Poetry: Ashraf AboArafe
O leaders of the “sisterhood,”
are you not weary
of statements scattered
like ashes on the faces of martyrs?
Have you not tired of words
that build no bridge,
that halt no bullet,
that cannot dry a mother’s tears
spilled among the ruins of her home?
You craft speeches
draped in polished phrases,
you cry “genocide,” “war crime,”
yet you clasp the killer’s hand,
rolling out the crimson carpet
for those who shoot truth in the chest.
O leaders,
when cameras are slaughtered with their keepers,
when a journalist is killed for writing one line—
is “we condemn” enough?
Do conference tears suffice
while you hand your nations’ keys
to a foreign grip?
Look!
From the far West to the South,
peoples rise with no profit, no gain,
they flood the streets with one cry: Enough!
While you record in meeting halls:
“We request, we urge, we denounce.”
Brazil refused an envoy of slaughter,
Norway stripped power from a company,
Germany broke its Holocaust chains,
France moved faster than your reckoning.
And you—what have you done?
Opened your ports,
sealed new deals,
left Gaza’s blood to stain the sea,
let the West Bank be swallowed,
let Jerusalem dissolve
into an endless exile.
Do not say again: we seek to end the war.
For he who truly seeks it
does not welcome the invader with smiles,
does not embrace their envoy,
does not pave the streets of investment
that feed the occupier’s guns.
Rest, then—
rest with your hollow words.
For you are the engine of this genocide,
its silent guardians,
until the day you choose otherwise.
