Remember, during the COVID-19 pandemic, the joy we found in banging on pots and pans every night at 8 p.m. to salute the dedication of healthcare workers. Doctors and nurses were overwhelmed, contagion was spreading blindly, nothing seemed able to stop it, and we were all equal in the face of danger.
Our drumming echoed through the streets; the entire city vibrated with this disorderly yet joyful noise, despite the general gloom. This urban rhythm also told each of us that on every balcony, behind every window, there was someone whose isolation mirrored our own, a hunger for connection.
The clash of wooden spoons on metal bowls expressed a range of emotions, sometimes even tears, serving as a conversation with strangers, uniting everyone in a common cause: Faced with the dehumanization imposed by the pandemic, we supported, under the ghastly hospital lights, those exhausted soldiers fighting an uneven battle without regard for time.
Close your eyes and bring back the memory of that joy in feeling human, despite feeling helpless. The noise saved no one, true, but it carried a message of respect and recognition that made its recipients feel supported.
The time has come to bring out those pots and pans again. The nighttime clamor began yesterday in Ramallah and is expected to spread around the globe. Those pots and pans should have been used to feed the starving in Gaza.
They hold only the sound of anger and indignation, but they carry it to the ears of the damned in this strip of land threatened by rampant famine. It's not as if numerous fundraising campaigns haven't been organized since the war began, but given that Israel has closed the crossings and taken control of food distribution with the violence and contempt that it's known for, everyone wonders how these donations could possibly reach the most vulnerable.
In Gaza today, a kilo of flour costs nearly $40. The risks young people take at distribution points are immense. The number of people who never return from those lines — shot by some bored or nervous soldier — keeps growing. Your heart aches for the father and the child, sifting sand between their fingers for that trace of white.
Hunger is an unimaginable suffering. It attacks you slowly. First, cramps double you over, your stomach acids having nothing to digest. Then your body draws on its reserves and begins to break down its own substance. One organ fails after another. You can no longer stand, you give up, you lie down, you waste away. Infections take advantage of the general weakness.
And then there's that expression for emaciation: "Skin and bones." But the bones themselves are gnawed from within, and the skin is cracked.
Sometimes a quick, maybe even heroic death — if that means anything when it comes to feeding your family — is better than this feeling of abandonment and decay under the gaze of the rest of humanity.
In Gaza, hunger is everywhere. The paramedics carrying the dying, the doctors trying to work miracles, the reporters documenting the horror — they are also starving.
A father was seen, after a huge struggle, bringing back to his family of 12 — including a young woman seven months pregnant — a plate of rice floating in a bit of water. He took just a single spoonful for himself. His tears of despair, seeing his children share even less than a meal, humble us all.
Nothing justifies this atrocity, this punishment inflicted on an entire people, some penned up in tents, others living in the ruins of what was once their home: neither paranoia over Hamas nor Israeli pressure to recover its hostages.
Famine is the result of meticulously engineered barriers to food assistance. It's a weapon more dreadful than bombings. It brings people to their knees. And as spectators to this horror, we lose a bit more of our own humanity every day.
Banging on pots and pans, deafening those who could apply pressure to make this stop, may seem like nothing, but it's a way to lift our heads for those who no longer have the strength.
This article was translated from L'Orient-Le Jour.
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