Rafah

The past few days have not been great, as I have been oscillating between feeling distressed by the Israeli onslaught on Rafah, and feeling stressed about my job hunt. Rafah is the Southern edge of the Gaza strip, where most Gazans have evacuated to. To the East is Israel, to the South is Egypt, to the West is possibly the Gazans least hostile neighbour, the Mediterranean sea. It feels like  a moment of reckoning--either the genocide has to stop, or it will be escalate to such an extent that even Israel's most ardent apologists won't be able to defend it. The numbers are at protests are down significantly from the November peak. We protest for a number of reasons, but a big reason is so that we can sleep better at night. And, I guess some people are managing to sleep okay without turning up to protest. I don't mean to sound bitter, and I prefer to be around sympathetic people compared to those who are indifferent to Gaza. More intelligent people than me have written about how this feels like the point of no return. If the world cannot prevent a genocide that is being livestreamed, then what hope do we have for collective action against climate change or fascism? However, it okay to feel despair from time to time, but not okay to wallow in it. Hope is what makes us human. The ability to imagine a better world even in the depths of despair, the ability to see setbacks as learning moments. I am not alone in believing that the progressive energy that events in Gaza have unleashed cannot be put back into the bottle. People who have found their voice in this cataclysmic event will continue to use it even after the Gaza genocide ends, and even after Palestine is free, from the River to the Sea.