I wept in front of Al Jazeera television for much of the holiday. That is the long and the short of it.

I still feel numb and shaken. The horror of what we have witnessed – are still witnessing – the evil of it, is beyond anything I had been able to fathom.

I check Associated Press, United Press International and Reuters every day! To the extent they report at all on the massacres taking place day after day after day in Gaza (and also the West Bank!!!) they all three refer to them offhandedly as to just any old, distant and – above all – minor event that is of little or no concern to us.

Ghastly! You find me for once tongue-tied. The nightmare is still going on, mind you, unchecked by moral scruples. Why hasn’t the corporate press voiced outrage? Because it is a puppet, an instrument of the US powers that be.

I feel like a child who has discovered that Santa Claus was just a fairytale. Worse, in fact, much worse. Santa Clause is in reality a very big, very black and immensely dangerous wolf. Worse, even: Santa is evil to the core.

Stunned, still, I really have nothing more to add other than a very warm recommendation for another book:

Patrick Lawrence, Journalists and their Shadows, 2023

Except, oh yes, except that there is a sliver of light between the black clouds:

• My own servile-to-the-USA country’s pusillanimous public broadcasting company dutifully reports, every day, the number of Palestinians massacred over the past 24 hours. And every day it presents us with new heart-wrenching photos and scenes. It is bravely reporting what the USA does not want reported.
  
• Learning of my despair, a friend in Iceland sent me a picture of his Christmas tree this year. It is decked in the Palestinian colours and with Palestinian flags. Surprised and grateful I started watching the Icelandic evening news on television.
  
• One of the headlines of yesterday’s evening news from Iceland was the arrival at Keflavik Airport of a young Palestinian woman, who had been “gifted” with Icelandic nationality. She had never been to Iceland, but a Palestinian refugee there – her brother – had mobilised sympathy for her, and the government had decided to offer her a home in Iceland. The footage of her arrival was very moving as she appeared in a wheelchair.
  She had no legs.
  So the Icelandic public broadcasting company is also doing its bit.