The Academy of Fat Cats…

In a vast farm named politics, where doors are opened to everything but conscience, fat cats sit atop high walls, watching the scene with half-closed eyes as if they have convinced themselves that the homeland was created to always pass under their claws and that people exist only to applaud whenever their weight increases.

These are not ordinary cats, but a breed that has perfected obesity at the expense of the public's suffering, feeding on the wasted time of nations, the frayed nerves of distressed people, and the lifespan of postponed issues, excelling in turning national pain into daily rehearsals for camouflage.

In this farm, success is not measured by what has been achieved, if there is anything achieved at all, but by the ability of some to market inadequacy as wisdom and to wrap failure in gold paper called "the sensitive phase," then sell it to people as if it were a great political victory.

Thus was born the unofficial academy of fat cats, where courses are taught that are not written in books nor studied in universities, yet memorized by heart.

First: The course on converting failure into personal achievement.
How to emerge from every crisis appearing bigger than reality, with words longer than the missing achievement, and noise sufficient to mask the permanent void, so that the listener believes that the fog is a major national project.

Second: The course on nationalism amidst the noise.
It is one of the most dangerous courses where students are required to raise their voices high so that no one hears the sound of shortcomings gnawing at the walls from within.

As for the tails of division, they are a distinguished faction of fat cats and are in the warmest wing of this farm. They do not create projects, they do not repair cracks, nor do they build bridges, but they are adept at keeping the rifts open, for their political sustenance grows in the spaces between brethren and flourishes the longer the darkness lingers over one home.

The darkest irony is that just yesterday, the occupation approved a death penalty law against Palestinian prisoners in its racist military courts, adding a new chapter of organized cruelty against the defenseless Palestinian people, while some of these cats were still busy weighing statements, arranging phrases, and distributing roles in the noise before their trip to check on their children or in-laws at one of the Palestinian embassies.

Here, betrayal is not only in theft but in the ability to transform existential danger into a passing news item that slips under the table, as if the necks of prisoners are merely footnotes in their heavy interests.

But what these cats do not understand is that the Palestinian people are not a memory that can be frozen, nor a consciousness that can be sedated indefinitely. This is a people that remembers the names of martyrs, the faces of prisoners, and the stones of old alleys, and will not fail to remember the faces of those who have fattened at the expense of its pain.

They may endure for a long time, may give chances, and may watch silently, but when they decide to open the account book, hunting fat cats becomes a matter of a short time only.

And here begins the truth they flee from:
That the Palestinian people, backed by the Palestinian judiciary and with clear support from the Palestinian President and the hawks of Fatah, will not leave this farm in chaos for long and will not allow fat cats to remain above the law or above accountability.

For homelands are not managed by noise nor protected by slogans. They are preserved when will turns into action, patience into decision, and popular anger into an inevitable moment of justice.

On the upper floor, where silent sessions and muffled laughter occur, the fat cats still think that the thick carpet can hide the traces of footsteps, but they forget the heavier truth:

That the moment of the fall of fat cats does not come from the outside but begins from within when the homeland decides to reclaim itself.

And when the homeland grows hungry, it does not spare those who have fed off its life.