Monthly Archives: June 2025

Gaza Will Haunt Us All

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Everyone likes to think they would have saved people from the Nazis. That they would have hid people from them or even fought them. That they would have risked everything, even their own life. But the truth is much darker.

The prism of distance is a drug. Distance from a place. Distance from a time. It entrances us with a romanticized picture of history and of choices. The people in these stories become archetypes. Not flesh, blood and bone humans like us. They are devoid of the shadows that we contend with. Every decision is a moral and courageous moment to prevail over dire circumstances. But if so many of us fear the stigma or association with being labeled a bigot for simply opposing the murder of children, how can we believe we would have opposed the Nazis when they rolled into our village or city?

This drug is one of the most potent on earth, because it can be used by leaders or influential people to ignore the current reality in exchange for some imagined moral greatness. But every day we face the same choice. To be human, or to dissolve any trace of it.

Decades after those camps were closed and the dead disintegrated into dust, new camps have been opened. Different in optics, but exact in intent. Annihilation of that other we have been conditioned to dehumanize. We exchanged their insignias for new ones, but the monsters are the same. Only this time, we are on the wrong side of that red line.

Gaza is close to being erased. Almost every building has been reduced to rubble. Tombs for their inhabitants. The people who have survived thus far are being massacred every single day as they are starved by the Israeli regime. Corralled like cattle into ever shrinking pens, desperate for food or water, but really just waiting to be slaughtered.

We watch it all being normalized as it unfolds. The extermination process being presented as “humanitarian aid.” And we are scolded if we simply say what we see with our own eyes.

Gaza gives us a glimpse into the abyss of our deepest fears. A terrifying look at how depraved our leaders can actually be. How comfortable they are with evil. A clear window that shows us how shallow and meaningless our civilization is when its leaders are asked, begged, pleaded with to do the most simple of things. To stop killing people. To stop killing children. Or to just stop arming the assailants.

When this is over. And it will be over at some point. Some will try to understand our powerlessness in the face of such blatant evil. Such raw sadism. Others will try to rewrite the script. What many of us have found out, to our everlasting horror, is that most of us wouldn’t be the hero in a story about fighting fascism or state brutality. Not necessarily the villain. Maybe not the collaborator. But certainly not the ones who risked it all.

Some of us will carry on with our lives as if nothing ever happened. But there are many of us who will carry it all with them to the grave. One thing is certain, none of us will ever be the same again. The relationships that have been severed. The families that have been split. The friendships that have been broken. None of them can be mended after this. Even the indifferent ones will taste life differently. Bitterly. Indeed, Gaza will haunt us all, every one of us, for every single day we have left on this earth.

Kenn Orphan, June 2025

every war is a war against our biosphere

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I remember reading about the firebombing of Dresden and Tokyo, and the aftermath of the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in World War II when I was a child. The photos depicted horrendous human and animal suffering. Yet, we were told it was all “necessary” to defeat German fascism and Japanese imperialism.

It was years later that I discovered this to be a lie. That there was no need to incinerate civilians. That in so many cases, the atrocities that took place were purely geopolitical strategies or merely out of some sadistic curiosity.

To be sure, I do understand the satisfaction many have at seeing an oppressive regime, belligerent bully or a brutal empire getting a taste of what they have dished out to millions of people. And I have no sympathy for the political leaders who engage in or cheer on genocide.

But war has always been at the pleasure of the powerful, and it is always the working class on either side who pay the ultimate price. They are the pawns. The disposable ones. The faceless who are erased from history or who get statues and memorials raised in their honour while the powerful place wreaths upon them and pontificate about their “sacrifice.” Meanwhile, arms dealers and weapons manufacturers lay on beaches in the riviera, sipping cocktails and counting their blood-soaked cash.

In our age, every war is a war against our biosphere. Every jet, tank and drone is fueled with the primordial blood of this planet. Every bomb inflicts a deep wound in the living loam of this world. A massacre not just of human beings, but of animals, trees, insects and all manner of life. Indeed, every war is an unforgiveable crime against the earth itself. And at some point, she will deal with her abuser.

