Phalapoem editor, 07/10/25
Handala (the small boy with his back turned, bare feet on cold marble):
Two years of children buried in rubble, two years of mothers digging with their hands.
Twenty thousand little bodies.
And now—only now—you recognise my country?
Tell me, Prime Minister, did the paperwork comfort you while the bombs fell?
Starmer (tight smile):
Recognition is a step toward peace.
Diplomacy takes time; we must be responsible actors on the world stage.
Handala:
Time?
My people measure time in mass graves.
Your “responsibility” signs three hundred weapons licenses while you whisper the word peace.
Is that diplomacy—or arithmetic of death?
Starmer:
The United Kingdom maintains export controls.
All sales are subject to rigorous review.
We cannot simply abandon our strategic alliances.
Handala:
Strategic alliances.
Fine words to hide a dripping blade.
You send planes to spy on the children you claim to protect,
ban the protests that call their names,
and shake the hand of a man the world’s court calls a criminal.
Is this what Labour means by justice?
Starmer:
We condemn civilian suffering.
But Israel has the right to defend itself.
Handala (still facing away):
Defend itself from whom?
From the babies you help starve?
From the grandparents clutching photos under the dust?
Your “right to defend” is a license to erase us.
Starmer:
History is complicated.
Britain cannot rewrite the past.
Handala:
But Britain wrote the past—
inked the Balfour promise,
handed our home to strangers,
and now hides behind complexity while the descendants of that ink bleed.
You cannot rewrite it, but you repeat it.
Starmer:
Recognition is progress.
It opens a path to negotiation.
Handala:
Recognition without action is a flag planted in ashes.
Stop the weapons.
Lift the bans on speech.
Cut the strings that tie you to slaughter.
Until then, your “progress” is just another checkpoint on the road to our graveyard.
(Handala remains with his back turned—silent, unbowed. The Prime Minister adjusts his tie, searching for a word that does not exist.)