On Current Events
I recently watched a short video on the New York Times (linked below) featuring survivors of the October 7th terrorist attack in Israel. The surviving members of the Kibbutz Kfar Aza, where hundreds of civilians were killed, were asked to share their feelings in the aftermath. One young woman who had lost her father in the attack said something striking: She said she lost her empathy. I mourn for what she lost on earth and in spirit. I can’t think of anything crueler. Terror often seeks to rob us of our most essential matter: our human bond, our shared humanity. The depth of trauma she and her community have experienced is unfathomable.
Earlier that day, I was stricken by another kind of loss of empathy, one more sinister since it involves a certain amount of distance from suffering. Two women—a mother and her grown daughter—sat at a table next to me at a cafe. They began casually discussing the tragedy. In between debates about which items to pick up from Whole Foods, they spoke plainly about the violence. "How horrible it is for Israel" they concurred. “We have to take Hamas down once and for all,” the mother said. “What else can we do? We can secure peace for the Middle East. We have to wage war." I balked silently at the American proclivity to excuse war as a means to peace; in truth, violence always seems to beget greater violence. I waited for an acknowledgment of the thousands of innocent civilians who lie dead on the other side; for the children of Gaza murdered at the hands of Israel; for the remaining who await their death in agony. It came flatly: "I mean I feel bad for the innocent civilians,” the daughter said, “but Hamas just makes it impossible.” In the very next breath, the mother asked, "Should we make pasta?"
As I write this, Gaza is under siege. Israel has cut access to electricity, food, and water. Last night a refugee camp was destroyed. If Gazans happen to survive bombardment, they risk quite literally starving to death. And two women in New York will debate another’s right to live, and afterwards, they will make pasta. To quote journalist Megan K. Stack (whose Op-Ed for the New York Times is featured below)
“If the people of Gaza are just a political abstraction, perhaps it’s easier to tell yourself that the killing of their children is sad but unavoidable—an unintended and ultimately forgivable consequence of a nation's righteous pursuit of self-defense."
I don’t know if or how any of you are going about your day as normal. I know I'm not. Blatant inhumanity is raining down around us, if in images alone. We are left as voyeuristic witnesses to mass atrocity. And we can only stand by to watch, repost, comment. I tried to write something of value this week, but I think it will take more time. Sending even more words into the chattering void of the Internet feels useless. I have trouble thinking through my constant rage.
Instead, I have compiled a sort of reading list. The following pieces of writing have helped me frame and make sense of a dark and devastating time in history. These writers and journalists, in their superior skill, have articulated far better than I could our collective mourning; more importantly, they call out our collective failing.
I still weep for the young woman from the kibbutz. I pray she can reclaim her empathy but understand if she cannot. How dare we ask anything of her. I have less sympathy for us, the privileged who live outside war but view it haughtily from afar. The ones who sleep soundly in our beds after perusing images of dying children from “the other side.” That as Americans we may be so weak, so quick to lose empathy in the comfort of our complacency. I find it unforgivable. On behalf of the survivors of Hamas’s terror, the hostages, the victims of indiscriminate Israeli bombs, the children born into open-air captivity who are expected to resist a natural anger, and those who march peacefully on our streets asking for freedom, only to be diminished as sympathizers of terrorism: We cannot lose empathy in the process. Throughout it all, we must remain human. We have that luxury. We can make pasta.
ARTICLES (if any of these are behind a paywall for you, please reach out to me for my password!)
"I've Been Under Bombardment. There Must Be a Cease-Fire in Gaza." by Megan K. Stack
'I Feel a Human Deterioration.' Interview with Israeli writer Etgar Keret by Lulu Garcia-Navarro
"The Palestine Double Standard." by Hala Alyan
"Israel Doesn't Have a 'Right to Exist.' -- But Israelis and Palestinians Do" by Ben Burgis
"American Muslims Are in a Painful, Familiar Place." by Rozina Ali
"There is Jewish hope for Palestinian Liberation. It Must Survive." by Peter Beinart
BOOKS
The Parisian, by Isabella Hammad
Enter Ghost, by Isabella Hammad (currently reading!)
POEMS