The unending death-news maelstrom assaults the reader with what seems like daily frequency. Our digital distance simultaneously transports us to and shields us from the bedlam. We are assaulted virtually – our empathy enables that – but experience none of the flechette-mangled corpsifying assault that the victim does. We are free to imagine, knowing full well we are wholly incapable of adequately doing so.
News of the murders of Ibrahim Abu Sayed, Hossam Abu Sayed and Ismail Abu Oda struck me with a dull thump. I was saddened, but exhausted. The endgame is within reach – the end of apartheid is knowable and doable – and the Zionists destroy human lives senselessly. I can’t do anything for them. They’re dead already, so just stay focused on the horizon. Remember, this is a marathon effort.
I was surprised at my reaction, at the total absence of anger. I wondered if my rage nerves were temporarily frazzled. Being immersed in Palestine – constantly attuned to it – begins to take a psychological toll. One of our safety mechanisms is to divorce and disconnect. Reality is somewhere else, not here, not now, not on a Friday night.
But a more sinister possibility insistently pushed itself into my conscience. I began to think that I’d become desensitized to the deaths of small numbers of humans. Leave your TV on static long enough, and your brain will tune it out; maintain a steady death rate, and people will tune it out. There was truth in the thought and it horrified me.
I was born in Gaza. My entire extended family is in Gaza. I was there ten years ago, and visited the border recently in February. And yet, I allowed myself to grow numb, to slip into a superficial ritual of affirming their – my – humanity without remembering their daily trials. I found that my memory failed me, and something wooden had taken its place.
Adie Mormech’s piece helped me to remember Gaza. I was reading it when I had the haunting realization that I knew the Oda family. They’re Bedouin, just like the Abu Moors. Their farm is near my father’s farm. And I think that they’re also from Be’er Al Sabaa, and also members of the Tarabin tribe.
I began to wonder: Mohammed Abu Oda, the man interviewed in the article, is that the same Mohammed who greeted my father, my brother, and me early in the summer of 2000 with tea and watermelon at his family’s home? There were small children running around that day. They were shy and had snotty noses. They giggled and ran around, slapping at you when you weren’t looking. The 16-year-old corpse, Ismail Abu Oda, was he one of them?
I remembered my father marching my brother and me around our few dry dunums, triumphantly showing of his newly planted olive trees and fig trees. The Israelis razed them all some years ago. I felt a stultifying, enraged impotence when my father told me – I remember that. Those trees were my inheritance.
And I remember my great uncle – one of Ibrahim Abu Sayed’s contemporaries – rolling his tobacco with large, thick fingers. I remember the way the fat flies settled thick on everything when he looked at me and said, “The earth is like a woman, the more you plow it the more it yields.” He laughed and my father laughed, but warned me not to repeat what I’d heard.
My cousin Eyad later built a two-bedroom hovel on the land near the place where I captured that memory, on the farm he’d inherited from his dead father. I remember his bucked yellow-stained teeth when he laughed. He chain-smoked Viceroys and wasn’t very bright. My father helped him find a job making tea and sweeping floors in an office in Gaza city. I vaguely remember news of his wedding. And I remember the day in 2007 when I learned of his death.
The Israelis declared curfew but failed to tell anyone. Eyad stepped out of his home at dawn and had his face hole-punched open by a sniper’s bullet. Another one buried itself deep in his chest. He was 28 and had three children. His wife was pregnant with their fourth.
I remember that for days I grieved. Images of his decomposition flashed in the contours of my mind as I pictured what was happening to him underneath Gaza’s hard, dry earth. I remember the regret I felt that I’d ever condescended to him, or spoken harshly to him. Later that week, I went out with friends in New York and I remember the shame of having buried it – him – so quickly.
These and other thoughts cascaded into my head. And suddenly I was mourning Ibrahim and Hossam Abu Sayed and Ismail Abu Oda. These three human beings, two of whom hadn’t even begun to live, were murdered. They were family and now they’re gone.
There is no “Why?” here which makes coping difficult. There is nothing I can do for them and that makes it difficult, too. In the face of so much death we have no choice but to push ahead. We also have a responsibility to not forget. The difficulty isn't going away and so we must watch ourselves lest we become become inured to it.
