Category Archives: Archived

A Network of Torture Camps

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Ahmed Manasrah was 13 when he was convicted by the Israeli High Court of attempted murder. He was, in fact, with his 16 year old cousin Hassan who killed an Israeli teenager and stabbed another man in the illegal settlement of Pisgat Ze’ev in occupied East Jerusalem on that tragic day in 2015. Hassan was fatally shot by a member of that illegal settlement.

Ahmed was run over by a car, beaten by settlers, and filmed while he lay bleeding in the street, taunted by onlookers. He was arrested and convicted even though he never stabbed anyone and even as the High Court admitted Ahmed had nothing to do with the incident.

Ahmed was sent to prison for 9 and half years. Human rights organizations documented torture and depravation of the boy while he was in custody. He was harshly interrogated without the presence of his lawyer or his parents. And while in prison, he was put in solitary confinement for a majority of the time. This led to him developing schizophrenia. He attempted suicide several times.

In a related case, a teenager from the occupied West Bank recently died in an Israeli prison after being held for six months without charge. In fact, scores of other Palestinians detained without charge have come out shaking, gaunt, injured, with signs of torture and needing prompt medical attention. One had a star of David carved into his back.

And there have been many documented incidents of rape and sexual torture. One resulted in the death of the highly respected surgeon and head of orthopaedics at Gaza’s al-Shifa Hospital, Dr. Adnan Al-Bursh. According to the Israeli human rights organization HaMoked, prison guards dragged Al-Bursh and dumped him in the prison yard, naked from the waist down, bleeding and unable to stand. He died in agony a short time after.

This past August, the Israeli media outlet Channel 12 released a video showing soldiers at a notorious prison in the Negev desert gang-raping a Palestinian detainee. There have been instances of soldiers using dogs as well. “They don’t care if you’re from Gaza or Jerusalem, whether you’re a doctor or a labourer – if you’re a Palestinian, you’re the enemy, ” Shai Parness of the Israeli human rights organisation B’Tselem said. “It’s brutal and it’s systematic.” B’Tselem’s August report, Welcome To Hell, called these prisons “a network of torture camps.”

There were protests in Israel, but not to object to these rapes. They were in defense of the perpetrators. All of this has gone on with little to no denunciation, let alone acknowledgement, from Western politicians and most media.

For Ahmed, his horrendous treatment underscores the widespread devaluing of Palestinian children by the Israeli occupation. As tens of thousands of children have been slaughtered, sniped and starved in Gaza over the past year and a half, this case provides a window into an apartheid system that has been meticulously designed and constructed to crush an entire people over many years. A dehumanization where even children aren’t spared the full boot of the state. And the result of all of this has laid out a bloody path to genocide.

According to the Jerusalem Prisoners’ Families Committee: “The Israeli occupation deliberately released Ahmad away from the prison, while his family waited at the prison gates to welcome him upon his release. A Bedouin man from the Negev (Naqab) received Ahmad and called his family to inform them that their son had been freed.“

Kenn Orphan, April 2025

The Charade of Death

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This is the man given dozens of standing ovations in the US Congress. The man welcomed in the White House with open arms. And not just by Trump. Biden was enraptured by that bromance too. This isn’t because this man controls the American Empire. It is because Israel is the empire’s last true colony. It is its last major investment.

Beheading children with airstrikes. Starving infants and sniping toddlers. Raping doctors to death and shooting nurses. Burning journalists alive and burying medics in their ambulances. Leveling everything in sight, from shelters to bakeries to universities to water treatment facilities. All of this is simply the business of American Empire. It is the collateral damage that allows the dollars to keep flowing upward.

Now, as the annihilation of an entire people has entered its final chapter, it has become impossible to deny what the United States is: a sham. The myth of its fabled democracy hobbled along with empty promises and hollow platitudes as crutches for a long time. Even as its institutions became sepulchers that housed barely conscious old, rich, white men. Fortresses that protected their capital investments. But the shroud that covered their moldering corpses has been ripped off for all to see. The myth of American democracy has finally died in the streets of Gaza.

