I attended an event hosted by Students for Justice in Palestine, part II of a Palestine 101 event series. In this event, the audience heard from university students in the West Bank. It had been a month since October 7th, and it had become abundantly clear to those seeing and hearing that the Netanyahu coalition government sought to depopulate the West Bank and Gaza. Ethnic cleansing, genocide, Nakba. But I am getting ahead of myself, losing readers, losing sympathy, so let me return to the event.
One speaker gave us an update of what had transpired since the first installment of Palestine 101. Over a thousand more people had died. I learned that when those under the rubble die, they die slowly, it sometimes takes time for their lungs to give out. The speaker asked of her audience, of me, “Wake up, before we all die.”
She said the Indonesian Hospital had been shelled thirty minutes ago. Palestinian hospitals were officially out of fuel, beds, anesthesia. “Only primitive care is given.” She said that Palestinian women have aborted their babies, and those who hemorrhaged during birth were also given hysterectomies as there were no units of blood to give. It was the only way to keep them alive.
She went on, more quickly, mentioning offhandedly the things, the horrors, the people she had seen raw footage of—of worms and maggots in wounds. Of children with compound fractures (You know, breaks where the bones protrude, ripping out of their place, previously tucked softly within a bed of flesh where bones belong?). 203 schools bombed, 45 completely out of service. 80 to 100 people living in each classroom. The bombing of Gaza, at that point, had amounted to two nuclear bombs in tonnage amount.
At this point, she pivots, stops short. Explaining how she has seen horrors, but she will not show us these images, she wants to protect us. She wants to protect us. And she does, she does protect us, we do not see the images of people, alive, with worms and maggots in their wounds, of children without anesthesia with bones where you should not see bones. She protects us. She protects us.
I do not see the rotting flesh, the wrongness of a child in pain. However, in the days that follow this event, I take note of the flies in the news footage out of Gaza. Did you notice the flies, too?
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In The Source of Self-Regard, Toni Morrison draws on the origins of the African American literary tradition in the self-written slave narrative, highlighting the ways in which they stopped short of the horrors as, “popular taste discouraged the writers from dwelling too long or too carefully on the more sordid detail of their experience.” (God’s Language, 237) Equiano wrote, “I was left in a state of distraction not to be described.” Douglass wrote, “But let us now leave the rough usage of the field…” Henry Box Brown wrote, “I am not about to harrow the feelings of my readers by a terrified representation of the untold horrors of that fearful system of oppression.” Why did they stop short? Their editors and audiences were sympathetic whites, and I suppose, the belief was that bearing witness to the horrors would be too much for audiences. They would not be able to bear mere witness to what another person lived.
She wanted to protect us, and she did, gifting us with what she could—relief, sympathy, compassion. None of it deserved but trues gifts never are.
What does it mean to bear witness to the horrors?1
I fear I do not know the answer, but I am, by virtue of being American, an inheritor of these blood-soaked hands and soil—I know what it means when we do not.
Today is July 13, 2024, and I can not remember all of the horrors, and by horrors, I mean unspeakable violence committed against people. By horrors, I mean families trapped under the ceiling of a home bombed by US-made weapons dropped by Israel. By horrors, I mean a boy laying on his back in the road, drawing in impossible breaths as he bleeds out alone after being shot by an IOF soldier. By horrors, I mean babies left to decompose in incubators after their families and healthcare workers were ordered to leave at gunpoint. By horrors, I mean the concentration camps in the Negev where Palestinians are systematically raped by the IOF. By horrors, I mean Palestinians being terrorized by quadcopters shooting dozens of rounds into tents, chasing those who flee. By horrors, I mean the Lancet’s estimate of over 180,000 murdered. By horrors, I mean the knowledge that with everything I see, there will not only be more but there was a before. Such violence has a generational precedent.
Today is July 13, 2024, and today was al-Mawasi massacre. al-Mawasi had been declared a safe zone. al-Mawasi was inhabited by displaced Palestinians living in tents. Israel, using US-made bombs, US-made diplomatic cover, US-made geopolitical protection, killed over 100 Palestinians and injured hundreds. According to the Palestinian Youth Movement, this is the same weaponry used in the Jabalia, al-Maamadani Hospital, and al-Nusseirat Market massacres.
Today is July 13, 2024, and I no longer think or feel the same way I did November 10, 2023. I have since gotten organized. I do more than bear mere witness. There is always more to do than just that.
You are not a spectator in this world, you do not stand apart.
I need you to understand this.
You live in this world. You live in a world of bounty and abundance, of violence and horrors. You live in this world. You are not a spectator, you do not stand apart, you stand alongside and among us all.
When you touch the world, the world moves.
You live in this world. How then will do more than just bear it?
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I have been following Sarah Aziza’s writing. Her discussion and analysis of witness is worth you time, focus, and care. Her insistence on the preciousness of Palestinian life is urgent.