You make it real, Ahmed, in case we grow so numb we can’t see past the numbers.
Yes. You make it real, and aching, Ahmed. A powerful elegy in their memory. Brought a tear to my eye. It must be horrifying, too, not to be able to go to them, to do something.
This was in December, 2008or currently or some other time?
I’m sorry for your loss, and if it was the result of negligence to communicate of regulations, I also express my sympathy and anger at negligence.
Richard: Ahmed shares with us a moving, first-hand account of human tragedy in Gaza, and you immediately look for a way to exonerate Israel? “Negligence?” Negligence is what you do when you hit the submit button before checking the spelling on your comments. An Israeli sniper killed Ahmed’s cousin. If you have to say something, can’t you just say you are sorry?
Negligence during war gets people killed.
Negligence and tragedy.
You are quick to condemn my words.
You know that I regard Hamas’ behavior as similarly negligent, not the button pusher, but the party that insisted on the condition in which negligence that resulted in death could happen.
Lots of bad choices, bad actions going around.
And, I am aware that Israel also created the conditions in which Hamas negligence could happen (in not relaxing the blockade), and I am aware that Hamas created the conditions in which the blockade was perceived as necessary. And, I am aware that Israel created the conditions in which Hamas perceived that terror was its best approach. And, I am aware that Hamas participated in creating the conditions in which the wall was perceived as necessary.
Ad infinitum.
Personal tragedies are real. Better that we ACTUALLY stop the cycle, than rationalize for the justness of rage expressed.
oh give it a friggin rest you blowhard. murdering a 91 yr old man and lying about them ‘planting bombs’ to coverup it isn’t war it just disgusting occupation and ethnic cleansing. must you highjack everythread with your cheap rationalizations and distractions.
i urge everyone (including myself, i am making a vow for this one day) to simply scroll thru his incessant blatherings and ignore them for once. just let them wallow here in solitude without response. i know it will never work but it’s my wish for at least this thread.
Callous, murderous disregard resulting from near total dehumanization of the other NOT “negligence”. The latter implies error at a minimum. There was no error in these indiscriminate murders, or in the Israeli failure to inform Gaza residents that they had imposed yet another arbitrary curfew when they murdered Ahmed’s cousing. The response to this sort of EVIL from a state is resistance. NOT “terrorism”. That comes 24/7 from the side you support unconditionally – as evidenced in the manner in which your comments always exonerate Israel, explain away or minimize its misdeeds. no matter how inhuman or barbarian its behaviour.
Let me rephrase that, to explain the Holocaust:
“Negligence during war gets people killed.
Negligence and tragedy.
You are quick to condemn my words.
You know that I regard the Zionist behavior (celebrating Hitler’s victory, the transfer agreement, Stern gang etc) as similarly negligent, not the button pusher, but the party that insisted on the condition in which negligence that resulted in death could happen.
Lots of bad choices, bad actions going around.”
You like?
I’m with you, annie, and I’m one of he worse offenders.
I think Witty is merely a useful tool to make the site “appear” more balanced. I have little trouble sliding right past the “Witticism”. He does drive Chaos nuts.
And who created the conditions for which “ethnic cleansing is not currently necessary,” as you said? Please clear that up as well.
Negligence during war gets people killed.
Yes, intentional harm never enters the equation of any war, especially not if the war is fought by the “most moral army in the world,” now, does it?
If negligence during war gets people killed, it must be that that murdered settlers were the result of “negligence during war” getting “people killed.”
annie,
I gladly state that I only read witty’s comments if they are a response to my own post – most of the time I don’t respond to him even then. Yes, best just leave him waffle on. I mean he’s been told thousands of times about the facts of the Nakba, yet….
You know the rest: always the same blah blah blah from witty.
Witty,
The acid test for negligence is someone saying they’re sorry.
Instead we got the orchestrated campaign against Goldstone.
You, Witty, are a walking, talking, keyboard-pecking apologia for the indefensible. –d.
