Saturday before Sunday May 19
Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder, and I see the most exquisite beauty here. The weather has closed in to zero visibility at the moment, but this morning's clouds gathering as this passing thunderstorm (pic above) presented a sight to behold.
Ten years ago, before The Old Place sold and while we were searching about for new home possibilities, we looked in the Cove, on North Bay in Lynn Haven, at Bay Point and two other condominiums at Panama City Beach, one on St Andrews Bay and the other on West Bay - - all lovely, but Harbour Village has an underground garage next to the elevators, and meant staying in St Andrews the place of my heart; and of several apartments we were shown here, 718 offers the exact same view as The Old Place, but higher and even better, and I was sold. It was a rainy day, and I stood in the rain and told the realtor that 718 was the one I wanted. He suggested a price offer, and we offered it, and it was accepted, and 7H opened up to us.
Seventh Heaven.
"... in my Father's house are many mansions," but lemme tell you something, Buster: it ain't no way no mansion in no sky could equal 7H, nomesane?
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And yet as I age away in heaven on earth, neither praying liturgically nor even particularly mindful of them, God's children are dying terrified and suffering indescribable pain and grief. Here's an essay from an American who puts it plainly: a people of short attention spans, we are oblivious to all but self. For one, it assured President Putin that our outrage at his intentions for Ukraine would quickly pass; for another, the Israel Gaza War is, as the essayist below says, of slight interest to us. Gaza is/was being ruled by madmen, Israel by fools. Wars are between governments, not between peoples. As one who holds governments in contempt, I could easily be an anarchist!
LHM, CHM, LHM
T88&c
I’ve never felt more disillusioned as a Palestinian
My classmates and school at large, like most of the west, see the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians as a far-removed problem
06:16 EDT Friday, 17 May 2024
There has always been trauma involved in being a Palestinian. When I was only 13 years old, I saw my people in Gaza slaughtered by 150 occupation shells on evening news, as if our death was casual, replaced a few days later by false ideas of “peace talks”. And, now, for the past seven months, that trauma has been overwhelming: we’ve seen more than 30,000 Palestinians, 14,000 children, slaughtered, with world governments, especially my own US government, not only excusing this onslaught but actively enabling and funding Palestinian death.
However, if you were to turn on the news we are bombarded with coverage of the Met Gala and other inanities. The media, and western world at large, fawns over the costumes draped over an evening of celebrity gossip, with no mention of the 200 Palestinians murdered every day.
Through social media, the catastrophe on Gaza has become all too clear; we see live the footage of children trapped under rubble, fathers carrying the remains of their family members in bags, or the hundreds of other documented and systematic war crimes, as UN rights experts say, committed against the Palestinian people. These images and sounds are interlaced on our feeds with whatever random content is put out by our peers who could not be bothered about the suffering of our people.
Why must I see pictures from a birthday party after witnessing a Palestinian child take their last breath? I have seen more posts and “hot takes” on the feud between Drake and Kendrick Lamar than the several mass graves found at al-Shifa hospital. Is Palestinian life worth so little that people simply do not care? Is the death of our people inconvenient to normalcy? Here in the States, the media and administrations have spent decades telling us that war is endemic to the Middle East and that the Palestinians have brought this destruction upon themselves. To those in power I ask, do you not hear the screams of the Palestinian child?
But the disillusionment to Palestinian suffering goes far beyond the Met Gala. It is ingrained in the media coverage, or lack thereof, that has led to western disregard for the lives of my people. Each day for the last seven months, I, and those in my personal life, have felt an indescribable grief – not a breath goes by where the constant thought of my family back home or destruction of Palestine does not weigh heavy on my lungs.
However, as I made my way through my first year of law school, alongside the very people meant to uphold future generations of justice, it as though the genocide of my people is not taking place. Not once have I heard anyone on my campus say how preposterous it is that a foreign lobby is bankrolling politicians sending US weapons to rain bombs down on children, not once did I hear anger in my classroom that the US senators are rejecting the international criminal court investigation into genocide, and I have yet to hear grief that our own university is invested in weapons of mass destruction. My classmates, professors and school at large, like most of the west, see the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians as a far-removed problem.
For more Guardian journalism follow this channel
Which is worse, Israel’s lies about Gaza or its western backers who repeat those lies? | Mehdi Hasan
In truth, I cannot place all the blame on those who ignore Palestinian suffering. For it is not the fault of the western audience that our suffering if often overshadowed, purposefully, by the neverending cavalcade of western entertainment. Airstrikes and war crimes in Gaza make brief appearances in the news cycles before being shunted aside by the ongoing Trump trial or Joe Biden eating his ice-cream.
For many in the west, Palestinian lives seem to hold little value. There is a willing ignorance that prevents empathizing and sustaining interest in Palestinian death. It would mean confronting those hard questions about our lives and our government. It would also mean recognizing how the Israeli military strategically schedules its major bombardments during times when they know the western public is preoccupied and conditioned for distraction. They understand the reality that Palestinian life will not interfere with American comfort.
Historically, operations such as 2008’s Operation Cast Lead in Gaza commenced shortly after Christmas, when western attention was still fixated on the holidays. The 2014 bombardment that created a generation of orphans in Gaza took place during the World Cup. Israel’s 2018 massacre of Palestinian protesters in Gaza began on the eve of the Met Gala that year.
This pattern was repeated numerous times over the last few months. Christmas of 2023 was one of the deadliest nights to that point, when refugees in the Maghazi camp were massacred on Christmas night. While holiday dinners were hosted in the west, the world forgot that people in the Holy Land bled – the third-oldest church in the world was destroyed due to indiscriminate bombardment. During the Super Bowl this year, Netanyahu ordered the military to submit their military plan to invade Rafah, where more than 1 million Palestinians were pushed as a “safe zone”, which we now know was invaded during the Met Gala this year.
These are not coincidences, but rather intentional efforts to minimize eyes upon their brazen disregard for human life. Yet, for all their marketing prowess, Israel cannot ultimately control the horrific images of grieving families wailing over the mutilated bodies of loved ones. The west cannot simply look away and retreat their privilege. It should not be easier to disengage than confront the complexities of brutal occupation and cycles of violence. Each failure to acknowledge Palestinian humanity, each decision to buffer yourself from the violence, is as if you drop the bombs yourself.
This disillusionment is inescapable to us Palestinians. There is no red carpet, no star-studded gala to blissfully distract us, and those in Gaza, from the rubble, the screams and looming threat of the next bombardment. We owe it to the Palestinians suffering under the bombs our tax dollars fund to not make their death a backdrop to be scrolled past.
Ahmad Ibsais is a first-generation Palestinian American, law student and poet who writes the newsletter State of Siege