My 90- year- old cousin who lives in our area called around noon. Both being widowers, we always check on each other, so as usual, I asked how he was. “Zift” was his answer. “Did you fall? ”I asked , worried about his answer “zift” which literally means (tar) used metaphorically when one is “at the lowest ebb.” No, I did not fall but I am so upset because Israel is shelling Gaza and the number of people killed is rising while the world is watching. Aren’t you going to write something? I immediately sat at my computer and recalled the famous quotation by Edmund Burke “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good people to do nothing.”
Although a little bit too late, but actually many good people have tried to do a lot for Gaza during this genocide, and many ended up paying a high price for their solidarity, whether they were students, professors, doctors or journalist. But in the meantime, the international community has failed to hold Israel accountable. Furthermore, Israel, encouraged by Mr. Trump, broke the terms of the cease fire it had agreed to, and the Palestinians continue to pay the price.
In March 2003 Rachel Corrie, a young American woman volunteering in Gaza, was bulldozed as she was trying to prevent the demolition of a house. In today’s local paper Al-Quds, Bin Maummar el Haj Issa wrote a column in memory of Rachel, noting that the “World conscience has been bulldozed and buried just as Rachel was. So, unless the international community and its organizations that were established to maintain world peace and order take action, and implement their resolutions, nobody is going to be safe, including those who think themselves immune like emperors and can run the world as they wish. We have learned from history that even empires eventually do fall. And for those who use the Bible to justify their actions, remember the legacy of prophet Micah :”What does the Lord require of you but to do justice and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God."