Never Again

extension for boycotting Israel:

[Gaza Notifications @gazanotice]

🚨A heartbreaking farewell to 4 year old Zeina Al-Safadi and her 14 year old sister Lana, killed alongside their father when an Israeli strike hit their family apartment in Gaza City.

[Focused 🧘🏾‍♂️👁️ @xonphused]

This is real love, not that fake Christian love that comes with conditions.

[ALUTHEDON @Mbakaza4L]

These. Are. Concentration. Camps.

[William Peynsaert @PeynsaertBill]

A dying mum in Gaza: '‘Am not sorry I lose you when you are nine years old, I am grateful I could be a part of your life for nine years, I wouldn’t give away those nine years for anything in this world.’
‘Do you remember when I used to put a kettle on the stove with eucalyptus leaves and mint leaves to help you breathe better, my heart of my heart?’

He lies and says that he does, that he for sure does. And moments later it’s not a lie anymore, because some vague memory of that black kettle on the stove and the steam rising to the ceiling does flow to him.

He can hear she has trouble speaking. Something is pressing on her chest. He can’t see her, but he knows. He knows the sound of his mum’s voice when she is in pain. She sounds way too cheerful.

When he was 3 his mum tried to move an old matrass. Her idea was to saw the matrass in pieces and then take it down by stairs. He remembers how seconds later his father carried him and not the matrass down. The springs in the matrass had flipped out and one had hit her in her foot. There was lots of blood. They took him to an aunt and an uncle and went to the hospital. The aunt and the uncle warmed their house with coal and he remembers sitting on a green little chair that was a bit charred from once standing too close to the hot stove. His mum has a permanent scar on her foot. He doesn’t remember if it’s the left foot or the right foot, but he knows that because of the stitches it looks like the pound sign on a keyboard.

It’s relatively warm outside. 18 degrees Celcius, but his mum is shaking. He can hear her teeth chatter, somewhere down there, under all this deformed material.

One of the men puts a hand on his shoulder, but he pulls away, he doesn’t want pity or sympathy now. Compassion and attention from these men who are the biggest heroes in his eyes, make him go soft inside, and then he will start crying and he doesn’t want the last thing his mum hears in this world to be the sound of her son sobbing.

The worst is when she whimpers in pain. The sounds cut through him. He wishes he had some pulverizing gun so he could make the crumbled walls and the twisted steel vanish and he could get to her.

The men are still circling around what’s left of this once tall building to see if they have a way in, but without the proper tools they have no way to clear this much debris. These are huge concrete blocks with unwelcoming steel bars sticking out. Here and there you can put your arms between them, but there is no way through. Her voice is coming from about 5 meters down. It’s a miracle she has survived the collapse of such a big structure until now. One of the men is thinking out loud and coming up with theories as to how she could have ended up there when must have been somewhere on the fourth floor. One of the other men tell him to stop.

His three sisters are all almost certainly dead. One for sure, because his mum has confirmed that. His mum says she can see her head, squished, but definitely her head, but no trace of the rest of her body.

Even in these moments his mum says that Allah has chosen him to be saved. She says there is a plan for him, he needs to trust the plan and everything will be redeemed.

She says: ‘Am not sorry I lose you when you are nine years old, I am grateful I could be a part of your life for nine years, I wouldn’t give away those nine years for anything in this world.’

No matter how hard he tries now the tears break through.

‘My love is in you. Every kiss I gave you is in you. Every gentle touch is in you. Every kind word I spoke to you is a part of you. My love will always be in you. I will always be in you. Repeat these words to me, habibi, my heart’s treasure, repeat: My mother loved me dearly, I was worthy of her deepest love, I am worthy of all the good life has to offer.’

He repeats the words, though they sound strange to him, at least he tries to, but the tears make them come out in bits and pieces.

She says: ‘You will have a wife, you will have children, you will live. The creator will make right what others have made wrong. Do not burden yourself with thoughts of vengeance. Am only sorry now that I can’t hold you one last time. I so loved to hold you. We did eskimo kisses and it made you giggle. Ah, the sound of your giggles. I smile even now. I have been so blessed in my life, with you and your sisters, your beautiful sisters. What a blessing too that my parents went before me. Am not in pain, habibi, am not in pain. Your mum is not in pain.’

The sounds that follow indicate something quite different. No more words follow. A weird kind of subdued yelping. He has to muster all his strength, he is scared he will not produce a sound before it’s too late, but with the greatest effort he can open his choking. closed throat and wails ‘thank you, mum, thank you, mum please don’t go, please don’t go’

One of the rescue workers falls to his knees and slams the palms of his hands on the ground until they bleed. One of his colleagues drags him up and pushes the wailing man’s head against his chest. The man sobs uncontrollably.