This is not to shame anyone who feels a sense of comeuppance at some of the images and videos we are seeing. And the oppressed have every right to resist their oppressor in whatever means they have at their disposal. I understand this even more so after bearing witness to nearly two years of an ongoing genocide.

But at some point we must understand that if our species continues down this path, then war will eventually end us all.

*photo is of the aftermath of an Israeli airstrike on Tehran.

The Psychosis that is Israel

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In a time where Orwellian speech has become the norm, Israel is once again claiming victimhood as it launches an unprovoked “long war” against Iran. Terrified that nuclear talks might succeed, the Israeli regime needed a convenient distraction from its genocidal campaign in Gaza. But the idea that nuclear-armed Israel is protecting itself from a non-existent nuclear state is as laughable as it is infuriating.

In terms of the sheer magnitude and power of nuclear bombs, Israel has detonated its equivalent over Gaza dozens of times over the last 19+ months. Data compiled from the Copernicus Sentinel-1 satellite over Gaza found levels of destruction unprecedented in recent conflicts. Unprecedented from the war in Ukraine, to the Syrian Civil War, to even World War II.

In fact, its bombardment of the small enclave which has become the equivalent of the Warsaw Ghetto, dwarfs the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. To put it simply, Israel is literally nuking a concentration camp full of children it is starving to death and with full support from the most powerful empire the earth has ever known.

Israel knows that it cannot destroy any Iranian nuclear program, as the Islamic Republic is far more advanced than its other imagined enemies in the region. But that isn’t the point. This is meant to create chaos. To create a broader war that has no end point. And no point at all.

Israel is a militaristic fascist society that is in the grip of a deep psychosis. One that has been enabled by its wealthy and violently psychotic friend and benefactor, the United States, for decades. And fascism is as destructive as it is delusional.

It is a society characterized by a sort of borderline personality disorder. One which has woven a convoluted and intricate web of false victimhood as it creates chaos to shield it from self inspection. Because if it did that, it would have to face a mountain of crimes and corpses that span its 77+ year colonial settler project. It would have to reconcile with its racist and genocidal nature. And it would rather set the entire world alight than lay down on that couch.

Kenn Orphan, June 2025

*photo is of an apartment building Israel bombed in Tehran, not Gaza.

Mike Huckabee and the Evangelical Cult of Death

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How do we make sense of US Ambassador Mike Huckabee’s fervent support for Israeli genocide? How do we grapple with a man so devoid of compassion, reason and basic human decency that he would cleave to the most murderous and racist elements of Israeli society? Well, we have to understand the evangelical Christian culture he emerged from.

I am familiar with this culture. I grew up in it, although I would classify my parents as Jimmy and Rosalind Carter kind of Christians. They were people of faith, but it guided them to be fair, kind and loving. They took the best parts of Christ’s message, the beatitudes, and they tried their best to live by them.

Others I knew weren’t so enlightened. Their puritanical sensibilities drove them to judge everyone but themselves. They invented a god that took great pleasure in causing ordinary people enormous suffering. They conjured demons everywhere to explain why anyone would dare disagree with their spiritual or worldview. And they were drunk on the notion of vengeance and in destroying a world they viewed as irredeemably wicked.

Huckabee comes from such a culture. He views the world through an eschatological prism where Christ is chomping at the bit to return to a lost and devastated earth. One where only people of his particular faith and denomination are saved. Where the return of Jesus is heralded by the destruction of God’s “enemies.” And those enemies, not by coincidence, happen to be the same ones of the American Empire. It isn’t a stretch to think that Huckabee believes he is an instrument of this fantastical “End Times” plan. That he sees himself as a “vessel of the Lord.”

