Words Matter

I was 10 years old the first time I was called an “ostie d’anglais” in 1980; I was in the fourth grade and some sixth graders bullied me because I had an English surname in a French school. The insult – along with others I won’t bother sharing – came at a time when tensions were high in Quebec between the French and the English. In May of that year, Quebec held a referendum on its sovereignty, with the “No” side winning by a wide enough margin. While I was bullied because I was English, my mother was feeling increasingly ill at ease around neighbours and family members who were in favour of Quebec’s independence from Canada. Tensions were high, and sometimes she didn’t know what to say.

In times when difficult, complex and polarizing issues can strain friendships, family bonds, and small talk among neighbours and acquaintances, words matter. The recent events in Israel and Gaza have prompted me to reflect a great deal on the importance of choosing the right words, in trying to carefully and clearly understand the words of others, and – just as importantly – to make sense of silence.

As I’ve written previously, the October 7 attacks by Hamas on innocent Israelis were heinous and reprehensible. Families and friends of the 1,400 victims face a lifetime of grief to compound generational trauma fuelled by the Holocaust and antisemitism. They deserve support, they deserve care – as do the more than 200 hostages and their families who are rallying tirelessly for their safe return.

I cannot put myself in the position of those who have lost loved ones to Hamas. I cannot put myself in the shoes of someone whose family went through the Holocaust. But I empathize to the extent that I can with what they are going through, and I’m seized with dread that brings me down and weakens my spirit.

The same dread tramples my heart as I see images of suffering in Gaza, with a death toll in the thousands. I cannot ever see a justification for the deaths of thousands and the continued suffering of millions of people – I said people, words matter – in the hopes of eliminating terrorists who’ve embedded themselves in an overcrowded population. These actions are pulling us further from peace than ever before.

As the violence continues to unfold, everyone’s words matter. This week, the Secretary-General of the United Nations, António Guterres said in a speech to the Security Council that he condemned unequivocally Hamas’s attacks but that they “did not happen in a vacuum.” The Israeli ambassador promptly asked for the Secretary-General’s resignation and accused him of “justifying terrorism.” I’ve listened to the Secretary-General on many occasions over the last several years; I understood what he meant, and I’m sure the Israeli ambassador did as well. The ambassador’s remarks show a predictable reaction that only further erodes the possibility of a reasoned dialogue to ever take place. Words matter.

Political rhetoric is rife with sound bites that feed into everyone’s confirmation bias, which is stoked further by pundits, social media, misinformation, and (thankfully) actual information. What is deeply upsetting is the demonization and dehumanization of Israelis and Palestinians through social media. Amnesty International noted that social media companies need to step up their game and increase efforts to combat online hate and censorship, citing a recent increase in such posts since the conflict began. Demonization and dehumanization through language only solidifies the divide between “us” and “them.” It also limits the ability for many people to engage with those who categorize and channel their worldview through dehumanization: how does one respond to a friend’s social media post who is horrified by what “our” group has gone through and how anyone from “the other” group doesn’t deserve to live? Where can you go from there? (By the way, go ahead and fill “our” group and “the other” group with whichever groups you want.) Words matter.

About 10 years ago I was at an UNRWA school in Gaza speaking to a group of young secondary school students who were members of the school’s student parliament. After they explained to me the work they did – running student elections, speaking with school management about issues affecting students, providing community outreach – they took a few minutes to ask me questions. A young girl raises her hand, says her question in Arabic, and my friend translated for me.

“Do people in other countries think we’re all terrorists?”

There have been a few times when I’ve been at a loss for words, and that was one of them. I fumbled in my response, in part because I was in shock that someone would ask me such a thing, but there was also a part of me that was so deeply saddened by that question. How demoralizing it must be to believe that the global perception of who you are as a people is reduced to labelling everyone as terrorists. In the end, I did tell her that No, it certainly wasn’t the case, you’re not seen as all terrorists, and that many people around the world were advocating for a peaceful solution and the full enjoyment of human rights for Palestinians. Words matter.

As does silence. The head of UNRWA recently wrote, speaking about the deteriorating situation in Gaza, “The generations to come will know that we watched this human tragedy unfold over social media and news channels. We will not be able to say we did not know. History will ask why the world did not have the courage to act decisively and stop this hell on Earth.” Don’t stay silent.

The current conflict has worn me down emotionally, as have others in the past (and which are still going on – Ukraine, Yemen, Afghanistan, Sudan, Syria, and on and on). The images of violence, sorrow, destruction, pain, and suffering from everyone affected is seemingly unending. In a time when words matter, I seek voices who yearn for peace, who advocate for a cease fire, who pray for an end to hostilities and a safe return of all hostages, who find space in their hearts for forgiveness, who bring people together with words that move us to hope, solidarity, and towards human rights for all.

“Maybe this world is another planet’s hell.”

I must have been about 14 when I read the above quote by Aldous Huxley. I’d purchased the science magazine OMNI, and there were always a couple of pages that had historical quotes that, depending on the issue, either destroyed or restored my faith in humanity. At the time – 1984 – the threat of nuclear war between the Americans and the USSR was palpable. Even the Doomsday Clock from the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists crept up a few minutes to reach 3 minutes to midnight. The scientists noted in their editorial for that year, “We thus stand at a fateful juncture, at the threshold of a period of confrontation, a time when the blunt simplicities of force threaten to displace any other form of discourse…This is an appalling prospect.”

