Tenfold and More
One way I’ve found to counteract the anesthetic quality of a months-long day-in-day-out massacre – the sense of inevitability and resignation of the state of the world and the gradual acclimation to an ever increasing death toll – is to revisit what I thought it would look like at the beginning. On October 9th, 2023, as the Israeli war machine was revving to life, I wrote the following on Mastodon:
Every time Palestinians kill Israelis, the Israeli military repays it tenfold and more. I’m horrified by what has happened and terrified of what’s to come.
It’s significant that I posted this on Mastodon. I use and enjoy Mastodon, but I have less personal investment in it and less following on than other platforms. So why post this there and not elsewhere? Partially, I’m ashamed to say, I was skittish about social conflict that posting about Palestine could cause, but partially it was this: even I was skeptical what I was saying. I remember thinking “Really? 15,000 dead Palestinians? That doesn’t seem very likely.” I worried that, in posting such a thing, the future would have me on record as hyperbolic, overwrought, and taken in by worst-case scenarios.
Instead, I can’t believe how badly I underestimated it.
By the point of this writing, there are not 15,000 dead Palestinians, but about 30,000. Humanitarian and public health experts predict that in the coming months deaths from the horrific conditions Israel has produced may outnumber those that directly result from the attacks. I hope they’re wrong – that these predictions are hyperbolic, but, man, I don’t know if I can muster that optimism. It is sobering to think we’re talking about 3% of the population of Gaza killed in a year and we’re just counting the deaths that are already inevitable. It hasn’t stopped. Who can say how much further Israel will go? (Not to mention that counting deaths is only one piece of the trauma being wrought on Palestinians.)
Despite my existing cynicism about the Israeli military and its government, five months ago it wasn’t even possible for me to conceive of how inhumane and devastating this assault would actually turn out to be.
You can read my previous post about Gaza here.