"All we can do now is to request, beg, cry out: Don't enter Rafah. An Israeli incursion into Rafah will be an attack on the world's biggest displaced persons camp. It will drag the Israeli military into committing war crimes of a severity that even it has not yet committed. It is impossible to invade Rafah now without committing war crimes. If the Israel Defense Forces invades Rafah, the city will become a charnel house"

Gideon Levy in Haaretz today
#Israel #Gaza #Rafah

https://archive.is/aamVy

When I was a kid, and even into adulthood, I wondered how people could live in places where, down the street (figuratively or literally), horrors were being committed. How could they get out of bed? How could they go to work? How could they go to birthday parties and social occasions, dancing and singing while thousands of innocent people were being killed not 100 kilometers away? Isn't this a horrible complicity that reflects a deep moral failure?
I was reminded of this recently, reading a review of The Zone of Interest, https://jacobin.com/2024/02/zone-of-interest-holocaust-film

And here I am, living in Jerusalem, teaching classes, sipping coffee with friends, going to see movies, while the siege on Gaza continues.

It isn't that I don't feel guilty. It isn't that I'm not in shock and grief about the images and stories I read every day. But I feel so helpless, and I am scared to speak my mind for seemingly no benefit and only great social cost, and at some point that sense of helplessness became psychological distancing.

I don't want to think this is cowardice, but I really don't know. Maybe it is. I wish I were stronger, I wish I felt like I could do something, but I don't.
I hope some day in the future I am able to articulate what this has been like to go through. For now I don't have the words, except to say that I'm sorry. I don't even know for what right now, but I'm sorry.

#israel #Palestine #gaza #alienation

Ibrahim Quarishi has published an article in CounterPunch about seeing the Oct 7th tragedy from Primo Levi's perspective. Among examples of Israeli Jews and Palestinians who try to adopt this philosophy, Quarishi mentions @neo and me (blush).

The voice of peace supporters here is drowned by war drums, and actively silenced. Articles like this remind readers abroad that we exist.

Beyond the Memory of Trauma: Remembering Primo Levi During the Israeli–Palestinian Tragedy
https://www.counterpunch.org/2024/02/02/beyond-the-memory-of-trauma-remembering-primo-levi-during-the-israeli-palestinian-tragedy/