“If you still don't understand that this is ethnic cleansing and genocide, if you still believe that Israel is… an illusion,” Ensler said.
I spent nights thinking about these dead-hearted people and the governments – including our own – that failed to call a ceasefire in Gaza and then suspended payments to UNRWA, the main aid provider to the stricken region, after Israel accused dozens of its employees of being involved in the October 7 massacre. .
Israeli soldiers pose for a photo at a site on the Gaza Strip border, in southern Israel, last month.credit: AP
This is happening at a time of war, mass displacement and impending famine, and when these allegations – which remain unproven – were directed at approximately 0.1 percent of the UN agency’s estimated 13,000 employees in Gaza.
I thought about this abject failure of the international community and the failure of many Jewish people to condemn an Israeli government that has been hijacked by right-wing extremists, Christian extremists, unruly settlers, and a morally bankrupt prime minister.
For months, the Israeli government has been preventing adequate aid from entering Gaza, and Palestinians are now eating grass and drinking spoiled water. Hundreds were forced to share one toilet. Children began to die of starvation, and even aid workers were starving to death. Almost all hospitals were damaged or destroyed. Doctors, nurses, artists, students, teachers, journalists, entire families and children, thousands and thousands of children, all died.
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“Never in my many years as an aid worker have I seen a place bombed like this for so long, with such a trapped population, with no chance of escape,” said Jan Egeland, head of the Norwegian Refugee Council.
I still swallowed my tongue, even after I heard the American anti-Zionist Rabbi Yisroel Dovid Weiss condemn Israel. “We cannot remain silent,” he added. “Because we are Jews, we have to stand up and say… not in our name, we completely object to this.” We cry and suffer with the people of Palestine.”
On February 10, they discovered the body of Hind Hamada, the little Gazan girl who had asked to be rescued in a recorded phone call to the Palestinian Red Crescent. Her family had responded to the “humanitarian” call sent by Israel to evacuate Gaza City when Israeli tanks opened fire on them.
The fate of the six-year-old girl remained unknown until she was found in her aunt's burning car, after she bled to death under the corpses of her family.
From that, she turned to the image of another Palestinian girl sobbing, trembling, and scratching the dirt over the loss of her family. Then she listened to Bisan Odeh, the young Palestinian director who had created an Instagram account since the beginning of the war. Of 4.4 million while trying to describe the indescribable:
“Hello everyone! This is Bisan from Gaza, the land of love, life and death. So today the bride and groom Maryam and Abdullah, who were married just three days ago in tents, were killed today. They were living in the “safe” area of Rafah. There are no safe places and no safe people in Gaza, and all our attempts to live, love and complete our lives waiting for this war to stop, will fail. There is no other solution but to stop this war and [begin a] cease-fire”.
Then I read about the “stampede of the hungry” and the assessment of Volker Türk, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights: “There seem to be no borders, no words to express the atrocities unfolding before our eyes in Gaza. This is a massacre… All people in Gaza are at imminent risk of starvation.” .
This was him. I texted my editor and asked if I could try another story. Yes I can. Now, in my attempt to find the words, I turn to the words of Elie Wiesel, the Jewish Holocaust survivor and author who in 1986 accepted the Nobel Peace Prize after vowing never to be silent about the suffering of others.
“Wherever men or women are persecuted because of their race, religion or political opinions, that place must – at that moment – become the center of the universe,” he said.
At this moment, Gaza is the center of the universe, and silence is no longer an option. If that's really the case.
David Lesser is an author and journalist. He is a regular contributor and former writer for Good Weekend.
