“Writing poetry after Auschwitz”, Adorno says, “is barbaric” (Adorno, 1967). Yet it is the prerogative of poets and artists who refuse integration to differ; poetry on occasions remains the only language that refuses to conform and art the only method to violate the norms of an established reality that denies any other means of catharsis. “Work of art”, Marcuse says, “represents reality while accusing it [even] its affirmation does not cancel indictment” (Marcuse, 1979). According to the Norwegian refugee council, “Gaza is the world’s largest open air prison where the prison guard is Israel” (Hovering, 2018). It is an integral part of the same “open-air prison” Adorno alluded to “which the world is becoming” yet contrary to his premise it is important to know ‘what depends on what’ because this is the question of to be or not to be, of a humanity which in the face of terrible coercion and utter indifference of world community is struggling to be reborn. A community which probably has long lost its right to be named as such and with its selective justice has become more of a crowd which according to Marcuse “is an antithesis of a community” in which every member participates as “standardised subject of brute self-preservation” (Marcuse, 1998). For the people of Palestine the query of ‘what depends on what’ and its answer needs a definite reply. They have managed to live and survive in ‘the open air prison’ for more than five decades facing a blitzkrieg of the occupier on regularly regular basis. Gaza especially is an inferno and the fire that keeps it burning is not the holy fire that once beaconed in Sinai to emancipate a motley crowd fiddling in a desert to find its way to a homeland; it is a fire that erupts both from the ground and the sky to consume all and sundry, unarmed and innocent, infants and aged with democratic disregard. “In the condition of complete powerlessness”, Adorno narrates, “what life-span remains to the individual appears as little more than a brief reprieve from the gallows” (Adorno, 1987). This is precisely what is happening in Gaza, a dress rehearsal of Auschwitz with a difference that here the expropriated of the past have turned into expropriators of the present. History is repeating itself, first disguised as Nazis and now veiled as Zionists. “The Romans”, Gramsci says, “were content with binding their vanquished opponents to their triumphal chariots…then they made the defeated lands their provinces. But now the victors would like all the inhabitants of the colonies to disappear, to make room for the new arrivals” (Gramsci, 1994). If one does do not like a person, Freud adds, it is because he reminds something that one does not like about himself. Such intolerance in the language of Psychology may indicate pathology of self-hatred, sadism or total alienation from one’s own outer self, a case of schizophrenia Who are these new arrivals, groups of Zionists migrating from everywhere to their ‘homeland’ owned, populated and developed by another people? This is the humanity which, according to Adorno, “is secretly emerging, which hungers for the compulsion and restriction, which the nonsensical continuation of domination imposes” (Adorno, 1987). In ‘Dialectic of Enlightenment’, Adorno and Horkheimer state: Akin to the “adults to whom the cry for the blood of Jews has become second nature do not know the reason why any more than the young people who are called upon to spill that blood. Those in command who know the reason do not hate the Jews and do not love their followers. But the hatred felt by the led…knows no bound” (p7, 1997). Instead of Jews one only needs to substitute the word with Palestinians and the theme and the process of repetition of history will be quite evident. In 1940s Nazis pushed Jews out of the productive process making them redundant; today Jews are doing the same with the Palestinians. Like always those in command involved in genocide know precisely what their reasons are. Both Adorno and Freud are quite clear about the concept of ambiguity, a characteristic feature of both poetry and resistance. “Neurosis” for Freud “is the inability to tolerate ambiguity”; for Adorno “intolerance of ambiguity is the mark of an authoritarian personality” (Adorno, 1993). If one does do not like a person, Freud adds, it is because he reminds something that one does not like about himself. Such intolerance in the language of Psychology may indicate pathology of self-hatred, sadism or total alienation from one’s own outer self, a case of schizophrenia. A society based on an exchange system where “the word coined by commerce and really alienated, touches [people] as familiar” (Adorno, 1987) neither ambiguity nor collectivity suits the large majority. People within exchange society want stability which itself is a contradiction but they do not want any act that could lead to unrest. Anything that jeopardizes their daily monotonous, premeditated routine is abhorrent. It can force them to think “because thinking burdens them with a subjective responsibility, which their objective position in the production-process prevents them from fulfilling, they renounce it… The displeasure of thinking soon turns into the incapacity to think at all” (Adorno, 1987). In case of Zionism the incapacity of its followers to think is further dwarfed under its atrocious ideology. They are looking for something which once their predators had demanded of them. Lebensraum and Juden Raus was the Nazi slogan. In Gaza the Palestinians are asked to vacate the room for the descendants of a ‘chosen people’ by quitting the place voluntarily. Else they have to face the music of the consequences. This is another kind of music that escaped the attention of Adorno who otherwise wrote at length about it. It is a “new phase of musical consciousness” of the Palestinians that “defines displeasure” without having any pleasure in it. It is a rage within displeasure, and they are entitled to this reaction since living under the might of totalitarianism where natural death is a distant dream “the term enjoyment of art sounds funny” if not vulgar. “Aldous Huxley has raised the question of who, in a place of amusement, is really being amused. With the same justice, it can be asked whom music for entertainment still entertains. Rather, it seems to complement the reduction of people to silence, the dying out of speech as expression, the inability to communicate at all” (Adorno, 1997). Exiled in their homeland Palestinians have little to be amused about, their amusement rests in cherishing their past, their one time freedom, their dreams and poetry that gives them “reason to look ahead and identify a glint of light”, a light that does not burn but emancipates and keeps intact the desire to live and struggle. When Adorno states “those who are homeless writing becomes their home” (Adorno, 1987) one can feel the cry of agony echoing the mourning not only underneath his chest but of the whole Jewish diaspora and of all those who for one reason or another are forced to leave their respective homes. Here one finds Mahmoud Darwish a bit ahead of everyone; for him “Exile is more than a geographical concept”. “[One] can be in exile in one’s homeland, in one’s own house, in a room”, and why not, Freud once confessed that wherever he went he found a poet had been there before him. Hence writing poetry after Auschwitz is not barbaric, it is defiance to the barbarity to the world of Holocaust regardless of where it is staged and who its inmates are. Poetry exists as culture “because freedom does not”. The writer has authored books on socialism and history. He blogs at saulatnagi.wordpress.com and can be reached atsaulatnagi@hotmail.com Published in Daily Times, December 7th 2018.