We need to look at it. We need to see it for what it is. Otherwise, we will continue to delude ourselves that there is something worth saving. When the reality is that everything must be rebuilt from the ground up for us to be worthy of saving. Everything. Because to save any of what is left is to ensure that there will just be more of the people-killing, planet-killing, soul-killing same. And I, for one, want no part in that charade of death. 

Kenn Orphan, April 2025

Bodies flying through the air

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Bodies flying through the air

As if they were made of straw

Black soot from airstrikes rising

Buzz of death drones overhead

Sounds of distant wailing pierces the wind

And bodies flying through the air

Torn flesh bleeding

As if it were made of paper

Crumbled homes form a tomb

Ambulances and medics under sand

Sounds of distant wailing pierces the wind

And torn flesh bleeding

Headless bodies of children

As if they were mere dolls made of plastic

Schools become shelters become graveyards

Dogs scavenge for sustenance from unretrieved bodies

Sounds of distant wailing pierces the wind

And headless bodies of children

Skeletons with skin

As if they were birdcages wrapped in cloth

Water filled with parasites

Bags of rice spilled with the blood

Sounds of distant wailing pierces the wind

And skeletons with skin


Ancient olive trees ripped from the earth

As if they were blades of grass

Fruit drenched in blood

Even the birds aren’t spared

Sounds of distant wailing pierces the wind

And ancient olive trees ripped from the earth

And bodies flying through the air

Bodies flying through the air

Kenn Orphan, April 2025

Fascism has Arrived

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“There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen.” – misattributed to Vladamir Lenin

The above quote, which has been misattributed to Lenin, has been repeating in my head a lot these past three+ months. It describes the whirlwind of changes we have since the Trump regime was swept into power. From an endless stream of executive orders to the near complete dissolution of the old world order, it indeed feels like decades have already gone by. And this is perhaps what makes the next few weeks so harrowing.

When Trump took the seat of the American imperium, one of his first executive orders was to declare a national emergency at the southern border. With this, he demanded that the Department of Defense and the Department of Homeland Security advise him on if and how he could invoke the Insurrection Act. That report is due on the 20th of April, which is incidentally Hitler’s birthday.

In section 6B of the executive order it reads:

“Within 90 days of the date of this proclamation, the Secretary of Defense and the Secretary of Homeland Security shall submit a joint report to the President about the conditions at the southern border of the United States and any recommendations regarding additional actions that may be necessary to obtain complete operational control of the southern border, including whether to invoke the Insurrection Act of 1807.”

Trump wanted to do this during his previous role as president, but was stymied by the Secretary of Defense at the time, Jim Mattis. He also openly pondered if protestors could be shot. This time around, he has stacked his cabinet with yes men and women. Pete Hegseth, Tulsi Gabbard and JD Vance would never defy the dictates of the president. And they are the ones who will deliver him his options a few weeks from now.

The Insurrection Act would allow the president to use the military on domestic soil to quell “civil unrest.” And this vague terminology could be applied to anything from campus protests to demonstrations like on Saturday of this past weekend to bake sales at your local progressive church. He could fulfill his campaign promise of sending troops into “Democratic” cities which he has painted as being filled with “illegals,” criminals and “leftist radicals,” rounding up anyone he deems a threat. Painting them as “terrorists,” gang members, communists or perverts. No protests. No rallies. No gatherings. It would be a move directly out of the fascist playbook.

If he is advised on April 20th that the US is under threat, it would not be inconceivable for him to crackdown on the press, social media and on anyone who opposes the regime, from scientists to college professors to librarians. It would become a matter of “national security.” And corporations will almost always comply. Just recently, American historian Heather Cox Richardson was all but purged from Facebook as she openly criticized Trump.

The regime has already implemented breathtaking actions at stifling dissent on university campuses. Professors have fled to Canada. Border police continue to harass tourists and visiting delegates. Ice has already disappeared people for simply expressing opposition to US support for a genocide. It has also detained and deported hundreds without due process. And it has done all of this while boasting about it and promising even more.

