17 Comments

And those of us who care have to do everything in our power to stop this: boycott, refuse to vote for politicians who support this horror, move our money from banks to credit unions, continue to speak out.

Thanks so much for speaking up for those of us who care, Aya.

Expand full comment

Great piece of writing.Sums up how I am feeling.Have to work hard to stay balanced in a mad,bad world that normalizes genocide.As a mother of six children,my heart has literally been breaking for ten months.I find it agonizing to see the suffering of the Palestinians.I was brought up a christian-I am now a practicing Buddhist.What the hell are these Israelis?Where are their hearts,their humanity,their souls?They are monsters from hell ,sick psychopaths.Meanwhile,the Western world which has harped on about human rights and moral justice for ever,has turned into into a blind,blob of nothingness,ineffective,inert,subhuman.I dont know which scares me the most.All I know is that I am changed forever.I have lost interest in the human race.My family and anyone else who feels for Palestine,my social circle has shrunk to this.

Expand full comment
Jul 19Liked by Aya

I spent time in the 70's in Germany, and when I had questions about the war or about the Concentration camp down the road, they were still in a state of dissociation 25 years after the end of the war.

Few have the courage to allow feelings to circulate.

I have a connection to Gaza, I worked on an Israeli kibbutz about 10 mins walk from the North entrance into Gaza, and worked with Young Palestinian men milking the Cows early each day.

My reaction as a pensioner was to send donations to MSF and the Red Crescent, as I felt I had to do something, so increasing medical support seemed to be needed.

I cannot understand how man can be so cruel to man, yet think he is sophisticated.

I felt as though I knew families in Gaza, I probably did before the Genocide.

Why did nobody stop them?

Could the same happen in my Country next?

Expand full comment
author
Jul 19Author

Man is savage to man. Their faux sophistication lies only in the ways they justify to themselves their right to be savage

Expand full comment
Jul 19Liked by Aya

Let’s be honest this is the nature of the barbarism that rules us except it is sugar coated as in the endless movies, dramas entertainment etc that normalises violence and suffering both of the disaffected, poor, colonised and frequently against them and the “other” the outsiders, the untermensch who threaten the comfort and stupor of the consumerist zeitgeist that sustains the exploitive accumulation of Western monopoly capital.

Expand full comment
author
Jul 19Author

This is literally exactly what the leader of that country said the other day. Totally forgotten which one - not Niger but the one beginning with S who also now just kicked out the French imperialists (or is trying to)?

Expand full comment

You are my people.

Expand full comment
author
Jul 19Author

You are mine

Expand full comment

I truly feel besieged by people I thought I respected. Just this morning, someone admonished me for calling out Biden for supplying funds, weapons and political cover to Israel, saying, "None of the cries from both sides, blaming our president or the past presidents to be responsible for the situation do lead us to a solution." To me, it's important to call out the guilty and the people who continue to support them as a first step to moving toward solutions. Lately I've been continually frustrated and angry, but doing my best to not slip into despondency.

Expand full comment

I feel so helpless

Expand full comment

I have no words to describe anymore how I feel. The disbelief that so many of us have experienced that no country, save Yemen, had done anything worthy to stop the massacre of people in Gaza, starting also in the West Bank. They are more concerned, here in North America with a man who had his ear grazed by a piece of flying glass, and propping up a genocidal man with dementia. I too say loudly, this atrocity to Palestinians is not happening in my name! And I will continue to share news, facts, educate as many as I can reach, protest, write emails and sign any petitions because I do not want to just want to carry on as usual in a horrific world like we have seen this to be.

Expand full comment
Jul 22Liked by Aya

Thank you Aya,

After years of observing and speaking out about the horrible humiliations and sadism of the occupation, I am feeling so shattered and traumatized by witnessing the genocide being committed by my country of citizenship and by my religious group that I can no longer put anything into words. I can only see why something is important and pass it on.

Expand full comment

Beautifully said.

Expand full comment
Jul 19·edited Jul 19

"words are cheap" you dismiss politicians you don't like, only to go on writing "I want them to know, that it wasn't all of us who watched without emotion."

If we want to be the change we need to acknowledge other voices, get stronger and unite against the forces of war. With tears or without them, visibly touched by grief or not. I'd fight along a soccer fan, even if I didn't share his emotions. I don't like 'my' PM, but for once he says the right thing and closes spanish ports, I'm on his side. Today. Tomorrow we'll see.

Free Palestina ! 🇸🇩

No impunity for Israel.

Expand full comment
author
Jul 19Author

Who said I didn't like him? Do I think he's doing anything to 'punish' and 'prevent' genocide as per the genocide convention? No. Do I know he can do much more and even maybe stop it? Yes

Doing a few small gestures - and apologies but they are small - which annoys the Zionist apartheid state of Israel, is good. It's not great. As leaders, they can and should do more.

Probably more than 10% Gaza is dead and 300,000 now have no water. What has he done to get them food and water? The trucks wait outside the borders. What has anyone done to make them get in?

I am not denouncing your PM who is one of the nicer ones. I'm simply stating the fact that there's not enough care from any of them to stop this. Literally only the houthis took to the sea - and actually sent a US warship into retreat - wearing flip flops. Amazingly, they have massively cut off the red sea to Israeli laden ships. These are amongst the poorest of nations on earth whose population have also been starved by the imperialistic west and if you see the malnourished of their children you would not know that they were Gazan children - they are also skeletal.

So can the Spanish PM do more than make gestures? Yes. Yes, he can.

Also historical documentation and decisions and actions of leaders are two separate topics. One is record keeping. The other - if it does not materially prevent or stop genocide - is cheap.

Expand full comment

Of course he could do more. I'm not happy with him at all - but lets honor the little gestures he does. Imagine he gets a phone call from Orbán and Europe begins to restructure. With the current EP nothing will be done.

Everyone could do more ...

Expand full comment

couldn’t agree more ! part of the world is now suffering from ptsd.

Expand full comment