10 June 2024
Open Your Eyes, Open Your Heart
Open your eyes, open your heart, and question your humanity. Yes, we all need, from time to time, to question our humanitarian principles.
The 120 Israelis kidnapped, captured, and imprisoned by Hamas must go back home, must be with their families. Yes, they must! I really want to see them among their families and their beloved ones as much as I want the same for the more than 13,000 Palestinians kidnapped, captured, and imprisoned by the Israelis. I want to see these thousands at home with their families, with their beloved ones.
Before 7th October, Israel had kidnapped and imprisoned more than 4000 Palestinians. Since 7th October, Israel has kidnapped more than 9000 Palestinians. Thousands are exposed to severe torture; many have died from torture. Yet, no one questions Israel about them, as they are not considered human beings! Open your eyes, open your heart.
In Gaza, street dogs are dying of hunger. They used to live by the leftovers from people; now people have no leftovers, people are starving. Some dogs survive on the Palestinian bodies left in the streets, killed by the Israelis and left in the streets for days and weeks. Some dogs find them a meal. This is not fiction, this is happening in Gaza! Open your eyes, open your heart.
A man who lost a leg stumbles along, leaning on his daughter’s shoulder, and says to her, “I am exhausting you my dear.”
A mother carries the dead bodies of her 2 children, weeping, “Why have you left me? I can’t bury you. I can’t, it was you who should bury me when you grew up!”
Open your eyes, open your heart.
A young man wearing a jacket in the hot weather, trying to hide his amputated arm.
A man from Gaza sent a message to those who are not in Gaza, a message of envy:
- I envy you for not being forced to lose weight!
- I envy you for not sleeping and waking up with drones, bombing and shelling sounds 24 hours for 8 months and more!
- I envy you for not hearing the screams of help from people under the rubble, dying and you are unable to help them!
- I envy you that your children do not live day and night in fear and panic!
- I envy you that you can afford a piece of chocolate for your children when they ask for it!
- I envy you for having washing machines and not being obliged to clean your clothes with a quantity of 1, or maximum 2, litres of water!
- I envy you for not being obliged to eat canned food and drink unsafe water for months and months until you become emaciated!
- I envy you that you do not have to build a fire every day for 9 months with bits of wood, papers, plastic and whatever flammables you can find to heat some food for your family, burning your hands and your chest with toxic smoke!
- I envy you that you that you don’t have this feeling of being a burden on others when some relatives or friends take you into their home or their tent!
- I envy you for not worrying about the privacy of your wife and daughter in a non-protective tent or a public latrine!
- I envy you but I don’t want you to be in my place, not for a single day, not for a single minute.
Open your eyes, open your heart, and question your humanity!
There is no shame, we all need to question our humanitarian principles from time to time.
Just open up…