Smaller than a Mouse- a poem by Naomi Shihab Nye published in her most recent book "Sidekick" 2026

                   Smaller than a Mouse

We demonstrated on a steaming day,

carrying signs,

five hundred thousand people 

in the streets of New York

saying no to war,

gathering crowds for blocks and miles,

crush and press of world's religions

and secular codes, multi-flavored

WE SHALL NOT KILL

and the next day our story,

the story of saying no to war,

was written up in a three-sentence news item

on the back of the front section of the New York Times

smaller than the story of a mouse found

in a chain restaurant soup.

This is the truth.
 

    Poem by award winning Palestinian American poet Naomi Shihab Nye published in her most recent book "Sidekick" 2026  

 https://boaeditions.org/book/sidekick/

Praise for Naomi Shihab Nye

“On every page, Shihab Nye's insistent call is the same: people, all people, deserve to live safe and healthy lives, free from fear and violence. She mourns, rages, takes politicians to task, but always lands on the side of compassion.” —Shelf Awareness

 

Naomi Shihab Nye is the author and/or editor of more than thirty volumes including six collections of poetry from BOA Editions: Sidekick (2026), Red Suitcase (1994), Fuel (1998), You & Yours (2005), Transfer (2011), and The Tiny Journalist (2019). She has been a Lannan Fellow, a Guggenheim Fellow and a Witter Bynner Fellow. Her numerous awards include a Lavan Award from the Academy of American Poets, the Isabella Gardner Poetry Award from BOA, the Lee Bennett Hopkins Poetry Award, the Patterson Poetry Prize, four Pushcart Prizes, the Robert Creeley Prize the Betty Prize from Poets House for her service to poetry, and the Lon Tinkle Award for Lifetime Achievement from the Texas Institute of Letters. She served on the Board of Chancellors of the Academy of American Poets from 2010–2015, and in May 2019 she was named the 2019–2021 Young People's Poet Laureate by the Poetry Foundation. 

[AS ALWAYS PLEASE GO TO THE LINK TO READ GOOD ARTICLES (or quotes or watch videos) IN FULL: HELP SHAPE ALGORITHMS (and conversations) THAT EMPOWER DECENCY, DIGNITY, JUSTICE & PEACE... and hopefully Palestine]

Albert Einstein and Hannah Arendt's 1948 letter to the New York Times: They saw the creation of a Jewish ethnostate in Palestine at the expense of its indigenous Muslim and Christian population as a profound injustice and moral catastrophe. Einstein and the other signatories explicitly compared Begin’s Herut (Freedom Party), born from the Irgun, to Nazis and Fascists, warning that their ideology of racial superiority and violent ethnic nationalism posed a grave danger to the moral and political future of the new state.

https://x.com/mazzenilsson/status/2058596779835469875/photo/1

    

[AS ALWAYS PLEASE GO TO THE LINK TO READ GOOD ARTICLES (or quotes or watch videos) IN FULL: HELP SHAPE ALGORITHMS (and conversations) THAT EMPOWER DECENCY, DIGNITY, JUSTICE & PEACE... and hopefully Palestine] 

https://archive.org/details/AlbertEinsteinLetterToTheNewYorkTimes.December41948/page/n2/mode/1up 

Albert Einstein and Hannah Arendt's letter to the New York Times: December 2, 1948 

Signed by Albert Einstein, Hannah Arendt, Sidney Hook, Rabbi Jessurun Cardozo, Irma Lindheim, and 22 other Jewish scholars, writers, and public figures. (Published December 4, 1948, in The New York Times.)

“What does it say about these times that the world trusts Ms. Rachel more than the New York Times?” Mo Amer in The New Yorker

Photograph by Natalie Naccache for The New Yorker

The New Yorker Interview

Mo Amer Has Survived by Being Funny

The comedian discusses flying in Jimmy Kimmel’s jet, beefing with Jerry Seinfeld, and the “weight” of talking about Palestine on his new standup special, “Wild World.”