The questions on Gaza are what were plausibly legitimate defense approaches.
Unless you are willing to engage in that discussion, then all there is is blame, not analysis.
Goldstone was willing to, and it is a stupidity on Israel’s part to have originally rejected his report. They changed on that. They accepted the report, used it as a basis for their own investigations, and concluded that some of his assertions were valid resulting in dozens of disciplinary actions and court-martials. It might not be enough, but it is a thousand times more investigation and self-inquiry than Hamas conducted or reported.
“Personal tragedies are real. Better that we ACTUALLY stop the cycle, than rationalize for the justness of rage expressed.”
Yes stop the cycle, but keep the status quo.
“The questions on Gaza are what were plausibly legitimate defense approaches.”
There was nothign plausaible about it. The side that initiates a war losing any claim to self defense.
“They accepted the report, used it as a basis for their own investigations, and concluded that some of his assertions were valid resulting in dozens of disciplinary actions and court-martials. It might not be enough, but it is a thousand times more investigation and self-inquiry than Hamas conducted or reported.”
This is mostly meaningless. At best it shows there might be some people within the IDF who would like to do the right thing, but until high ranking officials are called to account it’s worthless.
The same is true of the US, btw. As Glenn Greenwald points out, there’s no accountability in America for war crimes, at least not for people near the top.
As for Hamas, they didn’t inflict anywhere near the level of suffering that Israel inflicted, though I recognize that by your calculus one Israeli casualty is worth 1000 Palestinians, if indeed they can be compared at all in your mind. Hamas should investigate themselves but they are no more (or less) likely to do this in a truly serious way than the Israeli or American governments.
>> Better that we ACTUALLY stop the cycle, than rationalize for the justness of rage expressed.
I agree, let’s stop the cycle. The most sensible and just way to do this is for the aggressor – the one stealing and occupying land, building and expanding settlements, destroying homes and livelihoods and generally oppressing people – to take the first step.
In my opinion, all Israel needs to do to break the cycle of violence and prove its willingness to be a genuine partner in peace is to withdraw to within the internationally-recognized 1967 borders, accept Palestinian autonomy in the West Bank and Gaza, and agree to sincere and equitable negotiations (including an agreed-upon right of return (or restitution in lieu of)) with a democratically-elected Palestinian government.
Were this to happen, I believe that Palestinians would be compelled to engage in sincere and equitable negotiations with Israel.
And I would be the first to condemn unprovoked violence against an Israel that is genuinely interested in peace.
>> And I would be the first to condemn unprovoked violence against an Israel that is genuinely interested in peace.
Well, okay, maybe not *the* first, because I’m not *that* quick on the “Reply” button…but I would definitely be among the first. :-)
RW
What about “2007″ as stated in the article, is it that your eyes were unable to see? Or did you not bother to read it again?
” I also express my sympathy and anger at negligence”
Sympathy for negligence but no regret for intentional mass murder, ethnic cleansing, home demolitions, land theft, and starting wars.
Well. I wouldn’t feel guilty about having a coping mechanism. It keeps you from being driven mad by anger. You clearly haven’t anesthetized yourself to the point where you can’t recognize at all that you are coping with something that might drive you over the edge of sanity, so you’re not doing anything wrong.
That’s right, Ahmed, you must never lose sight of the contorted agonies of the Palestinians.
Don’t be enamored by your own acrobatic intellect either.
The violence of the occupation is fiendish and relentless, glaring whether you look in it’s direction or not.
The current disgusting lie of the peace talks/process will clearly not bring justice or an enduring peace to the Palestinians and the middle east region.
That’s why I stated before, as I will state here again, that the Palestinians should stick it to the zionists in as many ways and places as they possibly can. This is 64 years of war and they sure ain’t got nothing to lose at this stage, the eleventh hour, considering the systematic and violent gobbling up of their lives and lands.
I support all Palestinian resistance, armed and civil. I feel I have no choice no more but to support both forms at this vertiginous step of the precipice.
