Memorable Stuff I Read This Week

Even in our darkest imaginations, no one could have conceived of Gaza’s streets littered with the decomposing bodies and skeletal remains of our loved ones; that stray dogs and cats would be filmed feasting on those bodies; that Israeli soldiers would confess to driving their tanks over hundreds of living and dead humans and crushing them into mush; that parents would scour the streets looking for hacked pieces of human flesh to put randomly in plastic bags and consider each 10–20 kilos a child; that thousands of kidnapped Palestinians in Israeli “torture camps” would be systematically and routinely beaten, raped, forced to perform sexual acts on each other, forced to drink from toilets, starved to near death, blindfolded and chained 24/7 in crowded cages whose air is filled with the “putrid stench” of “neglected wounds left to rot” and amputated limbs, that the perpetrators would document and brag about their atrocities every minute of the day; and that the world would watch all this live-streamed and yet allow it to continue unconstrained.

— Muhammad Shehada / A Short History of the Gaza Strip

39 HATE GROUPS ARE ACTIVE IN ARIZONA
AND 94 ACROSS THE COUNTRY USE THE WORD “PATRIOT”
OR SOME DERIVATIVE IN THEIR DENOMINATION

— Giancarlo Huapaya / [39] from “Ley de la Feria/Law of the Fair”

Something changed in the world. Not too long ago, it changed, and we know it. We don’t know how to explain it yet, but I think we all can feel it, somewhere deep in our gut or in our brain circuits. We feel time differently. No one has quite been able to capture what is happening or say why. Perhaps it’s just that we sense an absence of future, because the present has become too overwhelming, so the future has become unimaginable. And without future, time feels like only an accumulation. An accumulation of months, days, natural disasters, television series, terrorist attacks, divorces, mass migrations, birthdays, photographs, sunrises. We haven’t understood the exact way we are now experiencing time.

— Valeria Luiselli / Lost Children Archives

the earth we are
burning gives

the blossoming
scent of oranges

I peel and eat over the sink.
The teacher is burning.

— Mary B. Moore / “The Teachings of Naranja”

There’s a direct link between the poverty Gates claims to care so much about and the wealth he fails to mention. In the US, homelessness is breaking records, and so is the share of assets owned by the top 0.1%. While this might not be Gates’s own business model, by holding down wages, racking up rents, busting trade unions and winning tax and spending cuts, the ultra-rich thrive on impoverishing other people.

— George Monbiot / “I wish we could ignore Bill Gates on the climate crisis. But he’s a billionaire, so we can’t” / The Guardian

Disasters don’t show up one at a time.
They arrive in legions like a starving hoard.
A poet said this then died.
For example, half my family died
and after I celebrated the end of that year
my father died.

— Asmaa Azaizeh / “Reflection”

How, then, is one to understand this total war? How far back into history does one need to go to judge these actions? Is it sufficient to look at the atrocities committed on October 7, 2023? What led to that fateful day unfolding? Does one need to go back to 2007, when Israel officially imposed its siege on Gaza? Or to Hamas’ violent takeover of Gaza right before that? What about the group winning a democratic election in 2006? Israel’s 2005 unilateral “disengagement” from Gaza? The second intifada? The 1993 Oslo “peace process?” Israel’s closure and separation policy in Gaza since 1991? The first intifada? The 1973 war? The 1967 war? The 1956 war? The 1948 Nakba? The 1947 partition plan? The 1917 Balfour Declaration? Or even further? And why does virtually every Palestinian have those dates memorized by heart? What terrible significance do they hold?

— Muhammad Shehada / A Short History of the Gaza Strip

What I’m Listening To: 

Y nacerá un mono del huevo de una piedra
Y aunque seas inmortal
Hijo del sol, del cielo, la luna y la tierra
Tú jamás aprenderás
Aprenderá a andar, a trepar, y agradecerá
Nunca alcanzarás la paz

— Juana Molina / “desinhumano”

And a monkey will be born from the egg of a stone
And even if you are immortal
Son of the sun, the sky, the moon and the earth
You will never learn
You will learn to walk, to climb, and you will thank
You will never reach peace

— Juana Molina / “desinhumano”