Asking

Yesterday, I watched a very sparkly Biden official, who looked like he had just come from the Ken-at-High-School-UN box, answer questions from a very well fed looking journalist. The questions were about what the UN ceasefire resolution meant, whether it was binding, what the U.S. was doing, etc.

All very edifying – like a debate in an insane asylum.

Rather than questions about the “ongoing” talks at Doha and the politics of the UN, the questions should have gone a totally different direction.

Ask the Biden suit how long he, personally, has ever gone without eating.

Ask the Biden suit what he would feel if he saw his five, ten year old child lose twenty pounds in a week. Ask him how much nutrition for a two year old can be derived from soupy rice in a small bowl delivered once a day. Ask if he has ever fed a child. Ask if he would be willing to propose, to the delegates at Doha, that they all eat the same diet as the average person in Rafah. Ask if he would be willing to rush forward for his one meal a day while being shot at. Propose that the only meals the Doha conference attendees can receive be parachuted into Doha. Ask whether he would feel safe getting those parachuted in meals if he was aware that the same area might be bombed five to ten minutes later, after the drop. Ask the Biden suit how he would feel about his child having his or her leg amputated in a hospital where soldiers were shooting people in the hall. Ask the suit how he would feel if the doctor amputating the legs of his five year old daughter were halted in midcourse, taken out into the hall, and executed. Ask him if he would feel very peaceful and warm about the people who did that. Ask the suit whether he has ever studied the psychology of starvation. Ask the suit whether he would feel it was totally just to consider his 18 year old son a fair target for marksmen, because he is potentially a military recruit. Ask how often he has drunk muddy water from a rusty can. Ask what he would think about the delegates at Doha being limited to drinking muddy water from rusty cans.

Ask if he is human. Ask if anybody sitting at the conference asking questions about the “process” is human.

Ask if he would mind if all the questioners threw up in disgust at the little play they are putting on. Ask about the stink of that vomit, and how he think it compares to the stink of the hospitals that are under attack, or the stink of the buildings in which bodies are crushed in Northern Gaza. Ask if the question of those smells ever come up at the ceasefire conference at Doha.
Ask.