I get the double standard that I am perpetrating of insisting that people sympathize with the plight of European Jews, surviving the holocaust, putting up with persecution at the return to their homes, coming to Israel and experiencing decades of terror on civilians (not on military) and not being sufficiently sympathetic with the plight of Palestinians experiencing trauma.
The reality of it is that I am over-politicized. Norman Finkelstein is critical of the political uses of the holocaust. I am slightly, much less so than he is.
I am also aware of the political uses of the nakba to inflame, to firm the backbone of resistance in a pavlovian invocation.
For a month, I publicly chanted kaddish (and posted it online) for every Israeli and Palestinian victim of violence in 2002.
I am honestly jaded now. Politicized out. Reactive to those that are reactive to those that are reactive.
When is enough enough?
Enough was enough a long long long time ago Witty. When are you going to get enough of exonerating the apartheid state for its continued dispossession, discrimination, deaths, detentions and demolitions?
Seven “I”s in this post. When is enough enough about you?
If you can’t express sympathy with a person’s loss, then just shut the hell up.
For pete’s sake. Stop pretending you are somehow equivalent to a scholar like Finkelstein. You’re jaded? what about us? Perhaps you are tired of writing the same old non specific get-out waffle? Enough is enough – give us a rest from you proselytising humbug.
Wow. I just assumed the Zionists would just ignore this post, but here we have Witty trying to justify the outright murder of Mr. Moor’s grandfather — because to Witty, sniping Arabs with extreme prejudice is a perfectly normal, perfectly legal thing he imagines Jews to be doing.
You know honestly, he actually managed to trip my emotional circuit breaker this time. I’m actually so shocked at the utter inhumanity of Witty’s attitude toward the murder of Palestinians, his utter solipsistic vanity that this should be about his delusions, that I’m actually too overwhelmed by the shock of actually interacting with a human being that is this — literally — psychotic, that I can’t even manage my normal outrage.
Ahmed,
I am truly to hear about the murder of your grandfather.
Are you being a provocative ass on purpose? Yes, I noticed after the fact that I got mixed up, and it was Mr. Moor’s cousin who was killed by the sniper. The grandfather I was thinking of was an entirely different set of victims — killed by tank shells.
Seriously. You Zionists really are devoid of any human capacity for rational morality, aren’t you?
“I get the double standard that I am perpetrating of insisting that people sympathize with the plight of European Jews, surviving the holocaust, putting up with persecution at the return to their homes, coming to Israel and experiencing decades of terror on civilians (not on military) and not being sufficiently sympathetic with the plight of Palestinians experiencing trauma.”
Experienced terror Witty? That’s a bit like suggesting that John Wayne Gacey experienced I’ll treatment at the hands of the police.
“I am also aware of the political uses of the nakba to inflame, to firm the backbone of resistance in a pavlovian invocation.”
What you are also aware of is the fact that the perpetrators of the Holocaust were tried and executed and that the victims have been handsomely compensated.
So are we to assume you were opposed to the perpetrators of the Holocaust facing justice Witty?
“When is enough enough?”
Good question Witty. When is enough Zionism (racism) enough Zionism?
Perhaps you don’t know of the decades of “infiltration” including snipers shooting at civilians working in fields.
You’re talking about Zionists, right? Because that’s a common tactic that settlers and IDF soldiers use against Palestinians.
Seriously. It’s like you live in a bizarro fantasy world where every goyim has a knife in their pocket, ready to skin a Jew.
you’re right ahmed, we have no choice but to push ahead. that’s all there is now. and know that as we (yes we) push ahead we are growing in numbers. whereas before when Eyad’s life was ripped away and memories fly away like the wind these murder now have more witness. the lies of the occupation are countered by foreign witnesses (sad but true it is foreigners who’s voices matter in these rebuttals) immediately. the patterns are understood, the crimes understood and the resistance to the apartheid state and their crimes grows exponentially. in the time since eyad’s murder and now we are growing exponentially. we have no choice but to push ahead. keep the faith ahmed for we will win this battle. truth will prevail and someday palestine will be free.
