A new war shocks us, and our impotence only manages to point a huge index finger at the ineffectiveness of world leaders, incapable of pacifying the territories. Territory, yes, that is the bleeding word that expresses the sense of belonging to a physical, and legitimate, place to live. Gaza has become a concentration camp, and the world continues to be absurdly divided into sides, as if suffering and death understood colors or flags.
We do not hear world leaders ask for a ceasefire or affirm that only through peace can justice be done, because confrontation and violence are once again tolerable forms of political relations in our ultra-polarized world, in which pacifist sounds like an enlightened guru, a hippy with butterflies or a naive loser.
We have undervalued peace, since we took it for granted, when in reality it is the most perfect and happiest balance that humans have been able to find throughout history. We thought that war was an anachronism in the 21st century, that humanity would no longer be exterminated with tanks and missiles. However, two years ago Russia attacked Ukraine and Zelensky put on the military jacket. We were overwhelmed by the beginning of the fight, the same one that bores and desensitizes us today. And if we are still outraged, it is, above all, because of the rise in gas and electricity bills.
My Spanish Jewish friends who have family in Tel Aviv tell me that they live in armored shelters. That a viscous sadness permeates everything. “What good is so much intelligence, technology and wealth?” they ask themselves, emotionally devastated by so much violence. “Isolating the population of Gaza without food or water is genocide,” says former prosecutor of the International Court, Moreno Ocampo, on TVE. In the images – the few that come from the strip, where there are hardly any reporters and 15 journalists have been murdered – an injured child trembles so helplessly that the very act of breathing hurts. Gaza is a mousetrap without cheese to which even yesterday food, medicine and water did not reach.
When 17 years ago the Israeli Government approved the expansion of the offensive against Hizbullah in Lebanon, the writer David Grossman issued a warning call along with other colleagues: that could be tragic. He did not mention that two of his sons had been recruited and sent to the front and he did not even mention their names. But, soon, the little one, Yuri, was killed. “I won't say anything now about the war in which you died. We, our family, lost this war.” This is how a pacifist like Grossman said goodbye to his son. The intellectual said that, when writing about the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, he forced himself to see reality from the other's point of view: “Although I am Jewish and I am conditioned by my education, by my language, by the anxieties of my country, I insist on describing the opposite situation.”
Equidistance is a term loaded with negativity, pejorative, typical of cowards. And it is true that one cannot be equidistant when faced with a summary execution, whether that of a Jew at a rave or that of a child in a Gaza hospital. Grossman claims this in a manifesto together with other Israeli intellectuals addressed to the left. Instead, equanimity should be vindicated, essential to confront the terrorist massacres of Hamas and Hizbullah with the indiscriminate punishment of the Israeli army. Where is the line between self-defense and revenge? Why is peace relegated, as if it were a matter for fools?