If this regime is gleeful about sending people to a forced labour camp in El Salvador (see: concentration camps) and the complete annihilation of the Palestinian people, does anyone really think they would have a problem implementing the Insurrection Act and brutally repressing American citizens? As Trump decimates the economy, unrest would certainly grow. Does anyone really think he would not want to suppress this with every tool he has? And If he is comfortable saying undocumented immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our nation,” does anyone think he would not broaden that to everyone who opposes him?

To say time is running out would be an understatement. Fascism has arrived. And as Democrats hide, align themselves with them, or make meaningless 25 hour speeches that block nothing, it grows unchecked. It may have been decades in the making, but it has only taken a few weeks for it to establish itself. It isn’t in complete control… yet. But if there is no mass movement to stop it, it will proceed toward a full takeover. 

Kenn Orphan, April 2025

Stay Woke

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Many Americans are planning to go to protests tomorrow. And I applaud their desire to do something, anything, in a time of growing barbarism. But I would also caution those who think they are “saving democracy” by attending these events.

The American Empire is dying. Like all empires, its descent is not linear. It is erratic and may take a few decades for its final dissolution. But its prognosis is terminal. And the Trump regime is speeding this process up with idiotic tariffs and blind imperialistic fever dreams. It may be difficult, if not impossible, for many Americans to realize this. After all, the US has one of the most propagandized populations on the planet. But the signs are glaring.

For years, most white Americans have been drunk on a false shibboleth of supremacy. Believing that they live in the “greatest nation on earth” despite not having healthcare or basic labour protections. Most who espouse this notion haven’t traveled beyond the borders of their state, let alone country. Few possess a passport. But this delusion has permeated every cell, every fibre of the culture. Facts to the contrary (and there is a mountain of them) be damned.

They have been inured to the rot that has been allowed to spread through the halls of power. Fed a steady diet of Hollywood pablum where impoverished people have a chance to rise to riches. Where white heroes save Black and Brown people in the Global South. When the reality is that their leaders have been raping, pillaging and bombing them to smithereens for over 80 years. There is always a meticulously scripted “happy ending” to every unnecessary nightmare. Those who don’t fit in that narrative are disappeared, both figuratively and literally.

As the edifice of empire crumbles, its true nature is revealed. Standing there for everyone to see is a sepulcher filled with the bones of the innocent, the vulnerable. Anyone who stood in the way of capital. The tomb is ceremoniously draped in a red, white and blue shroud, but even those threads are beginning to fray. The tatters of nationalism cannot withstand the hard fist of betrayal.

As the late Howard Zinn once said, “there is no flag big enough to cover the crime of killing innocent people.” After more than a year and a half of supporting, funding and arming a genocide, the worst crime of this century, the US has demolished its reputation forever. The world understands this, even if most Americans do not. This one thing stands firmly in the way of any meaningful change. Unless it is reckoned with, platitudes and promises will continue to ring hollow.

You cannot save a democracy that no longer exists. And this is due to decades of political chicanery, where billionaires and corporations hold more sway than ordinary citizens. A protest is powerless unless it disrupts this arrangement of power. Not on a weekend, but during the week. When the gears of the machine are at full speed. The event planned for tomorrow will act as a vent. Letting off the steam of frustration, despair and hopelessness. And that is a good thing. But it would be foolish to think it will stop a regime that cannot be negotiated with.

Rallies and 25 hour speeches that do not block fascist legislation or executive orders, or stand non-violently in the path of the regime’s thugs, represent little more than political spectacle which can create the dangerous illusion of a mass movement. A kabuki theatre of clever signs and merchandise. But in the end, far more is needed. We are literally staring down the barrel of a gun. Our angry climate cares not about pithy speeches and signs. It requires a wrench thrown into the gears of death while there is still time.

