Alok Mukherjee, The Way I See It

DIA DE LOS MUERTOS – A TIME TO CELEBRATE OR TO MOURN?

“The nightmare in Gaza is more than a humanitarian crisis. It is a crisis of humanity.”

Antonio Guterres, UN Secretary General

Alok Mukherjee

“Dia de los Muertos” (or, The Day of the Dead), usually observed on November 1 and 2, is a celebration when, with death masks, colours, food, flowers and music, Mexicans welcome their dead among the living and honour them. At a time when more living are joining the dead, however, what to do? Embrace and celebrate death or mourn the loss of lives, largely avoidable, and join the fight to prevent death?

As I write this blog on Christmas Eve, when Bethlehem is dark, I am drawn to some lines from one of the most powerful poems of our times, “The Second Coming,” written in 1920 by W. B. Yeats, the great Irish poet.

Things fall apart; the center cannot hold; 

Mere tyranny is loosed upon the world. . . .

It does feel that things are falling apart. The “center” of our world, for me, is made up of the institutions nations created together so that there would not be a repeat of the past: the UN and all the agencies and institutions towill deal with issues of war and peace, territorial disputes, rights to national sovereignty and national liberation, displacement of people, health, labour, rights of children, development, trade disputes, monetary system, nuclear proliferation, environmental emergency, preservation and promotion of human rights, investigation and prosecution of crimes under international law, protection of intellectual property and our cultural heritage, etc. etc. etc. This network of rules and systems was to be the centre of a new world after the World Wars, the Nazi Holocaust, decolonization and the supposed emergence of a new world order.

Have we lost that “center”? Is “mere tyranny,” indeed, “loosed upon the world”?

I am thinking of Refaat Alareer, a Palestinian professor of English at the Islamic University of Gaza, and a poet. On November 1, coincidentally the first day of the Mexican festival of Dia de los Muertos, Alareer posted a poem on X (formerly known as Twitter), titled “If I must die.” Here is the poem, which has gone viral:

                   If I must die,

                   you must live

                   to tell my story

                   to sell my things

                   to buy a piece of cloth

                   and some strings,

                   (make it white with a long tail)

                   so that a child, somewhere in Gaza

                   while looking heaven in the eye

                   awaiting his dad who left in a blaze—

                   and bid no one farewell

                   not even to his flesh

                   not even to himself—

                   sees the kite, my kite you made, flying up

                   above

                   and thinks for a moment an angel is there

                   bringing back love

                   If I must die

                   let it bring hope

                   let it be a tale

Refaat Alareer did die, on December 6, a little over a month after he published this poem, viewed by over 30 million on X. Barely 44, he was killed in an Israeli bombardment of Gaza, along with his brother, sister and their four children. Their bodies lie buried in the rubble.

Alareer is one of some 13 Palestinian writers and poets who have been killed by the Israeli Defence Force (IDF). They have also killed some 67 Palestinian journalists and media workers, reporting for various major media directly from Gaza, virtually the only ones to do so. It is the highest number of journalists ever to be killed in a war zone. The same is true of the number of UN personnel killed by IDF, mostly relief workers, besides Palestinian doctors and other healthcare personnel.

It is as if Israel is dead set on destroying the cultural, intellectual, informational and material backbone of Palestinians.

These are, of course, a small portion of the more than 20,000 killed by the IDF since it began its onslaught on Gaza in the name of destroying and eliminating Hamas following the tragic events of October 7 in an Israeli kibbutz near Gaza. On that day, the military wing of Hamas broke through vaunted Israeli security and escaped surveillance to enter the settlements and reportedly killed some 1200 men, women and children, including an estimated 373 military and police personnel. They also took away approximately 230 hostages. Without question, it was a bloody encounter. It is reported that almost 1500 Hamas members, too, were killed, and their bodies, or parts thereof, were left behind, to rot.

The condition and fate of the hostages is a cause of grave concern. As human beings, we cannot remain untouched by or indifferent to those who died on October 7 or are caught in its aftermath and their families. We must feel empathy, and understand their loss and grief, even as we seek to understand the overall situation in that region critically and rationally.

Yet, there are many around the world who believe that the price being extracted on the civilian population of Gaza is disproportionately high, and it continues undeterred by the calls for a ceasefire so that humanitarian and medical aid can be provided to Gazans, severely at risk of hunger, starvation, and disease, and a long term political solution found through peaceful means, including diplomacy, with the help of the UN and its members. The targeted and general killings continue unabated despite the emerging information that a very large number of the Israelis who died on October 7, lost their lives to gunfire by Israeli forces.

Clearly, Israel’s government has reacted to October 7 with fury. The future of the country’s wily but deeply unpopular prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, hangs in the balance. The same is presumably also true of the entire political class who have now banded together in an “emergency” war cabinet, united in their support for a massive assault on Palestinians living in Gaza, Hamas’s stronghold. What is not clear, though, is their objective: to destroy Hamas only or to eradicate the Palestinian people because “no Palestinian is innocent,” as Israel’s President Isaac Herzog has said?

Yoav Gallant, Israel’s defence minister, describing Palestinians as “human animals,” ordered a “complete siege” of Gaza, depriving residents of food, electricity and fuel. According to him, Israel is “fighting human animals and we are acting accordingly.” Prime Minister Netanyahu provided a Biblical justification for the dance of death and devastation unleashed on Gazans. He said to Israelis: “You must remember what Amalek has done to you, says our Holy Bible.” 

Netanyahu was referring to the message from “the Lord Almighty” that the prophet Samuel brought to king Saul: “‘I will punish the Amalekites for what they did to Israel when they waylaid them as they came up from Egypt. Now go, attack the Amalekites and totally destroy all that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys.’ (1Samuel: 15.3)” If Netanyahu is being literal in his invocation of the Hebrew Bible, his goal must be the total annihilation of a people, or, to put it bluntly, a genocide. 

