The Brochure

how they market stolen land

Photo by gaf clickz on Unsplash

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They smile for the camera
They smile for the cash
Funny how those dollars
Bleach out the past

The camera captures shoreline
The sunlight
The sand
But what about the footprints
Of the people they banned

What about the names
Scraped from the stones
What about the keys
Still cold in our palms
What about the children
Who never came home

But they don’t care

Just another brochure

Just another view

Just another paradise
Built on the blood
Of the displaced

They crop out the history
Chop out the grief
Photoshop paradise
Profit from ethnic cleansing

But who fucking cares

The ocean sure looks fucking great

Amazing what a filter can do
To hide all the blood from view

They sell luxury living
They call it escape
All it will cost you
Is 10 million dollars
Oh and your soul too

Will that be cash
Or credit

They sell waterfront dreams
Where a village once stood
While telling you
How that marketing meeting
Felt morally good
While lining their pockets
With immoral money
Because they could
And they always would

They keep scrubbing their hands
But blood never comes clean

Did they bother to ask

Did their hearts reach the brink

Did their conscience even blink

Or did their every objection
Sink in the ink

Sign here

Smile there

Hair done

Light set

They don’t remember
Because money forgets

Tell me

If they built condominiums
Over Auschwitz today
Would the cameras still gather

Would celebrities say

What incredible sunsets
What a beautiful space

Would they toast with champagne
To the excellent taste

Or would history matter
Would everyone care

The disrespect of forgetting
All the suffering
Just to sell luxury there

Does the thought
Make you squirm
Good it really should
But ask yourself why
That reaction is nowhere in sight
When the victims are from Palestine

That’s the real question

Not the answer they spin

Not the apartment with a bloody view

Not another celebrity
Calling conquest a win

They are paid to perform
Not to think
Not to feel
All that money
They’re paid
To make occupation
Look like a win

The brochure says
Coastal

It doesn’t say
Cleansed

Doesn’t mention
Whose blood fed the trenches

No
That’s not their lens

Only blue water
Only blue sky
And another blue checkmark
Selling stolen paradise

Fame doesn’t make people wise

It makes them a product
That always has a price
Sold with a promise
Wrapped in disguise

Their status isn’t a halo
They didn’t acquire wealth
By being kind

The applause
You give them
Isn’t ethics

All their awards aren’t a spine

All the standing ovations
Can’t override their crimes

An actress gets millions
To decorate land theft
Just miles away
From an ongoing slaughter

Gwyneth Paltrow
People worship her name
While she sells you
Ethnic cleansing
Apartheid
Genocide

Up in her ivory tower
Built on death
Wrapped in the wealth
That her image has made
Selling pseudoscience
Like Goop on a plate
Then calling it truth
Selling to your faith

Can’t blame her

She needs another mansion
Another yacht
Another transaction
Another expansion
Another charity
Another distraction
While preaching compassion
From her first class cabin

Another dress
That costs what we make in a year
Another red carpet
Another fake cheer
While children are starving
She smiles for the premiere

Selling luxury living
While their reaper lingers near

The disparity
You can’t tell me
She can’t see

She feeds on praise
Gets off on selling her image
As some enlightened being

But she’s a puppet
Selling a penthouse
With a stolen ocean view

She’s capitalism

She’s celebrity

She’s greed
Packaged
Priced
And sold

And she’s not the only one
Because celebrity
Has always been for sale

Today it’s luxury condos
Yesterday it was diamonds
Tomorrow it’ll be whatever
Pays enough
To bleach another map

Their faces
Become the billboard

Their smiles
Become the mask

Their fame
Becomes the product
That teaches you
To forget

Until forgetting
Becomes
The only thing
They never have to sell

You already bought it

Their brochure
In your hands

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Gwyneth Paltrow is helping sell luxury apartments in what Israelis call Herzliya. Before the Nakba ("Catastrophe" in Arabic) in 1948, this was the Palestinian village of al-Haram, whose Palestinian residents were violently expelled. What is being marketed as luxury living today was once a place Palestinians simply called home.

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