Feeding Gaza, and Identifying With Every Being
One Abominable Year Later Of Absolutely Apocalyptic Aggressions
In Rafah, where they ran over Saint Rachel…
I have never seen such godforsaken horror, this unfathomable nightmare, whose reality eliminates any horror movie reassurance—“this is not just a movie”—we must tell ourselves, over and over again, as words themselves are feeble captors of this apocalypse.
The tortured screams of widows lamenting their lost babies hurtling through our cross-Atlantic phone speakers without end. A cruel one-way radio, forcing us to watch & listen as the helpless become more helpless, if they are not turned into shards of flesh and bone.
The ‘beheaded babies’ headlines of October 2023 are now an Orwellian full circle… the only headless children anyone has seen are the lifeless Palestinian torsos I saw yesterday, in between Russell Brand’s conversion to Christianity and an Instagram ad for colorful cookware. The stock photo dish was eerily Middle Eastern.
I want to mourn in silent respect and reverence for these innocent fallen cherubs.
But also, The Atlantic just said killing kids is okay.
And for some reason thousands of humans clicked a strange button with the intention to listen to what this drunken wannabe Bodhisattva has to say. So I feel compelled to put it as plainly and clearly as possible:
Stop killing the Palestinians.
The children, the women, and the men.
The father scraping in agony at the rubble covering the bodies of his most beloved little ones.
He deserves to live, too.
The Palestinian people are a beautiful, brotherly & sisterly, culinary, resilient culture. Every Palestinian I know personally is a beacon of friendship, inclusion, and joyful laughter. They want to live in peace with their new neighbors. And they want the past eight decades of violence to end. They want to sit under the shade of the olive trees their grandfathers planted.
And me, a cosmic cowboy in a faraway shady spot, believes they deserve it all.
May the shade of the bombs paid for by the taxes that come out of my bi-weekly direct deposits, transmute into the shade of those ancient olive trees—for every Palestinian who endures this unparalleled modern hell.
I see your beauty, and I join with you as another Mask of the One.
May all sentient beings be happy, free and at peace.
I wrote the above piece a few months ago during the Israeli military’s strikes on Rafah. Rafah is the Palestinian border town with Egypt where hundreds of thousands of Gazans were told to evacuate to, as it was considered “a safe zone”. If you aren’t aware of how it turned out, refugee tent cities were incinerated by fires from Israeli bombs paid for with American tax dollars. If the hundreds of Palestinian civilians murdered didn’t die by the explosions, they were taken by fire.
We’ve now hit one year since Hamas’ violent assault on Israel’s Nova music festival and several Israeli neighborhoods on the border of Gaza. Violence which I’ve condemned over, and over, and over again. Violence which Jewish-American scholar Norman Finkelstein has compared to Nat Turner’s Slave Rebellion. Referencing the pacifist, abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison when questioned about Nat Turner, Finkelstein offers a similar sentiment: ‘after so many agonizing years of brutal subjugation and dehumanization by force, what did you think would happen?’
Fundraiser Dinner in Austin on October 10th
With my dear friend, local activist and healer, Madeline Vu, I am co-producing a fundraiser relief dinner to help feed Gaza. It is a bittersweet mix of warmth and heartbreak.
We’ll have inspiring poets and delicious food—at a classic Austin loft space celebrating the beauty and resilience of the Palestinian people. And yet, our poetry gathering will take place one year and three days after the initial aggressions that created this apocalyptic hellscape with seemingly no end in sight.
In the first six months of the so-called “war”, Israel killed 15,000 children. For context, 500 children were killed by Russia in Ukraine in two years. The destruction in Gaza has been unfathomable. The Palestinian people have a right to live peacefully on their land, and they want to do so in harmony with their neighbors. While we condemn Hamas’ violence on October 7th, we condemn Israel’s violence the past 51 weeks, whose collective punishment against the entire population is a violation of international law. And we condemn Israel’s occupation of Palestine, the past 76 years. In Gaza, every university and every hospital have been bombed—with over 90% of its infrastructure destroyed since October 2023.
Israel’s far-right, ethno-nationalist leaders have not hidden their intentions to make Gaza unlivable; and with the aid of US tax dollars they are doing just that.
In supporting relief efforts, there are both high-level international humanitarian NGOs making an impact, which we admire; and there are grassroots mutual aid efforts on the ground supporting Palestinians as well. We’re raising money for the latter, The Sameer Project, which directly supports Palestinian families with food, water, tents, diapers, and other vital needs.
Please join us at Royal Blue Grocery on October 10th at 7pm.
We’ll have:
Poetry readings by Sara Bawany, Tane Ward, Isra Cheema, Bob Peck (me), Wajiha Sultana Rizvi, and Lilas Taha.
Bites by Wee’s Cozy Kitchen and sweets by Austin Kuih Co.
Palestinian goods for sale by Palestine Online Store, founded by Haithem El-Zabri.
Raffle prizes from local partners: Birds Barbershop, 3rd Eye Cacao, Earth Commons, EleMINT, Shelley Moon Designs, KG BBQ, and more...
Identifying With Every Being
Yesterday I posted the following quote from Thích Nhất Hạnh. The late great Zen Buddhist monk was able to walk the line between global grandfather of secular mindfulness and fearless antiwar activist hero. In his later years he showed us how to see the smile of a sunflower, and yet he hit the world stage in the 1960s courageously protesting the war in Vietnam—generating admiration from none other than Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. He humorously recounted the early years hearing bombs not far from his monastery in his native land: “It’s pretty hard to sit and meditate when there are bombs going off down the road.”
Thích Nhất Hạnh is the only human being to be nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize by MLK, modern America’s legend of spiritual peace and harmony. He writes,
“Continue practicing until you see yourself in the most cruel and inhumane political leader, in the most devastatingly tortured prisoner, in the wealthiest man, and in the child starving, all skin and bones.
Practice until you recognize your presence in everyone else on the bus, in the subway, in the concentration camp, working in the fields, in a leaf, in a caterpillar, in a dew drop, in a ray of sunshine.
Meditate until you see yourself in a speck of dust and in the most distant galaxy.”
Exhibiting the most psychedelic nature of nondual Zen, the great teacher reminds us of our inherent Oneness with All Creation.
A passionate activist responded, “Tough one for me as I have no desire to see myself in Netanyahu.” I replied that, “it’s a really really really tough one.”
I’m not Thích Nhất Hạnh.
It’s hard as hell to see myself in Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and any of his fellow cabinet members calling for the eradication of their neighboring civilian population.
But that’s why we must keep practicing the spiritual path, and integrate these methods for unity.
Keep serving those in need.
Keep loving all sentient beings.
And keep practicing.
ATX, see you on Thursday night!
Bob