The Eclipse of Peace

Staying sane in the war on humanity

We have been crushed between two eclipses, the lunar eclipse of 14 October and the solar eclipse of yesterday, 28 October. On the eve of All Souls Eve, I write from a personal rather than intellectual point of view.

I am coming to terms with my irrelevance and lack of influence. I write in an echo chamber whose membership I can count on one hand. Maybe it’s cathartic to express myself.

I am seeing a decline to zero in responses to mine and others’ posts on the situation in Gaza. Maybe people are tired of it. Maybe they are attending the half million strong protest in London.

Maybe my previous essays are not of interest. Maybe the FB algorithm, which has silenced pro-Palestinian accounts, puts them at the bottom of the stack.

Meanwhile, stuff like this is going viral on social media:

Videos of Israeli content creators making fun of Palestinians suffering without water, and electricity in Gaza are going viral. Click image for source.

Like Gabor Maté, who yesterday spoke sanely and humanely on the situation, I find myself lurching from foreboding to despair, from rage to hatred. I breathe, remind myself of things in my life I am grateful for. A roof over my head, food and water. Freedom to come and go as I please and express myself on the internet.

I tell myself, if my life is curtailed in some small way—the ceaseless construction noise, say—it is nothing compared to the curtailments suffered by Palestinians.

Husam Zumlot, the tireless Palestinian ambassador to the UK, recently tweeted:

This was met with calls for ceasefire, UN Resolutions to be implemented, Israeli officials to be expelled, politicians supporting the offensive in Gaza to be held to account and so on.

It was also met with calls for Hamas to be condemned as solely responsible for civilian deaths on both sides, justifications of Israeli collective punishment of the civilians of Gaza, and calls for Israeli hostages to be returned. For instance:

And:

This same commenter, whom I highlight as representative of pro-Israel sentiment, earlier tweeted:

Here he celebrates the violent intimidation of a muslim resident of NYC:

And here he retweets an obscure historical reference:

Such calls cheer on the dropping of incendiaries on a civilian population, half of them children, who have zero resources and cannot flee:

Such fireworks result in scenes like this:

And pour contempt on eye witness reports like this:

Sky News, Piers Morgan, CNN, MSNBC and the BBC have repeatedly called for interviewees, including Husam Zumlot and peace activist Low Key, to condemn the Hamas “terrorist attack.” They have never asked any Israeli spokesperson to condemn Israeli attacks against civilians. This is nothing new.

They say a picture speaks a thousand words. Cartoons calling out this double standard are circulating on social media:

And this:

Scholars, including Jewish and Israeli scholars, have drawn parallels between the plight of the Palestinians to the ANC in apartheid South Africa, to the French Resistance under Nazi occupation. Their voices are suppressed by social media algorithms. Those who live in Israel are repressed by mob violence.

Palestinian voices outside of Gaza, in the occupied West Bank and in Israel itself, that criticise the bombing of Gaza or in any way support Palestinian resistance, are identified by online networks for punishment to be meted out:

Gabor Maté, in an interview for Grayzone I cannot find on their website nor Youtube, calls the onslaught on Gaza, “the worst thing I have seen in my life,” and denounces the “smooth faced liars in the Israeli army, who give lessons to Josef Goebbels, who are masters of propaganda, like Goebbels never was.”

Note that this is from a survivor of the Jewish holocaust.

This, I believe, above emotional reaction to the plight of others in severe distress, the massive asymmetry of the two sides and the deceit and propaganda that distorts that truth, above emotional reaction to the racism behind the double standards and Israeli exceptionalism, is the correct response, the humane response.

I feel a sense of relief that there are, even after the atrocity of October 7, those who are able to stay sane. That sanity is predicated upon the ability to see the obvious, as it appears on our screens, hour by hour, day by day.

It is sanity to call out the violence of Israel against a people who have nothing and who have lived under apartheid oppression since 1948 as insane.

In a world in which voices from Washington, London, Paris, Berlin—even Mecca—shout their support for the bombing of children, that sanity is something I hold onto. It gives me hope in a more beautiful world, even as vast numbers of people insist is only possible via racist supremacy and the destruction of designated others.

It gives me hope that the shattered lives and brutal deaths of innocent children have meaning. May their last cries from beneath the rubble of their bombed homes reach us, who have the privilege of safety, security, food and water, access to the internet and the means of educating ourselves, the freedom to express ourselves, and in however tiny a way contribute to the transformation of the shadows of humanity.