If you go to the protests, consider these things. And instead of believing that Democratic politicians will save the republic, connect with real people. Build relationships that foster mutual aid and protection at the local level and outside of the institutions that are under attack. Above all, be careful. This regime has demonstrated it has no intention of listening to or working with anyone not in its cult of death. Knowing this might just save your life or the life of someone in a community that is now being ruthlessly targeted.

As Black residents of the American south once said to each other to encourage vigilance when faced with the violence of racist authoritarians, “stay woke.”

Kenn Orphan, April 2025

*Art is Hope by Syrian street artist Abu Malik al Shami. 

A Eulogy for the Geneva Conventions

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The Geneva Conventions have died. We are entering a new era where the vaunted “rule of law,” long peddled as the unassailable mantra of the West, is rapidly being considered a quaint set of guidelines from a bygone era.

Of course, the Geneva Conventions were long abandoned decades ago. Dousing children in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos with napalm, carpet bombing entire villages, and spraying Agent Orange on pristine rainforests did away with them early on. Successive campaigns of invasion, juntas and death squads, targeted assassinations and drone wars, from Honduras to Congo to Iraq, Libya, Somalia and beyond, demonstrated how toothless these rules actually were. But there was always the pretense of caring about them. Those days are no more.

After a year and a half+ of Western supported and funded genocide, the crumbling facade of “Human Rights” has collapsed into dust. In short, no one in the Global South believes the West anymore when they spout platitudes regaling their record of morality or ethics.

The Trump regime is now blatantly attacking and deporting anyone who is not a natural born citizen for protesting this crime. Not to be outdone by Netanyahu, Trump has ramped up his own genocidal rhetoric. But there is no hiding the fact that it was Biden who led us to this point. All Western leaders have played their part too. Those on the margins of Western hegemony know this very well, even if the denizens of the West remain in denial. They will never trust us again. Nor should they.

Each new day, a new horror is revealed. And not only by the victims or what is left of the journalists on the ground. This carnage is boasted about by the perpetrators themselves, through live feeds and TikTok reels. And why shouldn’t they? Their confidence in impunity has been well tested. There is no sign in the foreseeable future that this reality will change.

This is the last chapter of this bloody and needless dive into depravity. In these pages, we will likely see even more cruelty and more horrors we cannot begin to fathom. But when it is finally closed, we would be foolish to breath a sigh of relief. The moral price we have all paid for this will be immeasurable.

And the powerful have proven something far more terrifying to themselves. They have shown the world what they can get away with. Anyone they deem disposable can be dealt with in a similar fashion with little to no outcry from those who feel indifferent. If there is anything we can glean from this hideous orgy of death is that in a world where the folly of billionaires and fascists is paramount, we are all Palestinians.

Kenn Orphan, April 2025

To be in this timeline

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This past week I realized something. It was after I saw a video of a father tenderly holding the severed head of his child. He gently caressed the boys hair as he sobbed. He was killed by an Israeli airstrike on the tents where this family was forced to live. Forced to live because their entire neighbourhood had been carpet bombed. I also saw a young girl on a stretcher, her head cracked opened by shrapnel to the point that part of her brain was seeping out. Another one showed a girl in agony, burned from head to toe from a different airstrike. There were no pain meds to soothe her. And no parents to comfort, as they had been killed in the blast.

Over the last 17 months my Instagram has become a parade of horror and death. Of mothers wailing, fathers unable to speak. Of children shot by snipers. Of starving babies and amputees who had to endure their pain without anesthesia. Of dogs ripping at corpses in the street. Needless to say, it has taken a toll.

I have been involved in human rights for many years. And I have stood in solidarity with Palestinians who have endured occupation and apartheid for 76+ years. I’ve seen a lot of terrible and gruesome things. But even I have not seen anything like what we have been witness to for the past 17 months.

A livestreamed genocide. Shown to us partly by the victims. but also by the perpetrators themselves. Men and women in uniform donning women’s lingerie or riding on children’s bicycles. Women and children who had been forced to flee their homes or who had been killed by those same men and women in uniform. Men and women in uniform making marriage proposals in front of devastated schools or ruined mosques or gleefully detonating bombs to level entire apartment blocks or universities.

