STARVATION

“Many new tyrants keep a copy of Mein Kampf in their drawer; it could still come in handy, maybe [NOW] with some adjustments or the substitution of some names.” 

 ( Primo Levi, 1986)

STARVATION - Global Rights 

 1

This food i eat

sticks in my throat

the inedible thoughts

of monsters must surely

torment me

 

sleepless i sleepwalk

through

this nightmare

 

fooling myself

 

all is well and

safe and sound

in a wicked world

with little wonder

left.

 

This food i eat

i cannot swallow.

These sleepless nights

storm restlessly through

my dreams

 

just like the ghosts

of what could have been

but now will not nor ever

can nor will be

no more.

 

 “NEVER AGAIN”, they whispered.  (...Contd.)

Full Poem & Links

UPDATE - 22 August 2025: "It is a Famine - The Gaza Famine" 

"More than half a million people in Gaza are trapped in famine, marked by widespread starvation, destitution and preventable deaths, according to a new UN-backed food security report released on Friday.

"...UN human rights chief Volker Türk said the famine was the “direct result” of Israeli Government policies.

"...Yet food stacks up at borders because of systematic obstruction by Israel. It is a famine within a few hundred metres of food, in a fertile land.

"...It is a famine that we repeatedly warned of – but that the international media has not been allowed in to cover, to bear witness,” he added.

“It is a famine in 2025. A 21st century famine watched over by drones and the most advanced military technology in history. It is a famine openly promoted by some Israeli leaders as a weapon of war.”

“It is a war crime to use starvation as a method of warfare, and the resulting deaths may also amount to the war crime of willful killing,” he said." 

UN Geneva Press Briefing - 22 August, 2025

 

GAZA STRIP: Famine confirmed in Gaza Governorate, projected to expand 

 Famine Review Report & Analysis 

What could have been

(...But All Now Ends in ‘War’)

“If not now, when and if not us, pushing for this change, who?..”  

Francesca Albanese

GLOBAL RIGHTS 

Child,

What could have been

but now will not

what would have taken breath

but could not

what could have been but we ourselves

both could or would not speak

 

seeing the size of our solitary catastrophe...

2

Could or would or even

"I do not know"  (nor care)

you must still stand in line

embrace now

the curse of these lawless soldiers

their flag naked with only fear

left free to unfold

 

soldiers,  they say,

the “willful executioners of a genocidal attack” (Francesca Albanese)

soldiers

“…haunted by what they have done”

and

“…what they have seen.” (Francesca Albanese)

 

Soldiers, in their strange and solitary suicide

called “war”...

 Full Poem & Links

 

5

"If I am not for myself, who will be for me? And being for myself, what am I? And if not now, when?" (Hillel the Elder)

 

 "Young Israeli soldiers are 'wilful executioners' in Gaza, says Albanese" 

 (Sky News, July 7, 2025)

#poetry for #Gaza 🇵🇸-🇮🇪 Saoirse don Phalaistín - #FreePalestine

Some Images taken from RTE News, July 25th, 2025

(And Still…)

The Hell of Gaza

"The critique of culture is confronted with the last stage in the dialectic of culture and barbarism: to write a poem after Auschwitz is barbaric, and that corrodes also the knowledge which expresses why it has become impossible to write poetry today." 

 (Theodor W Adorno - 1949)

GLOBAL RIGHTS - TALKING PEACE - Palestine 

...7

Each day you will wake

Mr. Itmar Ben Gvir

Mr. Bezalel Smotrich

you will wake

from your dreamless sleep to this nightmare.

 

And all and everywhere around us

all you will see are wingless and wounded angels

silenced and sinking in their grim solitude

like ships long sunk and seething soulless

with this, the last of your incoherence

 

this

“last stage in the dialectic of culture and barbarism”:

over and over and over

 

Nach Gaza ein Gedicht zu schreiben,

ist barbarisch

 

– your own endless-bottomless-immeasurable-fearful-inhumanity…

"Whoever stays behind - needs to be burned"

(Nissim Vatari, Israeli Likud)

 FULL POEM (& Links)

The Fascist History of Ben Gvir

The Rise of Bezalel Smotrich

 “Kulturkritik findet sich der letzten Stufe der Dialektik von Kultur und Barbarei gegenüber: nach Auschwitz ein Gedicht zu schreiben, ist barbarisch, und das frißt auch die Erkenntnis an, die ausspricht, warum es unmöglich ward, heute Gedichte zu schreiben.”

#poetry for #Gaza 🇵🇸-🇮🇪 Saoirse don Phalaistín - #FreePalestine

Now End All Thoughts of Peace?

For (small) Amayah – and her World…waiting to be born

 

“…every baby in Gaza is an enemy…”

Israeli right-wing politician Moshe Feiglin

 

It was the Autumn of the Fences       

and blood flowed freely.

 

So freely it froze the fragile faces of

the small ones and the innocent ones

and the military clocks on all the main streets

hammered out that same-old cold-blooded song

for this new century

 

and all the seasons rebelled against the curse

of humanity

 

and while we slept in our loveless beds

War woke and a roomful of dark hearts

went out before dawn and stole a sinking-world away... (Contd.)

