the graveyards are full (1.5.08)

my head and heart are jumbled with worry and heartache and confusion and anger. each emotion battling the other and leaving me with knots of anxiety in my stomach. each emotion stronger than the other, surging in waves.

two days ago, israel invaded gaza on the ground. For what feels like weeks, so-called experts and commentators speculated on whether israel would actually do it—actually go through with the ground invasion. they opined about the “pros and cons” of a ground invasion, the strategies and goals behind such a move. they noted that israel hasn’t “won” a war in a city since the ‘70s. they postulated that israel might want to regain its reputation as a military might after the 2006 war against Lebanon. they argued that israel would not risk another loss like 2006. Comments, insights, speculations flew across newspaper headlines while israeli government officials and hamas leaders verbally sparred—each promising the other a long, painful, losing battle. words that fly above the heads of palestinians dying in gaza. And then they went in.

and now the comments and insights examine and try to discern israel’s military “strategy”. What is their goal in this ground invasion? how will they define victory? There is no clear answer. Nothing is clear in war, is what I am learning. There is no black and white. Nothing is ever simple. Israel ostensibly seeks to “crush” hamas and its infrastructure. It wants to be rid of hamas and their damned rockets. This is what it says. What it does is break Palestinian society. It crushes any and all semblance of life that exists/ed in gaza. Palestinian existence is antithetical to Israeli strategy. To Israeli existence, some might say.

Israel strangled gaza through hermetically closing its borders for a year and a half. It starved the people of gaza for the past two months and denied them medical aid. It cut off electricity and fuel supplies for two months. It bombed it for a week. And now idf troops have entered. This ensures only that more Palestinians will be killed. There will be more blood. More loss. More destruction. More tears. More grief. More calls for revenge. More despair. This is how this cycle goes. Every time it is somehow worse than the time before. Always worse than the time before.

The reality (I resist the word “situation” in its banality) of gaza is so bleak. So incomprehensibly bleak. So many people have been killed in gaza that the graveyards are full. People are reusing graves. Stop for a minute and process what that means—the scale of killing that encompasses.

The graveyards are full.

For over a year there has not been enough cement in gaza to give the dead a proper gravestone.

In life in gaza there is not enough food or medicine, and in death there are not enough graves or gravestones.

If this were a story being read in a literature class, this point would be highlighted and commented on—pointing to the great destruction and violence humans wreak upon each other. It would be poetic in its misery. But this is not a novel. Nor is it a poem. It is reality. Each day I wonder of my friends who have family, colleagues, and friends in gaza and the grief and pain they must be feeling, unsure if the rising numbers of dead include people they love. People they have laughed with. People they share secrets and memories with. And the numbers are rising, steadily. In 2006 it took israel 33 days to kill 1000 lebanese. So far they have killed 500 palestinians in 10 days. In the face of deaths and indignity like this, how can people still talk of victory? There is no victory in war. War in and of itself is a loss. In this war—this “operation cast lead” Palestinians are losing lives, homes, schools, mosques, hope, and future…israel is losing morality. And that is a heavy loss.

During college I heard a refusenik (a jewish Israeli soldier who refused to fight in the occupied territories during the 2nd intifada) speak of his experiences in resisting orders. When asked why he did not participate in the idf’s actions against Palestinians, he responded for him it was a question of morality. He said, “I do not fight because I am a jew, and I love god. In the torah it says, do not oppress as you have been oppressed.” A moral code by which I wish the entire world lived. The incongruity and hypocrisy of the jewish experience and israel’s treatment of Palestinians has always bewildered me. in the states, the jewish holocaust of world war II is upheld as the apex of world suffering and cruelty. It is rightfully held as a nadir in humanity. it is sacrosanct to suggest that another people's suffering could ever compare. the jewish holocaust seems to hold a monopoly on suffering. but I have never understood how a people whose collective identity is constructed in part by a feeling of persecution and suffering, can turn around and inflict such suffering on another people. After the holocaust the jewish community embraced the phrase and promise of “never again”. But now they have given the Palestinians their own “never again”…but our suffering has not ended. Instead we are blamed for it and told we brought it on ourselves. How awful to ever be told you brought death and destruction upon yourself—as though the perpetrator had no choice but to dispatch f-16s and apaches.