We have been told that this is all justified. That it is the consequence for the crimes of October 7th. But they never talk about the decades preceding that day. About the occupation. About the blockade and siege. About the home demolitions. About the tens of thousands of civilians, including thousands of children, who have been locked up in Israeli gulags over the years without charge. About the settler violence or the army that protects them as they rampage. About the indiscriminate bombings on Gaza long before that day in October. About a cruel, violent and entrenched system of apartheid.

They only talk about the murder of 1200 Israelis and foreign nationals. A terrible crime. But it is as if the complete destruction of a people is commensurate with that crime. As if the slaughter of tens of thousands of people, mass starvation, sniper shooting children, dropping 2000 lb. bombs on tents and hospitals and bakeries and universities and schools is a rational response.

I came to realize the other day that I am a changed person. Bearing witness to such crimes inevitably changes you. It wounds the soul. I cannot go to sleep or wake up without hearing the cries of little Hind. The child who sat in a car with the dead bodies of her family around her. Who called emergency services on the phone to come and save her as she bled. Of her voice, trembling with fear. Of the kindness of the operator as she tried to calm her. Of the sound of the Israeli tank in front of her and the gunfire that silenced her cries forever, along with the lives of the paramedics who came to help her.

I realized that I will never be the same. But also that I wouldn’t want to be the same. Because I don’t want to be like the people who have defended this. I don’t want to be like the people who have twisted their faces in laughter at human misery. Or like those who have witnessed this, yet have chosen to remain silent. To normalize it all for the sake of civility or safety. Or out of fear of being falsely accused of bigotry.

At first, I admit I was gravely disappointed by so many. Even angry at times. After all, I am not special. I am far from being a saint or virtuous. But I often wonder how so many others cannot see what I see. And I think you have to forfeit a great piece of your humanity to turn your eyes from one of the greatest crimes of this century. You have to become something else. A shadow of a person. A hungry ghost that seeks comfort in empty platitudes, distractions and the trappings of our age, yet cannot be sated. An apparition mimicking human form. Going through the motions, but unable to feel the full depth of what it really means to be flesh and blood and bone.

I never wanted to see or hear what I have. To be in this timeline. To bear witness and to be unpopular for recording it. Many of us feel that way. But I would rather do that, than lose the part of me that makes living in this world bearable.

Kenn Orphan, March 2025

*Photo is of a child killed by an Israeli airstrike while celebrating in their Eid clothes. The strike targeted a tent camp of displaced people in Mawasi Khan Younis, southern Gaza.

A Dark Chapter of American Cruelty has Begun

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This is the United States Secretary of Homeland Security, Kristi Noem, standing proudly in front of a concentration camp in El Salvador. It is the place where at least 200 men were disappeared by the Trump regime without Due Process by its militant arm ICE. It is the largest concentration camp in the world with a capacity for 40,000 human beings. It has at least 14,500 there now.

Many of the 200 men there were ambushed by masked men in unmarked cars and vans, targeting them simply because they were Brown, Latino or had tattoos that ICE goons did not understand. A gay makeup artist and a man with an “autism awareness” tattoo are among them.

This image is jarring, not only because of the fact that these men never had their right to Due Process. Not only because the image clearly shows inhuman living conditions with beds crammed full of human beings, stacked to the ceiling. But because of its historical weight.

The Nazi regime disappeared millions of people into concentration camps. First because of their supposed “crimes.” Then because of their political leanings or opinions. Then because they were Jewish. Then because of their sexuality or ethnic identity. The Pinochet regime also disappeared thousands of Chileans, taking them to stadiums to be shot or tortured, or deporting them from the country, or on to helicopters to be dropped into the ocean. Israel, which has been carrying out a Western-backed genocide for the past 18 months, is also currently locking up thousands of Palestinians, many of them children, in prisons where rape, violence and starvation are used as collective punishment.

