If Gaza is everywhere…

«People are surprised, they become indignant. They say: “How strange! But never mind—it’s Nazism, it will pass!” And they wait, and they hope; and they hide the truth from themselves, that it is barbarism, the supreme barbarism, the crowning barbarism that sums up all the daily barbarisms; that it is Nazism, yes, but that before they were its victims, they were its accomplices; that they tolerated that Nazism before it was inflicted on them, that they absolved it, shut their eyes to it, legitimized it, because, until then, it had been applied only to non-European peoples; that they have cultivated that Nazism, that they are responsible for it, and that before engulfing the whole edifice of Western, Christian civilization in its reddened waters, it oozes, seeps, and trickles from every crack..»

Aimé Césaire, Discourse on colonialism.

For many months now our eyes have been filled with the infinite horror perpetrated by the Israeli government in Gaza and Palestine. To reach the point of deliberately killing people queuing up for a piece of bread is unspeakable, something our voices are unable to pronounce.

The mechanical and scientific coldness with which Israel, its government and its armed forces are carrying out the extermination of the Palestinian population tortures the depths of our soul because we are unable to stop such terror now, this minute. We cannot proclaim that we are outside all this; many governments, including the Italian one, are supporting this massacre; many companies, among which the Italian Leonardo spa, are producing weapons that are being used directly against the Palestinians. Even the smallest acts, such as the use of paypal or a sandwich at Mcdonalds, are arming the hands of soldiers that are using guns, throwing bombs or, far more coldly, are designing, making and ordering drones that will reap more victims. Dehumanising the human, considering them objects of conquest along with the land on which they live, turning them into one more number on the list of dead that is growing daily. This is what is happening.

To celebrate the Jewish culture on the European day dedicated to it while all this is happening, is an act that sends shivers down the spine. To crystallize the oppression and dehumanisation suffered by the Jews while the Israeli State, with the complicity of many western and Arab States continues to perpetrate murder, deportation, violence and massacre of the Palestinian people, is part of a colonial and racist culture. Whether it is a question of genocide, ethnic cleansing, extermination, what counts is that the only thing that we should be doing is putting an end to it, in whatever latitude we find ourselves, whatever tradition one belongs to. And say the names and surnames of those carrying it out, of who is wiping out the lives of the Palestinians, their history, and their future, their culture, after having destroyed their homes, streets, schools, hospitals. What is the point of memory if it doesn’t serve for it never to be repeated. What is the point of persuading oneself, if it is only rhetoric, false words, mendacious gestures, and brutal institutions to have the upper hand. Gaza is everywhere, because it is the guilty conscience of a decrepit world on the brink of catastrophe.

Good intentions are not enough. We need to be against war and militarism, desert the logic of oppression and conquest. Attack militarism and the military logic wherever it is. Let’s not resign ourselves to a present and future of war, armies, hierarchies and obedience.

BIBLIOTECA ANARCHICA DISORDINE, via delle anime 2/b Lecce

disordine@riseup.net

Translated by Act for freedom now!