When I think about Gaza, which is a lot these days, I often go back to WWII.
When I think about Gaza, which is a lot these days, I become unstuck in time.
Why the fuck did we not learn from the war to end all wars? is the first question. And then there was WWII.
Surely the holocaust meant ‘never again?’ after never again? is the second question.
And then I think about the way Africa and The Middle East were carved up and how borders were drawn and re-drawn by the allies and the subsequent mess the world has inherited.
My own upbringing was heavily influenced by this colonial carve up, map mash up and border bludgeoning. I lived in Bahrain a former British ‘protectorate’ that gained independence in 1971, only four years before my birth. The ‘security’ and ‘stability’ of the protectorate still relied heavily on the suppression of native peoples with the aid of British and American training, advice and sanction. When we moved to Bahrain, we chuckled at the little idiosyncrasies, “Hey look, Israel is not on the map.” “You can’t get Coca Cola here because it supports Jews.” It meant nothing to a nine year old. Just some funny little quirks to laugh about while marveling at the five times a day Islamic Call to Prayer. Something to this day, I still find comforting despite my general distaste for all organized religion.
But it was here I learned to read and write.
I still remember the day I learned to read. I must have been 12 or 13. I was a poor student. I didn’t know why yet but it was because: 1) I was never taught anything worth a damn until that point 2) I had no confidence in myself and no teacher took any effort to inspire any in me. In the British school system at that time, you would be placed in a class according to your aptitude. I was always in the bottom class for everything until one day, I was given some war poetry to read. Essentially, the literature of the two world wars taught me to read. Wilfred Owen, Siegfried Sassoon, Henri Barbusse, Erich Maria Remarque, taught me to read. Reading this poetry wasn’t like school. At first it was confusing. Why am I enjoying this class? Why do I want to continue to read poetry after school? Strange new feelings, indeed. But my teacher, Mrs. Gaunt (one of four teachers I will be eternally grateful for) saw my passion and realized, this lad might not actually be the dunce he was resigned to being for the rest of his life. And she put me in the top class for English.
I still remember the day I learned to write. I was about 14 or 15. It was a history class and we were studying Civil Rights in the USA. The assignment was ‘Empathy.’ You see the Brits at the time and hopefully still, arguably knew how to teach history. I never had a mind for memorization. I could never remember, dates, treaties, etc. (I later learned that such ‘factual’ teaching of history was really a way of not teaching history at all.) But I was good at imagining what it might have been like to be a part of it all. Putting myself in various prickly historical predicaments and pondering how I might have faired as a runaway slave, a white plantation owner, a sympathetic white student, a freedom rider, a segregationist, a black nationalist, a Southern law maker, a little kid forced to integrate in a white school and so on. And that was the assignment. Consider American (US) race relations from all angles and make an attempt to understand why key players on various sides of the situation behaved the way they did, even the ones you knew were on the wrong side of history. It was pretty heavy essay writing but it was the first and only time I scored 100% and in the British system that is not something teachers award very often.
War, conflict and social struggle taught me to read, write, and think. Before that I was a pre-pubescent blob occupying awkward space I had no real understanding of. Of course it would take a lot longer to really contextualize what that meant as a British kid living in a post-colony but we would get there.
One day, I was walking out of my house to go skateboarding and spied a white T-Shirt by the front door. It was covered in sweat and dirt, and must have belonged to a skateboard friend. I picked it up, turned it the right way round and considered the design. It was a cartoon of a ragtag little boy standing with his back to the viewer. His hands behind his back, his head slightly bowed. I would later learn his name was Handala. I liked the design, so I put it in the laundry and wore it on occasion. To this day, I don’t know who the t-shirt belonged to but when I wore it I’d get nods from Arabic and Muslim friends and strangers. “Oh you support Palestinians?” “Yeah, I guess so.” It was a few years later I learned of Handala the 10 year old boy who has been 10 since 1948 and will remain 10 until his homeland is free. A potent personification of the Palestinian struggle.
About the same time, I read an interview with a professional skateboarder named Ed Templeton who was pretty politically aware, all things considered, and he said one of his favorite books was “Slaughterhouse-Five” by Kurt Vonnegut. That’s all the recommendation I needed.
When I think about Gaza, which is a lot these days, I often go back to WWII.
When I think about Gaza, which is a lot these days, I become unstuck in time.
Vonnegut, was an American prisoner of war, captured by the Nazis. Even though the war was coming to an end, with Germany’s defeat all but inevitable, the allies remained determined to flatten Dresden (and nuke Hiroshima/ Nagasaki). Vonnegut and his fellow prisoners of war, unlike thousands of civilians, survived the bombing because they were imprisoned in a cellar deep under a Slaughterhouse. When he emerged he bore witness to the aftermath of Armageddon. His ‘side’ had flattened Dresden. Dead bodies everywhere he looked. He spent the rest of his life traumatized, trying to make sense of it all through his writing, including the seminal novel “Slaughterhouse 5.” I think of Vonnegut and I think of the Israeli hostages who are deep under Gaza right now as it is is being flattened. Here we are, another brutal power-struggle that means far more to the lunatics in power than to the people on the ground. I wonder if the hostages will emerge from underground and see the same things Vonnegut saw? So it goes. Rubble, complete destruction, death and decay. Thousands of bodies. Will they still be the enemy?
Meanwhile, from a safe distance and now an American taxpayer, what I see is, our continual abject failure to learn from the horrors of history.
I think about imperialism, colonization, the Holocaust, the struggle of the Jewish diaspora, the creation of Israel, the subsequent suppression of the Palestinians and I see, like Billy Pilgrim, Vonnegut’s protagonist in Slaughter-House 5, we
are unstuck in time.
All moments, past, present, and future, always have existed, always will exist… It’s just an illusion here on Earth that one moment follows another one, like beads on a string, and that once that moment is gone it is gone forever.
Now is the time for Art and Literature. Now is the time for deep empathy and imagination. Now is the time for creative resistance to inspire movement beyond this fucking mess.
Fight war, not wars. Destroy power, not people- Crass slogan