But we need not look to the history or even current practices of other nations. The United States has done similar things in its past. From forcing Indigenous people on death marches as in the Trail of Tears, to locking up thousands of Black men in prison labour camps for merely being on the white side of town, to holding Filipinos in concentration camps in their own land, to sending thousands of Japanese Americans to internment camps in the desert. Or in recent times, the soldiers photographed torturing and terrorizing Iraqis at Abu Ghraib. Indeed, the US has plenty of examples of its own barbarism.

This latest chapter of American depravity is in keeping with its tradition of cruelty. But it may very well be the darkest yet. Years from now, this photo (or the accompanying video) may be used in classrooms, much like the ones used today depicting SS guards in front of Auschwitz. That is, if this dark chapter is finally forced to close forever.

Kenn Orphan, March 2025

When our song began to die…

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Perhaps the beginning of our disconnect was the moment our ancestors started killing these giant inhabitants of the sea for fuel to light the lanterns in their homes and cities.

These behemoths, appearing weightless in a vast blue sea, who sing to each other from thousands of kilometers apart and who sleep vertically. Together, quietly, like trees in the forest. Pointed upward toward the stars.

Perhaps dreaming the universe into existence. And then intricately sewing life together thread by thread with their song.

Maybe this was more than our kind could comprehend. The land walkers who slithered out of the blue to ascend to the trees. Then descended from the green canopy. Made tools and fashioned weapons to fight and subjugate each other. And made up stories about sky gods who play with our suffering for sport or jealousy or penance for sins we’ve never committed. Maybe we told them to make our oppressors feel better about themselves and ease some of the guilt.

Perhaps our disconnect from the only home we’ve ever known is the moment we saw the living loam of the earth as a commodity to be ruthlessly sourced, exploited, fought over and traded for coin.

And perhaps it was at that moment when our own song began to die.

Kenn Orphan, 2025

Gal Gadot is Shocked

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Oh Gal, you were shocked? Honestly, how utterly disconnected are you from the reality of being a settler? How can you continue to claim ignorance about the Nakba? How can you continue to pretend you have no idea how this all started?

Here’s the deal, Gal. I know I am a settler. I am not indigenous to North America. I know that this one fact does not make me an evil person. It doesn’t mean that I do not belong here either. But I know that being a settler requires my attention and action to work toward justice. A justice that was violently robbed of the Indigenous people here. It caused generational trauma. And I have a responsibility to acknowledge that. To listen and to act in a way that heals and restores what was lost. It won’t erase the crimes committed against Indigenous people here, but it is literally the least I can do.

Gal, you served in the IDF even as it carried out heinous acts of oppression and cruelty against millions of people. You ignored the ongoing apartheid implemented by your government. You defended them even as they commit genocide. You even took a role in a movie that showed you saving children from a missile attack. Yet you defended Israel even after it slaughtered four boys with a missile on a beach in Gaza who were merely playing football.

Gal, do you know how many Palestinian children have been targeted and killed by the IDF? Before AND after the tragic events of October 7th over a year ago? There were terrible things committed on that day, but do you know that there were no “beheaded babies” on October the 7th? That that was a lie? Or that there have been many beheaded babies in Gaza from airstrikes over the last year+?

Have you heard of little Hind? How she sat in a car with her dead family for hours through the cold night? How she desperately called emergency services to save her? How she was terrified and badly injured? And how an Israeli tank killed her and the paramedics who came to help her?

And yet, after almost a year and a half of endless airstrikes, imposed starvation, complete destruction of hospitals, clinics, bakeries, water treatment facilities, shelters, apartment buildings, universities, you are shocked by a backlash to you claiming you are Indigenous to a land that is being mercilessly emptied of its actual Indigenous population?

Gal, the backlash you received was not hatred. It was disgust. It was rage. It was the reaction from people who have just seen videos of children limp or burned beyond recognition. Mothers wailing. Torn bodies upon the scorched earth. And yet you stand in this moment of historic weight and claim you are the real victim here?

You are wrong, Gal. We know. We have an idea of what is happening here. And we also realize you probably never will. 

Kenn Orphan, March 2025