Hani Mahmoud is starving
his face has presented the afflictions of Gaza
on Al Jazeera throughout the conflict
but now, shrinking like a prune
his face tells its own story
Today he covers the shortage of blood
blood is life and however much iron
Gazans fortified their souls with
there is not enough iron in their blood
for it to be usable and besides
they are too weak to be able
to give blood without fainting
Israel calls a special meeting
of the UN Security Council
to complain about the starvation
– the starvation of hostages
and calls it an act of propaganda!
No doubt there was a time
when hostages were looked after
as the bargaining chips they are
but now there is not enough food even for the captors
whatever sympathy he may feel for
the family member who voices the complaint
and pleads for the return of his relative,
the Palestinian Ambassador ripostes
that Israel is starving a whole people
In other news today
it is eighty years since the destruction of Hiroshima
by a bomb so small that some today dare to classify it
as merely tactical and threaten to use such on their enemies
So much for the “War to end all wars”
and we are come to live in the moral wasteland…
© Andrew Wilson, 2025
I had not watched Al Jazeera news for a month or so, partly because the news about Gaza was moving more into the area of political and world people’s awareness and response, but also I confess to emotional overload. Yesterday, also the anniversary of the destruction of Hiroshima, I watched Newshour on the station and was shocked and upset to the point of tears, to see how Hani Mahmood’s face reflects his own malnutrition as well as the ongoing stress of reporting from Gaza for Al Jazeera. The screenshot above is from a while back, but I urge you to view Al Jazeerah news, not only for its coverage of the genocide in Gaza, but for a different perspective (non-American/Eurocentric) – even their weather forecasts cover all areas of the world…
Tonight, hosted by Björn Rudberg (brudberg), is Open Link Night over at dVerse Poets Pub and so I am posting a link there and there will be a live meeting at 10 AM and 11 AM New York Time August 16th…
So unbearably tragic.
Thank you so much for reading Sadje 😥
Your thoughts echo mine.
The world needs a savior.
Indeed it does Melissa…
I stopped watching Gaza updates partly because I can’t sleep in nights and partly because I feel helpless and can’t scroll through the genocide updates as if it’s daily statistics
But I keep seeing every now and then and misery grips my gut
I quite understand Afshan and even I have to stop watching but I keep writing as a way to make people think. That’s why I wrote this one…
Yes
U did a grt job on that
Poetry helps to cope…
Thanks Afshan…
Am not sure if my comment went through!
Anyway coming back to say – any kind of war to stop a war – destroys human race deeply and in unimaginable ways
I feel that we have unbearable disasters all over the world… as someone said, starvation in Gaza is one of the easiest thing to solve… everything is just waiting to be distributed.
The food is there but so are vast arms dumps enabled by the US and many Western nations in terms of spares over decades and the political will is still stuck in a time when people had sympathy for the Jewish people and weren’t prepared to look too closely at what Zionism was doing to the Palestinians in their name…
War is such an ugly thing. A cancer on society. Very hard to eradicate. An yet we must continue to speak out against it! Well done, Andrew!
Thanks Dwight – I may not make the live meeting tomorrow and I’m not sure I could make it through that poem anyway…
Al Jazeerah is a well respected news outlet. The situation in Gaza is sickening as is the leader of Israel. Net..whats his name…a war mongerer who has dragged his country – once considered a beacon of democracy in the Middle East – to the bottom of the barrrel in this league of nations. He’s a war criminal and there will never be peace while he is at the helm because war suits his interests.
Well said Yvonne…
It’s heartwrenching … 🙁
I never expected my poetry to have to turn into weapon in the war against evil but that is where we find ourselves Sanaa – thanks for reading…
I feel guilty absenting myself from mainstream news, the little that seeps through devastates, disturbs, destroys any hope I have for a peaceful future, here in the US and throughout the world. But your words need to be read, to be absorbed … and I thank you.
You are not alone in absenting yourself most of the time Helen – what causes me the most grief is that I spent most of my life in the cosy post-war dream that such wars and rising authoritarianism were a thing of the past but now I see that Israel was always like this under the surface, Putin, ironically, just required the fall of Communist USSR to get his twisted chance and perhaps Liberalism also allowed the dreams of the likes of Trump and Project2025 the space to grow… And I fer these things will not be rectified in our lifetimes – for they will be rectified just as people came together to fight Fascism in WW11 they will again – but when? Meanwhile we poets must put things in a way that stirs the heart to actual resistance…
The extinguishing of Western empathy for suffering in places like Gaza and Ukraine makes even the 80-year anniversary of Hiroshima seem like such a vanished, even trite moment. The worse it gets, the more we seem to recede. It’s the only reason I can come up with for the re-election of Donald Trump. The drain becomes a maeslstrom. The news of the 5 Al-Jazeera journalists killed by an Isreali strike under the presumption of Hamas sympathies vanished here amid reports of a robust day at the stock market and Taylor Swift’s new showgirlygirl album. So it shines under the dark sun.
All the more reason for poets to take up arms against the evil Brendan…
Andrew, when I see the victims of holocaust then turn to commit the same atrocities on others, my mind can’t wrap around it. The US supporting it with weapons and endorsement pulls us into commission by proxy. In Gaza and in Ukraine. The exponential expansion of atrocity with inversely proportional compassion is a sign of the end times. Yet at the same time it feels as if it will never end. I appreciate you speaking out the truth in your poem.
Thanks Li – the roots of Zionism go back to the 19th Century when young intellectual Jews escaped the pogroms in Russia and other parts of Europe. They made a plan for a Jewish homeland which they have never been open about (till now) and they pulled the wool over everybody’s eyes – even the ir own people. The Holocaust hellped them to swing the creation of the state and since then nobody has dared stand up to them – and its been like the frog in the saucepan not realising the temperature is going up. And we are where we are – andd we have to make a stand…
When they finally achieve their beloved homeland, they will not be welcomed anywhere else.
Already the quayside in Cyprus (I think) was lined with protestors denying Israeli tourists to come ashore. The Israelis themselves re sheltered from knowing how the world sees them – victims of their own hasbara (explaining)
So much for the war to end all wars. I often think that.
It’s a tragedy–an atrocity–what is happening in Gaza. Last week, I participated in a poetry fundraiser for Gaza. I don’t know if it helped very much, but I suppose every bit helps.
But it is also horrible what is happening in Ukraine and Sudan, and on and on. Everywhere, there are innocent victims of warmongers and zealots.
You’re right Merril it is all over but in all cases – dictators have been feeling increasingly empowered as the sacrifice and meaning of WW2 recede and Trump’s excesses will only empower them more – unless he is stopped and that might have the opposite effect…