By Umar Timol
The word ‘genocide’ comes from another place, another time. As we see some photos, rare documents, books, and objects, it’s an obscenity that we have a hard time grasping because we know it as distant, buried in faraway lands. We are convinced, or we try to convince ourselves, that it is unimaginable now, in the age of technology and images, because the victims will testify in real time, because we will know everything, and the world will stop the evil.
Never again.
Never again will we systematically kill beings, exterminate entire families, the elderly, children. Never again the concentration camps, never again the pestilence of thousands of bodies that we cannot bury.
Israel is currently engaged in what is described as a genocide, right before our eyes. This act of annihilation is happening in real-time, and we are witnessing the meticulous deployment of violence. It’s a violence that cannot be stopped, a violence that is legitimized and celebrated by some, a form of expiatory violence.
A Palestinian shares on social media what could possibly be her last ‘post’ as bombs rain down on Gaza. Later, we learn that she has died.
This murder is not a coincidence. It’s a choice, a calculation.
Over 7,000 deaths, including 2,300 children.
A child dies every fifteen minutes.
It is a genocide.
The propaganda machine will try to convince us otherwise. Israel has the right to defend itself. It’s a complex situation. It’s a response to the atrocities committed by Hamas. It’s a defence of civilization and enlightenment. It’s a battle between good and evil.
But the fact remains clear.
There is no room for debate. We will not question the semantics of words. No mental contortions, please.
We will face this reality. Confront it.
This reality that spews blood.
This reality that incinerates bones.
This reality that cremates flesh.
The dismembered body of a child.
There is an oppressor and an oppressed.
And the oppressor wants to annihilate the oppressed.
In this, they are similar to the colonists who destroyed the Native Americans, the Aborigines, the Algerians, and many other peoples. Hundreds of millions of deaths.
The methods have changed, but the result is the same.
The genocided Native American and the genocided Palestinian are brothers, united on the altar of colonial sacrifice, dehumanized, objectified, and martyred so that the powerful can dominate, terrorize, and be.
There’s no need to dig into the archives because the archives of reality, of the present, are staring us in the face.
We must slowly, very slowly, bury this word in our minds. Genocide. We are witnessing, for the first time in history, a genocide, an attempt to exterminate a people in real-time.
It is night. October 27, 2023. Gaza is cut off from the world. Bombing is taking place, and killing is happening with impunity. Not only Palestinians but anyone who desires freedom. The fascism that manifests elsewhere is the same as the one that will prevail here.
We are all Palestinians.
Let us remember this.
And we will not forget. The monstrosity of the powerful.
The complicity of Western elites.
The silence of writers, intellectuals, and artists.
And we will not forget.
The cry of this Palestinian woman that pierces the night, the cry of the human at the height of its humanity.
Genocide, this distant word is now etched into our very beings.
We will carry this testimony to the ends of time.
That you have killed the human, and that silence will cease to exist.
Bio:
Umar Timol is a Mauritian artist.
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