What broke in me on October 7th keeps splitting open and refracturing. Unimaginable cruelty begats unimaginable cruelty and hate finds a way to entrench.
A couple of days ago my friend Pamela, on the edge of tears, told me about Ahmad al-Ghuferi, a Gazan construction worker who had been working on in Tel Aviv on October 7th and was unable to return to his wife and three young daughters in Gaza City because of Israel's military blockade. He spoke to his wife, Shireen, on the evening of December 8,th as bombs were falling in their neighborhood. He did his best to reassure her, but a short while later a strike decimated their home, killing most of his multigenerational family, including Shireen and their daughters.
When asked by the BBC reporter if he would be returning to Gaza, Ahmad said, "What should I go back for? Who will call me Dad? Who will call me darling?”
“Those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it.” I first heard this George Santayana quote relative to the Holocaust. I thought I understood. Then came October 7th and I have spent months on another lesson: reactive memory seeks justification over truth and here we are. Again.
The past is not just outcome but continuum. The past is both system and impulse, and it is sweeping. The past holds October 7th and Ahmad-al-Ghuferi’s family and every single thing, good and bad, leading up to and extending from every event. Righteous is subjective. Peace is not. I am remembering the past, and it is clear to me that peace is the only way forward.
Yes. Yes.
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