I knew men and women like Huckabee. I went to church with them, sat in their Sunday school classes, and was put on their prayer lists when I “backslid” in my faith. When I began to see through the veil of their supremacist theology I saw a group of terrified and willfully ignorant bullies. Ones who used their faith as a bludgeon against anyone who they deemed sinful, defiant or a heathen. Their racism, or homophobia, or misogyny, or Islamophobia, or anti-science beliefs became their god’s beliefs. Their narrow and culturally prescribed interpretation of Biblical stories and myths became the sacrosanct and inerrant “Word of God.” And anyone who had a different view was cast as being blinded by Satan.

When I was growing up, I saw many religious tracts penned by the infamous Jack Chick. He was a master at drawing human beings he disliked as grotesque caricatures with twisted faces and usually followed by ghoulish demons sitting on their shoulders. Looking at them now gives me a chuckle, but I remember the fear they instilled in me as a child. And I began to realize that this was the worldview of so many people around me. A cartoonish and deeply cynical understanding of the world and its people. A spirituality grounded not in love or understanding, but hatred and sadism. Devoid of curiosity and wonder and full of sanctimonious preachiness. Huckabee makes me think of those tracts. And his worldview seems to be like a page from one of their fear-laden issues on sin and wickedness.

It is the only thing that can explain how evangelical Christians can adore a man who, by their own definition, is sinful, full of pride and ungodly. One who delights in cruelty. Who has fornicated and committed adultery, both grave sins in their theology. But he is fulfilling their end time dreams. So, everything else can be overlooked or even forgiven.

It is the only thing that explains how they can stomach the burning, bombing and imposed starvation of millions of people, including hundreds of thousands of children. It is all part of God’s plan. The Jews must return to Israel for Christ to return. But it isn’t out of any kind of love for them. On the contrary, they believe that two-thirds of all the nation of Israel will be cut off and die. The rest will supposedly “come to the light” and accept the American evangelical version of the messiah as their lord and savior. The Palestinians, in their worldview and as Huckabee has stated publicly, simply do not exist.

Huckabee is in a cult of death. Scary in and of itself, but even more so because this cult is in charge of the most powerful empire in history. And its mission is to bring about the end of the world. In truth, we are all being held hostage by its unhinged and maniacal policies, machinations and plans. We can only hope that this cult is dissolved before it embraces a final solution for us all.

Kenn Orphan, 2025

The US Invasion of Los Angeles

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It all started when White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller demanded the abduction of 3000 people a day. 3000 immigrants. A number that is staggering by any metric. If this policy is allowed to proceed, entire communities will be destroyed. Families will be ripped apart. And an entire generation will be traumatized beyond repair. It will also decimate the US economy which is driven by immigrant labour.

As a result of this barbarous demand, a vibrant immigrant community in Los Angeles was turned into a war zone. Jackbooted, heavily armed and masked thugs flooded the streets, attacking anyone they encountered. But they weren’t prepared for the neighborhood to stand its ground. Hundreds of people overwhelmed ICE. That’s when the LAPD came in with unhinged violence and brutality.

The LAPD, arguably the most corrupt and violent police force in the nation, pepper sprayed babies, beat women and choked a grandmother to unconsciousness in front of her family. Dozens of people had to be taken to hospital for treatment. They even shot journalist Lauren Tomasi with a rubber bullet as she was reporting in front of a camera.

But all of this was by design. The Trump regime had been looking for a reason to invoke the Insurrection Act, and it found one. Even though the vast majority of the protests in LA are peaceful, the videos and photos of some people waving Mexican flags, wearing keffiyehs or setting automobiles alight are all the regime needs as a justification for its brutality. Now it can say “look, we told you this was an invasion.” And this manufactured threat becomes the pretext they desire for the final descent into authoritarian fascism.

What happens in LA could determine whether Americans can recover any of their battered, lost or stolen civil liberties. But as I write, there are 500 Marines standing by on the President’s order to invade Los Angeles.

*Photo Homeland Security smashing a woman’s skull and ribcage with the butt of a shotgun.

