It is Always Worth Speaking Out

on the genocide.

Recently I attended a book launch in town. The book is, by all accounts, a noble attempt to describe what is happening in a small strip of land on the Mediterranean Sea. The author read some excerpts, the listeners politely clapped, and the microphone was passed around for audience questions. Somebody in the crowd asked about the brutal siege that the Strip is undergoing. Many of this land's inhabitants, mostly civilians, have been killed with weapons supplied by the United States, and the person in the audience wanted to know what a person should do about this. The author answered eloquently, fully detailing the history of the Strip and how we got to where we are. But when the full scope of the terror of the siege seemed to come to the writer's mind, they paused, and muttered that what was happening was "unthinkable, unnamable."

Initially this bothered me. After all, it is a writer's job to give a name to what is seemingly unnamable, and ponder what is supposedly beyond thought. But I softened once I left the reading. After all, how many times have I read the news of the Strip and thought 'God, that's terrible', and done nothing with that thought afterwards? How many times have I watched a video of a mother crying out for their baby, or stared at pictures of dead children in body bags, and thought, 'God, there are no words', even though there were clearly words to describe what was happening?

There's nothing unnamable about what is happening in Gaza. For over a year, experts in the UN have described what is happening in Gaza as a genocide. Last Friday the UN human rights chief, Volker Türk, said that Israel's bombing of Gaza is "tantamount to ethnic cleansing." Days ago an assessment was released saying that 930,000 children in Gaza are at risk of famine. Only yesterday, it was reported that an estimated 14,000 children could die of starvation within the following 48 hours. There are clear words to describe what is happening in Gaza.

The genocide is clearly within the scope of thought, too. Even despite the western media's lacking coverage of the siege, there are plenty of direct stories and testimonies trickling out of Gaza; from people on social media, such as Bisan Owda and Mohamed Al khalidi, or reports from journalists in the Strip, over 170 of whom have been killed during the siege. It's not a question whether a person can imagine or think of what is happening in Gaza, but rather if a person will, and whether governments will succumb to people's will to oppose the genocide.

I have written about Gaza before, but not so explicitly in a while. I've often fallen into the trap of thinking that the reality of the genocide is so brutal, and hopeless, that there is little value in writing about it. Kurt Vonnegut wrote in Slaughterhouse Five that "there is nothing intelligent to say about a massacre," and so twisted logic follows that one shouldn't say anything at all. There is also the potential of political repression, especially here in the U.S., which is a very real threat for those who are targets of the Trump Administration. I am not, realistically, a target. Still, it's easier than not to stumble into self-censorship and paranoia.

Yet Gaza is always on the mind. How can it not be? In Small Things Growing, Robina Khalid put these thoughts perfectly, writing

"Just over a year ago, I wrote, “I didn’t start a newsletter to write about genocide, or what it does to those of us witnessing one in real time.” But, I continued rhetorically, how can you write about anything but genocide during a genocide? It is a year later, and I still have the same questions, only amplified."

How can a person not be thinking about the genocide, especially when it is aided and abetted by one's own country? But also: one shouldn't need a personal or political connection to a genocide to care about it. The fact that more than 53,000 Palestinians have been murdered, including 17,400 children, should be a good enough reason to think about the genocide. People should not have to prove why Gaza matters. If anything, people should only have to justify themselves when they don't care about mass-murder.

The stories emerging from Gaza right now are horrific. On May 13^th The New York Times interviewed Khalil el-Halabi, a 71 year old man who on Monday was only able to eat " a little bit of fava beans from an expired can." The article goes on,

"He said on Monday that he was too dizzy and weak to walk, adding that his weight had dropped to roughly 130 pounds from about 210 pounds before the war. Mr. el-Halabi said his daughter, who recently gave birth, was unable to breastfeed because she has not been eating enough. No baby formula is available, he said."

On May 19th, two days ago, the BBC shared the testimonies of several mothers in Gaza struggling to feed their children.

• "Shahinaz, a mother of two, says... her seven-month-old baby "screams constantly from hunger". She explains that her baby’s immune system is very weak and her daughter is suffering from a calcium deficiency. "No-one is able to help us in our suffering," she adds.

• Fatima Khamis, a mother of two young children, shares that she can no longer produce breast milk, and baby formula is either unavailable or unaffordable. "My baby's face is pale from hunger, and he is severely weak," she says, adding that the "root cause - lack of food and proper nutrition - remains".

• A third mother, Hana Mahmoud Ismail, says the lack of food during her pregnancy affected her baby’s development. "He still cannot sit up, and his teeth have not yet started to come in," she said of her five-month-old son."

Last week the BBC published an account of a six-year-old named Ismail Abu Odeh, which must be one of thousands of similar stories in Gaza of children desperately searching for food;

"Six-year-old Ismail Abu Odeh fought his way to the front. "Give me some," he called out. His bowl was filled with lentils, but as he made his way back, it was knocked out of his hands. He returned to his family's tent crying. An uncle who had managed to get some food later shared some with Ismail. The following day, no deliveries of water or food arrived at the displacement camp where he lives, located in a school in Gaza City, and the people gathered there were left with empty bottles and bowls. Ismail cried again."

What is so vile and cruel about this famine is that it is completely purposeful. In April Israel Katz, the Israeli Minister of Defense, called the blockade on humanitarian materials into Gaza a "main pressure lever" to achieve their objectives in Gaza, which Prime Minister Netanyahu has begun to describe as "conquest". This is of course a blatant war crime. As Janina Dill, the co-director of the Oxford Institute for Ethics, Law and Armed Conflict said in The New York Times,

“Enforcing a military blockade with the knowledge that it will starve the civilian population is a violation of international law... when Israeli decision makers state that the purpose is to extract political and military concessions, it clearly constitutes a war crime."

Fortunately the global community is almost universally admitting that the forced starvation of Gaza is unacceptable. On May 16^th the leaders of Iceland, Ireland, Luxembourg, Malta, Norway, Slovenia, and Spain signed a joint statement, writing "We will not be silent in front of the man-made humanitarian catastrophe that is taking place before our eyes in Gaza." Finally the UK, Canada, and France seem to be reaching their breaking point with Israel too, saying that "we will not stand by while the Netanyahu government pursues these egregious actions. If Israel does not cease the renewed military offensive and lift its restrictions on humanitarian aid, we will take further concrete steps in response."

But last Thursday, when Trump was asked about Gaza, he said "I think I’d be proud to have the United States have it, take it, make it a freedom zone." He reiterated this idea again over the weekend, while being interviewed by Fox News. “Gaza is a nasty place. It's been that way for years. I think it should become a free zone, you know, freedom, I call it a freedom zone."

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I keep bumping into old circular arguments, like; what good are these words? What will they ever accomplish? Writing can never be a replacement for an organized, collective vision of how to build a better society. But writing must matter, or else Refaat Alareer and the hundreds of other Palestinian writers killed in this genocide would never had bothered writing. There might be nothing intelligent or new to say about a massacre, but people should still say the words, even if people have heard them already. What is the point in writing if you cannot honestly state what is happening? Not everyone can publicly oppose what is happening right now. But for the many who can, we have an obligation to speak out, even if it is just to repeat simple beliefs, such as; people should never starve. The genocide has to end. Palestine must be free.

Heba Zagout, "Jerusalem is My City", 2023 - courtesy of In These Times (Heba was killed during the genocide in Gaza).