Gaza ‘CEASEFIRE’?

“Death, in Slow Motion”

or...

 “Happy” “New” Year, 

Gaza…

 “Borrowing the words of Indian writer Arundhati Roy, ‘I tell you, another world is not only possible. She is on the way. And on a quiet day, I can hear her breathing. I hope you can hear her, too.’” Francesca Albanese

Global Rights 

 1

What better way to bury our dead

than plant their silence

in fields filled with words like flowers

freed from the lies of thieves and murderers

with their highly-paid diplomats

of greed and famine and fear?

 

What better way, now, to lift this

mountain of rubble we carry on

over-burdened shoulders

(our collective history of shame and

cruelty and carnage)

than to dance with the “laughter of children”

chasing their amputated feet out

far beyond these endless nightmares?

 

The days pass.

Yet day after day

the crazed-soldiers still come.

The people keep on dying.

As if Death could not ever find enough food

to feed on the lives and dreams of so many…

 

Shad Hammouri

“I stand in front of you today

coming from a long struggle

with the blood of those we've lost

over a struggle

that has lasted for over a hundred years...”

 

The days have passed

… as if all the Dead

could somehow open their mouths,

release the pain, their unfinished farewells,

this unfinished silence of broken bodies trapped

beneath the 2,000-pound-MK-84 U.S. bombs

 

“…a struggle that has culminated

into a moment of genocide

where even getting one loaf of bread into Gaza  

requires changing the whole of the geopolitical order.”

 

while the businessmen and the real-estate-men,

rub their greedy hands with glee

“in Israel, where social media and news

channels routinely chortle over the suffering

of Palestinians” (Chris Hedges)

…as if their plans and bank balances

could bring 20,000 children back to life... [Contd.]

"…as if their plans and bank balances

could bring 20,000 children back to life."

Full Poem & Related Links 

December 12, 2025 - Palestinian Casualty Figures

Since the “Ceasefire” (October 11, 2025)

 

Total deaths: 383

Total injuries: 1,002

Bodies recovered: 627

 

The Overall Toll Since October 7, 2023

 

70,373 Palestinians killed, among them

Children killed: 20,179

171,079 Palestinians wounded, among them

Children injured: 31,754

Women injured: 20,179

(Daily Casualty Report – Gaza, December 11, 2025)

IMEMC News - December 12, 2025

 

Shad Hammouri

“I stand in front of you today

coming from a long struggle

with the blood of those we've lost

over a struggle

that has lasted for over a hundred years...”

 

 “…a struggle that has culminated

into a moment of genocide

where even getting one loaf of bread into Gaza  

requires changing the whole of the geopolitical order.” 

 

The Hague Group: Six Measures to End Israeli Impunity | 5-Minute Summary  

Chris Hedges

 “in Israel, where social media and news

channels routinely chortle over the suffering

of Palestinians..."

Chris Hedges: Rebranding Genocide
 

“And for a future that awaits me amidst the rubble of life.”

Donya Abu Sitta, Palestinian writer and medical student, Gaza, Palestine

Donya Abu Sitta - Substack, December 17, 2025

 After Gaza

Global Rights

After Gaza i can no longer kiss

my dead children goodnight

because they are still in-hiding

from monsters buried beneath

tons of rubble stored in

too-many-inhuman minds 

for millennia.

 

After Gaza my neighbours are armed

with flags and inventories of the ones

we must destroy.

 

After Gaza – not just America but

all these countless States of Disrepute

died

- of Darkness – and Fear - and Greed.

 

After Gaza no one has any right

to talk about themselves, their achievements

or the war crimes they call “Holocaust”

and “defending yourself”.

 

After Gaza

– “from the River to the Sea”

?

?

?

 

There is Nothing

after Gaza

 

…not where we sit

in our delusions of “ceasefire”

and “civilisation”.

 

This is where they will bury us.

 

They are planning to bury us.

 

After Gaza it is easy to see

we are no longer needed.

 

My heart used to cry for the Palestinian people

then they came for the rest of us.

 

Before my sleepy-speechless granddaughter

falls asleep, she asks us:

 

“where were you, when all the Jews and the

Palestinians

(Native Americans, Herero and Nama, Armenians…)  

were massacred?”

Where were you, where were you?

 

Where are we now?

 

After Gaza - I have no answer.

 

i smile at her calm militant eyes

knowing

after Gaza - there is

no longer / not yet

an answer.

