Of All The Things That Scare Me About Palestine One Of Them Is The Lure Of The Story, The Lure Of Turning

of all the things that scare me about palestine one of them is the lure of the story, the lure of turning people to myths, because its something i find myself doing. many things that have happened in gaza have become much larger than life. i keep thinking about khaled nabhan, who held his granddaughter so tenderly and called her the soul of my soul, and how those words and that image became so enormous that he was killed a year later wearing a t-shirt that a company had made to fundraise using those words—the soul of my soul. a doctor had brought it in for him from abroad. he was already a myth before he was dead.

i thought about it just now when i saw this image of dr hussam abu safiya walking towards an israeli tank after his "hospital fell" — the words of the poet mosab abu toha, that he used unconsciously in how he described the israeli siege of the last remaining hospital in the north of gaza. he said the hospital fell like it was a fortress. dr hussam abu safiya's teenage son was killed the first time israel raided the hospital. for over a month he refused to abandon his patients while he grieved. in that time we found out other hospital directors had been tortured after being arrested by israeli: doctor muhamed abu silmiya of al-shifa hospital (who was released after months of torture) and doctor adnan al-bursh who was tortured to death. in that month of starvation we saw him comforting his colleagues who lost their children to israeli attacks, and then he lost those colleagues themselves in israeli shelling of the hospital. still the hospital stayed, and dr hussam abu safiya stayed. he recorded a video from inside the hospital almost every day, showing the immobile patients and the brave staff, explaining that he would not abandon them. a delegation from indonesia made it to the hospital and tried to stay with the palestinian staff, israel forced them to leave at gunpoint. dr hussam stayed through it all.

after two months of siege, after ethnically cleansing the rest of northern gaza, israel finally forced its way into kamal adwan hospital and forcibly evacuated the staff and the patients. fifty people were killed during the attack, numerous patients and civilians (including women) stripped and abused by the soldiers, and forced to march in their underwear out in the freezing cold. and finally this is how we get this image, the last time dr hussam abu safiya was seen as israel burned down the hospital he had done his best for, walking alone through the rubble towards the israeli tanks, knowing what awaits him:

a lot of the things happening in gaza right now and over the past year are much larger than most people can accept. they are acts of heroism and tragedy that demand to be remembered. and because palestinians have asked us to bear witness, at least to bear witness, we have fallen into the habit of a kind of mythologizing. in arabic and english. i've seen it from gazans themselves, who have often written their own eulogies and wills before dying. this is how systemic this genocide has been. how forecasted. how foretold.

i think a lot about refaat al areer's work, and his famous poem "if i must die" that he wrote before his death. refaat is another story from gaza that was already mythologized by none other than himself. but i also know people who knew refaat personally. they don't talk about him like a story. they talk about him like a friend they lost. they talk about him like a teacher they lost. when that happens the mythology around him seems very small and worthless compared to the scale of the loss.

people from gaza aren't predestined myths. they're not dead people walking. they're not heroes we are here to watch die. they're not stories and tragedies to mine. they're people. this is a person who has just lived through all that. these are hundreds of thousands of people who just lived through all of these things. these are hundreds of thousands of people who have lost all of these things. and israel is full of people who did that to them. that's a story too, i guess.