Guess what; in January of this year the folks at the Bulletin pushed the Doomsday clock to 90 seconds to midnight. In case you’re wondering, midnight is the apocalypse. As you might expect, a driving factor moving the clock forward in the past year was the war in Ukraine. At the time the Doomsday clock published its editorial, the death toll in that war was close to 7,000 after nearly one year of fighting. Just over two weeks into the Israel-Hamas war, the death toll is creeping to that figure (1,400 Israelis and over 5,000 Palestinians). Those numbers will only increase in the near future.

Much like the reflections of the Doomsday editors back in 1984, the current war between Israel and Hamas must have a better endgame other than “blunt simplicities of force.” As many commentators, analysts and activists have noted, there will come a point when Israel’s retribution wears thin with other nations, and there will be greater demands to move towards a solution that goes beyond flattening an entire population. The continued violence plays right into the hands of Hamas leaders: they do not value life, whether it’s the life of an Israeli or a Palestinian; their actions prove that. The heinous acts committed by Hamas on October 7 must never be allowed to happen again. And however painful these acts were – and their lasting consequences on families, friends, the nation of Israel, and Jews around the world, we – the most collective “We” as humans on this Earth – must find the strength to maintain our faith in humanity. As Yuval Noah Harari noted recently, “Hamas is waging war on our souls…Hamas is trying to destroy our trust in humanity, and thereby destroy our own humanity.”

It won’t win; it can’t win. But Hamas’s disregard for all human life is taking a horrendous toll on people in Gaza. Every day I wake up to see more grim statistics on the scale of human suffering. Over 600,000 people internally displaced, over 5,000 of people killed – 62% of them women and children, over 15,000 injured, buildings and homes demolished, families homeless and distraught, no access to food, electricity and water – the convoys are welcome but insufficient given the enormity of the destruction. Thirty-five UNRWA staff killed.

Peace is not an option, at least not now. An increase in the flow of humanitarian aid is imperative, as would be a cessation of the bombings that are affecting innocent civilians. There needs to be a viable, diplomatic road to peace, which does not include Hamas in any way, but rather another form of leadership from Palestinians which can come to the table with Israel – with the support from the US and neighbouring Arab nations.

We won’t get there if our humanity is chipped away by Hamas. While the diplomatic options might seem unreachable, it doesn’t mean that we – once again the big “We” of planet Earth – should remain silent observers to the unfolding violence. You can sign a petition to call for a cease fire (I signed a petition that currently has a quarter million signatures), you can donate to a reputable organization that is providing aid to Gazans (like UNRWA; I worked for them for 6 years, they are reputable, competent, and essential to saving lives in Gaza, period) or offer support for survivors of the attacks in Israel, or – and I know this is harder than it actually sounds – talk to others about it. Don’t remain silent on what happened. Even if you don’t know how to start a conversation, but you feel that you should – with a Jewish friend, or a Muslim friend, or with anyone – it’s ok to start a dialogue with “I don’t know what to say.” We can’t be afraid to speak about this because we fear tensions might flair – denial has always been a poor way to tackle any issue. Losing our humanity in the face of these events reduces our perceptions to absurd simplicities that trample our empathy and can galvanize anger, demonization, and hatred. An appalling prospect indeed, and not one I’m willing to give into. We are not another planet’s hell.

A Letter to My Sons: a little bit of happiness

Dear Alexandre, Dear Sam,

I’ve been in Gaza for three days now. This morning I travelled to the area of Middle Gaza to meet with teachers who were teaching human rights to children your age. What they had to say was really encouraging. Most of them did not know about human rights before, some openly said that they were afraid to teach human rights. Why teach human rights, some asked, when our rights are being violated? What difference would it make?

A lot of the teachers said there was a difference among the children they taught. The children learned to respect each other, learned to respect their teachers, made sure the school was clean, became more confident at expressing themselves to teachers when something was bothering them, and plenty of other things. They also learned that they had duties as well. For example, a child has a right to be protected from violence, but if one child sees another one being bullied in the schoolyard, they have a duty – or a responsibility – to inform the teacher of what’s happening.

A lonely sight

In the end, if you teach children about human rights, they care more for each other. And it doesn’t matter which religion you believe in, which country you call home, the colour of your skin, where you live, whether you’re a girl or a boy, how rich your parents are, or anything else that defines you that should make you care more or less for someone else. If I were to ask you what’s most important in life, you’d probably say love or happiness or family and friends.

In a place like Gaza, the poverty is so astounding that it’s hard for me to find the happiness. It’s hard to see beyond the fields filled with garbage, the unfinished or torn-down buildings, the broken cars, the dead trees, the empty stores or the pathetic wooden stands by the side of the road with merchants selling a smattering of fruits. Nothing is new, everything is worn or dirty or broken or cracked. Everything I see is faded and blurry through the shaded bulletproof window of the vehicle I’m in. There was an infant playing alone in a pile of sand in front of an unfinished building; in an instant I felt a tremendous sadness at how lonely and pitiful that little girl’s life is now, and wondered what hope she would have in the future.

Yes we are having fun.

Later on, as I walked to a mosque with my friends, I came across a group of young boys who were sliding down large sheets of metal shaped like a cut pipe used to pour concrete. Not exactly a slide like the ones you play on back home. But they were happy. They smiled as I walked by and they repeated, over and over again, “Hello! How are you? What is your name? Hello? How are you? What is your name?” I don’t think they really cared what the answers were. But they smiled as they crawled up and down their makeshift slide, and I was relieved that I’d found a little bit of happiness.

Je t’aime Alexandre, je t’aime Sam.

Daddy