Phalapoem editor, 29/10/25
A shattered olive grove at dusk. Handala stands with his back turned as always, hands clasped behind him. Ben-Gvir, flanked by a shadowy entourage, steps forward, smug but uneasy.
Ben-Gvir:
Why do you turn your back, little boy? Look at me when I speak.
I command the land. I decide who stays, who starves, who is erased.
Handala:
I face the wound, not the wound-maker.
I turned my back the day grown men forgot to be human.
I will turn to you only when justice no longer hides.
Ben-Gvir:
Justice? Justice is what we write in our laws,
what our army enforces,
what my followers chant.
Handala:
You write decrees on stolen paper
and call it scripture.
If justice were only ink,
even your guns would bleed truth.
But ink cannot cover a mother’s scream.
Ben-Gvir:
We are threatened!
Your people are a danger—
better that they vanish than we live in fear.
Handala:
A child behind barbed wire is dangerous only
to the conscience of his jailer.
Fear is the wall you built inside your own heart.
You feed it with myths and call it security.
Ben-Gvir:
The world wavers, yet still we act.
The great powers hesitate; some even cheer.
Sanctions are a whisper.
I remain a minister.
Handala:
Empires once cheered Pharaoh too.
But the river remembers every drowned cry.
History counts in centuries, not press conferences.
Your triumph is a sandcastle waiting for the tide.
Ben-Gvir:
And you, silent sketch of a boy—
what weapon do you hold?
Handala:
Memory sharper than steel.
Stubborn roots beneath uprooted trees.
A back that refuses to bow.
I carry tomorrow,
and tomorrow carries more power than your tanks.
(The wind rises. Handala does not move. Ben-Gvir feels the weight of a gaze he cannot see.)