This Will Haunt Us for the Rest of Our Lives

NOTE — This is an Instagram post featured on my writing account, @iestyntudorwriting.

What is the most horrifying video or image you’ve seen in the past 22 months? Since the genocide began? I’ll go first. It was a video of a hospital floor littered with dead and dying children. There was one middle-aged man slumped against the wall in the background. Skeletal. Grey. Barely alive. But the video focused on a little girl. She was starving and gasping for breath. She was laying against a dead boy — maybe two or three years old. 

There was a crater in his stomach. 

You could see his intestines. His insides.

Imagine the sounds in that hospital room.

If you follow my personal account (@iestyn.tudor), you know I share a lot about Israel’s genocide in Gaza. I only really started this after Israel pre-emptively bombed Iran last month. I wish I started much, much sooner. I chose to share it on that account rather than this one because it may reach more people. My friends and family. I also reported on a pro-Palestine protest for Nation.Cymru.

I haven’t used my writing account to speak out. Why not? Because I’ve discovered that language breaks down quite easily. When you try to describe the most-documented genocide in human history, you discover that words don’t capture it. They can’t. I’m a writer, but I’m aware of the limitations of language. It is a meaning-making tool. When human suffering is easily preventable and has no meaning, language is doomed to fail. But I’ll try my best.

I say ‘genocide’ a lot, but I don’t use the term lightly. I understand exactly what it means. 

Think of the Palestinian writers. How does one write about the extermination of their people? Jewish writers may have felt the same after the Holocaust. Now the Israelis, in the name of Judaism, are carrying out their own Holocaust against the people of Gaza.

I’m far away from all of this. We’re all far away from it. But we’re going to see the consequences of this for the rest of our lives. Gaza is going to radicalise a generation. I already feel it. Many others do, too. I read that this is Gen Z’s Vietnam. We have lost all trust in our governments for their foreign policy here. Our leaders are complicit in this, too. We are knowingly and unknowingly funding companies with ties to Israel. Mainstream media has manufactured consent for this genocide for 22 months, until now, when they’re realising they will be held accountable. 

I haven’t been aware of the situation for long. Something I regret. Once it clicked for me, there was no going back. Everything has changed. I wish I knew more about the Palestinian people and their culture before all of this. I wish I knew about the violence and fear required to sustain Israel. I support a two-state settlement with equal rights for Palestinians. But leaders on both sides have blocked efforts towards a two-state settlement over the years. This wouldn’t even be necessary if Zionists (who were traumatised by the Holocaust) didn’t ethnically cleanse the Palestinian Arabs back in 1948. Look into the Nakba. Israel is built on this colonised land. I’m completely open to more education on this. 

Before someone labels me a terrorist, I don’t support Hamas either. October 7th 2023 was one of the darkest days in modern history. Innocent Israelis were massacred and kidnapped and violated. That mustn’t be forgotten or downplayed. It was utterly vile. Pure human evil. As is Israel’s continued response to October 7th. The actions of Hamas have endangered the Palestinian people. Endangered is an understatement.

Criticising Israel is not antisemitic. Nothing justifies this. No scripture, no history. This has nothing to do with religion. One of the biggest tragedies is the rise in actual antisemitism across the world. Israel does not represent the Jewish people. They deserve so much better than to be lumped in with Israel.

Gaza is now an open wound on the face of the planet. A stain on our collective conscience. This will haunt us for the rest of our lives. Western governments need to stop trading with Israel, stop sending them arms, and sanction Netanyahu’s government. Sanction the settlers in the West Bank, too. Netanyahu and his ministers don’t actually care about the hostages. Their indiscriminate bombing of the Gaza Strip and the blockage of aid has probably killed them. This won’t end with the return of the hostages. It might end when Netanyahu’s reign ends. When he and his ministers are sent to The Hague, along with every complicit leader in the West.

Even if the genocide ends 5 seconds after I post this, we’re going to see the effects of this for decades. Generations of Palestinians (and even Israelis) traumatised. War begets war. It is a vicious cycle, and war is humanity’s ultimate failure.

One day, our children are going to come home from school. They’re going to ask: ‘What did you do during the genocide in Gaza?’ 

I want to have an answer for them. 

‘I used my voice. It wasn’t perfect. I tried to educate myself. I used what little power I had, knowing that was better than doing nothing at all.’