Your War or My War

Do Israelis and their allies count only bombings and armored tank attacks as war? Then what have Israeli troops been doing daily and ceaselessly as they storm into West Bank neighborhoods, killing, terrorizing families, abducting youths? What was it that killed 243 Gazans in May, 2021? What have armed Jewish settlers been doing when they attack towns, commandeer roads and burn homes in Arab villages around their fortified settlements? What did Israel’s prime minister dare at the United Nations just days ago, wantonly brandishing a map of Israel absent any reference to Palestine, neither historical Palestine nor the rumps of villages left by Jewish colonization? What are Israeli bulldozers doing when they uproot Palestinian orchards, when settlers pour a farmer’s harvest of olive oil into his ravaged field on his way home from the oil press? What are Israeli troops doing when they prevent an ambulance reaching a wounded Palestinian? What are Israeli intelligence agents doing when they threaten, bribe and coerce Palestinian to work for them as informants? What are roadblocks and the close scrutiny of any Arab traveler along any road in Israel and the occupied lands? What are Israeli supporters doing worldwide when they suffocate anyone daring to criticize the apartheid state? What is Israel doing when it chokes all Gazans with sanctions that reduce people to penury, only surviving on charity organizations? What is Israeli doing when it constructs walls through Arab neighborhoods, dividing a family from its fields?

There are endless means of recording war. I add two more to my questions: words penned long ago by poet Mahmoud Darwish, and a video clip of some bulldozers in action, a common occurrence (posted July 20, 2023 on X) widely viewed it seems, but unnoticed.