HEADLINES JUNE 2026

by Margaret Gannon

PAY-PER-VIEW CAGE FIGHT 

ON WHITE HOUSE LAWN  

 

(Israelis are still killing Palestinians in Gaza) 

 

ICE RAIDS THREATENED 

DURING WORLD CUP FINALS 

 

(Israelis are still killing Palestinians in Gaza) 

 

SAN FRANCISCO D.A. DEMANDS 

15 YEARS JAIL FOR PROTESTERS 

 

(Israelis are still killing Palestinians in Gaza) 

 

SECRETARY OF DEFENSE DECLARES 

MORMONS ARE NOT CHRISTIANS 

 

(Israelis are still killing Palestinians in Gaza) 

 

TRILLIONAIRE’S IPO TITILLATES 

RETIREMENT ACCOUNT OWNERS 

 

(Israelis are still killing Palestinians in Gaza) 

 

STRAIT OF HORMUZ BLOCKED; 

WORLD ECONOMY THREATENED  

 

(Israelis are still killing Palestinians in Gaza) 

 

AMERICAN DEMOCRACY STAGGERS 

TOWARD TWO AND A HALF CENTURIES 

 

(Israelis are still killing Palestinians in Gaza) 

 

 

Margaret Gannon is a retired attorney in San Francisco, CA.

REMINDERS

by Phyllis Wax

Israeli settlers beat a Palestinian man in the occupied West Bank, stripped him naked, tied his arms and legs and then zip-tied his penis, he, his family members and another witness said on Wednesday. “I thought I was going to die,” the man, Suhaib Abualkebash (above), a 29-year-old shepherd, told The New York Times. “I thought this was the end.” Photo by Afif Amireh.

Even as ghosts their bones

are visible: ribs, backbones,

sticks of arms and legs.

But the occupiers in the West Bank,

the army in Gaza,

do not see the ghosts

of their ancestors,

do not hear their rattling bones

or their ghostly admonishments

not to duplicate the cruelty done to them,

seem deaf to the idea that never again

means not to anyone.

Phyllis Wax writes in Milwaukee, where she observes the goings-on of the country and the world and is being cured of her delusions. She has read in coffee houses, bars, libraries and on the radio, and has participated in poet/fiber artist collaborations. Among the journals in which her work has appeared are Gyroscope Review, Writers Resist, Jerry Jazz Musician, Rise Up Review, Mobius: The Journal of Social Change, Wordpeace, The New Verse News, Naugatuck River Review, Your Daily Poem, Feral.

TO TELL YOU THE TRUTH, I’M NOT SO SURE ABOUT THE VENT

by Eric Oak

A government handout photograph showed weapon remnants displayed on a table near the ruins of the Shajarah Tayyebeh elementary school, where a precision strike reportedly killed 175 people, mostly children, on Feb. 28. The remnants have been identified by The Times as components of a modern, U.S.-made Tomahawk missile. Credit...IRIB, via Telegram

It was not the Israelis, after all,

who triple tapped the school in Minab.

It was US, according to the Times—

our bombs 

that blasted babies into doll parts, 

scattered them among the concrete-

silica dust of their classrooms.

But it was always our bombs, really–

Arab Salim and Jabalia, Biden’s

red line to Rafah. Bombs with

our names on them. Cruz and 

Haley chickenhawked in Sharpie, 

mine and yours scratched san-serif 

onto the shells in bolder relief with 

each paycheck deposited.

I read the article about Minab 

during my planning period, and

it lingers with me now around

this crater-quiet classroom.

The kids are taking a test, but I 

don’t care whether they pass it. 

I just want to talk to them.

I just want to believe that it's 

not too late to talk, that it’s 

not too late to believe.

Something about the way the 

big vent grumbles when 

the air kicks on reminds me:

the surprise lockdown drill

has to be this week or next. 

They’re quiet, like now,

the drills at least. 

The kids are used to them.

Winder and Uvalde, Gaza and Minab.

Maybe bullets stop when bombs do.

I remember now why that vent rattles—  

I took out most the screws that hold

it to the wall, and a few more outside. 

The maintenance guy showed me how

to kick and climb our way out there

in case we ever need to flee, to run

outside, unafraid as we are of a 

brush smoke sky.

Eric Oak is the pseudonym of a teacher of social studies at a middle school near Chattanooga, TN. He sometimes asks people to read the things he writes so that they may exist.

WHAT THE LIVING HAVE SEEN

by Lynne Rappaport

Donate here.

How many days has it been now, since 10/7,

that those Israelis held captive in tunnels in Gaza

have been without their freedom,

separated from all of life?

 

Their faces are plastered onto giant posters

for passersby in Tel Aviv to see,

burning these hostages’ plight into memory,

their country longing for it to end.

