“It is expected to be gaza people: a wonderful future awaits, but not if you keep hostage. If you do, you are dead! Make a smart decision. Release hostage now or will be hell to pay later! “
These were not the words of some extremely right -wing enclosure lurking in the dark corner of the internet. They were not shouted by an unwavering war war that sought revenge. No, these were the words of the President of the United States, Donald Trump, the most powerful man in the world. A man who signs, speech or one phrase can shape the fate of all nations. Yet, with all this power, all this influence, his words on the people of Gaza were not peace, not diplomacy, not relief – but death.
I read them and I feel sick.
Because I know exactly who he talks to. Speaks with my family. My parents, who lost their relatives and their home. My brothers and sisters, who no longer have nowhere to return. The starvation of children in Gaza, who did nothing but to be born to people who considered the world unworthy of existence. Bereaved mothers who buried their children. Fathers who can do nothing but watch their babies die in their arms. People who lost everything and yet are expected to withstand more.
Trump talks about the “beautiful future” for people of gauze. But there is no future where the houses disappeared, where the whole families were deleted, where the children were massacred.
I read these words and ask: What kind of world do we live in?
A world in which the leader of the so-called “free world” can issue a blanket to the entire population or two millions of people, most of whom have been displaced, starving and barely sticking to life. The world in which a man commanding the most powerful army can sit in his office, isolated from screams, blood, unbearable stench of death, and states that if people from Gaza do not meet his request – if they do not find them somehow and have no free control over – they are simply “dead”. A world in which survivors of genocide give the ultimatum of the mass death of a man who claims to be advocated for peace.
This is not just absurd. It’s evil.
Trump’s words are crimes. They are the direct approval of the genocide. Gaza people are not responsible for what is happening. They don’t hold hostage. They are hostages – trapped by the Israeli war machine that stole everything from them. The hostages of the brutal siege that starved them, bombarded them, displaced them, left them nowhere.
And now they have become hostages of the most powerful man on Earth, who threatens them more suffering, more death, unless they fulfill the request they are unable to fulfill.
Most cynically, Trump knows that his words will not be filled with any meaningful return blow. Who in American political establishment will be held responsible for the threat of genocide? Democratic party, which enabled the Israeli genocidal war in Gaza? Congress, who superiorly supports the sending of American military assistance to Israel without conditions? The main media, who systematically deleted Palestinian suffering? Trump has no political expenses to make such statements. If nothing else, his position reports.
It is the world we live in. A world where Palestine lives are so available that the President of the United States can endanger mass death without fear of consequences.
I write this because I refuse to let this just another amazing Trump statement that people are laughing, that the media turns into a spectacle that forgets the world. I write this because Gaza is not a point of conversation. It’s not a title. That’s my home. My family. My history. My heart. My all.
And I refuse to accept that the president of the United States may be impressed by the threats of death to my people.
Gaza people do not control their own destiny. They never had that luxury. Their fate has always dictated the bombs that fall on them, the siege that hungry them, the governments that leave them. And now, their fate is dictated by a man in Washington, DC, who does not see a problem with the threat of destroying the entire population.
So again I ask: What kind of world do we live in?
And how long will we let it stay that way?
The views expressed in this article are the author’s and do not reflect the editorial position of Al Jazeere.
