Where the world is going? The US has imposed sanctions against three Palestinian human rights groups that asked the International Criminal Court to investigate Israel over allegations of genocide in Gaza.

The three groups are the Gaza-based Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, Al Mezan Center for Human Rights, and the Ramallah-based Al-Haq.

The groups are engaged in documenting alleged Israeli war crimes in Gaza over the past 23 months. Sanctions will make it harder for international human rights organisations to cooperate with the groups.

What is the logic behind this? The same logic as the US tariff on India?

I’ve stopped following all these nonsenses. However, for those unaware - the ICC’s three-judge panel said it had found reasonable grounds to believe that Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant (his former defence secretary), “bear criminal responsibility for the war crime of starvation as a method of warfare and the crimes against humanity of murder, persecution, and other inhumane acts”. 

700 days passed but when the human suffering in Gaza will stop and when those 20 hostages will reach home, no one knows.

Someone has mailed me two poems – one by Haya Abu Nasser, a poet, who has been internally displaced four times in Gaza since October 2023 and writing poems while living in a tent and experiencing first-hand Gaza’s grievous losses caused by Israel’s genocidal violence. Right now, she is said to be in Malaysia after she managed to cross the Rafah border. 

At the Cliff of Death

What is our life but a melancholic play
on a stage of blood
with an audience of drowsy eyes?
In the background,
blues music chases the ears.
Footfalls sprint back and forth,
like a bow across violin strings.

Gloomy crowds resonate with wails:
where should we flee away
from the relentless drones?
People are escaping like shadows;
on their backs, the boulder of Sisyphus.
They are climbing the cliff of death.
Their fingers are outstretched,
reaching for the sprouting branches,
against the dark abyss.

Death is extending a hand of redemption,
with a forceful yank.
When I retract my hand,
he seizes my head and gazes into my eyes,
urging me to tread in his path.

At the cliff of death,
I see myself suspended by a noose,
swaying gracefully with the wind.
I am as free as a firefly glowing in a cave,
a smile on my azure face.
My hands are released,
like an ancient oak tree,
dancing a tango with the breeze.

My soul is an immigration ship,
where death waits by the sea,
craving more visitors.

On the other bank of the cliff,
Death stands alone.
He is dressed in a white suit,
arranging a bouquet with meticulous care,
to welcome his new bride.

Another poet Refaat Alareer (1979–2023) was a professor at the Islamic University of Gaza who was killed by an IDF airstrike on December 6, 2023, along with his brother, nephew, his sister, and three of her children. The poem is translated by D. P. Snyder who is a bilingual writer, poet, and translator. 

If I Must Die

If I must die,
 you must live
 to tell my story
 to sell my things
 to buy a piece of cloth
 and some strings,
 (make it white with a long tail)
 so that a child, somewhere in Gaza
 while looking heaven in the eye
 awaiting his dad who left in a blaze —
 and bid no one farewell
 not even to his flesh
 not even to himself —
 sees the kite, my kite you made, flying up above,
 and thinks for a moment an angel is there
 bringing back love.
 If I must die
 let it bring hope,
 let it be a story.