One year on
October 7th. At times it feels like only yesterday, but truly it has been an eternity. My heart today lies with the millions of people in Gaza and the West Bank, in Israel and in Lebanon whose lives have been ripped apart by the unending horrors of this past year.
One year of mounting violence, of sterile death counts that climb higher and higher into the tens of thousands, with no end in sight. One year of homes, communities, neighbourhoods, hospitals, schools, markets, and dreams pummeled into rubble and graves by merciless bombs.
One year of despair and sorrow beyond measure that hangs heavy with raw, wrenching grief. Fear’s impenetrable shroud surrounds families, communities and nations.
International law lies in tatters. Leaders, who we need to be courageous seekers of peace, instead plan, orchestrate, calculate and watch as recriminations, divisions, anger and hate spill out in all directions.
This searing agony long ago far surpassed anything that words can capture or convey. And the scale of it all only grows and expands, by the hour.
October 7th is now indelibly emblazoned on our collective conscience. A date that stands for the unspeakable terror and brutal attacks of a single terrible day. A date that forces us to confront all that came before and all that has come since. October 7th, after all, speaks not only of a day, or only of the wrenching year that has followed, but of decades of hate, racism, terror and war crimes triumphing over peace and justice.
I cannot begin to imagine. What it feels to be a Palestinian mother or father in Gaza, who has cradled their dying children in their arms while knowing there was no safe place for their children who live. The pain of an Israeli mother or father, desperately holding on to the dwindling hope that their child will yet be freed from captivity in Gaza. The humiliation of a Palestinian mother or father in the West Bank who has had the lands of their parents and grandparents stripped away and occupied, leaving nothing to pass on to their children. The terror of a Lebanese mother or father, fleeing with their children in the middle of the night, as Israeli bombs pound down from the skies. The fear of an Israeli mother or father, huddling in a bomb shelter with their children as Iranian missiles streak through the skies.
I am haunted, and always will be, by six-year-old Hind Rajab’s words, among her last before her voice and her life were silenced by Israeli shelling in Gaza City. “Will you come and get me, I’m so scared?”
Today my heart lies in Rafah, Khan Younis, Ashkelon, Ramallah, Haifa and Beirut.
My hope and my faith rests with the millions of Palestinians, Israelis and Lebanese who have always, with every ounce of their being, said no to all of this.
And my outrage lies in Jerusalem, Tehran and Washington; it lies in capitals around the world, including my own, and the leaders who cynically and cowardly ignore, betray and manipulate the fundamental laws and values that would bring this to an end.
So many questions, that indict us all and scream out for answers.
How can it be that our world – for generations and still today, even in the midst of all this madness – systematically and knowingly allows the Palestinian people to be deprived of their most basic humanity? And yet we sit back and profess that we cannot fathom how it is that resistance would find a home, and there would be a rising up?
How is it that 57 years of unlawful occupation and unrelenting war crimes throughout the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza have been allowed not only to continue, but to deepen, with champions at the highest levels of government and always without penalty or consequence?
How can it be that so many states and armed groups still refuse to recognize Israel’s existence and to assure the Israeli people of the sense of essential security that is their fundamental right?
Why is it that even as the International Court of Justice rules that genocide, the most heinous of international crimes, may be unfolding in Gaza and declares decades of Israeli occupation to be unlawful, and the International Criminal Court’s Prosecutor seeks arrest warrants for Israeli and Hamas leaders on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity, disregard and even contempt for international law and its institutions abounds, including from the very governments that declare themselves champions of the rules-based order?
How can we live with the reality that we are not just observers to this unlawful mayhem, but have been the complicit enablers and arms merchants behind the curtains?
What will it take to forge a path that truly recognizes that peace and security are born from rights and justice, are not wrought through the destructive wrath of bombs, missiles and rockets, and will never take hold in the face of apartheid, racism, blockades and a wall?
Have any of us truly done enough to push back as antisemitism, Islamophobia and anti-Palestinian racism have crawled out into the full light of day, around the corner and down the street from where we live?
And if it is not talk of genocide and if it is not the names and faces of Gaza’s murdered aid workers, journalists, doctors, nurses and medics, teachers, and the thousands and thousands of murdered, maimed and traumatized Palestinian children that finally awakens our conscience and ends this carnage, what pray tell will ever be enough?
Today, and every day, but especially today. Ceasefire. Free the hostages. Stop the arms flow. End the occupation. Recognize full Palestinian statehood, alongside a safe and secure Israel. Bring all war criminals to justice. Reject all hate. Embrace, respect and enforce all international law.
Choose peace. Now and always.
