This Obvious Genocide Is Not What It Looks Like

This obvious genocide is not what it looks like, smirks the man behind the podium.

Don’t trust your lying eyes, or your lying ears, or your lying mind, or your lying heart.

Silence that part of you which sees. Which feels. Which knows. Which cares.

Stomp it down until it stops moving. Pour concrete over it if you have to.

Stop feeling the feelings that you are feeling. Those feelings have not been authorized by the Israeli government.

We are waiting for the IDF to investigate itself to determine if your feelings are permissible. Until the results of that ongoing investigation, your feelings are antisemitic.

This obvious genocide is not what it looks like. The IDF will tell you when it is doing a genocide.

It helps if you don’t think about it too hard. Think about something else instead, like housewives in conservative homes do when their husbands climb on top of them.

Think about celebrities and Donald Trump, or that latest TV series you’re binging. Relax. Go to your happy place. It will be over in a minute.

Strangle that sacred spark within yourself that cannot accept what it is seeing. Grab it by the throat and squeeze until it is as dead as a Palestinian child.

Pour concrete over its dead body and then have a few drinks with your friends in congress. Are you not journalists? That is what journalists do.

This obvious genocide is not what it looks like. Forget what you’ve seen. Forget what you know.

Relax. Don’t struggle. Think of the beach. Daddy’s almost finished. Let the amnesia sink in, and float away.

Listen to a reading by Tim Foley:

https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/this-obvious-genocide-is-not-what