Kenn Orphan, June 2025

The Madleen and Israel’s Fiction of Perpetual Victimhood

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The illegal abduction of the crew of the Madleen by the genocidal state of Israel is certainly demoralizing. But it isn’t surprising to anyone and certainly not this courageous group of people. Israel is conducting the first livestreamed genocide. Day by day it descends even further into the pit of sadistic barbarism. Yet even as its atrocities and war crimes mount for all the world to see, it cannot help but claim victimhood.

Case in point, Israel’s defense minister ordered the kidnapped crew to be shown a heavily curated and guarded film of the October 7th attacks. He also repeated the ridiculous lie that Greta Thunberg is “antisemitic” and supports Hamas.

To be sure, Israel isn’t on some moral crusade against antisemitism or terrorism. But it has weaponized antisemitism to attack any critic of the regime or of the political ideology of Zionism. And it attempts to smear them as terrorists because that has become the catch-all term used by despotic and ruthless regimes all over the world against anyone who dissents.

No person of conscience supports indiscriminate violence against civilians and certainly not against children. But Israel is in a bind of its own making if it thinks it can shame the crew of the Madleen by forcing them to watch a film that cannot be viewed or verified by any independent body.

After watching 19 months of unhinged and vicious cruelty meted out on millions of people in the world’s biggest concentration camp, Israel still thinks it can garner sympathy. Even after it has bombed, burned alive and starved thousands of children. Even after it has killed its own citizens. Even after its soldiers have proudly posted themselves parading around in lingerie or smashing toys of women and children they had forced out of their homes or massacred. Even after it has bombed hospitals and murdered doctors and paramedics. Even after it has tortured captives. Even after countless statements of genocidal intent by its politicians and media figures.

But this is all Israel knows how to do. It only has one story. And it has spent the last 77 years polishing its brand of perpetual victimhood even as it ethnically cleansed the land and built an apartheid state that rivaled South Africa. It has repeated this fiction that it is the “villa in the jungle” and the Middle-East’s “only democracy” so much that it began to believe it was true. But despite its delusion, the mask has slipped for the world to see. And no amount of storytelling will convince anyone but the willfully ignorant, terminally stupid or psychotically deranged.

Kenn Orphan, June 2025

The New Testament of Maga Christianity

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When constituents of US Iowa Senator, Joni Ernst, shouted their anger that cuts to Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) would cause people to die, an impish smile stretched across her face. “Well, we are all going to die,” the senator responded.

People were stunned. A senator laughing at the certain deaths of human beings due to lack of food and healthcare? Due to the deliberate cutting of the very thing that keeps them alive? Laughing at the deaths of the elderly, disabled and children?

But the senator didn’t feel one bit of remorse. In fact, she doubled down on her stance, posting a video of her standing in a cemetery. In it, she sarcastically took aim at those who were outraged. “I made an incorrect assumption that everyone in the auditorium understood that yes, we are all going to perish from this earth,” she said. And proceeded to proselytize to them about how accepting her Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, would ensure everyone eternal life. Ironically, she said this after mocking her constituents for believing in the tooth fairy.

But was this out of character for the senator? After all, this is what she believes. This is Maga Christianity. It is the firm belief that the only respite you are entitled to in this life is in some afterlife you are sent to if you believe in their narrow, heavily curated and extremely exclusive version of spiritual salvation.

Maga Christianity, like the one espoused by Ernst, is not a new phenomenon. It is the natural evolution of American Christianity. One that was born out of the rationalization of Indigenous genocide, justification for the enslavement of Africans, the normalization of perpetual war, and a fanatical adoration of the predations of capitalism.

It is what enables them to overlook the cesspit of Donald Trump’s morals, trash the environment (after all, God is going to destroy it anyway), and support genocide in Gaza. The latter comes down to an eschatological worldview that requires the state of Israel to exist so that the second coming of Christ will be ushered in. Never mind the fact that this worldview posits the forced conversion or eternal condemnation of Jewish people. Never mind that it ignores the very existence of Palestinian Christians. Never mind that hundreds of thousands of people, including thousands of children, are being bombed, burned alive, and starved to death.

