Tag Archives: Gaza

If killing children isn’t considered a crime of monstrous proportions, then our civilization isn’t worth saving

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“No one in Gaza is innocent. Yes, even the children will have to be killed. No other choice…Because they are the children of those who want to harm us. They are all enemies like the Nazis.” -Michal Waldiger, Israeli MP.

The crime of genocide isn’t simply on how many people you kill. It is the intent. For over 19 months, Israeli politicians and media figures have openly called for the annihilation of the people of Gaza. They have publicly expressed the intent to either kill or forcibly displace millions of people. They have not hidden any of their plans. In fact, they boast about it, joke about it, write about it, sing about it, make TikTok videos about it. And they have done it.

Gaza has all but been reduced to dust. Tens of thousands of people have been blown up, maimed, burned and buried under rubble. Hospitals, shelters, tents, bakeries, water treatment facilities, mosques, churches, universities… All have been targeted. All have been bombed. Now, most of the population is facing starvation due to a blockade imposed by Israel. And all this has been made possible thanks to ammunition, tactical support and diplomatic cover from the US, UK, Germany and other Western countries. All are complicit.

Only diehard apologists without a shred of decency or conscience left or those actually committing the crimes continue to deny this is genocide. Most experts on genocide have stated that Israel is committing genocide. Doctors, surgeons, nurses and paramedics have testified to this fact. The UN, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem and several other groups have said this is a genocide. And we have our own eyes and ears to see it for what it is.

But regardless of how some want us to quibble over definitions and terms, if calling for the killing of children isn’t considered a crime of monstrous proportions, then our civilization isn’t worth saving.

Kenn Orphan, May 2025

a thorn of sadistic cruelty

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These pastries were seen in a patisserie in Israel the other day by Israeli journalist, Josie Glausiusz. She described her disgust in an opinion piece in Ha’aretz, the leading newspaper in the country, after discovering them in her village of Modi’in. The icing reads in Hebrew: “Let the IDF mow them down!”

This is a clear reference to something Israeli officials said years ago, long before the current atrocities. It implied that Gaza needed periodic bombings to keep its captive population, half of which are children, in check.

Now most of Gaza has been leveled.

A similar sentiment was shared by another senior Israeli official who said: “The idea is to put the Palestinians on a diet, but not to make them die of hunger.”

Now that diet has been completely cut off. Gaza is being slowly starved to death.

As Israelis celebrated their so-called “Independence Day” with barbecues and sweets, tens of thousands of children were starving to death just a few kilometers away thanks to a merciless blockade by the Israeli government.

For over 60 days, Israel has blockaded all aid into the concentration camp that is Gaza. No food. No medicine. No fuel. An estimated 60,000 children are showing signs of malnutrition, with more than 10,000 diagnosed with severe malnutrition.

One has to wonder how any sane person could bake sugary treats that celebrate the abject misery and suffering of millions of people? Or how anyone could eat these eclairs without any sense of disgust or shame?

But then we take a step back and we see a culture that has been engineered to dehumanize an entire people. It’s how soldiers could ride bicycles of children or wear lingerie of women they had just violently displaced or murdered. It’s how they could have gender reveal parties or wedding proposals with a backdrop of bombs burning and tearing human flesh apart. It’s how they could justify carrying out a genocide.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu recently laid out his plans for a final solution before the entire world. The people of Gaza have a choice, be herded into squalid militarized camps before “voluntarily” leaving their homeland or die a slow and painful death. Another Likud politician, Moshe Sa’ada, echoed this on Israeli television: we are heading for a major event of vanquishment, annihilation and emigration from Gaza.”

In fact, there are hundreds of documents that show Israeli leaders and media openly planning, justifying or encouraging genocide before the International Court of Justice. But the course has been set and it appears that the global community will do nothing to stop it.

The pastries in that shop are emblematic of how deep this pathology goes. A reminder of how ordinary people can become monsters when they are driven by murderous leaders. How a culture built on colonialism. racist supremacy, paranoia and militarism can so easily strip away the humanity of those they oppress. And how an innocent treat can be turned into a thorn of sadistic cruelty.

Kenn Orphan, May 2025

the most depraved crime of the 21st century

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We are all witness to the most depraved crime of the 21st century, as the Israeli blockade of Gaza enters its 65th day. No food, no medications, no fuel, no humanity.

Children and babies are the hardest hit, with mothers struggling to produce milk for their newborns. And this is punctuated with daily attacks by Israeli airstrikes and drones. Attacks which shred, burn and bury flesh, both young and old.

This crime has its parallels in history. It is straight out of the colonial settler playbook. White European settlers employed it in North America by slaughtering millions of buffalo, a staple in the diet of Indigenous peoples. They knew it would lead to starvation. That was the point.

And we saw it when the Nazis starved thousands in concentration camps and in the Warsaw Ghetto. The goal was to work as many people to death. And if that didn’t work, they would be denied food to hasten the process.