Another Israeli politician, Moshe Feiglin, a former Knesset member, has declared that Israel must be “revenged in a biblical way” for what the Hamas did on October 7.

If the use of these biblical justifications expresses a belief truly held, Netanyahu must also know the fate that befell Saul, the king of Israelites charged to lead them out of Egypt, for failing to carry out the direction of the Lord Almighty to the letter. Instead of totally destroying the Amalekites and their possessions as directed, he allowed his soldiers to take the cattle. Angered by his disobedience, the Lord Almighty ordered Samuel to replace Saul as king and anoint David instead. Eventually, Saul fell on his sword and committed suicide.

A great destruction awaits Palestinians at the hands of Netanyahu, a modern-day Saul, especially if he wishes to escape the Lord Almighty’s wrath and avoid Saul’s fate. His comments and actions suggest that this is, indeed, his intent. Resolutely rejecting the growing global call to end the war, allow humanitarian assistance and negotiate a solution, he has called Palestinians “barbarians” and insisted that his war is “civilizational.” He and his right-wing colleagues have also declared their opposition to a two-state solution. It would appear that, for them, the only place for Gaza’s Palestinians is someplace else – Egypt, Jordan, tents in the Sinai desert – but not their homeland in Palestine.

There is a large voice among Jews in and outside Israel that disagrees with Netanyahu and those who share his biblical view. Gideon Levy, a senior journalist and columnist for the newspaper Ha’aretz, is a vocal critic and advocate for a political resolution between Israel and Palestine. He is among those for whom Hamas is engaged in armed resistance due to years of failure to resolve the Palestinian question, violence by the state and extremists, continued encroachment and occupation of Palestinian land, and denial of access to the al-Aqsa Mosque, Islam’s third holiest site. Years ago, Ilan Pappé, a highly respected Israeli historian and academic, described Israel’s treatment of Palestinians as “ethnic cleansing,” for which he paid a high price. He lost his job as a professor at the university in Haifa and now works as a senior academic in England. In his 2017 book, Ten Myths About Israel, Pappé explores and contests the validity of the claims on which the Israeli narrative is based.

In meeting with Netanyahu, several families of the hostages held by Hamas have also pleaded for a ceasefire and a negotiated resolution of the hostage situation. And throughout the world, Jews and non-Jews are expressing vocal disagreement with the militaristic approach of Israel, supported by the US, and calling for ceasefire, diplomacy and a serious response to the Palestinian struggle for nationhood. “Not in my name,” Jews in New York are saying.

Netanyahu, his government and supporters – the US and Europe – thus stand in defiance of a growing opinion among ordinary people and countries demanding an end to the gruesome retribution being visited on the innocent men, women and children of Gaza in the name of destroying Hamas, and a resort to peaceful means for obtaining the release of hostages. They do not condone Hamas’s action on October 7, but understanding what caused it, they insist that only an honest, honourable and just response to the Palestine question is the real long-term answer.

Palestinians are paying a heavy price for what happened on October 7. The magnitude and scope of deaths and injuries are well-reported. Even hospitals, refugee camps, schools and other UN facilities sheltering Gazans are being bombed heavily on the ground that Hamas combatants are hiding behind civilians. Sites like these are supposed to be strictly protected against military attacks under international humanitarian law, the breach of which can constitute war crime.

There have been aggressive actions in the Occupied West Bank, as well, by Israeli settlers killing hundreds, injuring many more and destroying homes and villages. 

Antonio Guterres, the UN Secretary General, while calling what Hamas did on October 7 “appalling,” has said that it did not happen in “a vacuum” and could not justify Israel’s military retaliation against Palestinian civilians of Gaza. 

Jurists, lawyers, legal scholars, political scientists and experts in military and security matters – and relevant international institutions – can determine, as they should, what international laws, treaties or covenants have been violated during this conflict. They can find out whether the bombings of hospitals, schools, homes and refugee settlements, or the destruction of bakeries, fishing boats, water supply and communication channels, violate international humanitarian laws and human rights commitments. They must decide if Israel’s military action is consistent with the rules of war that require proportionality of response, distinction between combatants and civilians, and military necessity. They must conclude whether, given the pronouncements and actions of Israel’s military and political leaders, this is, indeed, “a textbook case of genocide,” in the words of Craig Mokhiber, who resigned as Director of the New York Office of the UN Human Rights Commissioner.

In the meantime, as Netanyahu, the modern-day king Saul, carries out the Lord Almighty’s direction to destroy the Amalekites, thousands of men, women and children, including infants, die, are injured or are displaced in Gaza and the West Bank. The fate of the hostages hangs in the balance.  There is no prospect of peace as an intransigent Netanyahu and his extreme right-wing colleagues resist all calls for a ceasefire and negotiations. His powerful allies and backers are unwilling or unable to restrain him.

Alareer died, and contrary to the hope he expressed in his premonitory poem, there are no signs of hope or love. I wonder: does the invocation of the orders of a vengeful God, render this mayhem being carried out in His name exempt it from the laws, rules, norms and values we, humans, have established in our collective striving for a world of peaceful coexistence?

So, while Bethlehem, the place of peace, is dark and desolate, nearby Gaza, a war zone, is alight with falling bombs and shooting guns, its grounds and streets crowded with the dead and the injured, mostly buried under rubble. In the face of the failure of humanity to stop this carnage, must we wait for Second Coming? In the absence of a satisfactory answer, I have turned to some great literature to guide my unruly thoughts. I share them in the next blog, hoping that they will also resonate with you.