See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil — and mind only my own business. In the Shinto tradition, the famous three wise monkeys cover their eyes, ears and mouth to ward off evil, to deny it any way of manifesting itself. Today the meaning is more realistic and more provocative. See no evil — because I mind my own business, I saw nothing, I wasn't there. Hear no evil — because I wasn't paying attention, I was busy with other things, I was distracted. Speak no evil — because I don't know the facts, because I didn't inform myself, because I don't want to make a mistake, because you never know what might happen. The choice of the three monkeys, therefore, is one of omertà, indifference, selfishness and silence — but also acceptance of abuse, injustice, and the surrender of the right to expression.
Thanks to the internet, the world we live in does see, and hear, and in some fashion, speak. The one who has spoken loudest and clearest of all has been Francesca Albanese — and that clown Trump has sanctioned her for it. Millions upon millions of people have spoken and shouted in every city on earth, and Israel, indifferent, has gone on exterminating. We have seen images of children with containers bigger than themselves queuing for water, and a missile that tore them to pieces. Technical error, the IDF said, while a father screamed and wept at his dead child: "Why did you go to get water? Why?" — To survive, to quench the infernal thirst that kills, the child could not answer.
By now, horror is part of our daily life. The truth is that there is an Israeli prime minister who, with his government and his army, is doing whatever he likes as though he were the owner of the world. And nobody dares intervene, stop him, arrest him. There is a genocide underway, and while a people is being massacred there are also people profiting from it, enriching themselves, doing business from it, year after year. Every criminal on earth together and in love — like canis latrans on carcasses to be stripped.
In twenty months, 58,000 Palestinians have been slaughtered, more than 18,000 of them children. And those are serious, conservative estimates. To defend itself? To defeat Hamas? Please. It's daily butchery to raze a country and its people to the ground, to deprive them of everything — water, food and medical care included. To seize a land with all its resources, among them the gas that represents immense wealth for the poor Palestinians.
We write, we shout, we march, we sign petitions — but see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil is the motto of those who have bought the world, who pull the strings of the puppets who believe they govern it. Take Signora Meloni, who only opens her mouth when the Israelis strike a church. And she does it with words that are ridiculous, cowardly — because she cannot afford to lose her position: "The attacks against the civilian population that Israel has been carrying out for months are unacceptable." You heard that? Meloni calls these attacks "unacceptable." Which is to say: children crawling on the ground to beg for water and food from American aid convoys, and for Meloni it is "unacceptable" that snipers shoot them in the head, that they commit "technical errors" in which they butcher a people at its limits. These are things one simply should not do — please be more careful, gentlemen.
And yet… we have reached a level of infamy, of ferocity, of cruelty, of oppression so immensely high, so brazen, so shameless, so thoroughly criminal that I cannot believe it can last. History repeats itself, yes — but when it exceeds certain limits, it starts over. Nobody knows for how long, but it starts over. And all these filthy earthlings — for what else can I call them? — with their putrid riches will end up in the very same filth they produce today. Amen.
Alessandro Ippolito