https://www.heraldgoa.in/Edit/By-invitation/Never-Again/212806
Soon after daybreak on Simchat Torah – an important Jewish holiday signified by “rejoicing under adversity” on October 7 earlier this month – the British-Goan-Israeli artist Solomon Souza was startled to hear the relatively rare sound of air raid sirens blaring across Jerusalem. He says “I came into the kitchen to see my wife and babies looking out the window. We wondered - it must be a test run, but why on Shabbat? Taking no chances, I hurried them into our shelter just as the rockets started falling.” This was the surprise beginning of “Operation Al-Aqsa Flood” launched by Islamic Resistance Movement (aka Hamas) from the intensely crowded little Palestinian enclave of Gaza on the Mediterranean Sea next to Egypt, about 75km away from Souza’s home, where “the incoming barrage continued relentlessly throughout the day.” It took some time for the world to realize this 5000-rocket fusillade from Gaza City – which is exactly the size of Dharbandora, the smallest taluka of Goa – was just cover for an unprecedented co-ordinated assault on the heavily militarized fences which keep the Palestinians separated from Israel. With drones, paragliders, trucks, bulldozers, speedboats and a fleet of motorcycles, hundreds of armed militants sped across the border after the Hamas military commander Mohammed Deif’s call to “kill the enemy wherever you may find them.” The resulting bloodbath lasted almost an entire day, in which the gunmen killed over 1400 people, mostly civilians, including guest workers from Thailand (at least 30 dead), Nepal (10), Philippines (4) and Sri Lanka (2), and seized over 200 hostages. All this would be extraordinary trauma for any society – remember India after 26/11 – but even darker thoughts awakened in Israel. The spectre of the Holocaust, when Germany and partners effectively wiped out the Jewish presence in most of Europe, murdering millions. But also, unavoidably, the post-war Nakba, the human catastrophe in which the same countries responsible for WWII imposed a new Jewish state in Arab-dominated Palestine, and hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were forced from their homes to become refugees, including 70% of the population of Gaza. The central premise of modern Israel is those facts on the ground will remain impregnable, now shaken to the core when descendants of the expelled came rushing back. The shock has been primal, existential, the worst nightmare come alive. After that another litany of horrors, as the Israeli war machine is unrestrainedly flattening Gaza, with civilians bearing the brunt. It was clear this would happen immediately after Israel closed the gates on Gaza again, as Sara Bashi of Human Rights Watch warned Isaac Chotiner of The New Yorker two weeks ago: “International-law obligations are nonreciprocal. If the other side commits war crimes, that doesn’t mean you can commit war crimes. We don’t make comparisons between different kinds of war crimes. Hamas killing civilians deliberately on a massive scale, taking civilians hostage, and even threatening to execute civilians—those are war crimes. That doesn’t justify the Israeli government committing its own war crimes. And I’m very concerned. I’m worried that the United States is appropriately condemning the horrific acts committed by Hamas, but is then forgetting that those same principles of protecting civilians also apply to the Israeli military operation in Gaza.” Bashi also voiced another long-dormant terror: “For many of the refugees in Gaza, especially the elderly who remember 1948, this feels like a replay of what Palestinians called the Nakba, when they were told to leave or they fled and they were never allowed back. And the fact that the Israeli military has also called upon Egypt to open its border and has called on civilians in Gaza to flee to Egypt just ramps up those fears.” Everything that has happened since has underlined the validity of those anxieties, as Adam Tooze asks in his invaluable Chartbook: “What kind of place is Gaza, that it can be subject to such instructions? How can a territory that is home to more than 2 million people be disposed of in this way? Why are there no powerful interests that react against the ruthless logic of a military campaign that simply designates a city for destruction? How did Gaza and its people become so isolated, so absolutely objectified?” These vital questions are being drowned out by manipulative propaganda on social media and television, and I appreciate how Professor Oded Na’aman of Hebrew University of Jerusalem describes it: “This moment is characterized by a widespread conviction that recognition can only go in one direction: that any show of empathy toward Israelis is tantamount to supporting the oppression of Palestinians, and that any show of empathy toward Palestinians is tantamount to supporting the massacre on October 7. Those who subscribe to this dichotomy see attempts to recognize all suffering as disingenuous and manipulative. They sometimes complain that symmetrical empathy entails symmetrical judgment, symmetrical condemnation, or attribution of symmetrical power. And since they reject these equivalences, they reject the equivalence of empathy. But empathy for all those who suffer doesn’t entail any of these equivalences.” Unfortunately, the current scenario is greatly worsened by our increasingly multipolar world, where there are few curbs on strong countries going rogue. Thus, what happens in Palestine now is largely up to Israel, which is a disastrous situation for the Palestinians. Here is Prof. Na’aman again: “If the Israeli fantasy has always been a land empty of Palestinians, the Israeli nightmare has always been a Palestinian massacre of Jews…Many find it difficult not to interpret the events of October 7 as a decisive confirmation of the longstanding Israeli suspicion that the Palestinians will slaughter us if they get the chance—in other words, as proof that the existence of one people can only come at the expense of the other. The fact that the Israeli nightmare became a reality leads many to conclude that the Israeli fantasy must also be achieved: we must use force to wipe “them” out, simply in order to survive. But ethnic cleansing and genocide are not only morally reprehensible; they are impossible. Palestinians will continue to exist in this land, and there is nothing Israel can do about it. I think most Jewish Israelis know this, but given what happened, they find it impossible to accept.” What will happen now, in this chasm of dangerous cognitive dissonance? All bets are off, and the previously unthinkable is now entirely plausible. “The bubble has burst,” Solomon Souza told me via text message earlier this week. Besides his beautiful young family, the 30-year-old grandson of our great modernist painter Francis Newton Souza of Saligao, London and New York is worried about a Palestinian friend with seven children who was trapped in Gaza, and also very upset about his vibrant fellow artist Inbar Hyman – they had first met in Goa – who was amongst those kidnapped by Hamas: “I break when I think of what she’s enduring”. He sent me the agonized painting you see alongside this column, along with these lines: “Tears for the shattered dream/The dream of a peaceful future for all / Tears for the Bird that can no longer fly/ Its wings clipped / tattered and torn.” .
