Humanitarian Pause
Channel: David Rovics
Date: 2023-11-26

What do you call a regime that kills over 5,000 children in a carpet-bombing campaign, leveling most of an entire region, intentionally bombing all the hospitals, ambulances, water tanks, power generators, solar panels, homes, churches, mosques, schools, refugee camps, grocery stores, and bakeries, with total destruction as the obvious goal?  And what do you call it when they take a few days off from the killing spree, with every intention of continuing it after the "humanitarian pause"?  I have no idea, I'm just asking, because these questions need answers.  But I wrote this song, anyway.

Lyrics:

Humanitarian Pause

After targeting emergency responders
After blowing up the water tanks and fuel
After bombing all the hospitals and ambulances
After blowing up the mosques and the schools
After bombing all the camps north and south
The camps of new and former refugees
After fighter jets with bunker buster missiles
After navy ships shelling from the sea

They’ll take a little break from slaughtering the children
Then they’ll do it all over again

After bombing all the solar panels
After blasting apart every street
After leveling apartment blocks, turning them to dust
When might they think the bombing is complete
After blowing up the churches and the parliament
After killing families in their cars
After killing families walking down the road
With nothing in between them and the stars

After bombing their own prisoners
Beneath the missiles, dying there alone
Who knows what might be their plan of attack
As they kill off so many of their own
After keeping food and water from the people
After making sure all the injured die
Along with all the babies in the incubators
As everywhere the world wonders why