Their worldview demeans and diminishes life here. It ridicules suffering or says it is inevitable or necessary. Well, at least for those they deem subhuman or “sinners” or heathen. But for Maga Christians, their eternal reward begins here with unfettered access to power and wealth.

Ernst and her ilk will likely never come to see her faith as a bludgeon. She will likely never develop a real sense of empathy. And since empathy is rapidly being classified as a sin in the Maga religion, why would she?

To the rest of us, her callous cruelty and sadism will not be forgotten, nor forgiven. Her little joke at the expense of the ill, the disabled, children, elderly, impoverished and dying will forever be likened to the phrase “let them eat cake.” And we all know what happened to the person that was attributed to.

Kenn Orphan, June 2025

A moral giant in a time of sycophants, genocide apologists and bloodthirsty elitists.

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There are some people that seem to effortlessly embody the very essence of courage. Who possess the kind of integrity most of us only dream of. Whose bravery will be recorded in the pages of history. Greta Thunberg is just such a person.

Gaining international notoriety from her climate activism when just a child, Greta has been ceaseless in fighting for human rights and against genocide. And this has earned her the ire of some of the most loathsome villains on the planet.

American senator Lindsey Graham is one of them. The semi-moribund southern belle shared a news article about Thunberg’s presence on a flotilla that is headed to Gaza to break the cruel blockade of food, medicine and fuel imposed on millions of people by Israel. He wrote: “Hope Greta and her friends can swim!” Graham has long supported Israel as it commits the most heinous crimes, including the bombing, burning and starvation of children.

In all likelihood, Israel bombed the first flotilla with Greta onboard. It has tortured, maimed and murdered thousands of activists, aid workers, journalists, doctors, nurses and paramedics since the genocide began. And this is nothing new for the apartheid state. In 2003, it murdered American peace activist Rachel Corrie.

Graham knows this. So, his post is not only a crude and vile jab. It is a credible threat against her life.

But Greta Thunberg is undeterred. She has proven herself to be a moral giant in a time of sniveling sycophants, depraved genocide apologists and bloodthirsty elitists. And one day when all of this is over she will take an honoured position in history, while Graham will barely be a footnote in some forgotten book on the noxious and duplicitous nature of genteel, white, American southerners.

Kenn Orphan, June 2025

Pinkwashing Genocide

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Back in November 2023, an Israeli soldier had posted a photo of himself holding a rainbow flag as he stood atop the rubble of a neighbourhood he took part in destroying in Gaza. The banner read “In the name of love” in both Hebrew and Arabic. If there was ever a perfect example of pinkwashing, this was it.

Pinkwashing is a term used to describe Israel’s cynical weaponization LGBTQ rights to distract from its ongoing oppression of the Palestinians. It is a well funded public relations strategy – sponsored by none other than the Israeli government itself. Long before the past 19 months, pinkwashing was employed aggressively to justify Israeli apartheid and ethnic cleansing. Now, it is being used to justify Israel’s genocide.

Pinkwashing often works because it uses entrenched racist prejudices and misconceptions in the West against Arab and Muslim cultures, often painting them all as a stereotypical monolith. It uses old colonial tropes by portraying Arab cultures and societies as backward or “savage” and Israel as a “villa in a jungle.” In this way, Israel is cast as the “white saviour” on a civilizing mission. A liberal bastion in the midst of terror and cruelty.

But it is nothing more than a clever marketing ploy that highlights certain liberal enclaves within Israel while ignoring the deep homophobia within Israeli society itself. It glosses over violent hate crimes, orthodox religious extremism, and rampant homophobia, even from officials at the highest level of Israel’s government. It also robs queer Palestinians of their agency by either ignoring their existence or using them as pawns to justify continued colonial violence and oppression.

But queer Palestinians do exist. And they have agency. One such way they have expressed it is through a project called “Queering the Map.” This is a community-based online mapping platform where users can submit their personal experiences at specific locations to one collective map. In this way, queer people know that they’re not alone. Since its inception, users have contributed over 80,000 submissions in 23 languages.

