Tag Archives: genocide

Using form: Villanelle: Discoveria, ‘October 7’

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Your actions have unleashed a living hell.
Each day Israelis, Palestinians die;
Netanyahu, Hamas: go fuck yourselves.

October 7: gunfire and the smell
of death in the kibbutzim testify:
your actions have unleashed a living hell.

The siege of Gaza, ground invasion, tell
the UN of the “risk of genocide”.
Netanyahu, Hamas: go fuck yourselves.

And when the hospitals are bombed as well,
and there’s no water, food, or power supply,
your actions have unleashed a living hell.

Across the world the rage and hatred swell
and everyone feels forced to pick a side.
Netanyahu, Hamas: go fuck yourselves.

This one cannot be silent, for the bells,
they toll for everybody; none shall hide.
Your actions have unleashed a living hell;
Netanyahu, Hamas: go fuck yourselves.

*****

Discoveria writes: “I wrote this piece as a response to what was, at the time, a perception that people were being demanded to pick a side in the conflict between Hamas and the Israeli government, leaving no room for legitimate criticism of both. I wanted to express my anger and frustration at the situation, in which both sides have chosen the path of death and cyclical violence. The repeated refrains in the villanelle form emphasise these emotions. The piece was written overnight and posted in the early hours of Remembrance Day, 11/11/2023, after a little doomscrolling. I cannot pretend that there is much subtlety to the poem; it is what it is.”

Discoveria publishes much of their work at AllPoetry, saying “Due to the politically sensitive topic of the poem I would prefer to be credited under my username.”

Photo: “17 year old boy killed by Israeli army during demonstration in solidarity with Gaza” by ISM Palestine is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.

RHL, ‘Deuteronomy 20: 16-18’

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You’ve no autonomy
under Deuteronomy;
it’s your obligation
to your tribal nation
to kill all Palestinians
so you don’t sin against
God, who’s neurotic.
Yes, Yahweh’s psychotic.
No escaping his wrath,
no path but the psychopath.

*****

For Christians and Jews who state (as Jesus did) that every reported command by God in the Torah / Old Testament must be obeyed, I ask their position on Deuteronomy 20. This contains the command for the complete genocide of the non-Jews living in the land which Moses claimed had been given to the Jews by God. (Note: not expulsion or enslavement of the people living there, but the death of all of them and their animals.) The reason? So that they don’t teach evil ways to the Jews:

16 But of the cities of these people, which the Lord thy God doth give thee for an inheritance, thou shalt save alive nothing that breatheth:
17 But thou shalt utterly destroy them; namely, the Hittites, and the Amorites, the Canaanites, and the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites; as the Lord thy God hath commanded thee:
18 That they teach you not to do after all their abominations, which they have done unto their gods; so should ye sin against the Lord your God.

To the extent that fundamentalist Jews constitute a large percentage of the Israeli population and are influential in the national government, the Palestinian situation cannot be resolved until scriptural passages like this are dragged out into the open and examined and discussed: was that passage only for then, and things are different now? Or does the command to massacre non-Jews still hold for today’s Jews in “the Holy Land”?

This poem was first published in The HyperTexts, where Michael R. Burch maintains extensive collections of poetry related to both the Holocaust and the Palestinian Catastrophe.

Illustration: “Moses has the mature women and the male children of the Midianites killed” is marked with Public Domain Mark 1.0.

Sonnet: “From Gombe’s Chimps”

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From Gombe’s chimps to interstellar space
We will have war. Sanctioned by the Divine,
Moses first led the Jews to Palestine
Telling his tribesmen not just to displace
But to kill all, and wipe out without trace
Each adult, child, animal, tree, vine.
Genocide’s justified, cleansed ethics fine,
To get resources for your tribe and race.

Believers justify war’s bloody courses:
We’re right, they’re wrong, so therefore they’re to blame.
Conquer through war to grab and keep resources,
Aztecs or Spaniards, everyone’s the same –
Victory to the best guns, swords or horses,
And put defeated scriptures in the flame.

I’m pessimistic about the chances of humans being able to stop warfare. It seems built into the nature of social creatures – when you define your group, you are defining everyone else as not in your group. Then, when it’s a question of who gets limited resources, groups compete and the most ruthless groups tend to do the best.

This sonnet was originally accepted for publication by Quarterday in Scotland, but that excellent glossy magazine seems to have folded after a few issues and this poem was left hanging. Fortunately the Better Than Starbucks group is still competing successfully, thanks to the ruthless Anthony Watkins and Vera Ignatowitsch, and published it.

The sonnet is one of my favourites for several reasons: technically it is purer than most, rhyming ABBAABBA CDCDCD, though the volta between the two sections is weak (or possibly nonexistent). It deals with human nature, and the problems facing us as we move into the ever more complex future. And it highlights one of my personal religious irritations, that people can walk into a neighbouring territory, wipe out the inhabitants, and create a justifying fairytale of how the destroyers are the persecuted victims. Think of the Pilgrims and other British immigrants in America… think of the Jewish tribes coming into the Promised Land: when they captured a city outside the core area,

“when the Lord thy God hath delivered it into thine hands, thou shalt smite every male thereof with the edge of the sword:
But the women, and the little ones, and the cattle, and all that is in the city, even all the spoil thereof, shalt thou take unto thyself; and thou shalt eat the spoil of thine enemies, which the Lord thy God hath given thee.” (Deuteronomy 20:13-14)

But when they captured a city in the heart of the Promised Land,

“of the cities of these people, which the Lord thy God doth give thee for an inheritance, thou shalt save alive nothing that breatheth:
But thou shalt utterly destroy them; namely, the Hittites, and the Amorites, the Canaanites, and the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites; as the Lord thy God hath commanded thee:
That they teach you not to do after all their abominations.” (Deuteronomy 20:16-18)

It is hard to see a future without warfare, when even the most revered “holy books” teach genocide and justify it as doing God’s will.