Four fundamental things seem to be slipping through our fingers and out of sight as the world attempts to come to grips with the violence in Israel and Gaza.
The truth. No need to dwell on the unfortunate mix of journalism in crisis, the explosion of artificial intelligence and the collapse of Twitter (renamed X). The little “verified” hooks no longer guarantee anyone’s credibility, the platforms’ content moderation and fact-checking services are ineffective, and false information abounds. Result: it has never been so difficult to find information online about a conflict where actions – and deaths – evolve from hour to hour.
The weather. Many observers have compared the Hamas attack on Israeli civilians, including many children, on Saturday to Pearl Harbor or to September 11, 2001. What we are trying to convey with this image is the feeling of a breach. There have never been so many deaths on the Israeli side, just as the Americans are not used to being attacked on their own soil. The United States had time to enter into national mourning, then react: the Pacific War which ended with two atomic bombs on one side, the war in Iraq and the destabilization of the Middle East on the other .
We don’t have time here. The Israeli army’s counter-offensive in Gaza is already underway. The number of civilian deaths rises by the hour, including many children. Given the imbalance of forces present, we fear what will follow.
Almost the entire Canadian political class condemned the weekend’s pro-Palestinian protests, as if every person on the street was there to “celebrate” the Hamas attack, and therefore the Jewish deaths. Although there were, certainly, among the organizers, figures with highly reprehensible objectives, many participants were poorly informed and were rather deeply concerned, as well as in solidarity with the Palestinian people, more broadly.
How can we want to send this message of support to the Palestinians when the bodies of Hamas victims are still warm? Because there is no time, precisely. All the concerns, fears, anger and grief pile up on top of each other, hurt and bury each other. In a conflict where emotions are also on edge, the lack of time poisons everything.
The power. It is one thing to want balanced media coverage that puts forward a fair representation of the points of view of each party involved, to seek to treat each victim of war with respect. It’s essential, even. It’s another to erase, to lose sight of, or to pretend not to notice how power and its inequities affect each side differently.
A glaring example, among many others. On the one hand, Gaza has been under a blockade for years, and Egypt only allows the exit of a few people at the Rafah border crossing, which has also been bombed by Israel since the beginning of the week. . On the other hand, with the support of the international community, we are planning evacuations from Tel Aviv airport, where a significant proportion of Israelis have dual citizenship, and from where people can travel around the world without a visa.
Everyone is trying to escape from fear, from terrible fear, from terror, from death. The fear can be equally great on either side. Fear is unique to everyone. Fear cannot be measured. The means to escape are measured.
The peace. I have the feeling that every report, every interview must end with a “do you have hope of seeing peace one day”? Not only is it cliché, but it is also irritating to see peace presented as a process that belongs to a handful of men who would one day agree to parley around the same table.
Peace is not just a political state, it is an action that we can choose to take, or not, every day. Peace is a driving force behind our actions and our words too.
We all remember George W. Bush’s “either you’re with us or you’re with the terrorists” in the aftermath of 9/11. This was a warlike logic, which led straight to real war. This logic is Manichean. She takes any endeavor of contextualization as an insult, and is convinced that to seek to understand the actions of the opposing camp is to justify them, excuse them or even show solidarity with them.
This warlike logic proliferates. It accelerates the right-wing of Israeli civil society and takes its left, which wants a free Palestine, in a stranglehold — even though this left is essential to peace efforts. It leads to painful tensions within the Jewish communities here, and makes it all the more difficult and costly to share perspectives that are dissonant with those of major associations. It equally supports the radicalization process which allowed the emergence of Hamas and marginalized the leadership of the Palestinian Authority. War logic refuses to distinguish between support for a free Palestine and a terrorist rallying cry. It brings the entire population of Israel, and even the entire Jewish people, back to Netanyahu’s administration in the same breath.
Peace, as a choice within everyone’s reach, is the choice to make room in one’s mind and in one’s heart for several emotions and truths at the same time. Peace seeks to understand both the role of the trauma of the Holocaust and centuries of anti-Semitism in the symbolic burden that Israel carries, the 75 years of relocation, oppression and marginalization of the Palestinian people, the role of colonialism in British control of Palestinian territory at the time it was given to Israel and the West’s continued power over the region since. Peace seeks to listen to everything, hear everything, make enough room for everything.
An anthropologist, Emilie Nicolas is a columnist for Le Devoir and Libération. She hosts the Détours podcast for Canadaland.