When Rockets Look Like Stars
Finding humor in Karma and maybe it's WWIII
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Beyond the music, sometimes there is there is a moment when the fight back feels like it’s worth it. The victory of that one retaliatory swing.
Last night, coming down from the day, I swiped through social media and I saw a video pop up in my scroll…
A Lebanese man in the south playing a saxophone as a barrage of rockets headed toward Israeli occupied territory.
I smirked. Leave it to the Lebanese to post a little dark humor. Hamdiallah for rockets that look like stars, eh?
It was as if he was playing out the credits at the end of a film. Ah, perhaps the end of Zionism itself. Inshallah, Inshallah.
I’m an ol’ war journalist and I’ve seen rockets fly and light up the night skies in a tournament of war lord pissing contests. No one advocates for death of human life, here.
But when the dominant offender slaughters and sheds, and beats their victim in front of the world, while invading and gaslighting, I believe it’s been said they’re bound to…
Reap
What
They
Sow.
Mm, I think a Palestinian Jew talked about that once, a couple thousand years ago. Yeh, well, they killed him too, with the help of the colonizing Empire who bought their souls.
See? It’s all in how we tell the story, isn’t it?
As my friend
wrote,“When resistance hits from more than one direction, the apartheid state folds. When the world stops pretending the oppressor is the victim, the mask slips.”
Let’s be clear, Israelis are afraid and Caitlyn Jenner has joined the Hasbara. Sadly, it’s not waking up the majority of Israelis, it’s only deepening their resolve which demands their victimhood. They never left being victims, instead colonization helped them craft it into a villainous and vengeful overthrow of Palestine, rather than repair after a terrorizing rupture.
My god what have we become?
And yet, and yet,
How do we carry on through the night?
When I was in Gaza, 11 years ago, I ran on 2, maybe 3 hours of bumpy sleep at best at night. I tried to lay down somewhere around 3AM when the volley between the Israelis and Hamas stopped. Then it was up at dawn to see the wreckage while fighters rested and returned to retaliations by afternoon. Back and forth like a tennis match, but it was no real match, considering Israelis have top of the line missiles, and oh, those Nukes at Dimona, always looming, always a threat.
And have you heard?
Israel has a global hit list if it all goes south. They go down, they’re taking the world with them. It’s said to be the “Samson Option.” Fitting. Y’all ready?
Mm, Americans are not. Americans still live in the delusion that the end of the world will not come to them. But it’s here habibis. Check the news, get off your light and love Peloton.
And so, what do we do when it all comes crashing? Mm?
Well, how about play the sax and take stock in a small direct operative of justice or a least, a little retaliatory karma.
Sometimes, when we don’t know where we’ll have to take the car tomorrow, and drive like a crazed bat around rubble and bone as we grieve and scream, we can still stand for a moment and witness the world rather than forget it.
And while we witness it, what is the story of the stars at night?
Do they look like rockets?
And can you smile at the irony, even as you pack to run?
Leave it to war torn generations of brilliant Lebanese to feel the room and play out the soundtrack to black.
Yallah, let’s go to Beirut. ;)
Ash is a poet, writer and veteran war journalist. Find out more and to work with her, connect here.