Three reflections around words and their power, as History plays out before our eyes.
1. Freedom of the press. Three Israeli journalists were among the victims of the Hamas attack on October 7. Since then, a Lebanese journalist has also been killed during an Israeli attack on Hezbollah. And 19 Palestinian journalists died in Gaza, most of them in Israeli army bombings. On Saturday, Reporters Without Borders launched an alert: “Israel is suffocating journalism in Gaza.” For what ? Basically, because journalists are killed, severely injured or forced to flee leaving everything behind, but also because entire newsrooms are destroyed by bombings and part of the Internet access is cut off on the territory. Result: the news reaching us from Gaza is partial, at most.
Why did the big news rooms, which had assured us that they were Charliedo they remain silent on this issue, they who usually come out of their reserve to denounce attacks against freedom of the press?
2. Feeling of helplessness. It is fascinating to read between the lines of American diplomatic communications. Since last week, President Joe Biden has been urging Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu not to repeat the mistakes made by the Americans in the aftermath of September 11, when the United States was “enraged.”
On Tuesday, Barack Obama, with freedom of speech permitted in retirement, went further. He writes, in a statement posted online, that “the Israeli government’s decision to cut off food, water and electricity to a captive population not only threatens to worsen a humanitarian crisis, it could also harden attitudes Palestinians for generations, erode international support for Israel, play into the hands of Israel’s enemies, and undermine long-term efforts for peace and stability in the region.
His text gives as reference a column by Thomas Friedman in the New York Times, which goes even further — a former president does not refer his readers to a column without implicitly supporting it. It writes that “there will be no one to help Israel support more than two million Gazans — not if Israel is led by a government that thinks and acts as if it can exact revenge on Hamas while “he is unjustly building an apartheid-like society, led by Jewish supremacists, in the West Bank.”
Let us be clear: no one among these American personalities is yet calling for a ceasefire, however urgent. That said, the change in tone compared to Netanyahu is notable. And this political readjustment seems to be rooted in an awareness of international (and American) opinion that is increasingly sensitive to Palestinian suffering.
Many feel overwhelmed by a sense of helplessness and wonder if the demonstrations or sharing of information on social media are worth anything. When we decode what is said on diplomatic channels, the answer is yes, popular expressions of solidarity or concern count. Governments are watching the protests, seeing what is being said on Meta and what is being searched on Google. Things are starting to move. Too slow and too late for so many civilian lives, but perhaps fast enough to save others.
3. Sensitivity to criticism. This growing criticism of Israel causes a lot of pain and dismay in a large part of North American Jewish communities. Not everyone, of course, feels connected to Israel in this way, quite the contrary. But this link is strong for many, and it is important to seek to understand why.
“A land without people for a people without land. » This popular Zionist expression contains both the erasure of the Palestinian people and this idea of Israel as a refuge for a Jewish people deprived of security for centuries. The dream of Israel as a symbol of finally possible security is transmitted to many children here, from a very young age. We therefore understand that emotion can be strong when it comes to this.
We also understand why criticism of Israel is often more difficult here than in Israel itself. In all diasporas, languages are spoken more easily in the security of one another than when we fear that our words will be co-opted by a majority that has long oppressed us. To see the state of consciousness of the Israeli left, moreover, you have to read the pages of Haaretz. Let us say that we do not mince words and that the horror of what the army is doing to the Gazans and the settlers to the West Bankers is clearly mentioned.
We understand that, if the idea of security is still linked for many to this elsewhere, it is in particular because there still remains, even here, a feeling of insecurity. Many have written to me to tell me that they cannot help but feel that the world is turning its back on them and that they will soon be alone, as the Jews have been for too long.
In this fear of imminent abandonment there is an intergenerational trauma inherited from the Holocaust and the pogroms – and an observation of our failure for us, non-Jews, to contribute to a feeling of community security here, in Canada, while anti-Semitism is on the rise.
I believe that there is absolutely room to continue to witness history, to denounce the war there, the deaths on all sides, as well as the forced displacements, and any other war crimes and abuse towards the Palestinians, given in particular the incredible imbalance of forces between the actors present, and, at the same time, refusing to let part of the Jewish communities here fend for themselves with their own pain and their own traumas thus awakened, and strengthen our commitment to their safety and dignity.
Not only must there be room to do it, but it seems to me the only right thing to do.
Anthropologist, Emilie Nicolas is a columnist at Duty and to Release. She hosts the podcast Detours for Canadaland.