 

GLOBAL RIGHTS - TALKING PEACE - Palestine

 

...Here is a world wretched and cold-blooded

like a winter endlessly at war.

 

Here is a winter like the Irish knew in ‘45 or ‘47.

 

A winter never to be remembered nor forgotten.

For the hunger here is no longer famine nor futility.

Now it is called starvation and government policy

and the politics of revenge, much like the sound

of glass breaking on a new-old century

 

and behold, there

are those now who call the night day

and those that call this darkness light

 

and they have risen from their graveyards

to come haunt a disappearing world... (Contd.)

 

FULL POEM (& Links)

 

UNRWA Update: Between 7 October 2023 and 28 May 2025, according to the Ministry of Health (MoH) in Gaza, as stated by OCHA, at least 54,084 Palestinians have reportedly been killed in Gaza and 123,308 have been injured.

•  At least 310 UNRWA team members have been confirmed killed since 7 October 2023.
• According to the UN, at least 1.9 million people – or about 90 per cent of the population – across the Gaza Strip have been displaced during the war. Many have been displaced repeatedly, some 10 times or more. Since the recent displacement orders were issued, more people have been forced to flee in search of safety.
• According to the World Health Organization (WHO), only 19 out of 36 hospitals in the Gaza Strip remain operational, with at least 94 per cent of all hospitals damaged or destroyed. Moreover, across the Gaza Strip, “only 2,000 hospital beds remain available, for a population of over 2 million people, grossly insufficient to meet the current needs.”

UNRWA Situation Report #173 on the Humanitarian Crisis in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem 

 

"Israeli right-wing figure Moshe Feiglin is under fire after declaring “every baby in Gaza is an enemy,” calling for full colonization of the region and the removal of all children to win the war. His remarks came as former IDF General Yair Golan accused Israel of committing atrocities and warned of becoming a global pariah. Golan's comments were denounced by PM Netanyahu as “blood libel.” The escalating rhetoric reflects a growing ideological divide in Israel as tensions over the Gaza war intensify."

(Oneindia News - May 21, 2025

 Towards the Writing of a

History of the Persecuted

“This is a belief system that is genocidal at its core and treasonous to the wonder and beauty of this world.”  Naomi Klein/Astra Taylor

GLOBAL RIGHTS - Human Rights

DAY ONE

 

Day One: you wake in the womb only

to realise your destination

was destroyed – pogroms ago - by the dumb

acquiescence of the fearful and the ferocious greed

of the greedy

 

THE INTERLUDE

 

sad angels still whisper in your ear

 

you will wake in the womb only to realise

your destination was destroyed

 

by American, German, British, Italian & Indian weapons

by Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II stealth killer fighter planes

by other stealth aircraft and British “reconnaissance” flights

by their costly missile defense programs

their Iron Dome, Arrow, and David's Sling systems

by Iron Dome air-defense missiles, small-diameter bombs

JDAM kits (“which convert unguided bombs into GPS-guided weapons”)

by “advanced weaponry such as CH-53 heavy-lift helicopters”

by KC-46 aerial refueling tankers

by laser-guided missiles for the Apache gunship fleet

by 155mm shells, night-vision devices, bunker-buster munitions

by shiny-new army vehicles

by the costly “components of air defense systems and communication equipment”

by thousands and thousands of portable anti-tank weapons

by almost a million (or more) rounds of ammunition for automatic or semi-automatic firearms

by even more helicopters and naval artillery

by the much-needed components for the F-35 child-killing-combat aircraft

by countless bombs, killer-torpedoes, ruthless-rockets, other explosive devices and charges

by related equipment and accessories (useful to maim, murder, burn,

bury-alive, imprison, disappear, rape and torture)

and don’t forget the Hyderabad-made Hermes “Killer” 900 drones

nor the tonnes of rocket engines, the extra tonnes of rockets

with explosive charges

thousands of kilos of cold-blooded explosive substances

thousands of pounds of charges and propellants for cannons

and more…and more… much more.

 

All soulless-malevolent-malicious-mean

pitiless and remorseless..." (Contd.)

 

Full Poem (& Links)

• In an overview covering the period between 7 October 2023 and 7 May 2025, WHO reported 686 health attacks in the Gaza Strip, affecting 122 health facilities – including 33 hospitals damaged – and 180 ambulances. According to WHO, 910 people have been killed in these attacks, and 1,380 injured.
• According to the UN, at least 1.9 million people – or about 90 per cent of the population – across the Gaza Strip have been displaced during the war. Many have been displaced repeatedly, some 10 times or more. Since the recent displacement orders were issued, more people have been forced to flee in search of safety.
• Between 7 October 2023 and 14 May 2025, according to the Ministry of Health (MoH) in Gaza, as stated by OCHA, at least 52,928 Palestinians have reportedly been killed in Gaza and 119,846 have been injured.
• Nearly 300 UNRWA team members have been killed since 7 October 2023.

UNRWA - Situation Report 171 - 15 May, 2025