Forgetting Gaza

I woke up early this morning at the sound of a persistent rain. I browsed the news. JSF had a post on Gaza. I read it, went to the source article and asked myself: Are we forgetting Gaza ?

We are inclined to forget what bothers us, to clean our memory from painful emotions. This can do some good when it is related to our own suffering, it is salutary. However, it cannot do any good for us when it is related to the suffering of others because our conscience will come back to haunt us. The remorse will transfer what we consider the suffering of others and makes it our own, in other forms, much worse, shame, guilt, what have we done ? What have they done in our names ? This is of course what will happen for those who have conscience, for those of us who consider themselves as part of Humanity.

The whole world has become morally lethargic. The amount of suffering endured by Palestinians in Gaza is unbearable, Gaza is a Warsaw ghetto where there is no income, no electricity, no normal medical care, no food, only bullets and brutality and bombings provided on a daily basis by the zionist state. The world is doing nothing, just as the world did nothing when Jews suffered in the Warsaw ghetto and in Nazi concentration camps. Do we want this tragedy to come back and haunt us like the tragedy of the Jews during WWII and the other large scale human tragedies that happened and are still happening before our eyes ?

I think the more we allow tragedies to happen, the more we become 'tolerant' to the suffering of others, the more we become morally inhibited and desensitisised, loosing our conscience and our humanity. What have we done for the Rwandan tragedy, the Armenian tragedy, the Bosnian tragedy, the south African tragedy, the ongoing ME tragegdies in Iraq and Lebanon, the African continent many tragedies, the Native American tragedy, the black people tragedy, the New Orleans tragedy ? We let them happen.

Tears are springing in my eyes as I am writing. In ten minutes, I will stand and start my day; go to the kitchen, prepare the coffee, eat my breakfast with my family, walk the dog, shop for the week afterward, see my father, have my spanish lesson, dine with friends this evening and Gaza will be forgotten...One of the biggest human tragedy of our time will have the back seat in my memory, for the day. It will return probably at night and then next morning when I will read the news, more bombings, more killings, more suffering and no indignation, just a downward spirale of violence and death inflicted by Israel wrongly in the name of past Jewish suffering.

I wish holocaust survivors can stand united and say: ''Not in our names' . In the present moral and political disengagement of the international community and of individual consciences from Gaza and the Palestinian territories, this will be the most effective thing to do to stop the ineluctable. I guess they don't know what is being done in their name.

''How long will the "international community" allow the slaughter to continue? The cruel repression of the occupied territories, and of Gaza in particular, is one of the most scandalous in the world today. It is the blackest stain on Israel's patchy record as a would-be democratic state.'' writes Patrick Seale. Read the whole article...