Galerie Claude Lemand

GAZA, where our humanity dies.

Edwy Plenel. Mediapart, December 7, 2023.

It is not only a con­crete humanity, that of lives irreparably lost, which is dying in the Middle East. It is the very idea of a common humanity that is ruined by the unre­strained and lim­it­less vengeance of the State of Israel against the Palestinian pop­u­la­tion of Gaza, in response to the mas­sacre com­mitted by Hamas.

’ When you fight your wars, think of others. Don’t forget those who demand peace. ’, says the Palestinian and uni­versal poet Mahmoud Darwish (1941-2008), in his poem Think Think of Others. Think of others. Do not lock your­self into a closed iden­tity. Don’t let emo­tion destroy empathy. Do not bar­barize others at the risk of bar­barizing your­self. Do not give up this ele­men­tary sen­si­tivity where our con­cern for the world and the living is expressed.

Contributing to making the lasting injus­tice done to the Palestinian people invis­ible, as long as Israel occu­pies and col­o­nizes the ter­ri­to­ries (in vio­la­tion of UN res­o­lu­tions since 1967) and its rulers refuse them the right to live in a sovereign state (in vio­la­tion of the Oslo Accords of 1993), the dis­course which feeds this insen­si­tivity acts as if his­tory had stopped on October 7, 2023, with the mas­sacres com­mitted by Hamas fighters which left 1,200 vic­tims.

Brandished as a mon­strous pre­sent, without past or future, without cause or out­come, this ter­ri­fying event becomes, for the rulers of Israel and their allies, the alibi for their blind­ness. Organized by Israeli state pro­pa­ganda, the pro­jec­tion of images of the killings of October 7, attesting to war crimes, serves as jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for a response which, itself, vio­lates the laws of war, trans­forming the mil­i­tary coun­ter­at­tack against the Hamas in an indis­tinct mur­derous vengeance against the Palestinian pop­u­la­tion of Gaza.

On this scale of vio­lence, it is not a ques­tion of col­lat­eral damage but rather of a war strategy which attacks the entire people from which the par­tic­ular tar­geted enemy comes: a goal of war pro­claimed by Israel, The anni­hi­la­tion of Hamas has become before our eyes the destruc­tion of the Gaza Strip, its cities, its his­tory and its socia­bility, its past and its future, its places of life and work. With the ulti­mate con­se­quence, the era­sure of its people, expelled from their own land.

’ We are nearing humanity’s darkest hour. ’ (WHO, Gaza)