We are not living in unprecedented times. The war on Palestine could have been prevented if only the world had listened and taken action decades ago. 

But what is unprecedented is the scale of the mass murder, forced displacement and desecration of dead Palestinian bodies after Hamas killed 1,200 people in a barbaric attack on 7 October 2023 and took about 200 hostages. The calls we are hearing for the Nakba 2023 – or “second Nakba”, as historian Avi Shlaim says – come as an entire people’s suffering is largely ignored by world leaders, the media and those who have the luxury of time to debate whether or not what is happening is genocide. 

More than 15,500 Palestinian civilians have been killed in Israel’s war on Gaza since 7 October 2023, including 3,561 women and 6,403 children. Over 41,316 additional Palestinians have been injured by Israeli attacks, many of whom are in critical condition and unable to receive even the bare minimum of medical attention as the Gazan health system collapses. 

A four-day pause came into effect after more than 48 days of bloodshed. Hamas released 105 hostages held in the Gaza Strip, while Israel released 210 women and children held in Israeli prisons. 

The truce did not stop Israel’s attacks on the West Bank, which continues unabated. This increased the total number of Palestinians killed in the West Bank to 254 since October 7.

Israel renews its bombardment of Gaza, hitting areas across the enclave after the end of a week-long truce. Negotiations on prisoner exchanges are now over and will not resume until Israel halts its attack, says Hamas.

World Health Organization director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said a child in Gaza is killed every 10 minutes. At least six children are killed by the hour. Palestinians do not have time to wait while experts argue over whether or not Israel is committing war crimes. 

Speaking to Democracy Now! on 16 November 2023, Norwegian physician Dr Mads Gilbert, who has worked as a medical doctor in Palestine since 1981, said: “If I should choose today between hell and Al-Shifa [hospital], I would choose hell.”

A long road has brought us here

On 7 November 2023, a month after Hamas’ attack on Israeli citizens, which killed 1,200 and led to 240 taken hostage, South Africa’s Minister of International Relations and Cooperation Naledi Pandor stated before the National Assembly: “The facts are, the people of Palestine are denied the right to exist as human beings. They are denied the right to enjoy the freedoms and the rights we so love as South Africans, the rights and freedoms we fought so hard for. The rights and freedoms we’re united on as a diverse South African people.” 

We should feel the desperation that suffering causes, even if that suffering is not directly our own.

She went on to say that we, as South Africans, cannot ignore what is happening in Occupied Palestine. To do so is to ignore the legacies of imperialism and empire. To ignore our own history of settler colonialism. 

Making sense of what we’re seeing

How do we turn away from the trauma we are witnessing? Should we have the luxury to mute the videos on our screens? How do we pick ourselves up after being shattered by our new reality?

These are the questions I ask myself as I struggle with overwhelming feelings of discomfort. But it is not just discomfort. It is heartbreak, it is grief and it is the abject horror of seeing what a Hellfire R9X missile does to a human body. What it did to a Palestinian child, who was left with nothing but shreds of a neck in the wake of his decapitated head and mangled body. 

Sitting here, 7,000km away, the only thing greater than that grief and horror is the guilt of looking away. As children dig themselves out from underneath the rubble of their homes, as premature babies await death in incubators that have run out of power, and as thousands of displaced, injured, starving people walk to seek safety and shelter after more than 40 days of bombardment.  

Carrying on with daily life feels futile in comparison. Grief, despair and rage grip me as entire families and communities are completely eradicated from existence. Gaza, if overlayed on Johannesburg, is as wide as the distance between Braamfontein and Rosebank, and as long as the distance from Soweto to OR Tambo International airport. It is home to 2.2 million people and is now devoid of the most basic necessities for life: drinkable water, food, fuel, safe shelter and sanitation. 

That is the duty that sits with each of us – to answer our own humanity’s call for the killing of innocent people to stop immediately.

It is a reality that should shake us all from the comforts of our daily lives. We should feel the desperation that suffering causes, even if that suffering is not directly our own. This grief, this trauma and this rage should be the thing that brings us all together so that we can work as a collective and also comfort one another in our calls for a just and free world.     

Let us use this awakening to sit shiva in the face of our shared loss as human beings and be present in how we show up. (Image: Midjourney AI)

Collective trauma needs collective healing 

What I reflect on, often, is trying to answer the question: “What if it was me?” What if, as has been the experience of generations of South Africans before me, the horrors of an apartheid regime were being inflicted on me? What would I hope for from the world? 

The answer usually comes immediately: I would want whoever is able to intervene, to stop what is happening. To raise their voice to save my life. 

Read more in Daily Maverick: Israel-Palestine War

And that, I wholeheartedly believe, is the duty that sits with each of us – to answer our own humanity’s call for the killing of innocent people to stop immediately. I know this can feel hopeless, especially when the power to stop it sits in the offices of world leaders who refuse to put an end to the violence. But hopelessness cannot be the fork in the road we choose to walk away from. 

In a recent talk, Gilbert said the two most important words in his language are “love” and “solidarity”: “Those are the two most precious qualities of human life. Love, because we can embrace each other. Solidarity, because we will all need it one day and it is the best thing we as humans can give another – somebody needing support during a strike; suffering from poverty or disease; requiring practical help, or like the people of Gaza needing our active solidarity and our active action.”

If they can do it, we can do it. If they can, I can.

In our most desperate times, love and solidarity can go far in reminding us of our own humanity and seeing the humanity in others. Watching how an entire population has been stripped of theirs is difficult, there is no denying that. But watching is still better than living it. So, while we watch, as we bear witness, we cannot be a silent audience. 

Communal solidarity is critical for the sustainability of any cause. Perhaps we can channel our anger and outrage positively to hear and understand the pain we are collectively feeling. As Rabbi Greg Anderson suggested, we need to create safe spaces and communities of care to have these kinds of discussions: 

“Not to debate or persuade. To listen. Reach out to your neighbour, colleague, school friend who is not you, and may not think like you or consume the same media that you do. Find out how they are doing, ask how they are feeling, given what is going on, and how they are managing. And hopefully, they will ask the same from you.”

It is not enough to push “like” on a post and continue with what we are doing. We have to stand up, speak out, and act. We must put pressure on our government to continue taking clear diplomatic and economic actions against an apartheid force. Where possible, we must volunteer with NGOs helping those on the ground in Occupied Palestine, and donate money and resources where they are available. We must attend protests, educate ourselves and each other, listen, unlearn and relearn. And in the most important form of solidarity, we must practise self-care to better care for the world. 

Artist and activist Dylan McGarry shared that he is “sitting shiva”. 

Sitting shiva is “a Jewish ceremony of staying with and mourning loss; it’s an active pause and stillness in the face of loss. Its primary purpose is to provide a time for spiritual and emotional healing, where mourners join together.”

Let us use this awakening to sit shiva in the face of our shared loss as human beings and be present in how we show up. Whether we are helping ourselves, a loved one, a colleague, a stranger or the people of Palestine, let us not forget that radical self-care is an act of radical solidarity. DM

This story first appeared in our weekly Daily Maverick 168 newspaper, which is available countrywide for R29.