Palestine

Someday everyone will have always been against you., by Omar El Akkad (La Otra Editorial), raises the question of moral positioning in the face of the Palestinian tragedy, which, according to El Akkad, is the "first genocide in the world broadcast live."

The book is a must-read. We experienced the savagery of October 2023 from this side of the trench. Our cultural debt to the Jews is entirely constitutive, from the Old Testament to cinema. My gratitude goes to a greater body of thinkers and artists than any other nation has given me, except for the Catalans, because they are mine.

When the Israeli response arrived, I didn't want to remove X from the accounts that published the other atrocities. I didn't want to look away, and the words "horrible" and "unbearable" have fallen terrifyingly short. The images that can be seen every day on X are so unbearable that equidistance ends up becoming tempting. How pleasant it would be to think they are propaganda and that the fog of war is blinding us. But we know that's not the case. We know there are remorseless massacres of civilians, and massacres of children. We have seen the cities razed to the ground. We have seen the cruelty—also a dramatically short word—of the video of Trump strolling through Gaza, which has become resort tourist. We know the disproportion. As I write, theNowpublishes:Israel kills 59 Palestinians as they search for food at humanitarian aid stations. Nearly 400 Palestinians have been killed and more than 3,000 injured at Gaza Humanitarian Foundation distribution points in the past three weeks.The news appears in a corner of the screen, it is not remarkable.

I saw an English journalist interviewing the Jewish ambassador in London. He kept asking: Why don't they give the number of dead children, if they give the number of dead terrorists? Why don't they let journalists into Gaza? The ambassador only replied: We must protect our children.

All genocides have been committed in the name of protecting one's own children. What does common sense tell us if they don't let journalists in? If more have died than in any other war? What does common sense tell us if they don't want to give figures on the number of children killed? Now we know how the massacre is experienced live: as if nothing had happened, with an indifference that shares the indifference of the executioner. It's a way of assenting, a yes to criminal impunity in exchange for the benefits of being on the side of the empire. So much literature, so much wisdom, so much moral reflection on the Holocaust, has served no purpose, not even to attenuate consent.