The current issue of Harper’s Magazine reports that a company commander gave orders in January 2005 to shoot and kill any Palestinian found in an “inappropriate location” near Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip. The commander faces a maximum of three years in prison for his part in this crime of overseeing the killing of a ten-year-old Palestinian girl and calling for the death of children.
“Arab”
female spotted
inside Israeli zone.
[Gunfire]. Soldier: “You dropped her.”
“Down. Kill confirmed. Over.”
“Girl under 10?”
“Roger.”
“If you
see movement in
the zone-even a three
year old-don’t hesitate to kill,”
Company Commander
said. “Stay in the
Zone!”
Alicia Benjamin-Samuels is a poet and performer who lives in Nashville, Tennessee with her family. Her poems have been published in London’s X Magazine, Black Arts Quarterly, WarpLand, Philadelphia’s Open City: A Journal of Community Arts and Culture, Yale University’s Black Ivy, and Web zines: The Eintouist and SeeingBlack.com. Her poem “The Way of a Lover” was featured in Londonart.co.uk’s 2005 Art of Love exhibit.