The boy wonders why a man who has never met his mum is so sad that she is dying and it encourages him to let go, so now he starts scratching his face and also sobs, he is ashamed, but he sobs like never before. He can now, because no more sounds are coming. It’s done. He can’t see her, but he feels it, she is gone.

There is an iciness, a gaping void in his chest, every part of his body hurts. He was nowhere near the building when it happened. He was out playing soccer with other kids when it happened.

Now he wishes he had stayed home. He could have perished with them. There would be not this life of pain ahead of him now.

He has no idea where his father is. Six months ago he went with two other men from the neighbourhood to get sacks of flour from a nearby village where trucks had arrived. They disappeared without a trace, along with many other men. Nobody has received any news.

A crushing sense of aloneness follows. He’s as alone as can be. There is nobody who knows his history, his likes or dislikes. He has some friends his age here, but he wouldn’t know where to turn to now. He also feels burning injustice, because right about now their mothers are tucking them in and kissing them good night.

He sits for a very long time. He doesn’t know how long. In his head he keeps asking to be allowed to join his mothers and sisters. Eventually a voice says: ��Come now, you can stay with us.’ The boy realizes a rescue worker has been sitting quitely behind him the whole time, waiting to break the silence.

The man takes the boy to his own family.

The boy has been with them for six weeks.

He still hasn’t spoken any words, except once in his sleep.

It sounded like a question, a question filled with incredible happiness.

‘Mama?’

46. The stab that ends childhood

Ephraim is lying on the floor. In their sitting room. Staining the carpet. He’s asking for water in Arabic. He’s clutching at his uniform, as if he is too hot and wants to drop a few layers. Grandma does something you have never seen her do. She spits. It’s just sound and air, no actual spit flies around, but still. Grandpa goes to the kitchen. His daughter, your mum, asks if he is seriously going to give this grasshopper water.

Your mum likes to compare the invaders, the terrorists, to locusts. Like they are a Biblical plague. ‘If he dies on our floor we are in a world of trouble’, says grandpa. ‘We have always been in a world of trouble’, says grandma. She tells her husband to bring a knife from the kitchen. Grandma has lost more relatives at the hands of the grasshoppers than you can name. Before the latest mowing of the lawn it was 11. Mostly cousins. Six months ago it was already 23. Then she kinda lost track. And now there is an invader bleeding to death on the carpet and the carpet could very well be worth more money than the entire shack you and your family now live in. You’ve been displaced 9 times, but the carpet has always traveled with you. Uncle Badr in Memphis, Tennessee calls you and your family ‘carpetbaggers’. Probably some Tennessee thing. You wish you were with uncle Badr now. You are 12 years old.

Every day you wake up next to your six year old sister who asks, as soon as she opens her eyes: ‘Are we in heaven yet?’ Grandpa returns with a glass of water and no knife. Grandma says: ‘He was desperate to marry me, only to disappoint me’. Grandma didn’t speak like this before the earth and the windows and the walls started shaking and the streets started smelling like rotten cat food from all the dying. Grandma heads for the kitchen, but your mum stops her. You thought grandma was joking, but your mum and grandma start wrestling. Grandma is serious about getting that knife. You feel tears running down your cheeks. Your sister is banging her fists against her own head. You pull her arms down. It’s hard, that little girl is strong. Her knuckles are bloody again. She drops to the floor and starts kicking. You let her be. Grandpa tries to give the soldier water.

The word ‘why?’ escapes your lips. Grandpa shrugs and says nothing. He also doesn’t know. The soldier says thank you. He’s in bad shape. You have seen plenty of people dying. He has that look. His hands are wandering all over his body. Your mum calls it ‘tapping’. The dying start tapping. Maybe they are saying goodbye to their body that way. You have seen it enough times. That soldier is done for. ‘If he dies here, they will blame us. We should move him.’ You feel that by ‘we’, he means you and him. ‘But am a girl, he looks heavy’, you say. You curse that soldier for running this way. What was he thinking? Why is nobody coming for him? ‘We have to pull him out on the streets’, says grandpa. ‘Not now, I don’t want to do that to anyone. Later.’ You know that later means after he’s dead.

You imagine dragging a corpse out on the street. ‘There is more of them’, you say. ‘They will see us. They will see we dragged him, because of the blood. They are never going to just leave him behind, not even dead. It would be a PR defeat if he fell into our hands.’ War has been a constant throughout your short life, by now you know the rules of the game. Grandpa knows all this too, but he is panicking. His daughter is still wrestling his wife over a kitchen knife.

