January 11, 2024. Writing in the dark.

Writing in the dark : a series of essays written or published between 2002 and 2007 (Books that have read me, The desire to be Gisella, Writing in the Dark,  Individual language and Mass language, Contemplations on Peace) and his speech at Rabin Square in Tel Aviv on November 4, 2006 - less than three months after his son Uri had been killed in Lebanon (during the Israeli intervention in Lebanon, 1982-2006).

Uri was killed two days before the final cease-fire. 

David Grossman, the man with the most profound, human insight into it all.

"To write about the enemy means, primarily, to think about the enemy, and this is a requirement for anyone who has an enemy, even if he is absolutely convinced of his own justness and the enemy's malice and cruelty."

I have two secular best friends in Israel and Gaza, both of them teachers, both of them fathers. Nathan and Masoud. Nathan teaches Arabic. Masoud teaches English. Masoud has three sons. Nathan has two. One of my deepest anxieties is that, some darker day, one of Nathan's sons kills one of Masoud's sons, or that one of Masoud's sons kills one of Nathan's. For, like David Grossman, they are both sensible, sensitive men, devoid of any extreme or sectarian, exclusive thoughts.

 

January 12, 2024. The choices we make, at all stages.

From what we know, only 70 trained men started the October 7 breach. Sent by 5 military leaders who had left all other echelons in the dark about their decision. The two Sinwar brothers; Deif - the Al Qassam leader -; Nofal, his right hand man; and Mushtaha, close to the Sinwars. The rockets man, Siyam, who had three thousand rockets launched that morning, was warned at the last moment. All political leaders, abroad or in Gaza, were not informed previously.

Five men only, out of two million two hundred thousand Gazans, making massive life and death decisions for all of them. There was a Parliament in Gaza City, a government. Who wants to live under a five-man absolutism ?

Take it back to the spring of 2018, not quite six years ago.

                                                               

The same pre-Sinwar Hamas political leadership on the stage, gesturing as if they were starting to implement our very programme for non-violent resistance (2003-2013). [See What life after October 7 ?]

Where was the military quintette then ? Somewhere underground, extending their formidable arsenal and network.

This photo op : just another manipulation of icons, dissociating the end from the means, a simple ploy, a Trojan horse.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/15/world/middleeast/israel-hamas-gaza-great-return.html

https://www.timesofisrael.com/hamas-planned-oct-7-from-before-2014-with-final-decision-made-by-5-leaders-report/

We learnt yesterday that, through the years, Hamas used over 6,000 tons of concrete, and 1,800 tons of steel, to build its subterranean complex - a tens of millions of dollars project, if anything.

January 13, 2024. Where did we go wrong ?

Tens of thousands demonstrate in London today, for the sake of Gazans. They have been warned by the authorities :

 

January 13, 2024. Twenty-five days in October + thirty in November + thirty-one in December + thirteen now = 99 days into this war. And I always this thought, of Nathan's sons, and Masoud's sons. Fearing one of them could be taken away by this cyclone, this horror manmade typhoon. Why, why did they have to unleash such devastation on the night of October 6-7 ? What for ?

Listening to Aït Menguellet over and over again. Tudert nni. Zer kan. His soft voice alone soothing the grieving soul.

Wondering, all the time, where is it that we went wrong ?

What is it that we missed, on October 6, October 7, and before, long before ?

For October 7 is not just another Nine Eleven, or November 13 for the French.

October 7 has thrust us all into a pit we had no idea was there, could even exist.

We are free to acknowledge it, and introspect in dead earnest, or to deny and turn deaf ears.
We have this choice, all of us.

The choice is what makes us human.

"UN Warns Gaza is Heading toward Famine"

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/13/world/middleeast/houthis-yemen-us-strikes-gaza.html

As Peace Lines we have devoted one third of our current budget to help displaced people of Gaza City to buy food.

Still looking for the exact connection between people starving in Gaza and the horror of October 7.

 

January 14, 2024. 100 days of war.

Waking up every day with the angst that something went wrong, terribly wrong, for one of those we carry with us, on both sides of the fence. Checking the news first thing in the morning, and the phone, for WhatsApp. The needs and reactions are different. The pain inside is kept silent, unshared. We don't know where we're going, where it's all drifting.

I keep reading David Grossman (Writing in the Dark), Amos Oz (How to Cure a Fanatic), Himoud Brahimi - the Casbah seer, listening to Aït Menguellet (Tudert Nni, Zer Kan) and I Muvrini (Portu in Coru).

My daily diet is under 500 gr, composed of cereals, cheese and chapiti (Indian homemade pita).

They rightly say "Put your money where your mouth is". I'd add "Put your mouth where your spirit is".

Isaac Herzog, the eleventh president of Israel, confesses :

"We made a grave and painful mistake by not being ready. But the greatest mistake is that of the enemy." 

To me, this is the crux of it all, wondering : when, if ever, will the other side confess their own mistakes ?

January 15, 2024. Martin Luther King Day.

Dr King would be 95 today, if he had not been assassinated in Memphis, in April 1968.

To us, he was not a dreamer, although he had this vision of a better, safer world, but a man of constant action, who would not stop struggling until his last breath.

He was our choice, from the start, in 2003, for our Bilingual Experimental Programme.

Two thousand volumes were printed in Bethlehem, in English-Arabic and English-Hebrew, and spread through classes and bookstores, from Jerusalem, Nablus, Ramallah, to Gaza.

Our only sorrow is that the ministries, on both sides of the divide, did not really go for it. In Gaza, after a few years, we had to stop. It had become clear that this philosophy of life and coexistence was not on the agenda of the rulers.

What was so wrong with this, in El Yarmouk school, Gaza - or in any school ?

Life's most persistent and urgent question is, What are you doing for others ?

 

-