Ed | What bearing witness means for this Jewish mother – Caribbean Life

Since Hamas militants’ lethal October seventh assaults on Israel, I typically lie awake at evening, greedy to really feel what the struggling will need to have been like, for the victims. It’s as if, embodying another person’s ache, may someway reduce the horrors inflicted upon their physique. If solely.

Each time I really feel overwhelmed by horrific and grotesque ideas like these, I attain for the ebook I carry on my nightstand, Relating to the Ache of Others, by writer, Susan Sontag. In Sontag’s poignant essay (revealed a yr earlier than her demise), she wrestles with what it means to devour others’ ache, what we do after witnessing it, and what that claims about human nature. She wrote this lengthy earlier than the times of Instagram, TikTok or Telegram existed, however one may simply switch her observations about images and tv onto any of those trendy communication platforms.

This explicit quote got here to thoughts, after studying journalist and outspoken Zionist Eve Barlow’s recent Substack, “Blacklisted.” Barlow describes her expertise of viewing a 47-minute video titled Bearing Witness, compiled by the Israel Protection Forces from uncooked footage taken from Hamas body-cams, from victims’ iPhones, and from first responders. The screening was stated to have been organized by actress Gal Gadot and occurred at LA’s Museum of Tolerance. Though I’ve learn comparable accounts from others who’ve seen the footage, every time one other particular person describes the burnt our bodies, the headless our bodies, the mangled and abused our bodies, a contemporary wave of horror consumes me.

Barlow writes:

“And thus for the report: the infants had been beheaded. I noticed them. The our bodies had been burned, charred black. I noticed them. The blood stuffed the streets. I noticed it. The torture was frozen on the emaciated, melted faces of the lifeless. I noticed that, as properly. The children on the music pageant had been gunned down on the tarmac like canine. I noticed them. And the canine had been shot too.”

Realizing these vile particulars doesn’t fill me with a thirst for vengeance or a need to inflict the identical violence on the boys of Hamas. It doesn’t, as many individuals who message me on Instagram appear to imagine, make me really feel that the struggling and demise of Palestinian individuals are “justified”. It doesn’t make the pictures or movies of lifeless infants and ravenous, motherless kids in Gaza really feel any much less horrifying.

As a Jew, witnessing what occurred on October seventh and what has occurred since to the Jewish folks of the world is a reminder. It’s a reminder that not a lot has modified for Jews within the final 85 years, since Kristallnacht. It’s as if the phrases “by no means once more” we heard in Hebrew faculty a few years in the past, was a merciless joke. We will not inform our youngsters that they’re secure right here in America’s cities and suburbs; or in Israel, or wherever. Our folks have all the time been persecuted, ridiculed and hunted, and above on their lonesome.

We’re alone, and inevitably this footage will probably be launched to the general public. So many individuals are going to devour this newest spherical of Jewish struggling, after which they are going to someway use it in opposition to us, or deny it, or twist it to be able to serve no matter agenda is stylish in the meanwhile. It’s a sickening feeling.

Why ought to anybody who’s neither a Jew, Israeli, or ally get entry to our battered Jewish our bodies? What is going to they do after seeing the evil and excruciating torture endured by kids, infants, grandmothers, younger adults of their prime? What provides them the precise to be spectators to our grief, realizing that after they see it they nonetheless received’t actually imagine it occurred? Or they are going to say properly perhaps it occurred, however you see, there’s a “purpose”, and for that purpose, what occurred was inevitable. Which implies it is just inevitable to occur once more.

Sontag requested, “What does it imply to protest struggling, as distinct from acknowledging it?” I imagine we can’t view these photographs from October seventh, with out the intention of taking motion. We should not solely bear witness to the atrocities dedicated in opposition to Israelis on and after October seventh, whether or not in video footage or survivor testimonies, however we additionally need to be ready to do greater than merely acknowledging that “sure, it occurred.” There’s a distinction, Sontag argued, between being a voyeur to another person’s ache, and being somebody who can be taught from it and take steps to make it higher or to make sure it should by no means occur once more.

It has been simply over a month since this unfathomable/horrific tragedy, and I’m adamantly steadfast in my perception that Jews have an important want and a proper to their ancestral homeland of Israel. On this I cannot waver, and I’m not shy about telling this to others, even when it means dropping some mates and colleagues. I’m not exhausting myself by having round conversations about land possession, the historic origins of conflict, the virus that’s terrorism, and Hamas, with folks whose minds I’ll by no means change. I don’t have a must attempt to change their minds. As a substitute, I’m pulling my Jewish family and friends and our allies nearer to me. However talking with and being within the firm of different Jews is the one balm to this ache I’m feeling. I’ve joined an affinity group at my youngster’s faculty. I’m going to marches, taking part in actions at my kids’s Hebrew faculties, and lighting candles each Friday evening.

I wish to imagine the Jewish folks of the world have a future. I do. For now and the fast current, I can do small factor after small factor to affirm my satisfaction as a Jewish girl, spouse, and mom and soak up and amplify the tales of survivors and their members of the family. Nevertheless, none of this may take again what the victims felt and witnessed earlier than their murders on October seventh. It received’t convey them again or hasten the return of the over 200 hostages. However, these particular person acts will ship the message that I’m right here, that we’re nonetheless right here, that Jewish individuals are tied by blood and DNA, and we’re linked. On this second that’s our greatest energy.