. July 17 is next.

---