PART 3
“NEVER AGAIN”
(An exhortation first used by liberated prisoners from the Buchenwald concentration camp.)
NEVER AGAIN
What a mandate that was!
Born of defiance, of guilt,
Of fathomless grief across generations.
And of the promise of redemption.
NEVER AGAIN
What a mandate that was!
Not just for all Jews,
But for all people. For ever.
NEVER AGAIN
That massacre of the innocents.
That race to exterminate.
That systematic dehumanisation of the other.
And literally countless crimes against humanity.
BUT NOW, AGAIN
Inconceivably, so, so cruelly,
Perpetrated at the hands of those for whom
That sacred mandate was first made.
BUT NOW, AGAIN
Suffering beyond imagination.
Starvation as a weapon of war.
The targeting of hospitals, of children, of journalists.
The forcible transfers, the scorching of the land.
The levelling of beloved home and community.
BUT NOW, AGAIN
The same systematic dehumanisation.
The same slaughter of beautiful, innocent people,
Reduced to an inhuman calculus:
40 Palestinians killed by the Israeli Defence Forces
*For every Israeli killed by Hamas.
Defiance. Guilt. Rage. Horror. Fathomless grief.
Redemption?
*THE INHUMAN CALCULUS (October 2023 – August 2025).
1. 1,195 Israelis were killed in the heinous attack by Hamas on October 9th, 2023. 251 hostages were taken; 148 have been safely returned, as well as 50 bodies; of the remaining 53, it is believed that at least 30 are now dead.
A total body count of 1,275.
2. Official figures confirm that 63,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza as of the end of August. According to Israel's own figures, 80% of these art non-combatants, almost all women and children. Approximately 50,000. A classroom of children killed every day for 670 days.
(The death toll in Gaza is realistically assessed to be much closer to 100,000 rather than 63,000. And rising every single day).
3. Officially, as of the end of August, that’s 40 innocent Palestinians killed for every innocent Israeli.
It’s not the eyes that are blind, but the hearts.
Jonathon Porritt
4 September 2025
