It is hard to say Merry Christmas when in 10 weeks 19,000 Palestinians have been killed, 85% of Gaza’s population has been displaced, and the state of Israel insists it will not stop its attacks until Hamas is exterminated. Netanyahu calls it a “tragedy” (and it is) that his soldiers have mistakenly killed three hostages waving a white flag… but he does not consider it an atrocity that, by land and air, his troops have taken the lives of 8,000 children and today there are more than 50,000 wounded Palestinians and 7,000 bodies under the rubble.
It is hard to say Merry Christmas when the United States keeps giving political and military oxygen to the Israeli prime minister, and governments such as Britain and Germany continue to support those who are leading the genocide against the Palestinian people. The bombings have killed more than 100 UN officials; journalists, doctors, refugees, women, and children have been massacred by a man and an army that have roguishly ignored the codes of international humanitarian law.
Of course, the 7 October attack by Hamas on Israel was an atrocity; an infamy that in one day claimed 1200 victims and took nearly 130 hostages should never have been committed. We have said it in every tone: terrorism – wherever it comes from – is a cruelty and a failure of intelligence; the worst insult to the love of life, and a symptom of human degradation.
But what Israel has done in bombing civilians, hospitals, refugee centers and IDP settlements, under the pretext of fighting terrorism, is an outrage beyond all bounds.
International bodies and diplomacy have failed; humanism mourns, writes letters, paints, and composes songs, but has failed to make the Israeli government understand that this genocide – like that suffered by the Jewish people at the hands of the Nazis – is also a disgrace, an act of physical brutality and spiritual misery.
It is hard to say Merry Christmas when humanitarian aid arrives in dribs and drabs, the bombing continues and UNICEF declares that Gaza has become “a graveyard for children”. The UN says that in the strip “9 out of 10 people cannot eat every day”, and children and adults have to be operated on without anaesthetics.
This ruthless invasion has generated a new legal term: “domicide”, which refers to the total and massive destruction of homes so that the inhabitants have no home, no territory, nothing.
Why could we not follow the example of the Barcelona dockers who decided to prevent the transit of arms shipments? Why is it that death flies so low over us and the radars of humanism and politics were ignored when the tragedy was still avoidable?
I finish writing this column on Sunday 17 December. Thirty-seven years ago, today Guillermo Cano was assassinated. I remember him every day… when I write, when I see his photograph on my ex-Twitter, when drug trafficking takes another life…
Minutes before sending this Pazaporte, I tune in to the closing of the 5th cycle of negotiations between the national government and the ELN, and I welcome with heart and conviction the ELN’s announcement to suspend from January what they call “retentions for economic purposes”; having overcome the crisis, and thanks to the table and the hosts, the process is strengthened, and the prospect of freedom and the consolidation of the road to peace will be our best Christmas present.
