“The [Another] Zone of Interest”.
“I am haunted by GAZA, I am disturbed by GAZA, I am outraged by GAZA”.
3rd January 2025
By Daniel Bernabeu Taboada (Head of Radiodiagnosis Section “La Paz” University Hospital. Madrid, Spain) and President of the trade union AMYTS (Association of Doctors and Graduates of Madrid).
“We are extremely concerned over the fate & wellbeing of Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, director of Kamal Adwan hospital who was detained by Israeli forces along with others during a raid on the hospital on 27 December 2024”
Amnistía Internacional
https://twitter.com/AmnestyMENA/status/1873437417178300494
We bid farewell to 2024 and welcome 2025. I leave 2024 with a bittersweet taste, many things have gone well, we have worked hard to inform and reach out to a lot of colleagues, the beginning of hospital stabilisation; in general for a reasonably well done trade union work during 2024. In 2025 we will try to continue this good work.
Despite this satisfaction, it is difficult to escape the shadows of the human race in this just ended 2024. I would probably prefer not to have known anything and not to have listened to the news. I would have focused only on the things that should really matter to me and that affect me on a physical and psychological level: the problems and joys of those of us who share space and culture. I suppose everyone in Germany in 1932 thought and did the same: why suffer for something I am not willing or able to face?
The constant bombardment of current affairs stuns me and I feel that it desensitises me: natural disasters, crimes, wars, massacres, unrelenting machismo, genocides,... I try to concentrate on tasks that distract me, on restorative leisure. I try to get away from the misfortunes of the world or my environment, and focus on the positive things in life: my work, my family, my friends, that rewarding reading, that restorative trip; or on everyday problems: caring for elderly parents, worrying about patients, the parking ticket, the electricity bill, my son's crazy rent…
But I can't completely escape, I suffer periods of connection and disconnection. I try not to watch the news, but I need to know, I need to know what world I live in. I need to know how to act; what decisions to make, what seems important to me and what doesn't; who deceives me and who warns me; who builds and who destroys; who has the conciliatory verb and who has the polarising verb. How to decide and how to act, without knowing? What future do I build for my children with my decisions? Are they the right ones? How difficult it is! More and more in a growing reality built on hoaxes, disinformation and mere opinion.
Perhaps, from a practical point of view, I should not give it so much thought and join a safe value, follow the trail of someone strong and with clear ideas, avoid being assigned ‘labels’ that are compromising or frowned upon in my environment, talk about everyday things: the gym I need to lose kilos, that car I like, the best investment for my savings, this healthcare that does not improve my working conditions, try to stand out in what I think everyone expects me to excel in...
However, I must be addicted to suffering. I find it hard to escape the horror of the images, of the daily stories of hatred and destruction. My stomach shrinks every time I hear ‘patera’ [small boat used for transporting illegal immigrants], ‘maritime rescue’, ‘shipwreck’, ‘migrant’. I wish I had ‘superhuman’ powers, to stop wars, to console Gazan mothers who have lost their children, to rebuke the Russian soldier who attacks Ukraine, to convince the US Senate and the Spanish government not to sell arms to Israel, to get children out of coltan mines, to exchange weapons for food to alleviate famine in Africa, to end exploitation and sexual violence against women. Too many superhero comics in my youth!
But, ENOUGH, I want, I need to talk about GAZA. I am haunted by GAZA, I am disturbed by GAZA, I am outraged by GAZA. More GAZA than other deaths or other conflicts? YES, and I need to explain why this obsession with GAZA, why GAZA hurts me so much. It pains me because I do not understand the outrage against an innocent population, it pains me because I do not believe in the law of Talion, because I am disgusted by murdering murderers. It torments me that citizens of the 1st world, western world, commit these crimes. I am overwhelmed by the disproportionality and the number of victims. I do not understand that humanitarian aid is being prevented, that health infrastructures are being destroyed, that schools and houses are being destroyed.
