Blinded by the Sights

On the image of emergency I can't get out of my head

Welcome to another episode of my flagship scroll, The Book of Sean M. P.

A quick thank-you to my subscribers, especially the paying ones.

Not already among that august group? Take care of that business at any tier—free, monthly, or founding—by hitting the button below. Your financial support subsidizes access for all.

(Patrons also unlock the ability to post comments and start chat threads…)

Now on with the show. <3

---

A Genocide Readymade

I saw the most distressing image this weekend and I can’t get it out of my head: a cardboard aid box with an NGO logo on it, a pair of sneakers on top, and a human leg bone sticking out.

I had to study the image for a moment to make sure I was seeing what I was seeing. But the scale of the bone was definitely appropriate to the size of a grown Homo sapiens body—it couldn’t have belonged to another mammal. And the sneakers (Adidases I recall) were a giveaway. The contents of the box had once belonged to a person.

Indeed, the contents of the box had once been a person—a living being with a personality, a family, a community, and a country. They were also a person who had rights, including the right to life.

And, of course, they hadn’t consented to die. Nor had they consented to have their remains exhibited publicly, and in such undignified fashion.

Screenshot of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights

But what distressed me about the image, which I’m intentionally not reproducing, was less the sight—a novel combination of elements to my eye—but what it signified: the utter depravity of the U.S-backed genocide in Gaza perpetrated by Israel.

Human remains and possessions in a box that previously contained emergency food.

Emergency food for a population that’s slowly being starved to death when it’s not being immediately killed by Israeli munitions.

An emergency that remains unaddressed.

An emergency, indeed, that only intensifies as efforts to address it intensify.

To wit: On one day, more than a hundred thousand Israelis march against the government’s decision to expand the genocide.

But on the next day, the military which that government oversees assassinates a group of journalists in their camp outside a Gaza City hospital.

And—in another indication of the mounting emergency—the military baselessly claims that the main target of the assassination, Anas al-Sharif, wasn’t just a Hamas leader but an actual combatant directing “attacks on Israeli civilians,” despite the fact that as a reporter for Al Jazeera, he was constantly visible online.¹

Al-Sharif’s pre-mortem remarks have already circulated far and wide, but I want to quote an especially relevant portion here:

I never once hesitated to convey the truth as it is, without distortion or falsification—so that Allah may bear witness against those who stayed silent, those who accepted our killing, those who choked our breath, and whose hearts were unmoved by the scattered remains of our children and women, doing nothing to stop the massacre that our people have faced for more than a year and a half.

The “scattered remains of our children and women” (or the “mangled remains,” as I saw in the Al Jazeera translation of his words linked above)—isn’t that exactly what the “genocide readymade” I refuse to show in this post shows?

Scattered, mangled remains that someone collected and put into a box? And which someone else—perhaps the same person—photographed?

But for what reason was it photographed?

To document the atrocity?

To call viewers to action?

To make a grotesque joke?

And what am I supposed to do with this content?

Anything more than what I’m doing here?

Basic analysis?

’Cause God knows that none of us, anywhere, have the power to change the facts on the ground.

Not when they’ve already been so radically changed over the years.

And not when messianic psychopaths living in cemeteries remain bent on eliminating Al-Aqsa Mosque along with every Palestinian life—the very genocidal intention that Hamas sought to head off with its Al-Aqsa Flood operation on 10/7.

Mahmoud Khalil’s interview with Ezra Klein set off a new round of controversy over the actions taken by Hamas on that day, including the war crimes they committed.

But the Palestinians—like any colonized group of people—have a right to armed resistance in order to secure their self-determination and freedom, as Richard Falk, a previous U.N. special rapporteur on Palestine, affirms in this 2002 journal article.

That right, of course, ends at war crimes, even as Israel—which has no right of self-defense against the people it occupies—continues to commit war crime after war crime with every action it takes in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

Why?

Because—contrary to the mendacious idiocy of Huckabee père—military occupiers are legally obligated to “ensure [the] humane treatment of the local population and to meet their needs.”

And yet obviously the Israelis are doing the complete opposite of that.

I say “obviously,” but perception is the problem, as the genocide in Gaza has evidenced for 22 months now.

But what distressed me about the image, which I’m intentionally not reproducing in this post, was less the sight—a novel combination of elements to my eye—but what it signified: the utter depravity of the U.S-backed genocide in Gaza by Israel.

Human remains in a box that once contained emergency food for a population that’s being slowly starved to death when it’s not being immediately killed by Israeli munitions.

---

Brain Break

My first time watching this video, even though the ear worm is a core one for me (as my rhetoric in this post betrays). Enjoy!

---

What I’ve Been Reading

• Finally catching up with the Hague Group after clocking its meeting in Bogotá in July; the outcome statement includes a simple list of measures states' can take to arrest the genocide in Palestine, starting with “Prevent[ing] the provision or transfer of arms, munitions, military fuel, related military equipment, and dual-use items to Israel.” Notably the drafters make no distinction between “offensive” and “defensive” weapons in the way that Democrats like AOC recently have.

• The Hague Group’s statement references this U.N. resolution from September 2024, the one-year anniversary of which has become a kind of diplomatic deadline (one reason states like France are now calling for Palestinian sovereignty to be formally recognized by the U.N.).

• Regarding Richard Falk, the 94-year-old (!) former special rapporteur talked with Counterpunch about the current special rapporteur, Francesca Albanese

• Mona Chalabi wondered how early people were using the term “genocide” to describe the emergency in Gaza: at least as early as 13 October 2023.

Ciao for now,

Sean M. P.

ICYMI⥥⥥

1. The only evidence the IDF has provided so far are links between al-Sharif and Hamas from years ago. Suffice it to say, these links haven’t been independently verified.