 

By Andrew Marantz

October 26, 2025 

On billboards for the second season of the Netflix show “Mo,” the comedian Mo Amer wears a kaffiyeh and a cowboy hat. “Mo” is a semi-autobiographical, semi-absurdist dramedy, in the tradition of “Louie,” “Maron,” and “Ramy”; in the show, and also in his standup, Amer, who is forty-four, recounts slightly heightened anecdotes from his life, which was already heightened enough. He was born in Kuwait, to Palestinian-refugee parents. When he was nine, the Iraqi military invaded, sparking the Gulf War, and Amer’s family had to flee. His father was being held mistakenly as a political prisoner, and his mother sewed wads of cash into the lining of a purse and a suitcase and led her children across the border to safety. “My mother is a gansta,” Amer says in his first standup special, “The Vagabond.”

The family ended up in Houston—hence the cowboy hat, the name of Amer’s second standup special (“Mohammed in Texas”), and Amer’s onstage persona, which combines Southern charm, streetwise acuity, and an impressive range of accents from both Gulfs. In one special, Amer tells a story about going to rural Louisiana for a standup show shortly after 9/11, and almost getting arrested; in another, he tells a story about performing for American troops in Iraq, in which he almost gets shot.

Amer told me that he has always felt an obligation to speak not only as a Muslim or as an Arab but from the more specific perspective of a Palestinian American comic... READ MORE  https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-new-yorker-interview/mo-amer-has-survived-by-being-funny

 AS ALWAYS PLEASE GO TO THE LINK TO READ GOOD ARTICLES & QUOTES IN FULL: HELP SHAPE ALGORITHMS (and conversations) THAT EMPOWER DECENCY, DIGNITY, JUSTICE & PEACE... and hopefully Palestine, or at least fair and just laws and policies]

Genocide is not a matter of opinion: 300+ writers, scholars & public figures refuse to write for the New York Times Opinion section in a collective effort to hold the paper accountable for its role in the genocide in Gaza.

“Language makes genocide justifiable. A reason why we are still being bombed after 243 days is because of The New York Times and most Western media,” the Palestinian journalist Hossam Shabat wrote months before Israel assassinated him. As Palestinians in Gaza return to their homes and take stock of the destruction Israel has wrought with two years of air strikes, massacres, and starvation, it is our responsibility in the West to hold complicit institutions to account for these crimes. As much as any weapons manufacturer, the media is part of the machinery of war, producing the impunity and bigotry that enables and sustains it... READ THE STATEMENT IN FULL https://www.boycottdivestunsubscribe.com/opinion-boycott

AS ALWAYS PLEASE GO TO THE LINK TO READ GOOD ARTICLES & QUOTES IN FULL: HELP SHAPE ALGORITHMS (and conversations) THAT EMPOWER DECENCY, DIGNITY, JUSTICE & PEACE... and hopefully Palestine, or at least fair and just laws and policies]  

Mohammed El-Kurd

@m7mdkurd

 

300+ writers, scholars and public figures – including almost 150 past New York Times contributors – have committed to refusing to write for the paper’s Opinion section until the paper 

 

1) addresses it's anti-Palestinian bias, 

 

2) retracts the widely debunked investigation “Screams Without Words.” and 

 

3) and calls for a U.S. arms embargo of Israel. 

 

The Opinion section is where the paper creates plausible deniability for its anti-Arab racism and its complicity in genocide. 

 

And while they treat the lies of the Israeli government as fact in their News section, they render the genocide debatable and relegate it to the Opinion page. But the section is nothing without the freelance contributors who write for it--and they are choosing integrity over prestige. 

 

Writers Against the War on Gaza

@wawog_now

Replying t@wawog_now

The @nytimes uses its Opinion pages to whitewash its news coverage, often inviting contributions which “contrast with or challenge those of our newsroom and our own Opinion columnists and editorials.”. But the section is nothing without the freelance contributors who write for it.

 

susan abulhawa | سوزان ابو الهوى

@susanabulhawa

·

Oct 24

Hamas wants international media to bear witness, investigate, and report. 

 

Israel does not and refuses to allow any international journalist into Gaza, while actively targeting and murdering local Palestinian journalists. 

 

Is it really that hard to discern who's lying and wanting to hide the truth? 

 

It's not "complicated," no matter how many times they [Zionist Propagandists] hammer that word into people's heads.