You can’t think of anything better than to run to your mum and grandma and breaking up their brawl by jumping on top of them. Out of fear of hurting you, they break it off. There is silence. Only broken by the gurgling sounds coming from the soldier. ‘He is drowning in his own blood’, says your mum, herself out of breath. ‘Best sound I’ve heard in years’, says grandma. And then it’s your 6 year old sister who sticks the soldier’s bayonet in his belly. ‘Stop!’

She means the sound, the commotion, everything.

47. She won’t make it through the night

As I am writing this I am 100 percent sure that somewhere under the rubble in Gaza there is at the very least one child younger than 6, wounded, cold, stuck, but alive. Some time this night that child will die. Its last thought will be about mum and dad and why mum and dad are not picking her up. If she is old enough to have learned how to pray she will be begging God over and over again to please get her out of this bubble of pain. She will be trembling, she will try to wiggle free and by doing so will scratch herself on sharp edges of rubble. She will feel hunger and most of all thirst. She will long for a glass of water like never before in her life. Nobody will come to bring her water. She will also feel the strange sensation of having one hand missing. When she moves her arm it feels eerily lighter now.

The wound will be covered by dust. There is so much pain she doesn’t know about all the places she is wounded. For example, her left ear is gone and she will die without ever noticing. The pain in other areas is much more demanding. Though she is bleeding some, she will die from a combination of dehydration and hypothermia. In the last stages of her ordeal she will mercifully start having visions of her parents and siblings as they are calling her to join them for dinner in her favorite restaurant, everyone smiling. In a few days rescue workers will finally drag her tiny mangled body out from under the debris. An aunt will receive the news and will drop the phone and collapse on her knees. The aunt will later that day read online that the bombing of Gaza is not as bad as the bombing of Dresden. The aunt will scratch herself till she bleeds, because she can’t take the world’s apathy, with its absurd focus on inane historical comparisons and the hammer blows of her grief. Last night I dreamt with my eyes open that a child pulled the covers off me. It felt intensely real. The dead children in Gaza are forcing me to look. The comfort and security I have spent my whole life building. It’s a hollow lie until all of us are safe

Written on the 6th of December 2023, the day quite a few European kids got gifts from Saint Nicholas

[JonnyUtd @Fx1Jonny]

Trump was born in 1946. He’s older than israel.

[Tired Peasant @HorrorGorl]

Never forget Jerry Seinfeld is a Pedophile

[JonnyUtd @Fx1Jonny]

How much more evidence do you need to see and hear before you realise we are run and owned by israel and zionists?!

The UK and America are occupied nations!

[Medea Benjamin @medeabenjamin]

Albania’s Flamingo Revolution to save Sazan Island is a reminder that people don’t have to accept secret deals made by politicians and billionaires. When communities organize, create, and resist together, even the most powerful can be challenged.

Long live the Flamingo Revolution.

[Nathan J Robinson @NathanJRobinson]

New Yorker exposé of Andrew Tate is even more horrifying than what we already knew. According to it, he raped and beat a 15-year old girl and bought her off with teddy bears. Tate was promoted by Tucker Carlson, Don Trump Jr., and Musk suggested he should be UK prime minister

[الكسندرا ميراي @LexiAIexander]

British people who are sleeping through this will regret it. What they did to them can and will be done to you

[Abier @abierkhatib]

lol who did this

[Neena Jha @DrNeenaJha]

No words needed 💔

[Jackson Hinkle 🇺🇸 @jacksonhinkle]

Someone please buy her a drink 👏

[Ramy Abdu| رامي عبده @RamAbdu]

“Around 30 settlers attacked us, beat us with clubs, and opened fire,” says Sanad Zahran, describing the settler assault that targeted them this afternoon in Deir Abu Mish’al, northwest of Ramallah.

[comra @comrawire]

Protesters breached police barricades in Manila, advancing toward the US Embassy. The demonstrators are demanding the removal of US troops and opposing the expansion of foreign military bases in the country.

[Emelia🌙 @Emelia8z0]

No words

[liam cunningham @liamcunningham1]

This is Zionism

[David Miller @Tracking_Power]

All pretence cast aside. A vicious attack on the Anti-Zionist movement by the British state acting for the Zionist regime in defence of genocide.

Shameful.
#FreeTheFilton4

[Nicholas M. Kimani @SankarasLawyer]

Mind you Israel refused to let her leave for 3 months causing the amputations

[The Palestinian @InsiderWorld_1]

If you stand with Dr. Hussam Abu Safieh, Reply with your country's flag،