I come from a country that does not exist any more. Yugoslavia. I hoped that the pain I felt watching it disappear into the smoke of the early 1990s would not be repeated during my lifetime. I was wrong.
It is now two months since the latest bout of the Israel-Palestine human catastrophe started — a conflict that spans almost an entire century. Over the past 60 days, under my editorial leadership, and with the daily stewardship of Jillian Green, Anso Thom, Heather Robertson and many others, Daily Maverick has endeavoured to help our readers understand this complex, difficult, layered and painful crisis, to chart the path for human stories and testimonies, to describe the involvement of greater forces, to share a diverse range of expert opinions.
The daily instructions to our editorial team are to concentrate on the suffering of the ordinary people caught up in this mindless conflict. To the best of our ability, bring these way-too-often-missed-out dimensions to the fore. Our team has done a great job of covering the suffering and I am proud of our work. Especially when the emotive reactions to bloodshed and violence mean many of our readers are easily triggered by words that don’t conform with their personal views.
Hamas’ attack on 7 October was a barbaric act. The 1,200 souls that perished and the 240 people who were taken hostage were victims of an act that defies comprehension. What was so shocking was that Hamas obviously knew very well what they were doing and what kind of suffering would be inflicted on their own people in return — and yet they went ahead in pursuit of destabilising the geopolitics of the region, betting on a violent response.
Benjamin Netanyahu responded to Hamas’ barbarism in what can only be described as a medieval manner. As though he purposely decided to disregard all the lessons that the US response to 9/11 offered (and he was reminded of those mistakes by President Joe Biden and Foreign Secretary Antony Blinken), Netanyahu chose to not build an anti-Hamas coalition in the wake of the world’s genuine shock at the events of 7 October.
Quite the opposite: he switched off the water and power, and blockaded Gaza in a way that was bound to create an unimaginably cruel humanitarian disaster. Instead of sending in special forces soldiers to retrieve hostages and target Hamas operatives, thousands of civilians perished in the aerial attacks on Gaza. Large parts of northern Gaza were flattened and that was even before the wide-scale ground invasion was launched by the Israel Defense Forces.
Among the casualties of the indiscriminate bombings were more than 60 journalists who bravely reported from the front lines of this war and paid with their lives. And the violence hasn’t stopped, save for the seven days of ceasefire during which hostages and prisoners were swapped.
The suffering of the Palestinian people in Gaza is impossible to ignore. And the killing has not eased the pain of the families of the victims of 7 October or those families who yearn to embrace loved ones taken hostage. A bombing and invasion of such a densely populated space as Gaza was never going to be anything other than devastating, and will fertilise the resentment that ensures this cycle of violence continues.
What was immediately obvious, apart from the inevitable response by Netanyahu’s government to the Hamas attack, was how neatly it served autocrats all over the world (and especially the Russian and Iran governments that were so welcoming of the world’s attention focusing firmly on the Middle East again). This latest bill was about to be paid in the blood of Israeli and Palestinian civilians, and not by President Putin or Ayatollah Khamenei.
Such a divisive conflict was bound to offer rich pickings to horrible people everywhere.
Hamas’ attack instantly unleashed a tide of anti-Islam and anti-Palestinian attacks in many countries.
Likewise, Israel’s attack on Gaza woke up anti-Semitism so shocking that even Jewish children in South African schools were made to feel unsafe. “From the river to the sea” — understood by many as the call to exterminate Jews in the Middle East — has been regularly heard in our society and elsewhere in the world.
This has to stop
Angry people conflated the violent actions of a small group of people with entire nations and religions, sparking hateful rhetoric and physical threats.
For all of us to have a future together, this has to stop. Anti-Semitic, anti-Palestinian and anti-Islamic attacks cannot be explained away.
The tragedy of the Palestinian and Israeli people is that they are led by “leaders” who have a “greater mission” on their minds, one that does not concern itself with civilian deaths. I urge you to read (or read again) the piece by Kevin Bloom, Messianism and madness: An intimate hell ride through end times in the Holy Land, from early in the conflict — it will explain a lot.
As for Daily Maverick’s coverage of the conflict, it should not be judged by a single article, analysis or column, but in its fullness. Daily Maverick editors and journalists are under pressure every day to ignore the totality of the humanitarian disaster and concentrate on one side only, to affirm one action or agenda over the other. Inevitably, because of how victimised and justified each side feels, we will publish something that is going to upset someone.
For me personally, the devastation of Yugoslavia, and so many other countries around it, inflicted a toll which is sometimes impossible to describe or gauge.
The instant foreboding I felt of what was to come from the Israel-Hamas war was not wrong — this war questions humanity’s ability to solve the structural problems we’re saddled with in these dangerous times. I have seen this before — it never ends well.
This was the bill for the Balkan madness of the 1990s:
- An estimated 100,000 dead.
- About 4 million people were either displaced or left the country — I happen to be one of them.
- At least two generations have been destroyed — their lives often reduced to mere survival.
And yet — and yet — the survivors of the conflicts eventually had to return to their original borders. (Serbia de facto lost Kosovo, but that is more complicated.)
It may seem obvious in this day and age of information warfare, but let me state it anyway: People from all sides of this horrifying conflict have been scolding me in the belief that I am an “Israeli flunky” or a “Hamas agent”. Needless to say, I am neither — it is a common fate suffered by editors globally. In this wretched conflict, the “You are either with us or against us” approach will not solve anything.
As a response, I can only offer this: we should all be humanists. I grieve for the souls lost on all sides. I refuse to hate.
I do not believe that a forever war will solve anything — unless the sides believe that their opponents should be wiped off the face of the Earth, which is not something that anyone with a shred of humanity or sanity should believe.
The ONLY way this conflict will be solved is when sane people sit down to talk and find a way to co-exist. When they become neighbours rather than enemies. No terrorist attacks or bombing campaigns will achieve that. And no “leaders” should ever strive to destroy anything in the name of their people.
We must all fight for reason to prevail. It will not happen while hatred reigns. DM
PS: I did not have a moment to write about the suffering of the Ukrainian people. Or the by-now-forgotten ethnic cleansing of Armenians from Azerbaijan, a complicated but no less painful exodus of more than 50,000 people. Or Sudan. Or … so many countries. Such is the violent reality we all share these days.