+

A recent dossier reveals material & ideological ties between Israel and journalists and executives of the NYT. Whether serving in the IOF or taking money from pro-Israel consultancies, the staff at the Times is compromised. Read all about it: https://newyorkwarcrimes.com/dossier

"The media’s initial reporting and subsequent failure to hold Israel truly accountable highlights a disturbing trend in which Western outlets choose Israeli propaganda over the truth, often downplaying and normalising blatant violations of international law. As such, the media allows the continued dehumanisation of Palestinians and the normalisation of Israel’s atrocities, even genocide. The Nasser hospital bombing is not an aberration, it is part of a larger pattern of Israeli aggression against Gaza’s civilian infrastructure, including hospitals, homes, and schools. " Assal Rad

AS ALWAYS PLEASE GO TO THE LINK TO READ GOOD ARTICLES (or quotes) IN FULL: HELP SHAPE ALGORITHMS (and conversations) THAT EMPOWER DECENCY, DIGNITY, JUSTICE & PEACE... and hopefully Palestine, or at least fair and just laws and policies]

Western media will always give Israel the benefit of propaganda

For nearly two years, Western media has normalised Israeli war crimes and dehumanised Palestinians amid Gaza’s ongoing genocide, argues Assal Rad.

Assal Rad

04 Sep, 2025

Israel attacked Nasser hospital in Khan Yunis, located in the southern Gaza Strip, on August 25, 2025. Numerous casualties were reported, including journalists and healthcare workers. [GETTY]

Language is not neutral; it shapes the way we perceive global events with profound implications for public opinion. In the context of the Gaza genocide, the discourse deployed by Western media is far from objective. It often contributes to the dehumanisation of Palestinians while reinforcing pro-Israel narratives. This bias is not just about what is reported, and what is not, but also about how the story is told.

Israel’s recent bombing of Nasser hospital provides a striking illustration of how media coverage can normalise war crimes.

For nearly two years, we have witnessed a clear pattern of mainstream media coverage on Gaza. Israeli actions are often described using terms like “self-defence” or “targeting Hamas,” framing them as justified, and Israeli officials are treated as legitimate sources for the facts regarding all events

On the other hand, Palestinian sources like journalists, witnesses, and doctors are often doubted and the historical context of their systematic oppression under Israeli occupation is often absent from the reporting. This linguistic imbalance shapes how the issue of Palestinian liberation is understood, positioning Israel as the victim and Palestinians as aggressors, regardless of the power disparity between the two.

Israel as the victim

For decades, Western media has perpetuated this skewed narrative and consistently minimised Palestinian suffering while amplifying Israeli victimhood. A January 2024 report from The Intercept offered evidence of the systematic bias in major Western outlets such as the New York Times, Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times.

The quantitative analysis revealed that emotive words like “slaughter” or “massacre” were almost exclusively used to describe Israeli civilian deaths, while adopting more neutral terms for Palestinian deaths. This imbalance is not an accident; it is a deliberate effort by the media to distort the reality of the conflict and shape public perception to diminish the scale of Israel’s violence against Palestinians.

The mainstream media’s coverage in the aftermath of Israel’s most recent horrific attack on Nasser hospital provides another egregious example of this calculated bias. The attack, which killed at least 20 people including journalists and rescue workers, was part of a broader pattern of Israeli assaults on Gaza’s healthcare infrastructure.

Despite the overwhelming evidence, Western media outlets initially prioritised official Israeli statements that tried to soften public outrage by calling the bombing a mistake, running headlines that framed the incident as a “tragic mishap.” This form of reporting, which downplays Israeli actions and legitimises its violence, is not new. However, what made the hospital bombing particularly notable was the release of footage showing that it was hit in a double-tap attack, clearly targeting rescue workers—in broad daylight—who were responding to the initial strike.

No accountability

As footage of Israel’s direct strike on rescue workers spread across social media, fuelling public outcry, it was evident that this was not an isolated event but a deliberate targeting of journalists and medical personnel. Instead of condemning the attack as an obvious war crime, Western media echoed Israeli claims.

When Israel later stated that the hospital was targeted due to a “Hamas camera” being present—a claim so outlandish it is almost laughable—the media unquestionably reported this absurdity as justification for the attack. By accepting and reporting Israel’s explanation, the media helped reinforce the narrative that bombing hospitals was somehow acceptable in the context of “targeting Hamas” or a so-called Hamas camera. This failure to challenge Israeli claims is emblematic of how Western media regularly parrots official accounts, even when they defy basic morality and logic.

It was not until after the initial wave of coverage—which sought to absolve Israel of yet another war crime—that some outlets began to report the truth. An investigation by the New York Times contradicted Israel’s account and rationale for the attack. Later coverage from the BBC and CNN revealed that Israel had attacked Nasser hospital more than the two initial strikes originally reported.

