In Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
the Evil Witch
has a magic mirror
of which she asks each day
“Mirror Mirror on the wall
Who’s the fairest of them all”
Imagine if we could each have a mirror
one that took our words
and repeated them to us
as though they were the words of others
applied to us
so that we might experience their impact
understand their context
understand their power
walk in the other’s shoes.
Imagine, if you will
Abu Obeida speaking,
as he writes a message on an artillery shell,
referring to death and destruction
in Gaza and the West Bank
“It’s an entire nation out there that is responsible. It is not true, this rhetoric about civilians who were not aware or not involved. It is absolutely not true”
If you read reports from the achord centre
you might believe it were so.
Imagine if the Daily Telegraph, the Washington Post or Al Jazeera
published a poll
showing that the vast majority of the respondents
a full 82%
were supportive of the forced expulsion from their country
of a people of a particular ethnicity
or that nearly half of all respondents
a full 47%
agreed with the statement that
“when conquering an enemy city, [the army] should act in a manner similar to the way the Israelites acted when they conquered Jericho under the leadership of Joshua, namely, to kill all its inhabitants”?
Just imagine!
Yet you can read just those results in Haaretz.
Imagine Putin, Kim Jong Un, Miguel Diaz-Canel or Gastova Petro
at the podium
announcing an attack by his forces
smiling and giggling, saying
“…it was amazing…nobody was killed…and on the other side, a lot of people were killed…Americans, mostly Americans”.
There would be outrage.
Yet when such statements are made of Cubans and Venezuelans?
Marco Rubio stands
before the mirror in Oman
and hears the voice of Iran’s Araghchi
repeating his own words back to him
“In order for talks to actually lead to something meaningful, the United States will have to include the range of their ballistic missiles, their sponsorship of terror organisations, and the treatment of their own people”
All legitimate concerns.
To those who witness last week’s trillion dollar military expenditure
events in Minneapolis
deaths in immigration prisons
the mass incarceration of blacks and Latinos,
these issues would seem real, valid.
POTUS stands before the mirror
admiring his own image
and hears
“I want two things: number one, no nuclear and number two, stop killing protesters”.
Such words spoken to the owner of the largest stockpile in the world
might have meaning, when
spoken to someone who decries “bad publicity” from protester deaths,
but not the deaths,
Whose deputy, when asked if an apology is due to the family of those killed
by their domestic terrorism thugs
can but shrug
and ask rhetorically
“for what?”
Imagine the Ayatollah
bombing a city into ruins
then stating:
“We won’t let them rebuild … Nothing moves, and what moves – dies. That’s all. And is attacked and annihilated”
Or
vOf course, outrage would rightly follow
armadas would assemble
Regime change would be called for
(and the CIA instructed).
But when it is Bezalel Smotrich?
as he supports the blockage of aid
the razing of Gaza,
even cemeteries and war graves bulldozed,
to create “real estate opportunities”
as he approves the illegal annexation of the West Bank
stands by and smirks at the violence of thugs and murderers, civilian and IDF,
stands by as more 1,000 Palestinians in the West Bank are murdered?
in some macabre parallel, nearly as many as were killed 7 October 2023?
Silence.
Penny Wong acknowledges
“The anger is understandable”
Indeed, it is.
But action?
Never action.
