Misguided is the one who ever thought that occupation has a religion!
When the killer wears the robe of the preacher, and joy is assassinated in the name of sanctity!
"The fox appeared one day in the guise of our preachers..!", it is not just a line from an old poem by Shawqi; it is also a live image walking on the rubble of Gaza, and a complete mirror of our times!
The fox wears the robes of peace, wraps itself in the cloak of sanctity, and speaks in the language of ethics, while its other hand is dipped in the blood of childhood. The fox is no longer a metaphor; it has become a state, become a discourse, become a public relations machine that coldly says “sorry,” then fires the trigger with the confidence of the unaccountable! Thus, the pure language is borrowed to cover the most vile acts, and thus, religion is invoked not to enlighten, but to justify!
In Gaza, not only the people are killed; the moment is killed, the memory is assassinated, and the knife is plunged into the very flank of joy itself!
In an evening that should have been a celebration, a shelter turned into a mass grave. Not only were five people killed, but also a laughter that was trying to sprout among the rubble, and a hand that was lifting a child to see the world from atop the destruction.
The shell does not distinguish between the rhythm of the dabka dance or the wild dancing and the heartbeat, but it knows well what it does: it kills joy because it is the most dangerous threat to the occupier’s narrative.
Palestinian joy is a proof of life, and life for those who build their state on exclusion is an unforgivable crime. Therefore, weddings are bombed, celebrations are besieged, and the voice that says this people still remains is silenced.
Under the same sky, in the venerable neighborhood of Al-Zaytun, the Christmas tree was lit every year, and bells were rung announcing that the city accommodates multiple prayers and one heart. Today, that light has become a memory, and the bells have become stones. A single missile transformed a house and a church into an open question and breaking news!, and stole from a girl the meaning of the feast, so she now knows the tree through a phone screen, and asks her mother: When will Santa Claus come? An innocent question that exposes an entire system: an occupation that first steals childhood, then steals joy, then steals the very memory.
Just 75 kilometers between Gaza and Bethlehem, but it has turned into an eternal wall; roads are closed, visits are forbidden, and rituals are choked. The numbers here are not neutral: only hundreds of Christians remain where there were thousands before, churches have been bombed, families erased, and bells silenced. This is not a war against a specific religion; it is a war against the very idea of diversity, against the possibility that faith, dignity, and life can coexist.
And in the corridors of Jerusalem, where myths are forged to become commands, texts are recited that turn “the promise” into spoil, and the spoil into a sword.
War criminal Netanyahu - wanted by the International Criminal Court for committing war crimes in Gaza - secular in politics, clerical in war, knows how to summon sacred language when he needs fresh blood. Verses are extracted from their contexts, and presented to the gunner as a mandate. Thus, God, in a distorted narrative, becomes a valve that hears their prayers and deafens from the moans of our children. And so, schools are targeted because childhood, in this creed, is a “future danger” project, hospitals are targeted because healing resists death, and churches and mosques are targeted because if the spirit remains, the killing fails!
History, if given the right to speak, does not stutter. From Deir Yassin to Kfar Qasim, from Sabra and Shatila to South Lebanon to the successive Gaza wars, the pattern is consistent: an agreement is signed, then broken; soft language is followed by an iron fist; a victim from the past is summoned to justify victims of the present.
"The Holocaust" suffered by the Jews has become, in the authorities’ discourse, a moral shield preventing accountability, and a license to fabricate a new Holocaust with more modern tools! Even when a “ceasefire” is announced, the killing does not stop; violations are recorded by the dozens and hundreds, and civilians fall, while the victim is always asked for restraint. The bitter irony is that compliance is always demanded from the weaker side, and the breach becomes a sovereign privilege of the stronger side.
And the world? The world knows. It knows through numbers, images, reports, and testimonies. It knows that starvation is a policy, that withholding medicine is a weapon, and that delaying aid is a crime. It knows that journalists are targeted because the camera embarrasses the killer, and that educators are killed because education is resistance, and children are starved because hunger breaks what bombs could not. Yet, it chooses silence or mere statements. Crimes are condemned in some places, and justified here. Laws are activated where no veto prevails, and disabled where interests lie. Thus, international law turns into a selective text, and morals into a geopolitical geography!
But beneath this rubble, something else is born: the resistance of life. A simple wedding in a tent, a school in a shelter, a book read by the light of a phone, bread shared among neighbors, a tree planted where a thousand were cut. This is not glorification of pain, but condemnation of those who create it. Because a people clinging to life exposes those who feed on death, and because joy, when suppressed, becomes a testimony, and when it returns, it becomes a defeat for the killer!
At the end of the poem, the rooster says his unmistakable word: "Misguided is the one who ever thought that the fox has a religion.."! This line is not merely a literary denouncement, but an ethical verdict. Its implication today is complete: Misguided is the one who ever thought that occupation has a religion, or humanity, or a mission. Misguided is the one who thought sanctity is granted to those who kill in its name, and that peace is measured by the number of declarations not by the number of living children. The truth is simpler and harsher: those who kill joy cannot be rightful, and those who slaughter childhood cannot be preachers, and those who turn faith into a slaughtering knife do not possess a religion, but an excuse!
In Gaza, a girl’s question on a demolished wall summarizes the world: “O Lord, if you love them as they say, then what is our sin?”. That question is the entire indictment, and the test!.
Palestine is not breaking news nor a deferred file; Palestine is the mirror of human conscience. And those who do not see themselves in it today, will seek it tomorrow in history books, where the same sentence will be written again, with heavier ink: the world knew… and chose to remain silent!
