Phalapoem

Phalapoem editor, 08/10/25

Scene:

A cracked mirror under a red sky.

The faint hum of drones replaces birdsong.

A barefoot boy — Handala — stands with his back turned, arms folded, forever ten.

Before him stands the reflection of Israeli Society, wrapped in flags, screens, and silence.

Between them — a sea of smoke, bones, and unfinished prayers.

⸻

Handala:

You keep asking, “Why do they hate us?”

But never, “What have we done?”

You look into mirrors that only show your pain —

while mine lies buried under your rubble, unnamed, unseen.

⸻

Israeli Society:

We are mourning.

Our children were taken.

Our people slaughtered.

We live surrounded by enemies.

We defend ourselves, because the world never did.

⸻

Handala (voice like flint):

You defend yourselves with phosphorus and famine?

With walls higher than guilt and hearts harder than memory?

You do not defend — you erase.

You erase until only your fear remains to fill the silence.

Your empathy is fenced like Gaza —

a checkpoint at every feeling,

a permit required for every tear not your own.

⸻

Israeli Society (sharply):

We are victims of terror.

We remember the Holocaust.

“Never Again” is our vow — our shield, our right.

⸻

Handala (turns slightly, the air trembles):

Yes.

You remember the gas chambers —

but you forget who filled them with silence first.

You remember the ghettos —

but not the hands that built them brick by brick, believing themselves pure.

“Never Again,” you chant —

but what you mean is never again for us.

You carved universality into tribal stone

and made suffering your flag.

Tell me — what is the value of your memory

if it teaches you only how to become what you once feared?

⸻

Israeli Society (angered):

How dare you compare!

We are not Nazis.

We fight monsters who hide among civilians.

We do not kill — we target.

We do not starve — we control supply lines.

We do not bomb — we neutralize threats.

⸻

Handala (voice rising, fierce and cold):

Ah, yes — the language of moral anesthesia.

The poetry of denial.

You do not kill — you “eliminate.”

You do not occupy — you “secure.”

You do not dehumanize — you “other.”

Your bullets have learned the grammar of excuses.

Your missiles speak fluent justification.

Your journalists count your tears but lose their tongues when asked to count ours.

You’ve mastered a terrifying art —

to feel deeply only for yourself.

⸻

Israeli Society (quietly, uncertain):

But we are human too.

We want peace.

We want safety.

We want normal life.

⸻

Handala (turning slightly, the light flickering):

Then why does your peace demand genocide and our graves?

Why must your safety taste like our ethnic cleansing and starvation?

You build “normal life” upon the ruins of ours

and call it coexistence.

You speak of “shared humanity”

while your soldiers film our dying for their feeds.

You cry for your hostages

and cage two million of mine without trial.

You call yourselves moral-

yet your bombs never ask for names before they burn.

⸻

Israeli Society (pleading):

It is complicated…

War is never clean.

We warn civilians before we strike.

We drop leaflets.

We have the most moral army in the world.

⸻

Handala (voice soft but cutting):

Morality that needs a publicist is already dead.

A warning before destruction is still destruction.

A leaf of paper does not shield a child from fire.

Your moral army marches over graves of innocence,

and your silence applauds every step.

⸻

Israeli Society (barely audible):

We lost empathy somewhere along the way.

We had to harden our hearts —

otherwise, how could we live beside so much hate?

⸻

Handala:

You mistake numbness for strength.

You mistake apathy for survival.

But a society that kills feeling to stay alive

has already buried its soul.

You speak of hate —

but you taught it first,

in classrooms where maps forgot my name,

in newsrooms where my death is just a number,

in living rooms where you change the channel when Gaza burns.

⸻

(Handala finally turns halfway — his face shadowed, his eyes unseen.)

Handala:

Germany too once built its strength upon denial.

They called their cruelty necessity,

their silence patriotism,

their propaganda truth.

their victims terrorists,

They too believed the world would never judge them —

until the world walked through their ashes.

History is not repeating —

it is evolving in your image.

You are writing a new chapter of “Never Again” —

this time, as the oppressor’s pledge.

⸻

Israeli Society (voice trembling):

Then what must we do?

What do you want from us?

⸻

Handala:

I want you to look.

Look at what you’ve done without filters,

without flags,

without excuses.

Turn your gaze from your dead to ours —

and realize they are the same size,

the same weight,

the same color when the dust settles.

True safety is not built on another’s ruin.

True mourning is not selective.

True humanity cannot live behind a wall.

Turn around, not to me —

but to your reflection before the mirror shatters completely.

Because when the last shard falls,

you will not see enemies or terrorists —

only the ghost of who you might have been

if empathy had survived.

⸻

(Silence. The mirror cracks again — a sound like thunder in a graveyard.)

Handala (fading, whispering):

You cannot bomb your way to peace.

You cannot starve your way to safety.

And you cannot lie your way out of history.

When you finally remember that,

I will turn around.

Until then — my back is your judgment.

⸻