A new war startles us, and our impotence can only point with an enormous index finger to the inaction of world leaders, unable to pacify the territories. Territory, yes, that’s the bloody word that expresses the sense of belonging to a physical, and legitimate, place to live.
Gaza has become a concentration camp, and the world continues to be absurdly divided into sides, as if suffering and death were understood by colors or flags. We don’t listen to world leaders calling for a ceasefire or affirming that only through peace can justice be done, because confrontation and violence are once again tolerable forms of political relations in our ultra-polarized world, in which pacifist sounds like guru il ·enlightened, a hippy with butterflies or a naive loser.
We have underestimated peace, taking it for granted, when in reality it is the most perfect and blissful balance that humans have been able to find throughout history. We thought that war was an anachronism in the 21st century, that humanity would no longer be exterminated by tanks and missiles. However, it’s been two years since Russia attacked Ukraine and Zelenski donned a military shirt. We were startled by the beginning of the story, the same one that today bores and numbs us. And if it still causes us indignation, it is, above all, because of the increase in gas and electricity bills.
My Spanish Jewish friends who have family in Tel-Aviv tell me that they live in armored shelters. That a viscous sadness permeates everything. “What is the use of so much intelligence, technology and wealth?”, they ask themselves, mentally devastated by so much violence. “Isolating the population of Gaza without food or water is genocide,” says the former prosecutor of the International Court, Moreno Ocampo, to TVE. In the images – the few that arrive from the strip, where there are almost no reporters and 15 journalists have been killed – a wounded child trembles so helplessly that the very act of breathing hurts. Gaza is a wasteland without cheese, where food, medicine and water did not reach until yesterday.
When the Israeli government approved the expansion of the offensive against Hezbollah in Lebanon 17 years ago, the writer David Grossman sounded the alarm with other colleagues: it could be tragic. He did not explain that two of his sons had been drafted and sent to the front, nor did he even pronounce their names. But soon after, the little one, Yuri, was shot down. “I will say nothing now about the war in which you died. We, our family, have lost this war.” This is how a pacifist like Grossman said goodbye to his son. The intellectual explained that, when writing about the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, he forced himself to see reality from the other’s point of view: “Even though I am Jewish and I am conditioned by my education, by my language, because of my country’s anxieties, I insist on describing the opposite situation”.
Equidistance is a term loaded with negativity, pejorative, characteristic of cowards. And it is true that one cannot be equidistant in the face of a summary execution, be it that of a Jew in a rave or that of a child in a hospital in Gaza. Grossman claims this in a manifesto signed with other Israeli intellectuals, aimed at the left. On the other hand, equanimity should be claimed, essential to confront the terrorist massacres of Hamas and Hizbullah with the indiscriminate punishment of the Israeli army. Where is the border between self-defense and revenge? Why is peace relegated, as if it were a matter for fools?