This is the world you are living in

If you still haven’t woken up — you’re next.

Go back to October 6, 2023. Think about all the things you knew to be true. The decency of men. The relevance of international institutions. The belief that there was no way in hell a genocide would be live-streamed for almost two years straight and no one would step in to stop it. That a genocidal regime would be able to completely blockade all water, food, medicines, and other essentials from an already besieged population — reducing the bodies of children and adults to skin and bones. That a regime would kill journalists in broad daylight then post graphics with their photos and names, boasting about slaughtering them. Did you imagine that you’d be watching countless videos of starved people lining up for food for hours, only to be thrown scraps and then forced to navigate a hail of bullets, tank shells, assault drones, and sniper fire to secure a packet of mould-infested bread — if they were lucky to survive the relentless fire, that is — and yet that grotesque spectacle would go on for months? Did you imagine watching hospitals being bombed with rigged robots and assault drones, their doctors and patients picked off by snipers? And doctors and nurses and patients abducted, tortured, and raped to death? How about starved infants, reduced to such weakness that they couldn’t even cry? What would you say if someone told you that there would be drones that will mimic the sound of crying babies to draw out concerned human beings only for that drone to then shoot indiscriminately to kill most of the concerned human beings who came out of their tents to save what they thought was a crying baby in need of help? Would you call it a bizarre film script that would get its writers laughed out of the producer’s office? How about being told of a military that left behind bombs shaped like food cans so that when the emaciated children pick them up as a welcome treat to sate their days-long hunger it blows up right in their faces and reduces them to charred meat? “Outlandish?” “Unbelievable?” “No way in hell is that real?” That the leadership of a country would label a people it has completely besieged for nearly two decades as Amalek, human animals, cockroaches — only fit for extermination, for total annihilation? Surely, that kind of language would draw censure from international institutions — you would think. Wouldn’t you? The international community would not tolerate such dehumanising language, you would tell yourself if such a dystopian thought even crossed your mind. Isn’t it? What would you think if told that the same leadership would openly broadcast plans to force everyone in the besieged enclave to leave their destroyed homes and move to a war-torn country in Africa with which they have no ties of blood or ethnicity? That you’d witness non-stop footage of sons carrying their dead parents on bare shoulders because no vehicles are available; a son carrying his dead father on a bicycle; a mother, disconsolate because her children were martyred on an empty stomach; people burying their loved ones in hospital courtyards and in the middle of playgrounds. There was an army that raided cemeteries for corpses — to steal fresh organs. There were scenes of bombed and hollowed-out, yet still alive, children whom doctors can do nothing for, except watch die slow, excruciating deaths in the absence of any medicines or equipment to try to save them. On October 6, you would have labelled all these scenarios the sick imaginings of a perverted mind that gets off on human suffering. Isn’t it?

But these are not the sick imaginings of a perverted mind that gets off on human suffering. You have witnessed all of these scenes live for nearly two years, every single day beginning October 7, 2023. What you have also seen is a huge group of people who justify all of this. All of this. They say that the journalists are terrorists. The inconsolable mother was feeding a terrorist. The father is a terrorist. The doctors are terrorists. The children are soon-to-be terrorists. The houses are terrorist hideouts. The hospitals are terror hubs. The journalist tents hide terror tunnels underneath. The schools train children into terrorism. The universities teach their students how to make bombs. The poets write to incite terrorism. They tell you there is no hunger despite no food having been allowed in the besieged enclave for months on end. They say that the famished children are not famished — they have genetic illnesses. You have seen the media you trusted repeat all these lies to you as if it’s the truth — the only truth. You have witnessed your politicians justifying the criminals carrying out these atrocities right in front of your eyes. You have seen the conscientious beaten black and blue by the police for protesting these atrocities. You have witnessed your friends or children being abducted from their campuses for standing against a genocide. You have seen them being booted out of their institutions for displaying basic human decency. You have seen your colleagues get fired from their jobs for opposing a genocide on social media. You have seen those protesting inhumane atrocities being labelled as antisemites or worse. Your governments have made it illegal to stand up for human rights, to cry out against the indiscriminate slaughter of fellow human beings, to protest the poisoning of water wells, to help the needy, the poor, the grief-stricken. You are not allowed to feel empathy, to feel emotions. You are not allowed to be human. Your humanity is being snatched away from you — with every person you see going up in flames. They want you to watch the latest on your streaming device, cheer for the guy who can run the fastest, hit a ball the longest, sing the sweetest — and, more perversely, the most profane — while they bring down a house full of children on top of their heads. They want you to get flawless skin while they peel the skin off young girls and boys with scorching fire. They want you to get your dream dress for the next date while they bury alive children dressed in their Eid best. They want you to buy the latest supplement to prolong your life — while every day, they ensure more than a hundred people will not live to see another day. And they are doing all of this in plain sight. This is no conspiracy theory. If you have been paying attention, you have witnessed all of this live over the past 22 months. And they have convinced you that you are powerless to stop it.

This is the post-October 7 world you are living in. If you still haven’t woken up — you’re next.

---

If you find value in my work, please consider supporting it with a paid subscription here or on Ko-fi or Patreon. It’s the only way I can continue writing. Thank you.

---