With a glossy Tiger Beat centerfold of Bibi N. thumbtacked above a cluster of L.L.Bean glamping bags, this unnamed D.C. townhouse is the bipartisan slumber-party pad of many an elite D.C. warmonger.

For last Saturday night’s saber-rattling clique, the pre-beddy-bye game was “Would You Rather?”

Around the circle they went. First was Lindsey, then Antony, followed by Kirbs and Bolt, and finally it was Tommy Q-Tip’s turn to answer.

A gooey frog laboriously choked down his pendulous throat, Minority Questioner Mitch coated each drawled vowel in sticky sorghum molasses: “Would you rather, 1. roast an Israeli being abducted by Hamas with an Apache Hellfire missile; 2. abandon a few dozen Gazan preemies to rot in generator-cut incubators; or 3. explode the head of a 13-year-old Palestinian amputee recovering in her Nasser Hospital bed with a 155 mm artillery shell?”

Q-Tip responded, “Golly, y’all! I gotta choose just one?”

Commencing in the late 19th century with father of Zionism Theodor Herzl’s “The State of the Jews,” right up to today’s Netanyahu liquidation-orgy, the justifiably regarded native Palestinian Arabs – long the predominant inhabitants of the land – have unceasingly had their fate hegemonically force-fed to them.

In 1937, Winston Churchill wrote, “I do not agree that the dog in a manger has the final right to the manger even though he may have lain there for a very long time.”

For nearly a century, the Palestinian Arabs have been displaced, humiliated, immured and slaughtered. Damnably, the world has ignored their misery.

And although my voice does not resound like Adelson’s tumbling casino bullions or persuade with Raytheon Tomahawk cruise missile might, to the venal milquetoasts in blood-soaked D.C., I emphatically proclaim, “No more genocidal dollars in my name.”

Robert Erving
Portland