Paedocide

from deported Flotilla activists
we hear testimony about
the abuse of a womanchild,
Greta Thurnberg,
about photos
taken of her
as she is made to crawl
as she is made
to kiss the Israeli flag
while IOF soldiers
encouraged by their officers
sit back and raucously revel

and we are reminded
that these are the Doctor Frankensteins
who created
the Jeffrey Epsteins
whose job it was
to abuse children
as a means to an end
for their honeytrap war

these are not paedophiles
but committers of paedocide

these are not paedophiles
but the same as those
who use children in Palestine
as deliberate sniping targets

and
if they treat Greta
as an entertaining trophy
making her drink toilet water
we shudder to think
how they are treating
the grandchild
of Nelson Mandela
who had the prescience and the audacity
to say to the world:
“South Africa will not be free
as long as Palestine is not free”

Jekyll and Hyde in Palestine

On July 27, 2025, Captain Ibrahim Traore, President of Burkina Faso, was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize but three days later he publicly rejected the nomination as “a political trap and a mirror reflecting power politics”

“You can cut all the flowers but you can’t stop the Spring from coming”
From the chat as the Marinette was still sailing on

two ships from the Global Flotilla
the Mikeno
and
the Marinette
crossed the red line
drawn illegally
by Israel
in Gaza’s waters

those rickety vessels
carrying humanitarian aid
proved
it is the zionist blockade
that is as fragile
as the Titanic

and today
five words
“Israel must stop the bombing”
pronounced
by Bibi’s staunch friend,
the US President,
prove
another red line
has been crossed
in an old alliance
and
even if those words
were retracted tomorrow
as the tables turn
between tussling criminals
– they cannot be unsaid

in the countdown
to October tenth
when the Nobel nominations
are due to be announced
our President
squinting his eyes on the wrong prize
prefers the title of Doctor Jekyll
to the banal mister
of his genocidal alter ego

do the twins-in-genocide
not see
a final red line has been crossed,
a line laid down from the streets of the world
to the waves of the sea
by the People –
the only ones who can and will decide?

The Palestinian Eye

“et l’oeil etait dans la tombe
et regardait Cain

and the eye was in the tomb
and it was watching Cain”

The end of Victor Hugo’s 1853 poem “The Conscience”
depicting the eye of Conscience following Cain
after his murder of his brother, Abel.

In tribute to the Flotilla boat called “Conscience”

at last
even Trump
let slip that there is
a genocide
in Gaza
but that was long after
world opinion
decided
that was the matter

the zionist aim
remains
scholasticide
targeting
educators and poets
and
bombing all the universities
but failing
to prevent under-tent
academies

the zionist playbook
highlights
the need for
mediacide
and Israel will enter
the Guiness Book of Records
for the number
of assassinated journalists
but even the children
have become
journalists of themselves

the IOF deliberately commits
ecocide
but Palestinian survivors
are replanting
the uprooted olive trees

the deletion of Gaza City
is tantamount to
historicide
but the people of Palestine
write history every hour
with their surviving hands

the Israeli army
in its despair
attempts to lure whole families
to betray the Resistance
or else they will fall to
familicide
but ancestral families would rather
die

paedocide
is routinely committed
as children
become the bulls’ eyes
of IOF snipers
eager to practice
on the smallest
of moving targets

Israel
has run the gamut
the entire spectrum
the whole cards’ deck
of inhuman destruction
and yet
wherever Israel goes
the Palestinian eye
of Conscience
follows

Bibi’s vacuum fills the world

“There is no such thing as emptiness”
Poet and activist Thich Nhat Hanh

Thay
taught us
that there is no vacuum
that an empty glass
is full of the air
we breathe

watching the footage
of the United Nations Assembly hall
as most of the world’s member delegates
leave the room
booing Netanyahu at the podium
as he waits to begin his genocidal speech
teaches us
that the slow dignified
universal withdrawal
is filling
outside on the grass
a People-blown glass

A Nobel Peace prize for the Global Sumood Flotilla

“Where is our collective heart?”

Alice Walker

the Global Sumood Flotilla
does not only keep unfurling
like the relentless high tides
of the sea,
it has flooded
the minds
of the world
with the breaking waves
of news
that no dam can contain

from airport
to airport
the world over
deported peaceful activists
take the mic
to say:
the story is not us
the story is not about our torture
the story lies in Gaza
and we are merely bringing it back

they bring us the fact
that 500 children are detained
and judged by Israeli military courts

they bring us the sight
of the names of Palestinian prisoners
written in blood
on Ketziot’s dungeon walls

they bring us the lived-in knowledge
of cages
where they were told
there are no doctors for animals

they bring us
the tip of the iceberg
of what Gaza
is going through
and standing for

they bring us
live testimony –
the taste and the sweat
the sound and fury
of a genocide
many still deny

let those who have been sailing on
and on
to break the siege
and then returned
to let us know –
may they receive the Nobel Peace Prize
if only because the dollars
can help mend
their broken boats

The Other Leverage we have is Steadfastness

according to a carefully crafted
narrative
we are told
the Palestinian liberation movements
negotiating
the ceasefire
will lose
the only leverage they have
once they free the Israeli hostages

the people of Palestine
on an imposed food diet
before man-made famine
are now being forced
into a political fast
of limited leverage

but
through their liberators
Gaza responds
the other leverage they have
is
steadfastness

Gaza responds
the other leverage they have
is
the knowledge
the silence of the world
has been shattered

Gaza responds
that there is leverage
in the waves of Flotillas sailing
on and on
until they reach Gaza’s shore

Gaza responds
that mothers
are giving birth
to the first babies of the ceasefire
knowing full well
their new descendents
may be turned into the leverage
of a resumed People’s war

and
even Gaza’s youth
now freely filling the destroyed streets
have learned
at the feet of their grandmothers
that leverage will always be theirs –
an ancestral leverage
wrought
in pain
with their bare hands
just as they were taught
to make a kite
to tell the story
of a Poet slain

History
acted upon
is
leverage supreme

Fighting Words

Journal of the Communist Workers league

Paedocide | Jekyll and Hyde in Palestine | The Palestinian Eye | Bibi’s vacuum fills the world | A Nobel Peace prize for the Global Sumood Flotilla | The Other Leverage we have is Steadfastness

Poems by renowned Black leader and activist Julia Wright