And as usual, this war reeks of racism blandly glossed over by the west. Arguments supporting israel’s actions which would have never been tolerated had the context been between another two people are accepted with open arms. The new york times published an opinion piece by benny morris, a once left-leaning revisionist jewish Israeli historian. He predictably supported israel’s aggression in gaza and remarked about the “demographic threat” of the arabs. That Palestinian populations have higher birth rates than jewish Israeli populations do and thus threaten the “jewish character” of israel. This is a common argument embraced and espoused by the Israeli government and a genuine concern of Israeli society. Imagine for a minute if Hillary Clinton wrote an opinion piece that black birth rates were threatening the white character of America. Imagine the disgust and shock and abhorrence you would feel to such feelings of racial superiority. There the racism is evident. But somehow this is a legitimate concern for jewish Israelis. Their existence is threatened by ours, and the world nods its head with sympathy.

Half of gaza’s ambulances have been destroyed. It sounds bad, but I wonder, realistically how much of an impact it really has on the death rate. Even before the incursion, gaza was desperately low on fuel and ambulances had to prioritize emergencies because they did not have enough gas to answer all the calls they received. And anyways the hospitals are overflowing and only the absolutely, critically injured are being seen. Half of hospital staff now is comprised of volunteers—so even if you make it to the hospital, those who care for you may not have medical training. And for the past 3 months the hospitals have been nearing a “critical shortage” of supplies…I am waiting to wake up one morning to read that the supplies passed the critical point and no longer exist. The hospitals will have nothing left to receive people with except empty rooms with beds to die in. So really, what impact does an ambulance shortage really have…

I cannot begin to comprehend what kind of fear the Palestinians of gaza are experiencing now. It is beyond my emotional scope of understanding. I understand that my stomach has been in knots for the past 10 days and that I almost began to cry at a protest a few days ago when a leader spoke of the maimed and dead children in gaza. But I cannot understand what it is like to not be able to sleep because every room in your house is vulnerable to bombing. To choose to sleep on the roof because it is safer, and maybe the sight of sleeping families on roofs will deter Israeli pilots from bombing those houses. To choose to stay home because it is safer, and because you would rather die at home. To receive corpse after corpse after corpse…all who were/are members of your family…and to know you don’t have any white cloth in which to bury them, and to know there are no more graves. I cannot understand how jewish Israelis can support such monstrosity, such breach of humanity. I feel that those who condone actions like israel’s in gaza…part of their soul must be dead. To will, to wish such pain on a people. I cannot comprehend it. I hope I never comprehend it. I don’t want to understand, accept, embrace cruelty. I hope I am forever baffled by it.

Those who claim israel has a right to defend itself ought to pause and reflect on whether military actions can or will ever bring israel security. They never have. Israel has bombed the hell out of gaza before. It may again. It has massacred populations and razed villages and erased histories from world memory. But in the end Palestinians continue to exist. I extend that the best self-defense for israel, a measure it knows it must take, is a true and just peace with Palestinians...one state for citizens of all backgrounds, reparations, and a right of return for refugees. Israel will try to crush hamas in this violent incursion. It will kill Palestinians who have nothing to do with hamas. It will create more anger and calls for revenge and the cycle will be perpetuated, each time with more destruction and flexing of might.

I recently saw a trailer for an upcoming movie about the jewish holocaust, in which a jewish survivor says “our revenge will be to live”. On the apartheid wall which excises the west bank from israel proper is written “to exist is to resist”. Indeed, for Palestinians, in their epic, pyrrhic struggle with israel, this is their greatest resistance and greatest victory.