Perhaps
the most terrifying thing about Gaza was not that the world allowed it to
happen. It was discovering that Gaza was only the beginning.
All
the speeches, protests, resolutions, international laws, red lines,
condemnations, and promises of “never again” have apparently taught this
monster nothing.
This
morning, Israeli strikes completely destroyed Ghandour Hospital in southern
Lebanon.
Another
hospital !! Another building once meant for healing reduced to rubble.
We
watched hospitals in Gaza bombed, besieged, evacuated, burned and destroyed. We
were told Gaza was exceptional. We were told the world was watching.
International institutions issued statements. Governments expressed “concern.”
People
marched through capitals demanding that there must be a line even war is not
allowed to cross.
And
now we are watching those lines disappear somewhere else.
Again.
We
are living through a dark age in which military power and money seem capable of
crushing almost everything humanity spent generations pretending was sacred:
international law, hospitals, homes, places of worship, trees, memory, and
human life itself.
And
perhaps that is what terrifies me most.
Not
only that these things are being destroyed, but that the world is being trained
to watch their destruction and continue with its day.
A
hospital becomes rubble. A neighborhood disappears. A family becomes
photographs. Another condemnation is written.
And
elsewhere, people wake up, drink their coffee, go to work, come home, and
sleep.
I
once believed that knowing what happened would be enough to make humanity
afraid of repeating it.
Now
I understand the more terrible possibility:
Human
beings can know.
They
can remember.
They
can build museums to the dead, teach their names in schools, write “never
again” above their graves; and still allow another human being to become
rubble.
It
happened.
Therefore
it could happen again.
Perhaps
the mistake was believing that “again” would look exactly like the first time.
If
hell is a place where power can destroy human beings, homes, hospitals, memory,
and life itself, while those who built laws to prevent it discover that their
laws cannot make it stop, then perhaps hell does not require another world.
Perhaps
it requires only this one,
and
enough people willing to continue their day.
