Christmas Day in Gaza, 2023

It is Christmas in Gaza and the Israelis have bombed

Another refugee camp, Al Maghazi,

And killed over seventy people. Yesterday

It was Jabalia camp for the fourth time,

And they sent in bulldozers to crush the tents

Where people were sleeping since the buildings were flattened,

And the bulldozers ran over the sleeping bodies

And buried living and dead together in the dirt,

Passing backwards and forwards over the bodies

So nobody would recognize their loved ones

Even if they dug them up. Israel’s crimes

Make all the cruelties of the past seem like benevolence.

Is it normal for a people who have suffered a genocide

To inflict genocide on others with such glee?

How they have learned from their persecutors — but what lessons?

Two days ago they went into apartment buildings

Rounded up all the people, separated the men

And shot them all in front of their families,

Then threw grenades among the women and children.

They took away their bodies to deny them burial.

Last week they raided a hospital, shot all the doctors

And the patients, took away the director

And tortured him till he confessed to being

A Hamas commander. Now they have the evidence

That all hospitals are Hamas command posts

And should be razed to the ground, with all the people

Sheltering inside buried under the rubble!

For months they have played sadistic games with fear.

They ordered people to move from north Gaza to the centre.

Then they bombed the buildings in the centre. Then they told them

To move south. Then they razed most buildings in the south.

And all the while the Americans and the British

Egg them on: Go on, defend yourselves,

You have the right to defend yourselves against

Terrorist children and terrorist women! Finish the job!

We won’t allow a ceasefire till you have!

Remember the forty beheaded babies! (Even though

Only two babies died that day, shot in crossfire

By Israeli bullets, as the Israeli army

Turned a brilliant military attack on their bases

Into a terrorist attack by shooting their own people,

And firing Hellfire missiles at cars and Kibbutzim.)

The Israeli army is too scared to fight Hamas

In their tunnels, so they bomb families in houses,

Hospitals, schools, churches (all cowards are sadists!)

Twenty thousand civilians killed, plus five thousand

Buried under the rubble, ten thousand children,

Massacred like the innocents killed soon after

The baby was born in Bethlehem on this day.

How shameful that people who profess to revere

That baby as divine have gone over to his enemies,

Applaud the massacre, arm Herod’s soldiers, and praise

Their right to defend themselves against wicked babies.

They do not understand the evil sect

That has taken over America. Biden, Blinken,

Nuland, Sullivan, Kirby, Austin, the crucifiers

Of ten thousand babies, are leading America

Into hell, from which there is no escape.

Michael Antony