(Great post by my Italian friend Chiara Busca who visited both Israel and Palestine a few months ago. You can read the original Italian here: theagathist.wordpress/2014/07/26/gaza-siamo-tutti-noi/) In these last few days all I did was reading, not knowing what else I could do. I read reports from international journalists in Gaza; letters from desperate doctors, men and women; political analysis, interviews and floods of tweets and comments. I watched debates between supporters of both sides; TV news all equally fake and useless; videos of children in tears, of worldwide protests, of politicians talking without saying anything, of other politicians talking nonsense. I marched, yelled, waved my posters and debated to the point of exhaustion. Now, while Palestinians keep counting their victims and Israel gets ready for a long war, I stop for a moment to think about what I’ve learned about human nature, in the midst of this tragedy. There’s a thousand things that I would like to talk about and that have been more or less discussed by many: first and foremost the war crimes committed by Israel (i.e. bombings of hospitals, ambulances and UN schools) which are evident and undeniable and which are slowly surfacing people’s conscience, despite the numerous efforts of the Zionist leadership to hide and deny them. I could rant for hours about the blatant silence of the world medias, which will pass into the annals of history for their incapability to conduct independent critical analysis, with ridiculous titles such as “Sharp rise in Gaza deaths: 13 Israeli soldiers, 70 others killed” , where the Baltimore Sun literally “otherizes” Palestinians. Or “Boys Drawn to Gaza Beach and Into Center of Mideast Strife”, a title chosen by the New York Times that I would rephrase as “Four boys killed by the Israeli Navy while playing football on the beach”. Or even “Missile at Beachside Gaza Cafe Finds Patrons Poised for World Cup.”, to which Palestinian journalist Ali Abunimah promptly responded: “Israeli missile stops by Gaza cafe for a drink and dialogue with its Palestinian friends.” I would continue with the virtuosity that Israel uses in turning the tables in its favor, making it look like the hundreds of victims of its strikes are puppets used by Hamas as human shields, the primitive rockets thrown from Gaza are life-threats for the helpless Israeli while the Israeli high-tech missiles are legitimate instruments of self-defense, the 166 children killed are collateral damage, and so on. Some of these apologies almost sound as jokes for their absurdity. I could then insult Obama for his persistence in supporting “Israel’s right to defend itself” while he fills his pockets with the revenues of the arms he sold to them. And I would continue railing against Europe’s tacit acquiescence, between Hollande who forbids demonstrations in France and Germany and Italy who sell to Israel submarines and fighter-bombers in abundance, maybe in the attempt of expiate their fascist sin financing more Fascism. (btw Italy is the greater EU exporter of military systems towards Israel). History teaches us that we are always ready to take part in a crime when it’s about taking profit from it, while we tend to shut up when it’s time to respond to the accusations; proof of it is that when the United Nations Human Right Council voted to form a commission of inquiry over Israel alleged war crimes in Gaza, Italy was among the 17 abstained, together with the rest of its coward European friends. Finally, if I had to speak about psychology, I would discuss the reason why only a small percentage of the population goes down in the streets to protest against this ongoing massacre. Why the pictures that each and everyone of us see every day on TV – of men reduced to shreds, of decapitated children, of cities in ruins and of hundreds of thousands of displaced – are not enough to shake our indignation. Why we lost that sense of humanity that makes us all sons and daughters of the same womb, all inhabitants of the same earth; that should make us feel close, parts of a whole. That should devour our bowels and has been put to sleep instead. As if the TV glass screen made those people fake, movie characters with whom we sympathize but for whom we don’t feel the need to do do anything. Because their tragedy doesn’t touch us. I would say that we are unaware of our power, convinced that there have been many wars and many are yet to come, therefore it’s useless to protest for a lost cause, it’s better to shut up and perpetuate the condition of slavery in which we have decided to stay. Aside all these inevitable and painful considerations, what I really wanted to talk about instead is an article written by Joan Smith entitled “In modern warfare, it’s the civilians who suffer most of all”. In it she writes: Modern forms of warfare are waged relentlessly against non-combatants. Just over a century ago, the ratio of military to civilian casualties was eight to one. By the 1990s, that figure had reversed. Think of a modern conflict – Iraq, Syria, Sierra Leone, Bosnia, Kosovo – and the pictures that come to mind are endless columns of refugees and the debris-strewn bodies of women and children. Spreading fear in civilian populations is a key element of modern warfare. The civil dimension of the massacre in Gaza is its most important and most horrible feature. Whether you are Jewish or Muslim, Israeli or American, Democrat or Republican, it is unacceptable to overlook the fact that entire families have been wiped out, that children are dying with alleged terrorists. The civilians of Gaza cannot be made to pay the price for a crime they never committed. The danger, when so many civilians die, is that it starts to seem inevitable. A painting of Andy Warhol comes into my mind, where the same scene of a deadly car crash is repeated fourteen times, always in a bright orange that covers all other colors, until the public doesn’t perceive the violence in it anymore. It doesn’t see death. It got used to it. Just as we got used to be afraid of terrorist attacks in the metro, to hear about planes diverted or shot down by rebel militias, to see death everywhere with unnatural naturalness. In this conflict like in many others around the world, regardless of who’s right and who’s wrong, regardless of who starts the attacks and who breaks the ceasefire, apart from the dirty political games, the treaties and the alliances, the civilians are the ones dying. It’s the mothers, the teachers, the construction workers, the six-months old children and those who are still in their mother’s womb, the university students, the young boyfriends and girlfriends, the doctors, the waitresses. the 99%. Us. Now I suggest we do an exercise, a terrible and nevertheless necessary one in order not to let our conscience die. This is the list of the names of the 930 victims and their ages, updated to the date of today by the Gaza Minister of Health. They are strange names, that the majority of us cannot pronounce. We can read a couple of them, not more. The list is too long. And yet these people were all real: they had careers, houses, computers, hobbies, problems and projects. We cannot let them become numbers. Let’s pretend that these are the names of our friends then; the names of our neighbors, of our brothers and sisters, children and parents: George, 4, Manchester. François, 22, Lyon. Irene, 16, Madrid. Michael, 25, Berlin. Rebekah, 61, New York. Carlotta, 30, Firenze. Maybe in this way our crushed humanity will be awaken, maybe we will realize what it means to lose a part of ourselves; and even if it won’t help to stop this massacre, maybe it will help us to understand something more of who we are, of the place were we live, of what we can do, and maybe it will help to stop future massacres, when the world-leaders will be our children. theagathist.wordpress/2014/07/29/we-are-all-gazans/
Posted on: Tue, 29 Jul 2014 14:30:01 +0000
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