Every time I get a notification with the words “Israel” or “Gaza,” my stomach clenches into a knot. Since the October 7th attack by Hamas, the war in the Middle East has been a source of fear, anger, and distrust for many American Jews, American Palestinians, and anyone with a moral conscience. For a while I tried to participate in the public conversation; it soon became clear that the internet was no place to discuss issues that required as much nuance as this one.
On Friday, when the New York Times alerted me of their newest article, titled “Lives Ended in Gaza,” I felt that familiar rush of angst and agitation. Journalists have had a strange task in trying to report on the conflict in a way that doesn’t perpetuate the exact tribal animus that is so virulent online, and my judgement is that they have done a mediocre job. The same headline can be very different when using the word “dead,” as opposed to “killed,” or “murdered.” At a time when we are asking for a kind of moral perfection from the entire world, any words you use are indicative of the “side” you’ve picked along the way. And if you aren’t with me, the thinking goes, you are my enemy.
The Times piece, though, was exactly what I and so many others needed to hear in this moment. Stripped of all context, there are 30,000 dead Palestinians as a result of the war. That is not a moral judgement, it is a statistical fact. The article was a kind of distillation of a small fraction of the individuals whose lives were ended as a result of the fighting. We didn’t get to know the people nearly as well as they deserved, but each of the small paragraphs showed the unfiltered humanity that is suffering that is happening in a part of the world that has known pain and violence for far too long.
There were many takeaways from the snapshots the reporters chose to include. According to UNICEF, half of the population in Gaza is under 18. To see children included amongst the dead is heart-rending, and reading their stories is the kind of brutal we all must face. These children played with toy trucks, practiced the violin, rollerbladed. These were not freedom fighters or terrorists; these were the manifestation of the freedom both sides dream of, snuffed out in the process.
I found myself particularly saddened by the individuals who were using their lives to try to make the world around them better, regardless of the circumstances. Mahmoud Alaouq was a translator who was working for a human rights organization to serve the needs of his community. Hedaya Hamad was a mental health worker who was trying to assuage the trauma that was an everyday reality for so many in Gaza. Worse than just people minding their own business caught in the crosshairs, these were people who wanted to help to make the world a better place and died trying.
In the over four months since the war began, there has been a constant chatter around what it means to demand peace. Zionists believe that the Jewish people have a right to determine their own fate and govern themselves. The Free Palestine movement demands that the Palestinian people be given the chance to live with dignity and opportunity in their own land. Ideologically speaking, these are both straightforward claims. But as the past hundred years has clearly shown, the political practicalities are far more complicated, and require a level of negotiation and diplomacy that is beyond my skill level.
The New York Times article finally expressed what I imagine so many of us have been feeling during this prolonged offensive: as human beings, our hearts hurt from the suffering. My heart hurts in equal opportunity; in war, death is inevitable, but that doesn’t mean we celebrate it or even accept it. “Lives Ended in Gaza” made us acknowledge the harsh realities of our world, and demand we confront the moral pain that comes from living at a time when peace is a far-off imagination.
Throughout the reading process, I could feel myself itching for the “well, what about…” reaction that is so common in this situation. The same article could be written about the Israelis who were senselessly murdered. The Palestinians chose Hamas as their leaders. Israel has done far more than any reasonable nation could be expected to provide aid to the same territory they are invading. All of those and so many more things might be true, but that wasn’t the task at hand in this article. As human beings, we are often asked to hold multiple complicated feelings at once. And in the face of what is happening in the Middle East, one of those feelings MUST be the profound sadness at seeing the suffering and death that has become far too commonplace.
Nobody on the internet, myself included, can be expected to have the answers to this situation. Demanding that local government make declarations about ideals and policies from an ocean away might make us feel better about our inability to get involved, but that doesn’t change our impotence. The best we can do, in fact all we can do, as everyday citizens of the world, is acknowledge the humanity of those involved. Acknowledging the humanity of another can never, must never be seen as a moral failure, but as evidence of the resilience of compassion in the first place. Both Israel and Palestine have failed to live up to the moral obligations that our faiths expect. And, in an article like this one, we are reminded of what it costs us.
Comments