Hunger is a horrible way to die. For children, it is perhaps the worst. Many succumb to marasmus, which is an extreme immunodeficiency of vitamins and minerals that usually leads to life threatening infections. Others die of kwashiorkor, which is a severe lack of protein leading to a massive build up in fluids (edema) and an enlarged fatty liver. This is why you see starving children with distended bellies. It is a visual that implies they are well fed when, in actuality, their bodies are shutting down.

Some apologists claim that Hamas is preventing food from reaching civilians. But there is not a shred of evidence to prove this. On the contrary, there is a veritable mountain of evidence that demonstrates that Israel is implementing the blockade as collective punishment. In fact, many Israeli politicians have admitted this openly. And this is a war crime under international law.

So, where is the international community? Where is the West’s vaunted commitment to human rights? The sad answer is that the West is a hollow husk of empty platitudes. It is no longer in possession of a conscience and its own laws and statutes have been rendered meaningless. It is now driven by racism and avarice.

This is what genocide looks like. This is what annihilation looks like. And everyone of us in the West, every single one of us, is complicit in it unless we speak out against this now.

Kenn Orphan, May 2025

Even the Land Knows

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As fires rage, Israel has declared a national emergency. And it has requested assistance from other countries as it attempts to extinguish the rapidly spreading blazes. In fact, the Jerusalem District Fire Department Commander, Shmulik Friedman, said this was “perhaps the largest fire ever in the country.” Several neighbourhoods have been evacuated around Jerusalem. And the main highway was shutdown while many people abandoned their vehicles and fled on foot.

Unsurprisingly, notorious war criminal, Itamar Ben Gvir, is blaming Palestinian Israelis for setting them. Even if this is true, these wildfires would never have taken off with this speed and ferocity unless there was something else going on.

Years ago, I read how the Jewish National Fund planted trees over the ruins of Palestinian villages following the Nakba. Villages that had been violently emptied of their inhabitants by Zionist militias. It was a project that aimed to obscure the ethnic cleansing of Palestine as well as prevent any chance of return for refugees, a right under international law.

But the JNF did not plant indigenous trees. They planted trees they thought would look more European, severely impacting native biodiversity and increasing the risk of wildfires in an ever warming climate. And this underscores the ultimate failure of any colonial settler project. You cannot claim indigeneity and then attempt to expunge any trace of indigenous life from the land without grave consequences.

As fires consume parts of Israel, it continues to reign death down on Gaza. Tens of thousands of civilians, including thousands of children, have been buried under rubble, blown apart and burned to death. Millions face starvation imposed by Israel. Gaza has been turned into a graveyard. So, it may be difficult to muster up any sympathy for the perpetrator as it battles these wildfires.

One could only hope that more Israelis would make the connection. That they would see and understand the consequences of decades of ethnic cleansing, apartheid and now genocide. The colonial settler project has always been built on lies. And deadly ones.

Even the land understands this.

Kenn Orphan, May 2025

Palestine existed. Palestine exists. And the Palestinians will not be erased

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Apartheid and genocide apologists are fond of repeating the lie that “Palestine never existed” or that there is no such thing as Palestinians. But in “Palestine: a Four Thousand Year History” by historian Nur Masalha, the long history of the region is detailed. The Greek historian Herodotus wrote about a district in Syria. It was called Palaistinê and it was between Phoenicia (modern day Lebanon) and Egypt in the 5th century BCE. From the 2nd to 4th centuries AD, the Romans referred to it as a province called Roman Palestine. The Ottoman and British Empires also called the region Palestine. Even early Zionists referred to it as Palestine when discussing plans to colonize it.

The insatiable colonial impulse to purge Indigenous history isn’t anything new. We have seen this in the Americas, where white European settlers attempted to eradicate Indigenous cultural identity and history. The Spaniards razed temples to the ground to build cathedrals on top of them. The British burned villages. The Americans and the Canadians forbade Native peoples speaking their languages and practicing their religions.

The erasure of Indigenous history is key to justifying a project of violent subjugation, ethnic cleansing and annihilation. In this new narrative, the settlers are cast as the true victims. A “civilized” people trying to tame a wild land. A “villa in the jungle” surrounded by rapacious beasts. It must tell itself and the world this lie in order to rationalize its actions.

This is why Gaza has been systematically leveled. Why its historic landmarks, buildings, ancient mosaics and markets, museums, libraries and universities have been blown up or burned down. It isn’t fighting a war, it is demoralizing a people by attempting to nullify their identity. Like the people who live there, these buildings and places represent historical truth. And the colonial settler cannot tolerate the existence of those damning reminders.

No matter how much destruction it causes, the historical record is clear. Palestine existed. Palestine exists. And the Palestinians will not be erased, even though this genocidal campaign is trying its hardest to do just that.

Kenn Orphan, April 2025

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

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.

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