لحظة ادراك

 

Normalizing with Death

North, south, east, and west—wherever you turn in Gaza, there is a trap leading to some form of death: by bombardment, by disease, by hunger, by thirst, by humiliation disguised as aid, or by sheer oppression. In Gaza, almost everyone can easily recall how many times they were displaced, for each displacement carries its own story of suffering etched into memory. The lexicon of death has become overcrowded. Amid the clutter of narratives churned out by directed media, a kind of normalization has taken place—whether intentional or not—with death, destruction, and violence.

In a land of excess death, it is no surprise that many develop a craving for swift release. To be gravely wounded in Gaza often means dying several times a day. And what if that wounded person is your child, while you are powerless to help? You cannot even provide them a meal, clean drinking water, or a roof to shield them from the burning summer or freezing winter. You watch as humanitarian aid—your most basic right—is sold at roadside stalls for prices you cannot afford. Meanwhile, you hear the buzz of a drone, a leaflet dropped from the sky, or a message delivered by a mobile app telling you that your tent now lies inside a “red zone.” You must leave, or face certain death. You and your family—if they survive—will simply be another statistic in the death toll, whether labeled “martyr,” “victim,” or a “collateral loss,” depending on the language of the warlords of myth.

If you are “lucky,” you will at least be numbered among the dead. But even then, after the accounting is done, you become a burden on those left behind, who must somehow raise the impossible sum required to dig you a grave. If fortune smiles, a charitable organization, an NGO, a TikTok influencer, or even a corrupt merchant seeking to absolve himself with stolen money may cover the cost as a “good deed” in memory of a parent. In that case, you are granted the luxury of a resting place once called “a home of peace.”

But in Gaza, you might instead find yourself on a morgue slab, mistaken for someone else—perhaps a hidden corpse of “Shlomo” or “David.” If you are cleared of suspicion, you will be sent back in an unmarked bag, buried somewhere in the land of death. Better, perhaps, not to be cleared, so that biology misidentifies you, and you are given the dignity of a proper burial—with prayers, mourning, and hymns. You may even be laid to rest in land your father or grandparents once tilled. It will smell familiar, and you will feel no fear. A passerby might lay flowers, even if the name on your grave is that of your killer’s brother. After all, both of you trace your lineage back to Abraham, cursed grandchildren of fate, fuel for the wars of legend, sacrificed at the altar of great games of power, domination, and survival.

Rest in peace, and leave them to their endless wars. Their stale narratives have no meaning where you are now. Your case has passed to the Judge of Heaven, where there are no manipulations, no sacred-sounding terms, no courtroom tricks. There, your hunger, fear, sickness, thirst, and despair—all that was done to you—has already been recorded in a book that misses nothing, great or small.

As for the living, they know well that in war, language is weaponized. What, then, when the war itself is framed as part of a “myth”? In such cases, terms are borrowed wholesale from sacred texts. And what if those sacred sources all spring from the same root? The same God, prophets, messengers, and scriptures—differing only in interpretation and the needs of each era—are invoked to justify rivers of blood. The land could hold both peoples, with plenty to spare if divided justly, but humanity insists on paying terrible prices before learning wisdom. Since the dawn of creation—since the first murder—this has been their way.

So they wage a war of “purified” terminology, wrapping violence in holiness, until even questioning your own death is seen as blasphemy. In their vocabulary, your dismembered body is merely a “collateral loss,” your child is a “potential militant,” and the unborn child in your wife’s womb is already stripped of innocence. If you are truly “fortunate,” the so-called civilized world may acknowledge you as a victim of genocide—slaughtered by weapons manufactured and shipped by their own hands. Yet those weapons are now so abundant, they have become worthless commodities in the marketplace of political hypocrisy, neither saving lives nor quenching thirst.

Such is the madness of the war of words—a madness that deepens bitterness and fuels the desire for revenge. By their sick logic, in order to be considered an “innocent civilian” before the bombs fall, you must possess superhuman abilities: to identify potential targets in the marketplace, to know exactly when and where missiles will strike, to avoid danger for twenty-four hours a day, thirty days a month, seven hundred days into the war. Whispered quietly, they admit: “There are no innocents in Gaza.” Everyone born or living there is guilty by default—even unborn children. They prefer to erase them from the land altogether, scattering them to countries that refuse to accept them. Even South Sudan, one of the world’s poorest nations, has declared it cannot take in “human waste.” Such is the age of tyranny and grand bargains.

They will continue their war to the bitter end, inventing new justifications each day, coining terms you never imagined. They care nothing for the voices shouting, “Stop this cursed war!” For they know that the moment it stops, calls for justice will begin, and their carefully crafted language will lose its power. Truths they sought to bury will surface. What they want is to proclaim false victories over a mountain of corpses, then invent fresh terminology to prepare for yet another chapter in the wars of myth—using the same tools, the same players, and slightly more “innovative” methods.