GAZA: CHANNEL LENNON THROUGH A PRISM YOU KNOW TOO WELL
In his totemic plea for us to imagine a better world, John Lennon insisted “It isn’t hard to do…”. Campus protests that commingle anti-Semitism and calls for ceasefire in Gaza belie that. So as a prism to see through the moral miasma, I recommend Covid.
The pandemic lockdowns were the closest the majority of the world who’ve never experienced war have come to a lengthy disruption of life.
They provoked frustration, despair and endless handwringing and lamentation over the effects on children unable to play and interact with their friends in favour of computer classes at home.
The operative word there is “home”.
The UN Palestinian refugee agency (UNWRA) estimates 1.7 million people, more than 75% of Gaza’s population, have been displaced, many of them several times.
The majority of our kids went through Covid in the comfort and familiarity of family and surroundings they knew intimately. They had food, electricity, running water, bathrooms that worked, toys and TV for amusement, beds with covers to snuggle up in.
Now: “Imagine no possessions/I wonder if you can…”
A recent report I watched on Al-Jazeera (which, along with the BBC, is among the few networks with local English-speaking reporters in Gaza) shows a boy of 10 or 12 atop a pile of rubble, tugging on a piece of material. It emerges as a blanket. He folds it, lays it atop other bits he’s scavenged, and returns to work in the broken concrete that may well be the remains of what he once called home.
IT’S IN THE AIR
During Covid, parents complained bitterly about children (and in some cases themselves) having to breath through surgical masks in public places.
The boy on the rubble might welcome one. The air he gasps in his exertions is a debilitating oleo of dust, uncollected garbage, the unforgettable stench of decomposing corpses under the rubble and the reek of human waste for which there is no longer a functioning sewage system, carrying the risk of communicable diseases that will increase in the coming summer heat.
Covid was a threat to our children, but — if adults around them were sensible and “adult” — they were to as great an extent as possible, protected.
Gazans live with hunger, grief and fear from which there is no protection as long as there is no ceasefire, no free and unlimited flow of humanitarian aid.
And don’t let your fantasies stop there. Think of a camping holiday, in a waterproof, zip-up, mosquito-netted cozy tent with a floor.
Now try to imagine “camping” for months on end under bits of wood and plastic, jerry-rigged as best you can, cheek by jowl with tens of thousands of others, no sanitation, no running water or dependable and adequate food supplies to hand, and worst of all, nowhere to go when it all becomes too much. Not to mention the incessant sound of drones and warplanes overhead, looking for a target that for all you know is living right next door.
THE BAD GUYS ARE EQUAL
And speaking of tents, those well-meaning and commendably committed-to-peace-and-justice protestors in the tent camps on U.S. campuses might want to bear in mind that the point of protest is to disrupt the status quo, cause discomfort among the otherwise unaware and uncaring and provoke another point of view.
The optics of sporting a keffiyeh, scrawling posters and graffiti without such considerations are just that; unimaginative optics.
Protest is only useful, or even mildly effective beyond the news cycle, if it provokes imagining based on facts and a clear understanding of history that goes back more than a few months or even years.
The Hamas leadership deserves as much condemnation as Netanyahu and his coterie of right wing religious zealots.
So “Imagine all the people/Livin’ for today…”and bear in mind that’s exactly what those who were slaughtered and abducted when Hamas forces swept into a rock festival on October 7 were doing. That they were Jews doesn’t mean they differed much if at all from their contemporaries on campuses around the free world in life-style choices, music tastes or the desire for occasional hedonistic freedom.
Take a minute to consider them as your friends, siblings, loved ones, relatives. Then note that tens of thousands of Israelis, for whom that is exactly who and what they are, rally on a regular basis in the streets and squares of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem to vent their anguish, anger and frustration that the war goes on with no end in sight for the people of Gaza or the hostages held there.
It doesn’t take any imagination to see that the world is highly unlikely ever “to live as one”. But it ought to be obvious by now, too, that we have much common ground, and with a little more imagination, we can find ways to share it.
All we have to do is force ourselves and those who have thus far shown neither the will, nor ability to do so, to imagine.
Comments are welcomed. Click CONTACT on the site header.
To receive e‑mail alerts to new posts, Click SIGN-UP on the header.
5 thoughts on “GAZA: CHANNEL LENNON THROUGH A PRISM YOU KNOW TOO WELL”
Nicely said Allen, especially the part about also condemning Hamas as much as Israel’s “targeted” strikes that kill innocent noncombatants.
Thanks Don. I’m never sure when I come at an issue from an odd angle if I’m. oversteppng my “atypical perspective” or not.
Well said, as usual. I can imagine you narrating this with Lennon’s song coming in at intervals.
Hadn’t thought of narratng it, but it would be a fun thing to do.
Well said. And nice parallel with our comfy covid disruptions and kids foraging for their subsistence. Nice to hear your ‘voice’ mate.