"Eating dates, without having to count them"
He had proposed to his wife to find a way to make the children perceive deeply, "in the depths of their souls," what the hunger experienced by the Palestinians of Gaza meant
In Brazil, the crimes judged by a popular jury are those called "crimes of blood," in which, in some way, life is taken or threatened.
One of the greatest lawyers to have ever acted before popular juries, Waldir Troncoso Peres, once taught a group of first-year law students, among whom I was present, that the main function of the defense attorney was to make the jurors forget that there was a corpse!
A great phrase-maker, and cynic, the journalist H.L. Mencken, used to say that the jury was a group of 12 people who gathered to decide who was the best lawyer!
Well then, there is no doubt that in the world there are many people, many institutions, many powers, many States, that together try to make us forget that there is a genocide in progress, try to make us unable to perceive the genocide and feel it. They are the best lawyer that the genocidaire could want for themselves.
Noam Chomsky and others spoke of the function of manufacturing consent, and I would say it is also about manufacturing consensus. These are powers that, under the cloak of apparent freedom of expression and debate, effectively restrict the field of what can be known, understood, discussed, believed. They are powers capable of pushing to the margins, outside the great flow of "official" communication (I say official for lack of a better equivalent in Portuguese for "mainstream"), every discordant note.
I have already imagined myself sitting on the banks of this great and powerful river, casting my modest bait into it, trying to catch men and women who wanted to see things under other lights, who had the disposition to leave the comfort of the cave where they believed to be truth what was nothing but shadows projected on a wall.
In these current days, we may fall into the temptation of believing that the margins, or the marginalized, have finally invaded the great course of the waters, with social networks replacing to some extent the great media outlets and giving freer course to the varied perspectives through which one can look at the world.
I will not go further here in discussing what I think are the gains of social networks and what I think are their problems and limits; I will leave that for another moment. I will only say that the great platforms and their owners, in general, have also worked, and continue to work, so that the corpse of genocide does not occupy the centerstage.
I believe that, on one hand, there came a certain moment when it was necessary to yield to the force of what people wanted to show, say, denounce, regarding Palestine and Gaza; it was necessary to open the floodgates a little to preserve the dam.
On the other hand, I believe that our manifestations in parallel vehicles (the parallel, here, are no longer the networks and platforms, but are the channels and communities where those who agree among themselves meet) serve somewhat as an escape valve, places to allow the release of excessive pressure, without letting the boiler explode.
We may believe that major newspapers and television and radio networks are moving toward obsolescence and unsustainability as business models, but it is clear to me that they continue to fulfill a fundamental role in defining the agenda. If these major outlets wanted to and had the courage to adopt this agenda, I am certain that the genocide in Palestine would be a topic of daily discussion in all segments of the population.
It is clear that the reason for the lack of courage of these outlets is the same that explains the cowardice of political, economic, intellectual elites, specifically in the West and in places of the Global South that do not know how to think autonomously (which is the case with Brazil).
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One of the places where one can follow the daily and epic tragedy that befalls the Palestinians, especially in Gaza, is the Electronic Intifada channel. I recommend it.
I confess that I do not have the emotional structure to watch every day, but when I watched, two or three days ago, I came face to face with a story that could be a poem: at the same time, a crystalline portrait of suffering, a lesson in resistance and hope, a small glimmer of humanity, a touch of lyricism…
The hosts, Nora Barrows-Friedman and Ali Abunimah, interview Asem Alnabih once again. Asem is one of the regular contributors to the site, writing articles from Gaza. He acts as spokesperson for the Gaza municipality and is an engineer and doctoral candidate.
Ali immediately notices: "Asem, every time we talk to you I notice how you are getting thinner and thinner."
They talk about the situation in Gaza, the difficulties. Asem says he feels privileged, he can still have one meal a day, still has some access to energy to charge his phone, access to a little water. And more, his wife and children were not in Gaza when the war began, and remain outside; they do not suffer, therefore, like the father or like the hundreds of thousands of women and children in Gaza.
They ask Asem what the agreement he had made with his wife meant, which he had mentioned in his last article. He had proposed to his wife to find a way to make the children perceive deeply, "in the depths of their souls," what the hunger experienced by the Palestinians of Gaza meant, perhaps one meal a day, perhaps having to travel a certain distance to find food?…
He clarifies quickly: he knows how many people in the world express their solidarity with Gaza, including resorting to hunger strikes; he had no intention of making people feel guilty; he was only inviting a deeper understanding… "from the depths of the soul."
They then ask what the story of the date was. He says something like: "I really like dates, I had a single date that I kept with me for six months, saved to eat at some special moment. One day, seeing the suffering my mother was going through and knowing that she also likes dates, I gave it to her. I have a younger sister, she's 17 years old, and for two years she has only been studying to get her diploma, without school, without teachers, without electricity… I really believe she is a genius, speaks three languages perfectly, I don't believe there is anyone better than her in mathematics and physics, I really believe she is a genius, she will go very far… My mother, seeing how my sister, Nasmah (which I feel like translating as breath, breeze, respiration…), studied and made effort, decided to give the date to her. Nasmah, in turn, thought it would be best if her, and my, little nephew, Mu`min (faithful, believer), 7 years old, ate that single date."
Asem ends by saying: "I wish that one day my sister Nasmah will be able to eat dates without having to count them!"
Asked about what goes on in the depths of his soul, he responds: "I feel I'm going to die."