What we are accepting
© 2023 FdR / NAEL GHABOUN
On Sunday, FdR offered a long audio and photo testimony by a Palestinian journalist in the Gaza Strip. On Monday, it asked an Israeli journalist to do the same thing, from his side of the front. We saw the images from 7 October, let's see those from Gaza. Faced with a war against civilians FdR asks: what are we accepting?
The images of Israeli civilians killed and massacred on 7 October will weigh heavily on Palestinians for a long time.
The images of Palestinian civilians killed and massacred in the military response unleashed on the Gaza Strip will weigh heavily on Israelis for a long time.
I have written that the Palestinians will never be a free people if they read in Hamas' action an act of resistance. I wrote that Hamas does not care about the fate of the Palestinian civilians.
If you ask me today if I find in Israel's military campaign against the Strip a long-term strategy of defence and survival, I answer no: it is only an angry reaction. Revenge is a word that, in that land and in the Middle East in general, has not gone out of fashion.
Looking at the images coming from the Strip, particularly those of children pulled from the rubble (dead and, some, still alive), can only suggest a question: what are we accepting? Indeed, it can only produce an observation: this is what we are accepting.
It is a question (and an observation) that includes 7 October and which, in resonating with the war against the civilians of Gaza, refuses, rationally even before emotionally, that it can be a supportable and justifiable reaction.
If we conclude that, instead, it is bearable and justifiable, then we accept everything.
(gianluca grossi)