I do not understand it, I do not understand it. I do not understand that a people that suffered a holocaust in its own flesh is capable of repeating the same holocaust on another people. I cannot find arguments to justify what Israel is doing: I cannot find them in jurisprudence, I cannot find them in international law, I cannot find them in human rights, I cannot find them in ethics, I cannot find them in my inherited Christian morality, I cannot find them from the perspective of promoting coexistence. I only hear arguments of hatred, of an eye for an eye, of Talion, of justification of murder, of violation of international law, that everything that Israel qualifies as ‘terrorist’ deserves to be killed or destroyed. That freeing 200 hostages justifies everything, even massacring 50,000 innocent people. Are these the new judges? Is this the new world ethics and morals we are going to build on in 2025 and beyond? Is this what we will do from now on with any country that has a terrorist group in its midst? Reduce the country or the region to ashes? Is this the new world order we want or accept with resignation?
Forgive me for my ignorance, for my confusion. I am not able to see a war in GAZA, I see only tanks on one side, only artillery on one side, only fighter planes on one side, only military equipment on one side, only military aid on one side. Homemade rockets and stones against ATACM, against F-16, against Merkava. Wasn't it enough revenge with the massacres in the Palestinian refugee camps of Chabra and Shatila? To hear, to read, that the death of a Palestinian child is one less terrorist, that the best Palestinian is the dead Palestinian, tears my heart out.
It has not been an entirely happy Christmas. I have laughed, I have hugged, I have shared illusions; with family, at work, or with friends. But my heart is sad, my heart cries. It cries for all the suffering in the world, but above all it cries for GAZA. Because I don't understand it, because it doesn't fit in my head. For coming from where it comes from.
I remember the brutal massacre of Srebrenika, during the disintegration of the former Yugoslavia. The international response, the hunting down and capture of those responsible, their trial and sentencing at the International Criminal Court. There were 8,000 ethnic Muslim victims and it was called the Bosnian genocide. What is different in GAZA? We are now at 50,000 victims, most of them children. More than 70% of the infrastructure of the strip, homes, schools, hospitals, has been destroyed. Food and water are cut off, people are forced to live in tents or in the open. What makes GAZA taboo in our conversations? What makes it so that in order to talk about GAZA we have to allude to every war/humanitarian conflict in human history in an attempt to minimise and normalise its mere existence? Why do we ignore GAZA? Why do we cancel GAZA?
I beg your pardon for my venting. I suffer and I need to share my pain. I may be wrong, I may be on the wrong side of history. That I do not see the need for the suffering of the Palestinian people, for the extermination of one people so that another can develop in peace. It terrifies me to think that I could live in a society like the German one of 1932. It makes me sick to think, as in the film, that ‘the zone of interest’ is developing within a country that belongs to the OECD, that competes in Eurovision, that is a major trading partner of the EU, that supposedly shares ‘Western’ values, that suffered a holocaust.
Now would be the time for impossible hope. We have been ignoring Palestine for 75 years. We cling, because it is in our interest, to the mistrust of the hoax and manipulation; and that it is really no big deal; that these are manipulated images, the attempt of one side to strike a chord with us. And we don't talk about GAZA, we don't think about what would happen if GAZA were real, a real massacre, a real genocide, and not a hoax fed by terrorists. Because GAZA is REAL.
To help GAZA is to talk about GAZA, to talk about the Palestinian problem, to think about the consequences of GAZA. To understand that the extremist positions of 100-500 individuals, of one people or another, cannot and should not justify the suffering and cruelty with the lives of innocents, of children who know nothing about politics, whose only crime is to be able to be the future of a people. Those of us educated in Christianity know something of the myth of Herod, of how he wanted to murder all the children of Bethlehem to try to do away with Jesus, and to avoid the prophecy. In this case, the prophecy of a Palestinian state.
Forgive me again. I just wish for this 2025 that, please, let's talk about GAZA. Good or bad, but let us politely and respectfully share our ideas, doubts and reasoning of what is happening in GAZA. Let us enlighten ourselves, let us review newspaper archives and books, let us talk about GAZA as if we were doctors, with the best possible evidence. I thank you if you have made it to the end, wishing you all the best for 2025.
For PEACE in GAZA. For compliance with international law. For respect for human rights. Israel, if you have any humanity left, stop the slaughter of innocents.