 

What can the prisoners know of the crisis above the tunnels?

The violence, devastation, rubble, blocked aid trucks, hunger,

children’s lives cut short.

Failed attempts at a lasting ceasefire.

Instead, more retaliations, an eye for an eye,

an endless war.

 

Bring them safely home.

Let them begin healing.

 

The Palestinian family I’m sending money to in Gaza—

Home destroyed, living in a tent,

subsisting on lentils and hot salt water—

Had a moment of joy welcoming a baby boy,

Husband venturing out to buy overpriced flour

for his wife and 2-year-old son. 

She needed medication to prevent blood clots,

needs nourishment to sustain their newborn child. 

They all need superhuman strength.

 

Almost 500 online donors, sending funds for a year,

trying to keep this family going, give them some hope. 

Will they rebuild their home in Gaza someday? How will they manage until then?

Will Gaza even still exist for them? Will they be displaced again?

Will these two children who’ve survived ever know a free Palestine?

What can the Gazans know of the air raid sirens, during the night,

Families hurrying to bomb shelters and safe rooms

In Tel Aviv apartment buildings?

 

Bring all safely home. 

End the occupation,

The unholy bloodshed.

 

The ghosts of the lost ones permeate the ashen air. 

Restless dreams, nightmares, 

and oh,

what the living have seen,

have seen,

have endured.

Author’s note: This poem came out of a freewrite session to the poem “Beannacht” by John O’Donahue, in Kathryn Santana Goldman’s Your Write to Resilience OLLI class, summer 2025.

Lynne Rappaport is a 72-year-old woman originally from New York who has lived in San Francisco for over 50 years. Retired from teaching ESL to immigrant adults, she enjoys poetry, nature, music, and Tai Chi. She dedicates this poem to her late cousin, Canadian poet Bobbie Ogletree, and to our late grandfather Jacob B. Sacks, born in Palestine (Jerusalem) in 1888. He immigrated to New York in 1912. 

OLIVES

by Gabriella Brand

Johannesburg-born artist Adam Broomberg, 53, took photographs of olive trees to his mother just before she died in December last year. She had been an ardent supporter of the state of Israel and a firm Zionist. Like many people in South Africa’s Jewish community, her family were Holocaust survivors. Both her parents lost 90% of their family in that pogrom. Broomberg has been taking pictures of ancient olive trees in Palestine for the past 18 months — most of them were planted more than a thousand years ago. The oldest one, called the Al-Badawi tree, is over 4 500 years old. Every two years this tree still yields 800kg of olives. It is nearly 20m high and has a circumference of 25m. “There is the sweetest man who lives there; at night he sleeps underneath the Al-Badawi tree just to protect it,” Broomberg tells me on a Zoom call from Berlin, where he is now based. “I was meant to go on 23 October, to take seven of my students to Palestine to go and pick olives from the Al-Badawi tree, because it is olive-picking season.” But the Israeli war—many describe it as a genocide—on Gaza, about 75km away, has put a firm brake on that plan. “It’s heart-breaking not to be able to go there,” Broomberg says. He pauses and closes his eyes. Since 1967 more than 800 000 of these trees have been either uprooted or burnt to the ground by Israeli authorities or by illegal Jewish settlers under the supervision of the military. Between August 2020 and 2021, more than 9 300 olive trees were destroyed in the West Bank, according to The Art Newspaper.  —Mail & Guardian (South Africa), October 21, 2023

Is there anything more innocent than olives,
green and heavy on the branch, 
Is there anything more peaceful than those branches,
Or more gentle than the wind chime of those leaves?

Isn’t it always the olive branch offered, between man and wife,
Between nations, the olive branch carried off to the Moon, even,
coded into statue and treaty, held out with pleading arms
Noah, himself, relieved when the dove returns 
with that verdant sign in its beak.
Mud receding, the return of life. 

Deborah was going to pick olives this fall
a special harvest program, there, by the Mediterranean 
Israelis gathering with Palestinians, Palestinians picking next to Israelis
Round hard olives in their hands, not stones, not weapons. just olives
An effort to extract some small oily, slippery drops of justice. 

And then came the news, the shock of it,
in that holy, but defiled place 
and the world gasped in horror
and the olives flew off the trees
bleeding, ripped, raped, burned
and the trees fell to the ground
and hope scattered and hid.

So many wrongs
No matter from which  hillside you gaze
The soil festers with pain 
Hate fueled, fertilized, continued. 
Why can’t there just be olives?


Gabriella Brand’s work has appeared worldwide  in over fifty literary magazines. Her latest U.S published poems and short stories can be found in Abandoned Mine, Syncopation, and Amaranth Journal. She is a Pushcart Prize nominee. Gabriella lives near New Haven, Connecticut, where she teaches foreign languages.