Though the later reports refuted Israel’s explanation, they still did not employ the language of war crimes and the damage had already been done. Indeed after flooding the airwaves in the wake of the attacks with Israel’s ridiculous explanations, Israeli talking points had already become entrenched in the public discourse.

Even Reuters, which had its own reporter killed in the attack, failed to acknowledge the deliberate nature of the Israeli strikes. Instead, their headlines repeated Israeli statements asserting that journalists were not the intended targets. This was despite the overwhelming evidence that Israel has consistently targeted and killed their Palestinian colleagues in Gaza, resulting in a staggering number of casualties among the press.

Propaganda over truth

The media’s initial reporting and subsequent failure to hold Israel truly accountable highlights a disturbing trend in which Western outlets choose Israeli propaganda over the truth, often downplaying and normalising blatant violations of international law. As such, the media allows the continued dehumanisation of Palestinians and the normalisation of Israel’s atrocities, even genocide.

The Nasser hospital bombing is not an aberration, it is part of a larger pattern of Israeli aggression against Gaza’s civilian infrastructure, including hospitals, homes, and schools. These attacks are plainly war crimes under international law. Yet, Western media’s refusal to hold Israel accountable or even to call their actions by their appropriate name is symptomatic of a deeper problem of how Israel’s oppression of Palestinians has been understood in the Western world.

Rather than immediately challenging Israel’s account of the Nasser hospital bombing and contextualising it within the larger story of the Gaza genocide, legacy media repeated Israeli talking points, helping to normalise the attack as a regrettable but inevitable part of “war.” This ongoing bias in Western media coverage of Gaza is not only about misreporting. It is also about complicity.

When the media acts as stenographers for genocidal states instead of defenders of truth, they become enablers of that very violence. By normalising war crimes, Western media is culpable for them.

 Assal Rad is a scholar of Modern Middle Eastern history and Nonresident Fellow at Arab Center DC. She received her PhD at the University of California, Irvine.

Follow Assal on Twitter/X: @assalrad

https://www.newarab.com/opinion/western-media-still-values-israeli-lies-over-palestinian-lives

 AS ALWAYS PLEASE GO TO THE LINK TO READ GOOD ARTICLES (or quotes) IN FULL: HELP SHAPE ALGORITHMS (and conversations) THAT EMPOWER DECENCY, DIGNITY, JUSTICE & PEACE... and hopefully Palestine, or at least fair and just laws and policies]

"It’s not a “project” and it’s not “controversial.” It’s land theft and it’s ILLEGAL UNDER INTERNATIONAL LAW" ... Deftly, time & time again, Assal Rad points out how our media has been writing it wrong, rather than righting a wrong:

Assal Rad

@AssalRad

"What Israel is doing to Palestinians:

 

 -Genocide 

-Ethnic cleansing 

-Occupation 

-Annexation 

-War crimes

 -Starvation 

 

What the media calls it: 

 

-Military operation 

-Relocation plan 

-Offensive 

-Settlement project 

-Takeover plan 

-Hunger crisis 

 

 This is complicity, not journalism."

 

 ~~~

.... " “Israel says” is not journalism. “Israel escalates genocide, forcibly displacing Palestinians under threat of death,” that’s your headline." Assal Rad

 

~~~

 

Assal Rad: "They’ve normalized daily massacres, but nothing is normal about this."  BREAKING: At least 64 Palestinians killed in Israeli attacks across Gaza since dawn on Wednesday, including 19 aid seekers, medical sources tell Al Jazeera.

 

~~~

 

Assal Rad: “Moves” They could have said land theft, annex, occupation, ethnic cleansing, forced displacement, genocide… But NYT went with “Moves.”

 

~~~ 

Assal Rad:

": Completes land-grab, annexes territory

 : Approves a controversial project"

"Also look at the striking difference in the image they use. For Russia, Putin looks like a cartoon villain. For Israel, Smotrich just looks at a map." Assal Rad

~~~

 

Assal Rad: "It’s not a “project” and it’s not “controversial.” It’s land theft and it’s ILLEGAL UNDER INTERNATIONAL LAW."

 

 ~~~

 

"“An exhausted military”

@CNN

is more concerned with how tired Israeli soldiers are from committing genocide than the state of their Palestinian victims." Assal Rad