Gaza, gazing on me

Once I see, I cannot unsee. 

People walking parallel to a sandy shoreline, some in groups, some as individuals. Each one carrying something that indicates they have a life: a bedspread, a teddy bear, a picture of a grandfather. Passing between piles of cracked and shattered concrete, ribs of dark steel rebar sticking out from what were once apartments – where years of tears and sweat, and joy, made compartments for dreams that families insist on, always insist on.

Gaza. Where dropping hundreds of 2,000-pound bombs was supposed to make it a safer place for two million Palestinians? A place that someone else now says that it would be wonderful to move them away from, into new, nice apartments in new, nice cities, just for them, away from places they had already been moved away from.  So, people walk up and down along that sandy shoreline that parallels the fence that keeps them away from where that grandfather in the picture once harvested apples, raised sheep and intended to raise his Palestinian children.  

The lines of walkers go up the coast sometimes. And then they go down the coast, some other times. Today, go north to be safe. Tomorrow, go south. And never be safe. Just don’t be here. Be there. Be somewhere else, anywhere else, but not here. Here is for someone else. There is where you should be – wherever there will be. 

These are civilians. Captives. Two million captive civilians. This is brutal. Brutal cruelty. Brutality we seem not to have verbs and nouns to describe. These are civilians who will never choose to leave. None of them will ever move out. Never. Violence has once again created the complicated space that entices more violence to come and entrench itself.   

A young Palestinian who has walked to the north of Gaza gets to a pile of concrete & rebar once called a house, once called her home, makes a video selfie and says, “No one created by God will ever forget this.”  

The honesty of a child is the honesty of God.  In the folktale, The Emperor’s New Clothes, the emperor convinces himself that he is decked-out in the finest finery. Those who curry his favor amplify his illusion. The child sees all that bare skin and says, but he has no clothes on. 

The honesty of the child breaks the pretense of the ruler who is afraid that he is less than what he thinks himself to be.

The honesty of God breaks the illusion that words woven to cover our fears can actually protect us.  They cannot. 

I gaze on Gaza. And Gaza gazes back at me. 

My cell phone screen gazes two-ways – in, to me and out, to others.  I can see them. But they can also see me.   I have my view that tells me about them. And they have their view that tells them about me.   

My side of the Gaza screen shows me that if one group of people in a system has rights that the other group of people is denied, both groups will never be safe.  I see live-streamed horrors flash on my screen – real children streaked in tears, blood and dust in real time. Children who are WCNSF – Wounded Child No Surviving Family. 

Here, a question: How will we help them survive? But, why not a different question: How will we help them thrive? 

If we continue to let the emperor pretend that he is clothed, that his nakedness is not real, that he should be protected from his fears, and if we allow those fears to crush generations of Palestinians down to only surviving – we deceive ourselves that any of us can be safe, that any of us can thrive.

Billions of tax dollars go to a foreign war machine to destroy a civilian population captive within the borders set by that war machine. A decision once made this possible. A decision, once made, can stop this.  

What does their side of the Gaza screen show them? Do they think that I think they deserved what has happened to them? Even babies? Do they think that I think they deserved such punishment to be born in the largest, fenced-in killing field in this century? 

Threatening poor people with poverty is a non-starter. Threatening people already displaced with yet another move is also a non-starter.  

Why not try mercy - totally counterintuitive, totally unexpected?  Mercy to make safe spaces for families that can create joy, as families always insist on. Mercy that leads to justice. We humans get very complicated about justice.  But everyone can take an uncomplicated step towards mercy. Mercy is what your neighbor needs. And who is our neighbor? The one who needs our mercy.

Would people who see us from their side of my cell camera think we should be trusted?  It is a possibility, a good chance for us to take, for us to be merciful, to be trusted. 

But, a for-sure probability is that insisting on continuing violence will multiply, amplify, and glorify, violence –  the “solution” that will prevent everyone from being safe.  

We must not be deceived. We must not confuse ourselves. We can have the clear sight of a child who sees nakedness for what it is, who does not pretend there is cloth when there is not. 

We have to want to be deceived in order to be blind. Our self-deceiving words allow us to spin verbal veils that make ourselves invisible to ourselves so that we can take the lives of those “others.” 

What will it take to be undeceived?  To stop desiring to be so. Our Palestinian neighbors are gazing upon us to see what we will choose. 

Curt