I often deal with what I call “compassion fatigue.” It is so easy to get paralyzed by the anger and sadness over tragic deaths, even when not personally connected to them. As you pointed out, in order to try to handle them emotionally, you try to keep your focus on the long term aims. But as you also observed, these emotions will come to the surface by any number of triggers. For me, I often find the tears flow when I watch a program about truth-tellers who stand their ground despite the personal costs (The Insider, Flash of Genius, Bright and Shining Lie) because of the deeply felt rage contained just below the surface over just how much we are lied to about things vital to trivial.
And when it’s a program with graphic footage of people being hurt and killed, I have to hold my hand out to block the screen for a time as seeing so much misery would otherwise cause me to shut down from an emotional overload.
Sadly, too many people I know block it out entirely in order not to deal with it at all. They’ll insulate and isolate themselves from any information that might cause them discomfort.
It’s as former First Lady Barbara Bush said of the war in Iraq: “Why should we hear about body bags and deaths? It’s not relevant. So why should I waste my beautiful mind on something like that?”
Thank you, Ahmed, for confirming my feelings. With the deaths of these farmers, I had the haunting fear that I was “normalizing” murderous Israeli behavior somewhere in my mind.
Thanks to Annie for reminding us that things have changed since the death of your cousin, Eyad. More of the world is watching and expecting a change for the better. Let’s keep that momentum going.
I should have known better than to apologize here. It is an opportunity for those that seek “we have them on the run”.
And, I should have known better than to venture into yet another Pavlovian invocation.
I’m sorry for your experience Ahmed. I’m also sorry for the traumatized families of victims of suicide bombings and shelling, who Phil and Adam choose not to present stories of.
I will NOT invest in your anger. I will NOT invest in retributionary sentiment in any form.
I WILL invest in the effort, the need, to reconcile, to stop each other shooting at each other over and over and over again, each time justifying it by one’s own trauma.
Your “friends” are not urging for it to stop. They are urging for it to continue, by their militancy, by their rage only.
So, those of us that are urging that the cycle stop, are ourselves stopped by the standard of rage, pretending to be justice.
This is NOT evil. This is escalation in a bottle.
And yet you do with annoying frequency. Just don’t respond to the bells you are hearing.
Yeah. No reason to be angry about wanton slaughter. And to seek to hold persons and their government leadership accountable for such acts is just misplaced sentiment, no matter the form of retribution (that’s why Israel declares even sternly worded admonishments the same as driving them into the sea).
“Yeah. No reason to be angry about wanton slaughter. And to seek to hold persons and their government leadership accountable for such acts is just misplaced sentiment, no matter the form of retribution (that’s why Israel declares even sternly worded admonishments the same as driving them into the sea).”
Yeah “move on, turn the page, next chapter, don’t be about vengeance, a witch hunt, retribution” These are the responses to demands that people, governments etc be held accountable for crimes committed against the Palestinians, the Iraqi people. Just move on turn the page. That is unless you lost your home friends, family members in the Holocaust. then it is all about accountability and remembering.
What a horrible double standard
>> These are the responses to demands that people, governments etc be held accountable for crimes committed against the Palestinians, the Iraqi people. Just move on turn the page. That is unless you lost your home friends, family members in the Holocaust. then it is all about accountability and remembering.
>> What a horrible double standard
Yup, the lack of accountability – the selective lack of accountability (it almost never applies to “us”, but it almost always applies to “them”) – disgusts me no end. To have it rationalized away by “humanist” excuses and/or conflating it with “vengeance” or “hatred” is shameful and dishonest.
When are you going to get that this isn’t really about you? Seriously, can you stop dancing on the Palestinian corpses already? Just stop.
I’ll use the terminology from Huffington Post (which I was permanently banned from on 9/11) for your wonderfully insightful comment:
“Fanned & Faved!”
“I should have known better than to apologize here. ”
I didn’t realiize you were apologizing Witty.
So allow me to respond in kind. Witty, I’m really, really sorry that you’re a Zionist have been infected by this racist, murderous ideology and that it has blinded you to the abhorrent crimes of Israel and made you an apologist for such an abomination.
Please forgive me.
“Your “friends” are not urging for it to stop. They are urging for it to continue, by their militancy, by their rage only.”
