Hypothermia
The death of a twenty-day-old Palestinian Freedom Fighter ... after all, there are "no innocents" in Gaza.
Struggling to live, tiny arms, legs and lips blue with cold
He knows nothing, blames no-one, just twenty days old.
He’ll never know: that what shines is daylight, dusk, sunset or dawn;
the milk of his mother’s breast; the warmth of her love for her newborn.
Peace, conflict, famine, genocide are words he cannot know
held hostage, starved of all those things he needs to grow.
He’ll never study maths, or languages that other children will need
he’s one more pointless victim of another’s greed.
This child, who should have been a doctor, a writer, a builder or vet
shall be just a statistic, a monument to his parent’s unremitting regret.
Mahmoud, Abdul, Mohammed, Wael; whatever was his name
this boy’s life was stolen, to our eternal shame.
Yet Israel would steal even his pure innocence, claiming
he would grow to be a terrorist: this poor child defaming.
In every act disdaining a Palestinian’s individual humanity
The “World’s most moral army” is a cynically constructed profanity!
But is freezing to death after twenty days of life in a tent
the experience of living that, for this child, was meant?
This has little to do with any great creator;
But more with the will of some genocidal perpetrator.
And does freezing to death as a baby in arms
provide merciful escape from far greater harms?
The children of Gaza have suffered such cruelties and deprivations
this mite’s death from hypothermia, is the final gift of western nations.