A Letter to The Fallen Children of Gaza

BY IMAM ZAID SHAKIR

February 21, 2024 at 7:51 am

To my young Palestinian brothers and sisters, the fallen children of Gaza, you continue to die
because those capable of stopping the massacre instead repeat, like drunk parrots, “Israel has a
right to defend herself.” To “defend” herself against you children who never had a chance to
grow to defend yourselves against the maniacal murderers masquerading as moral men. Rest
assured, their morality will prove as putrid, empty, and worthless as a rotten egg, withered, like
a raison in the sun.

Today, they laugh as they bomb schools, colleges, universities, mosques, churches, hospitals,
clinics, house after house, home after home, block after block. They laugh at the babies
separated from the incubators. They laugh at the people slowly dying in the ICUs after the
generators have been bombed. They laugh as they strip men naked and parade them in the
streets. They laugh as they bulldoze cemeteries, not even allowing your deceased to rest in
their graves. They laugh as they watch their government sponsored snuff films. They laugh as
they mock the call to prayer. They laugh as they destroy everything in their paths, except
Hamas. They laugh, O how they laugh!

Tomorrow, however, they won’t be laughing for your voices, rising from the grave, will haunt
them. They will find no rest, for your voices will stalk them. You will speak from the grave,
echoing an ancient refrain, For what sin was she killed? For what transgression was he
murdered? For what reason were they exterminated? There will be no credible answer for your
voices will silence them. Your voices will silence them, and the long stare of your innocent eyes
will penetrate to the very core of their vacuous souls. Their vile deeds will be known, and they
will be forced to own them.

This will be long after the American-made bombs cease falling from the American-made planes;
long after the American-made helicopters stop firing the American-made rounds into the
innocent bodies of Palestinian children, ripping them to shreds; long after American diplomatic
cover reveals itself as the patched, ragged, worn out, moth-eaten blanket that it is; long after
the blood and tears have dried; long after Bibi, Biden, Blinken, and the minions they command
are stripped of the smug, Nimrodic arrogance that leads them to believe it is they who
determine who lives or dies. When you speak, the laughter will cease. The nightmares will start.
The sleepless nights will seem like an eternity. The drugs and alcohol will then flow like the
rivers of Palestinian blood leaching into the Gazan soil. Finally, the state the politicians claim to
have a right to defend will be lost in the morass of its fictious origins – “A land without a people
for a people without a land.” It will be then that the “people without a land” will be forced to
grapple with a question asked long ago by one of their most honest brothers, Alfred Lilienthal,
“What Price Israel?”

Rest in peace, fallen children of Gaza.

© 2024 New Islamic Directions