 

séamas carraher

winter solstice, 2025

Global Rights - References & Links 

"You need to study Gaza and history. If you live in the global north, you will get to peer out at the horror. But slowly this horror as the climate breaks down will migrate home turning us into Palestinians. Given our complicity in the genocide, it’s what we deserve. Empires, when they feel threatened, always embrace the instrument of genocide”  

Chris Hedges [10:46 – 11:07]

Rebranding genocide – Chris Hedges Channel – 20, December, 2025

 O, Lord of Hatred

Gage Skidmore - CC BY-SA 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

- after Listening to Steven K. Bannon’s “War Room[s]”

Global Rights

1

O Lord of the Fascist underbelly

the morning after the storm cleared all

the leaves from the trees and a million

starving refugees were washed down

the gutters into a soulless sea.

 

O, Lord of the men & women in

the Business of Banks and Billionaires

with their poisoned currency.

 

O Lord of Corruption,

this lord of Chaos and Deceit

now “weaponised”...

 

Oh, listen, listen carefully, 

because 60 million Mercenary Millionaires

fear the Scourge of Democracy

(confronting the Terror of their Technology)

…but not the screams of dying children

in all the Gaza’s of our worst nightmares.

[contd.]

 

Full Poem & Related Links

FOR THE PRESENT?

“Fascism in power is a compound, a powerful amalgam of different but marriageable conservative, national-socialist and radical Right ingredients, bonded together by common enemies and common passions for a regenerated, energized, and purified nation at whatever cost to free institutions and the rule of law. The precise proportions of the mixture are the result of processes: choices, alliances, compromises, rivalries. Fascism in action looks much more like a network of relationships than a fixed essence.”

Excerpt From: Robert Paxton –“What is Fascism” (PDF)

And

“In a column that appeared online on Jan. 11, 2021, Paxton wrote that the invasion of the Capitol “removes my objection to the fascist label.”

Trump’s “open encouragement of civic violence to overturn an election crosses a red line,” he went on. “The label now seems not just acceptable but necessary.”

Robert Paxton: “It’s the real thing. It really is.”(in his 2021 Newsweek column)

Is It Fascism? A Leading Historian Changes His Mind.

“Robert Paxton thought the label was overused. But now he’s alarmed by what he sees in global politics — including Trumpism.” Elisabeth Zerofsky – October, 2024

#MakeAntiFascismGreatAgain

 This Fascist Inside of Me

Global Rights

This fascist inside of me

wakes at dawn

in the deep-dumb-darkness

of their double-digit

 

to crawl through the needle’s-eye,

to listen loudly to this poison i drink,

each news-cycle, in

a world already lost.

 

This fascist i can no longer love,

burnt twice in an inquisition of

power and poverty,

bent and torn on words dressed

 

like these well-dressed business-men

who pimp our most expensive prostitutes:

the men in power and the women

who greet each day with a faith

filled with both fear and venom.

 

This fascist among fascists,

this white supremacist of the soul!

this sex-crazed body-snatcher

who torments even my sleep

with dreams of our history in flames

and with words bitter like

poison.

 

Now, let it be said,

is the Time of Monsters,

uprising, today, all around us…

 

…the ones who slept snugly

while Berlin burned

and the rats commandeered

the sinking ship.

 

2

This is the time where Nature must sleep

waiting for the sperm of the Great-Ape

to dry and sink to sand and dust,

to disappear forever in the death of deserts.

 

Now is a time of permanent war.

 

And all that is different is

this solitary white male,

brain engorged with the blood

of dead penises

 

and with no blood left

to be siphoned from the poor

now He will turn

his shrill-sharpened teeth

on his own

 

this monster – who eats

even its own children – on its deadly way

down.

 

3

Once we were asked

who are these criminals, you speak of?

 

But, look, already they are fading

into the forgetfulness of the fire

 

for we have buried our own

hearts and minds

in the loneliness of this belonging,

burned our own homelands,

broken everything down

to the boneless bone.

 

and all that is left now

is their fascist inside of me,

 

the One i can no longer love

this fascist among a multitude of fascists

patrolling these welcome-less walls

 

as our mindless ghettos

burn fiercely

and with much hatred,

to the ground. 

[8 October – 14 November, 2025]

 Full Poem, Links & References

Topher McCulloch from Chicago, IL, United States, CC BY 2.0  via Wikimedia Commons

 

 

 

“So the line is that I am a dictator ‘we don’t need him, freedom, freedom, he’s a dictator’…a lot of people are saying…Maybe we like a dictator…” Donald Trump (Channel 4) 

#MakeAntiFascismGreatAgain