“I have an ON/OFF switch,” I told him. “I switch it OFF when I need to and forget about the misery I leave behind.”
However simplistic – or in fact uncaring – an answer that may be, it remains essentially true to what I do. Being in the presence of my children at home forces my switch to the OFF position; I can’t feel sorry for my friends in Gaza while I have to take my kids to a swim meet, or make them supper, or yell at them to clean their rooms. I just can’t feel all the time.
The escalating violence in Gaza pains me tremendously; my switch has flipped ON and OFF too many times in the past days. When four boys were killed on the beach in Gaza July 16, the pictures I saw were devastating, and so painful and raw and horrifying that they can never be unseen. As I looked more closely at one reporter’s account my heart sank when I saw the pictures he’d posted. He was staying at the same hotel I’ve stayed at in Gaza a number of times, and one photo showed a man carrying an injured boy into the hotel’s restaurant. I saw the man’s burly face and bushy beard and realized I knew him. He’d carried my luggage once or twice upon my arrival at the hotel; always had a nice smile, always wished me a good day. And there he was, carrying a bloodied boy in his arms.
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| Carrying a wounded child at the al Deira Hotel, Gaza. Photograph: Thomas Coex/AFP/Getty Images |
Seeing the man I knew carry the wounded boy made the violence more immediate, more urgent and desperate, and to use Anthony Bourdain’s words on Twitter in relation to a photo of the children, “so devastating.” It broke my switch. I have such a hard time processing the images I’m seeing from Gaza that I can’t think straight anymore. Half my Facebook newsfeed pops up with friends sharing the latest images of children gored by the bombings; the other half shows friends on sunny beaches during their vacation. In one particularly stark contrast this morning, one friend posted a video of babies being tickled, while the next feed from a different friend showed a disemboweled infant in Gaza cradled in a man’s arms. Last week I switched off the misery in Gaza and even resorted to the fluffy stuff by posting a few of my own sunny, life-is-good pictures from a peaceful beach.
I think of the people I’ve met in Gaza, the mothers, the fathers, their children. I think of the homes they’ve invited me to, I think of their smiling faces, I think of their resolve, their kindness, their fears, their squalor, their blood. None of what’s happening now makes sense. To make matters more difficult to understand, so much of the violence gets filtered through rhetoric from people posting an astounding amount of hatred online directed at both Israelis and Palestinians. Every argument and opinion advocating one perspective is counterbalanced with an opposing viewpoint that invariably starts with “Yes, but.” None of that helps us move forward, none of that helps stop the violence, the fear, the anguish.
I am not pro-either side, nor am I anti-neither. I am pro-peace, I am pro-human rights, pro-love and pro-anything else that makes sense if you want to live in a world in which you’re happy and safe. The leaders on both sides have undertaken actions that are reprehensible. The Israeli government’s defense measures have resulted in the deaths of over 300 Palestinians, most of whom are civilians. Its actions are abhorrent and considered by Human Rights Watch to be unlawful acts. Rockets launched by Hamas into Israel are an equally abhorrent act, and while the death toll is astoundingly disproportionate between the two sides, the anguish caused to Israeli citizens is something no one should ever have to go through.
I’m not one to posit any answers to this conflict. I never have been, and never will. The only thing I’ve been trying to do for the past three years is to work with Palestinian teachers in Gaza on teaching children about human rights. Respect for each other, equality for boys and girls, tolerance, strengthening links with communities, and learning to resolve conflicts peacefully (well, the small interpersonal kind at any rate). I think of the bombs raining down on the skies of Gaza and wonder about the futility of teaching any of that in the first place. But then again, even in times of relative peace (or at least non-violence), children were still eager to learn about human rights, despite living under an oppressive regime (I learned quickly that saying “Hamas” in public was akin to saying “Lord Voldermort” in the early days of Harry Potter’s stay at Hogwart’s). I suppose there should never be a reason not to teach anyone about human rights, even if they don’t have many to begin with.
As is often the case, it’s so difficult to move forward and teach children human rights values when they are surrounded by circumstances that counter everything human rights aspire to achieve. As a teacher working in Syria told me a couple of months ago, “Yes we can teach children about human rights, but what about the people who are dropping the bombs?” Or to put it another way, as Ralph Fiennes says as the concierge Gustave in the movie The Grand Budapest Hotel which I recently watched to turn my switch off and forget about misery, “You see, there are still faint glimmers of civilization left in this barbaric slaughterhouse that was once known as humanity. Indeed that’s what we provide in our own modest, humble, insignificant… oh, fuck it.”
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| Tell it like it is, Gustave. |
I have to believe in the faint glimmers Gustave mentions, and try my best to leave out his last three words. I’ll probably go back to Gaza one day, and see friends whose lives have been fractured, and knowing them they will continue to search for happiness and peace and a life of dignity every way they can, but the anguish of these past days will stay with them forever. Right now, I don’t think any of them have them have the option to turn off their switches. But for those of us who can show our support, we should. Taking to social media is one way, demonstrating in the streets another, or even signing a petition – here’s one for the Canadian government to take a stronger stance on forging peace. Does any of that ease the suffering – maybe, maybe not. But as a Palestinian friend once said to me, quoting Martin Luther King, Jr., “In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.”
paul mcadams - a change is coming 