Tag Archives: genocide

Mike Huckabee and the Evangelical Cult of Death

1 Reply

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

Pinkwashing Genocide

Leave a reply

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.

Biden lied and people died. Thousands of people.

Leave a reply

Some may be confused or even shocked why many of us simply don’t care about Joe Biden’s healthcare issues. It is not that we wish ill health for anyone. It is that we simply don’t care about the health of a man who actively and enthusiastically supported, funded and aided a genocide.

Biden bypassed congress to sell weapons to Israel as it was decimating Gaza. He was not forced by the Republicans to do this. He did it himself. And this was a flagrant violation of US law. Because even then, there was enormous evidence that Israel was committing war crimes and atrocities. In fact, nine officials from Joe Biden’s administration admitted openly that he was never “working tirelessly for a ceasefire” despite his constant instance that he was.

Biden, Kamala Harris and former Secretary of State, Antony Blinken did everything they could to help Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu in his murderous rampage, even though he frequently expressed his adoration of Donald Trump. And even as most Democratic voters vehemently opposed Biden’s support for Israel.

Even former Israeli Ambassador to the United States, Michael Herzog, admitted this: “God did the State of Israel a favor that Biden was the president during this period, because it could have been much worse. We fought [in Gaza] for over a year, and the administration never came to us and said, ‘ceasefire now.’ It never did. And that’s not to be taken for granted.”

State Department lawyer Stacy Gilbert, a 20-year veteran, resigned after the Biden administration falsified reports on Israel in order to avoid consequences from the Leahy Act, which forbids providing military aid to a nation involved in gross and verifiable human rights violations and atrocities. The report falsely stated that there was “insufficient evidence” linking U.S. arms to specific human rights violations. But it also said that the State Department did not “currently assess that the Israeli government is prohibiting or otherwise restricting the transport or delivery of US humanitarian assistance” in Gaza. It was obvious to everyone this was a blatant lie.

Even before the genocide, the Biden administration failed to hold Israel to account for the assassination of Palestinian American journalist for Al Jazeera, Shireen Abu Akleh. According to a shocking documentary by Zeteo, the Biden administration and the Israeli government did everything they could to cover up what happened on that terrible day to Shireen.

Ironically, Biden aided a regime that destroyed the last cancer hospital in Gaza. Scores of cancer patients will now likely die painful deaths without urgent and necessary treatment. In contrast, Biden will undoubtedly receive the best care possible from a state-of-the-art facility in the US.

So, for those that want to wish Biden well, by all means do it. But do not try to shame those of us who have no interest in participating in such niceties.

Biden lied and people died. Thousands of people.

In fact, they are still dying.

Kenn Orphan, May 2025

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

Leave a reply

“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

Leave a reply

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

Leave a reply

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

Leave a reply

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

2 Replies

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

The Charade of Death

2 Replies

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

Leave a reply

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