Whoever kills a soul…it is as if he had slain mankind entirely. And whoever saves one—it is as if he had saved all of mankind.
— Qur’an, Surah Al-Ma’idah (5:32)

This mixed spoken word-vocal piece, in two versions linked below, was inspired by a 3.8.25 LinkedIn post by Hani Almadhoun, Senior Director of Philanthropy at UNRWA USA and co-founder of the Gaza Soup Kitchen.

The famous quote from the Qur’an mirrors the Talmudic statement “whoever saves one life, saves the entire world” (Sanhedrin 37a) that highlights the value of each human life. This encompasses all human life, not just Jewish, a clear illustration of one key difference between Judaism and Zionism. We are all created in God’s image. There is no “other”, only we and us.

Too often in the Western MSM, reports speak of people in Gaza who were killed or who starved to death without mentioning the culprit, the state terrorist that murdered them with bullets, bombs, or blockades. It’s important to assign blame where blame is due: Israel. It is Israel, a 21st-century example of mass psychosis on steroids, that will have to pay the price for its war crimes and crimes against humanity that we will never forgive nor forget.

It is Israel, a country beyond redemption, that must and will pay the price for this genocide and land grab that is part of the Zionist Greater Israel project. Israel is the entity that murdered this girl’s father and is the cause of so much cruelty and suffering.

It is not only Israel’s political and military leaders who bear responsibility for this genocide. Millions of Israelis sitting in the cheap seats have been cheering them on. Exhibit A: 82% of Israelis want to expel Palestinians from Gaza; 47% want to kill every man, woman, and child. Exhibit B: 64% of Israelis believe there are ‘no innocents’ in Gaza. Exhibit C: 79% of Israeli Jews say they are “not so troubled at all” by the reports of famine and suffering among the Palestinians in Gaza. It’s fair to say that the majority of Israelis need to be deprogrammed so that they can liberate themselves from the hateful and destructive ideology of Zionism.

This no doubt includes a certain Russian immigrant and international educator in Tel Aviv who labeled my sources of information, including Jewish Israeli scholars, “biased.” And a US international educator who messaged me on LinkedIn to say, “I regret your need for me to stand with your position-or delete myself.” I told this self-proclaimed “thought leader” the following: “It’s simple, M. My position is that I’m against genocide and ethnic cleansing. I’m against the expansionist Greater Israel project. What’s your position? If you still ‘stand with Israel,’ you either support genocide or have no objection to it. Where is your humanity? Where is your commitment to justice and fairness? Genocide is not something we can agree to disagree about – like pizza toppings, as the saying goes.”

Then there are the countries that have been supporting Israel and its genocide in thought, word, and deed, including billions of dollars’ worth of weapons, that have the blood of innocents on their hands, first and foremost, the US.

We, the millions around the world who care deeply and mourn the death of each innocent in Gaza, owe the Palestinians a debt we can never repay, but we are morally obligated to spend the rest of our lives trying.

Please donate to support the lifesaving work of the Gaza Soup Kitchen.

Israel killed her father yesterday.

At the aid site.

Near the crossings.

Where people go not to fight—but to survive.

And today, his daughter showed up at the soup kitchen.

Reaching for survival— at least for the baby— through a bowl of soup.

They are free to kill us.

Free to starve us.

Free to be cruel, again and again.

And we— we are only free to grieve. In the ways we know how.

In the ways they cannot understand. Poor child.

Poor people. We carry the pain now— you will carry the guilt for a lifetime.

Version 1

Version 2