Hind is constantly tweeting about being overwhelmed and hopeless. Bisan is sharing videos of children dying--literally someone trying to give a child chest compressions before giving up, the camera lingering on the child's limp, dead body. Today, Motaz posted video of his bombed out neighborhood--footage of a hand that does not end in an arm but ends in frayed and tattered meat. His neighborhood lost 45 people, his cousin also died.
His last tweet, 16 minutes ago, is him in the rain, the caption begs for the genocide to stop. "Please god, stop this."
Things have been dire and are getting more bleak. Using these people as inspiration porn--repeated lines of "Palestinians haven't lost hope, so we shouldn't other"--grows useless as it is clear it is very hard for them to manage hope. Hind has flat out admitted to being overwhelmed and losing feeling. The dead child, whose face was drenched in blood, cannot hope. It is not their fault, it isn't a matter of them not trying enough. It is a sign of Israel's cruelty.
How bad it is gotten--how much worse it is getting as Israel faces little resistance from the international community, as lack of food and medical care and sanitation spreads disease, how much the rain and cold sucks out the capacity to do anything other than survive and stress--means we should push harder. Fueled by righteous fury at injustice and needless suffering, not human beings turned into mascots, we must push and pull things harder until the system of suffering breaks.
I don't even know what that means. Every call to action feels so pathetically weak in the wake of all of this. But we must figure out what pushing harder means and fast.
Every day spent doing nothing or the bare minimum is more lives lost, more hope lost.
blakekathryn
germansingergirl
yousharknotpass
snowghoul
titsay
