LET GO THE HEAVY HANDS OF HATRED

by Eliot Katz

The Massacre of the Innocents by Marcantonio Raimondi after Raphael ca. 1512–13, The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Hamas has taken Israel by surprise and undertaken immoral, large-scale 
terror attacks from Gaza, breaking national gates, sending hundreds 

of deadly missiles into populated towns, riding rifled motorcycles and flying 
machete gliders, brutally murdering more than 800 innocents, including 

at a kibbutz and a music festival, injuring thousands, kidnapping over 
100 civilians to bring into Gaza for human shields or prisoner-exchange 

ransom. Under its most extreme far-right government yet, Israel has quickly 
begun ruthless retaliation, cutting off all electricity, food, and water to Gaza, 

bombing high-rise apartments, schools, hospitals, killing and injuring entire 
families, creating a district of thick post-explosion gray smoke through which 

there is no ability to distinguish between Palestinians who support Hamas 
violence or not, in such a small, densely populated strip of land. The targeting 

of civilians by both sides is a violation of international law. Netanyahu says 
his army warns civilians in Gaza to leave before the bombs fly, but Gaza’s 

exits have been blocked years by Israel and Egypt. Netanyahu warns 
of the kind of devastating destruction that will “reverberate for 

generations” and that he secretly hopes will make Israeli voters forget his large 
intelligence failure. I have long written and demonstrated to support 

an end to oppressive occupation of Palestine and a peaceful two-state solution 
that looks to be moving further into the distant horizon with every bullet 

shot. Even here in New York City, there have already been physical fights 
between supporters of each side, each group carrying their heavy 

nationalistic flags of anger and war. Doesn’t it begin to hurt one’s shoulder
muscles, low backs, fragile necks on both Israeli and Palestinian sides 

to carry such heavy flags of resentment and revenge for so many decades 
now? Wouldn’t it be much easier on the body to carry the much lighter 

flags of international peace and cooperation, and to hold them upward 
toward the skies for the next two hundred years?

Called “another classic New Jersey bard” by the late Allen Ginsberg, Eliot Katz is the author of seven books of poetry, including Love, War, Fire, Wind and Unlocking the Exits, as well as a prose book, The Poetry and Politics of Allen Ginsberg. His most recent poetry book was a free pdf volume posted on his website before the 2020 presidential election, entitled: President Predator: Poems to Help Make America Trump-Free Again. He was a co-founder, with Danny Shot, of the long-running Long Shot literary magazine, and was a co-editor with Allen Ginsberg and Andy Clausen of Poems for the Nation. Katz, whose late mother was a Holocaust survivor, has worked for many years as an activist for a wide range of peace and social-justice causes, including helping to create several housing and food programs for homeless families in Central Jersey that remain ongoing. He currently lives in Hoboken, New Jersey.