Survivor's Guilt
Resistance is the best response
Guilt is often experienced when one survives a tragedy or even a natural death. Why me? becomes Why not me? And if your empire is on the death-dealing end of things, the guilt is compounded.
I just finished Don’t Look Left: A Diary Of Genocide by Atef Abu Saif. Saif is an author who was born in Gaza’s Jabalia refugee camp amid his relatives that were made homeless by Israel’s Nakba in 1948. He had since taken a job as Minister of Culture for the much maligned Palestinian Authority and moved with his wife and kids to Ramallah in the West Bank. On a return visit to Gaza with his teenage son they were caught up in the first three months of Israel’s bombardment, starvation, and forced displacement strategies.
Saif’s privilege got him and his son permission to exit through the Rafah crossing in late December 2023. His kid wanted to see his mom and siblings. Saif also wanted to return to his job. The guilt that began when he evacuated from north Gaza leaving his stubborn elderly father behind in Jabalia was compounded; now he left sisters, brothers, nieces, and nephews to their fate. In Egypt he was able to visit one niece, an artist who was evacuated to a hospital to receive care for the loss of both legs and one hand. He also visited her sister, her sole caretaker following the death of their parents, who has had a nervous breakdown and was hospitalized for that. Ultimately, he left them both to return to Ramallah.
Saif’s words lent depth and texture to the many photos and videos of suffering in Gaza that I’ve seen. I could smell the stench of rotting corpses in his descriptions; I could see the killing fields of the Netzarim corridor where Gazans from the north were forced through Israeli checkpoints and often executed — even as they followed the occupation force’s orders. Throughout his account, despair at the silence of world leaders is ongoing: Does anyone know what we’re suffering? Does anyone care?
In my youth I read accounts of the Nazi Holocaust and saw photos of liberated concentration camp survivors. What I thought: How could humans do this to one another? What I felt: guilt. This feeling compounded as I reached adulthood and realized that the U.S. government knew about the camps but kept it secret from the people, that U.S. corporations made profits working with the Nazis, and that Nazi rocket scientists were quickly incorporated into the U.S.’s nascent space program. Also that the U.S. turned away Jewish refugees from Europe, many of whom went on to die in the camps.
How can I feel guilty about something that happened before I was born? How can I not feel guilty, living as I have over the buried corpses of indigenous people slaughtered so that my ancestors could steal their land? A genocide that Nazis studied well in order to inform their own efforts.
A reader of this blog sent me a message yesterday with the notion that the U.S. is controlled by Israel and concluded: “We are under occupation and there is nothing we can do about it.” I disagree. People under occupation always find ways to resist.
I was struck by how little news of resistance was part of Saif’s diary. The word Hamas literally never appears. He does write of his memories of the First Intifada, his own participation, and of his time in Israeli jails. This may have been an editorial decision. Or maybe the information drought accompanying the genocide made it impossible to hear news of acts of resistance that those of us outside of Gaza might hear about. Maybe in a survival situation with a kid depending on him, his focus was all about that? I read after October 7 that Hamas brigades are mostly orphans. Whatever their background, they are tenacious freedom fighters.
Long live resistance! The U.S. just capitulated in its war with Yemen. Ansarallah said: If you stop fighting us, we’ll stop fighting you following the U.S. losing a third very expensive fighter jet and at least a half dozen expensive Reaper drones in the Red Sea. Ansarallah further clarified that they will continue to blockade Israel by air and by sea until it stops bombing and starving Gaza.
A friend solicited my help to make some posters she’ll share in a nearby town dominated by liberals who brunch and who care very little about genocide on their dime. I put one poster at the top of this post, but here are two more versions we worked on:
My friend is Jewish, the descendant of Nazi Holocaust survivors.
She never stops resisting by means of speeches, op-eds, protests, occupying congressional offices, and political theatre. I never will, either.
A curious form of resistance that cropped up in my inbox today may be of interest. Sinwar used a stick against the aerial drone that was trying to kill him, but sticks are of limited use against robotic quadrupeds that resemble dogs. Still, there are many other avenues to defend ourselves against such autonomous weapons.
Is it WW3 yet?