As the world considers how the first anniversary of the 7 October attacks by Hamas in Israel should be commemorated, Kalim Rajab looks at an infamous event from a century ago to ask a different question: when will vengeance be sated?
Rone walon se kaho, unka bhi rona rolein
Jinko majboor-e-haalat ne rona na diya
Warna kya baat thi, kis baat ne rone na diya
Tell those who wish to grieve, to grieve too
For those whom cruel circumstances would not let weep
For what was it
Why could they not shed their tears?
– Sudarshan Fakir (1934 -2008)
Monday, 7 October marked a year since the horrible events in Israel unfolded on our screens. Yet the anniversary brings with it no balm of perspective; it arrives at an unresolved time. Not only do hostages remain, but so too another question: what is the appropriate way to commemorate a disaster when we are still living through the dreadful consequences it unleashed? And another, equally unpalatable question, which the world increasingly asks itself: how do we deal with the hypocrisy it gave rise to?
What is this hypocrisy that we’ve been forced to absorb, as we’ve watched in mute horror over the past year?
First, the hypocrisy insists that what we have seen has been two distinct forms of violence. There is the unforgivable violence of the oppressed, those under occupation; and that this is of the barbaric form. That it is sui generis — that nothing has begotten it, not even a 57-year-long occupation.
By contrast, there is the violence of the coloniser. This, owing to its reactive nature, is redemptive, progressive and necessary. It is ex aliquo — not of its own making; a reflective block rather than an injurious instigator. It is only this latter form of violence which wants peace, despite it being of a form which, in its year-long wake, has left a miscoloured scar on the face of the Earth that’s visible from space.
Second, we’ve been taught that this redemptive form of violence may go on indefinitely, and in plain sight. Because the enemy has cowardly chosen not to wear uniforms, it follows that any Gazan — and in recent days any Lebanese — may be a threat and justifiably a target.
Nothing is off-limits or worthy of being mourned — neither women nor children, nor the elderly or vulnerable, not doctors or journalists, nor humanitarian aid workers or peace activists, neither refugees in camps nor those in search of food, not those running toward aid vehicles nor those attempting to fish, not those in wheelchairs or those closing their ears just before another bomb is dropped on them.
Not any six-year-olds dying alone in cars, buried under the rubble and allowed to rot. Not millennia-old churches, nor mosques, nor hospitals; not entire universities nor any green space. No timeline or quantifiable metric need be pronounced for when hostilities on these justifiable targets may cease. It can go on and on until it itself declares that it is sated.
Third, we’ve been instructed in the proper tests for invocation. As befits the modern world we live in where civilisation rests on the separation between church and state, religion cannot be invoked as a basis for ideology, certainly not among the dispossessed.
Such invocation is, at best, quaint in our secular world. At worst it is backward, medieval and inevitably unleashes a barbaric form of violence. An exception to this, however, is that Scripture may justifiably be invoked by the nation-state. After all, it is God’s sanction which gives the state its foundational logic and provides it with immunity from criticism.
Next, we’ve learnt that we should remain silent, not questioning this redemptive form of violence. On campuses, as tenured professors, corporate employees, concerned citizens. We cannot mount a query, we cannot challenge the accepted wisdom. We cannot weep for those too traumatised even to weep. Those who may be mourned are circumscribed. To raise one’s voice against this is to spit in the face of the virtuous.
And lastly, we’ve learnt that any hate speech masquerading as free speech — even this article itself — will be rejected with contempt by declaring a simple and overriding truth: “What about October 7th and the hostages?”
And yet for us powerless masses, as these thunderous blows of learning have rained down upon us like the US-made bombs over Gazan — and latterly over Lebanese — citizens, we cannot but remain burdened by what we know in our hearts to be the truth.
That what we have witnessed over the last year has been a genocide, played out in real-time while we watch.
That it has been an urbanicide.
That it has been a scholasticide.
That it has been a cultural Armageddon.
That it has been Death by Thirst. And Death by Stalking Famine. Done with an impunity which simultaneously declares itself virtuous.
***
In thinking of the last 365 days for Gazans, I’m reminded of the playwright Sir Robert Bolt and his experiences in writing the script for the film Lawrence of Arabia. In bringing TE Lawrence’s life in the First World War to the screen, one of the episodes Bolt grappled with was whether to document the infamous massacre at Tafas which happened in 1917.
Here a depraved Lawrence, his army reduced to mercenaries and cutthroats, came across a desperate retreating Turkish column as the war neared its end. The Turks had committed atrocities against an Arab village and Lawrence’s army had come across the village first. These were terrible crimes, Bolt reminds us, and Lawrence’s response to his army was: “The best of you brings me the most Turkish dead.”
In his memoirs, Lawrence wrote: “In the madness born of the horror of Tafas we killed and killed, even blowing in the heads of the fallen and the animals as though their death and running blood could slake our agony. By my order we took no prisoners for the only time in our war … even those who came imploring our pity.”
The killing of 2,000 men and animals continued unabated for a full day and night.
When the film was being made, the figure of Lawrence of Arabia was still a mythical hero and Tafas was considered an inconvenient anomaly by his huge following of supporters and apologists. But Bolt resisted the pressure to excise the incident from the script. Later he wrote words which fill me with dread when I consider not necessarily Lawrence, but our present circumstances:
“The atrocities … found in Tafas were to the last degree horrible. Righteous indignation was the natural response. Let us ignore what is a fact of common observation, that righteous indignation resulting in immediate cruelty is a highly suspect emotion, and merely ask how long righteous indignation can be thought to last? That a man, confronted by such a scene should snatch up a weapon and kill in pure moral fury, this I can accept. That he should continue for some minutes from the same motive, this too I can accept with some difficulty. But if he goes on for a day and a night, seeking out his victims and killing everything in his path, then something other than righteous indignation has risen up in him.”
Bolt could only conclude that it was madness and depravity on the part of Lawrence and his army.
***
And so a year on from 7 October 2023, as the righteous indignation continues unabated, as we still cannot weep, we wait not for God’s mercy but for an end to man’s depravity. DM