Richard, I’m confused. Which of Ahmed’s “friends” are urging more deaths on the people in Gaza?
Hamas by their carelessness and ruthlessness.
So it’s Hamas’ fault that the IDF uses tanks to slaughter civilians?
I think Germans had a similar rational vis-a-vis the resistance fighters in the Warsaw ghetto.
“I was born in Gaza. My entire extended family is in Gaza. I was there ten years ago, and visited the border recently in February. And yet, I allowed myself to grow numb, to slip into a superficial ritual of affirming their – my – humanity without remembering their daily trials. I found that my memory failed me, and something wooden had taken its place.’
Moving.
got to know a young man studying here at Ohio University from Afghanistan. He is now 37 and back in Afghanistan working in counter narcotics in Afghanistan (can you imagine) He often shared how his whole life had been swallowed up by the wars in Afghanistan. He described this numbness that takes place.
Goldstone Report
link to goldstone-report.org
“The Israelis declared curfew but failed to tell anyone. Eyad stepped out of his home at dawn and had his face hole-punched open by a sniper’s bullet. Another one buried itself deep in his chest. He was 28 and had three children. His wife was pregnant with their fourth.
I remember that for days I grieved. Images of his decomposition flashed in the contours of my mind as I pictured what was happening to him underneath Gaza’s hard, dry earth. I remember the regret I felt that I’d ever condescended to him, or spoken harshly to him. Later that week, I went out with friends in New York and I remember the shame of having buried it – him – so quickly.
These and other thoughts cascaded into my head. And suddenly I was mourning Ibrahim and Hossam Abu Sayed and Ismail Abu Oda. These three human beings, two of whom hadn’t even begun to live, were murdered. They were family and now they’re gone.”
And none of this is covered by Rachel Maddow, Keith or anyone else in the U.S. MSM?
Rachel doesn’t have much vision for anything beyond domestic issues, sadly, and Keith skirts around covering it but he goes much farther than anyone else in the mainstream. I remember his commentary on the Gaza slaughter, while comparatively brief, was damning, and after the assault on the flotilla Keith interviewed one of the retired US military personnel that had been kidnapped from one of the boats.
It was probably former US Marine Ken O’Keefe.
“All I saw in Israel was cowards with guns.”
see: link to counterpunch.org
You are right about KO. Does much more than most (how unbelievably low *that* bar is set?), but could be doing much more.
Ahmed, you touched me. And from the comments above, you touched everyone who read what you wrote; we will not forget. Only Witty didn’t get you, how and why you wrote–
I remember the emotional battles that raged inside me during the Israeli massacre of Gaza’s civilians last year. There were moments when I was pacing back and forth with rage, thinking about the unmitigated and barbaric onslaught on a defenseless population. There were days when I was overcome with grief and pain at the sight of so many innocent lives lost, the bodies of young children, babies lined up outside a hospital. Images of blood spatter and crushed bones kept flashing before my eyes. I found myself racking my brain in search of ways to end this massacre. When I found myself helpless and unable to stop it, I wished for a ceasefire. I wished the slaughter of civilians would end. And I realized once again that there was very little I or any one individual could do to stop this madness, this monstrosity. I felt helpless and vulnerable. For days I wasn’t able to focus. The reality in which I lived, my immediate surrounding with all the mundane daily trivialities seemed to clash with the reality under which Gaza’s civilians lived. By the 22nd day, when the killing stopped — even if for a short while — I was emotionally drained. But, the resilience of the people of Gaza, their determination to go on was reassuring. The human capacity to live on and push ahead, to endure was chilling. Those who survived the slaughter, went on to live with scars so deep their souls must have been ripped apart. To live on, to survive, but to feel dead inside was inhumane. I kept thinking of the human instinct to endure, to search for food and shelter to survive and how difficult it must be for Palestinians to maintain their humanity, their sanity and their resilience. I thought of the suffering they have endured and of the suffering they will most likely continue to endure in the future and I realized that forging ahead, pushing ahead through all the pain and suffering was the only way out. The only way to stop such tragedies from repeating was to work harder, daily, so that there will be no “next time”.