On Queering the Map, several LGBTQ+ Palestinians have flagged spots where they’ve had romantic encounters in the Gaza Strip. Others have mourned their lost loved ones, while some have called for the liberation of the Palestinian people.

I have often thought about that Israeli soldier holding a rainbow flag while standing on a graveyard. Did he really think that queer people in Gaza would welcome the endless bombings, burnings, shooting of children, rape, mass starvation, and total destruction of every city, of universities, of libraries, of bakeries? That they would be happy that their families were slaughtered? Or their partners?

But I choose to end this with the voices of queer Palestinians themselves. These are a few messages from that interactive map. One message was to a secret love who was tragically killed in an Israeli airstrike:

“I’ve always imagined you and me sitting out in the sun, hand and hand, free at last. We spoke of all the places we would go if we could. Yet you are gone now. If I had known that bombs raining down on us would take you from me, I would have gladly told the world how I adored you more than anything. I’m sorry I was a coward.”

Another read:

“Pls know despite what the media says there are gay Palestinians. We are here, we are queer. Free Palestine.”

And this one broke my heart:

“Idk how long I will live so I just want this to be my memory before I die. I am not going to leave my home, come what may. My biggest regret is not kissing this one guy. He died two days back. We had told how much we like each other and I was too shy to kiss last time. He died in the bombing. I think a big part of me died too. And soon I will be dead. To younus, i will kiss you in heaven.”

Kenn Orphan, May 2025

*Photo is of queer Palestinian activists from the occupied West Bank demanding an end to Israeli occupation, displacement and apartheid. This was prior to the genocide. Under the Palestinian Authority, homosexuality is legal in the West Bank.

An Image of Indictment in Gaza

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Some images have an historic weight that places them in a different class. We remember them as markers. As signposts. As harbingers. They are immediately recognizable to most people.

Think of the little Jewish boy in the Warsaw Ghetto standing with his arms up with armed Nazi guards in the background. Think of the young girl running down a street after her village was napalmed in Vietnam. Think of the emaciated toddler in Sudan who had collapsed to the ground with a plump vulture standing nearby. Think of the small Syrian boy lying face down in the sand on the beach of a Greek island.

This image is no different.

It is still from a video that shows a young Palestinian girl trying to flee an inferno. It was from an Israeli airstrike on the shelter where she was staying. Her name is Ward al-Sheikh Khalil, and she is only 7 years old. Miraculously, she survived. Her mother and siblings did not.

Images like this one are powerful because they are an indictment. A testament. A condemnation of blatant cruelty and injustice.

As Israel escalates its murderous war of annihilation against the people of Gaza, half of which are children, the world stands in shock and outrage. Even media figures who were long silent about the atrocities, like Piers Morgan, are beginning to shift their opinion. Even political leaders, like one former Israeli prime minister, cannot stay silent any longer. He accurately described what Israel is doing as a “war of extermination.”

It took 19 months. 19 months of the destruction of over 90% of Gaza’s structures, including schools, mosques, churches, universities, bakeries, water treatment facilities, farms and historic places. Of the daily bombings and burnings of people in tents. Of amputations without anesthesia Of snipers shooting toddlers. Of the slow starvation of children. Of Israeli politicians and media openly expressing genocidal intent and mania.

19 months for some leaders and influencers in the West to finally discover the humanity of the Palestinians. They all saw what we saw. But they chose to ignore it, normalize it, fund it, cheerlead it and chide those of us who denounced it as being “supporters of terrorism” or attempt to smear us as antisemitic bigots.

Before little Ward, there was little Hind. But unlike Ward, Hind did not survive. And we don’t have an image of her plight. We only have her voice. Trembling, terrified. Sitting wounded in a car with her dead family. Pleading with emergency services on the phone to save her. And they tried. But they too were annihilated by an Israeli tank.

There are countless little girls and boys like Hind and Ward. We will never hear their voices or see their faces. Buried under rubble, incinerated, shredded from bombs, wasting away from starvation. But they all matter. And they all deserved far better than this hell we have allowed.

Kenn Orphan, May 2025