Gaza Is Death - Opinion - Haaretz.com
"Azza k'mavet ahava" ("Love is strong as death"), says the Song of Songs, and on this verse, Israeli culture has constructed much meaning. It was understood simply as a fateful, total and sometimes painful love. Only later did it take on new meaning with Shlomi Eldar's book "Azza K'mavet Ahava" (published in English as "Eyeless in Gaza"; the words can also be translated as "Gaza as death love"), which sought to describe the agonizing, unresolved connection between Israel and the Gaza Strip, and after that came the television series of the same name, which chronicled Gaza from 1948 to October 7.
But after nearly 600 days of war, Gaza is no longer "as death." Gaza is death. Bombings, hunger, shortage of potable water, displacement and countless dead and wounded – these words barely describe what has happened in the enclave. It has become the worst environment a person can live in anywhere in the world. To go to the bathroom, you have to stand in line for at least 40 minutes. During heat waves, sitting in a tent is suffocating. To fill a bucket of water, you need to walk a kilometer or more, and sometimes all that's available is a single bottle. Hunger is not just a growling stomach but an existential feeling of extreme exhaustion. People are irritable, exhausted, impatient, easily fighting over a piece of bread or a bag of flour.
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My friend Noor lives in these inhuman conditions. She is about my age, the mother of two children aged 8 and 10, and she struggles to survive from one day to the next. In October 2023, she was forced to leave Gaza City for Khan Yunis, then to Rafah in December and finally, in April 2024, to a plastic tent in Muwasi. Last October, she and her husband returned to Kah Yunis, where they rented a room in an apartment with other families.
When they ran out of cooking gas a few months after the start of the Gaza war, she sent me a picture of herself cooking on a small campfire. Once it was rice; another time, lentils. Later, she sent a picture of empty supermarket shelves. She was determined to survive "for the sake of the children," but each displacement took its toll. "I've had to give up more possessions," she wrote. "All I took was the family photo album."
Over time, the photos became fewer and the messages shorter. They always began the same way: "I'm still alive," followed by a few more words. "I waited for the children to fall asleep so I could cry," she wrote once. "I don't know how long I'll be able to last." Another time she wrote, "Gaza is like a cage, and we're the birds that sometimes get a few crumbs thrown to them."
There is something very painful about seeing a personal acquaintance go through this. Noor is not a "media source" but a friend. Before the war, she was a teacher of English language and literature, but her true love was art – she sculpted in clay and dreamed of showing her work overseas. At some point, she ceased to dream. This is not a metaphor. "My mind no longer produces images at night. No color. No hope. Nothing," she wrote. The war has not only destroyed her body but also her soul. It turns those who are still alive into walking dead, a shell whose purpose is survival.
There are those who say in response to all this that "all of Gaza is Hamas" and that certainly Noor "has drunk from the poisoned chalice of October 7."
World Food Programme (WFP) trucks, which will be sent into Gaza empty for logistical purposes, according to a WFP official, are transported at the Kerem Shalom border crossing between Israel and the Gaza Strip, May 26, 2025.Credit: REUTERS/Amir Cohen
This is not just wrong – it is the height of dehumanization. More than anything, war robs people like Noor of the most basic thing, namely their humanity. It turns them into shadows, blurred figures out of a news report, numbers in a column of statistics, bodies left under the rubble after the bombs. Those who are exhumed are buried in mass graves. The war is also robbing the Gazans of their voice, their ability to cry out. As if they have no right to say: I'm in pain. I'm scared. My life is worth something.
I live in Israel. I see, hear, read and know that here you can't even grieve the death of a child in Gaza. In the Israeli space, to express true sorrow for the innocent civilians in Gaza is taboo. Publicly showing a photograph of a girl killed by Israeli shelling may lead to police violence. As someone once said to me without blinking: "I have no empathy for them."
People protest at Harvard University in support of Palestinians in Gaza on October 14, 2023, after Israel ordered the evacuation of the northern Gaza Strip before an expected ground offensive following the October 7 massacre.Credit: Joseph Prezioso/AFP
What's left? To continue watching the growing number of dead in silence from the sidelines, while others rejoice? How many more Palestinians must be killed to quench the Israeli desire for revenge? Why can't we tell the simple truth? I feel, I grieve.
I have a friend there and I'm afraid of losing her. I know that you can hold onto two truths at the same time – the horrific sorrow for October 7, for the murdered, the kidnapped and the families whose lives were destroyed, and the impossible pain for the children, mothers and fathers who are now being killed on the other side of the fence.
Last week, Noor wrote to me: "You know how we know this war has gone on for too long? When people around you are killed and you remain alone and know that your turn will come soon too." I haven't heard from her since. I sent her a message. I waited, on Saturday, a short message finally arrived. "We are short of shrouds," she wrote. "People are wrapping their loved ones in blankets."
I know that could be her last message. I pray that I'll hear from her again.