I came to adulthood in the wake of the Rwandan genocide, in the shadow of the genocide in the former country of Yugoslavia. In my middle age, I watch as the world starves, murders, and renders houseless the children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren of Palestinians made refugees in their own land. I had not understood what happened then – was it mere racism, was it fear of unknown consequences, was it exhaustion after all the terrible calamities of the Cold War? I knew only that my generation would never be able to remove the stain of those calamities from our souls, even if we were young and powerless.
We had been alive, and done nothing.
And now what? What explains the fact that countries that wax lyrical about democracy and human rights in other places, can supply weapons, while they withhold food? That they cannot even find the courage to say that murder is murder, when tens of thousands of women and children have been murdered, when whole families have been wiped out? People quibble about the correct word, is it genocide, is it not, while starving civilians gather at food trucks and are murdered for it, while babies die of malnutrition, while hospital after hospital is destroyed, and mass graves are dug in plain sight.
This is the world that we live in, in which a minister of culture from a country that considers itself civilised, that says it has learnt the lessons from its horrific past, can say she was applauding an Israeli Jew, but not a Palestinian Muslim, for a film that they both made together. What is this civilisation, then, what is the lesson learned, what is the culture she stands for that seeks to divide even those that try, bravely, to stand together as humans, as equals? What was she applauding?
Men walk through the destroyed streets of Gaza. Photo: WHO
Some deaths are monumental, it seems, others – they are only the monument of bones to be erected in response, dismissed as collateral, as a necessary evil. I recall reading, in an explanation that touched my heart, that explained the world to me in a way that I could grasp, that Talmudic scholars explained the repetition of the word “tzedek” (justice), in the instruction, “Tzedek, tzedek tirdof – justice, justice, you shall pursue” was meant to underscore that justice could only be pursued through just means. What is the unnecessary evil that we chase though the means of necessary evil? Is it not clear that when we reduce some deaths to meaninglessness and wave the deaths of others to justify this, we only say out loud what we believe – that only some lives are worthy, and the others must be sacrificed at the altar of this worthiness?
It sickens me that I have food, and more than enough food, when that is being deliberately deprived from even children. It hurts that I have shelter above my head, clean water, the warmth and love of family and friends in safe places, when all of this is being deliberately taken away – before my eyes – from millions of people, and all I can do is put out these small words to clothe such a colossal crime. To be safe, to be well fed, to be cared for, these themselves seem to be crimes right now.
To look away from evil is evil, I was taught, but what evil is this to continue to look upon evil, and more evil, and even more evil? Displaced, starved, bombed, and shot, these people will continue to die. What dies in us as we continue to watch, and do nothing?
Who are we, I had asked myself, those many years ago as I learned of those crimes. So many years later, I fear I know. This is what we are.
