Welcome To The Forever-War
As of the writing of this post, we are 303 days into the war between the Israeli and Gazan governments.
I was planning to write a short explanation of how things have gone, how they've gotten so bad, and what that means overall but like... I wrote that sentence, and had to pause. I actually stopped typing and looked at the screen with a blank, tired expression. Three hundred and three days. We've had soldiers being sent into giant mousetraps for 303 days. We've been keeping the people of Gaza living in goddamn tents and dying to disease and starvation for 300 and 3 fucking days.
The hostages are still there, yknow. Evidently our government has stopped giving a fuck and just accepted that having a protest twice a week is the norm going forward. Who cares about one of the most fundamental unspoken agreements in Israeli society - that there would be no price too high to pay to return someone? We gave 1027 prisoners for Gilad Shalit back in 2011. Hell, it's not actually unspoken, Mitzvat Pidyon Shvuim is a jewish law saying that you must do anything in your power to return a jew from any sort of kidnapping or slavery. And what do you know? The jews in gaza who are being put to do actual slave work1 are getting the double bird from Bibi and his cronies.
The heads of the mossad and shabac (israeli CIA and FBI respectively) are going in public statements that our prime minister is tanking any sort of hostage deal with his public statements, and he's been screaming at them recently that they're "weak" and should "go bother hamas instead". Fuck me.
And- I'm just living my normal fucking life! I just go about my stupid day, jolly and happy, and have basically accepted that perpetual warfare is how I'm going to spend the next year or so. I wish it was just me but everyone else accepted it too; I went to see an apartment a few days back, and the fact one of the renters has not been home since october was described with the same casual tone that the renter later used to mention how the AC's not working yet. That's just... that's just it.
I don't even know what to say. We at least are getting media attention, right? I talk to my ukranian friends who've had to flee the country or are actively without power because of russian bombardments and it's clear the rest of the world moved on from them, too. The west bank's being actively annexed and settlers are doing terror attacks in random villages there and other than a single John Oliver episode this week I hear fuck all about it in the popular discussion.
They haven't looked away from us yet, at least, which I guess is nice.
but does just looking help when the war machine still keeps on going
To clarify: while "slave work" would give images of toiling in fields with a whip, in this case it's just doing household work for no pay under threat of starvation. Not quite as horrendous, but it's in no way "good."↩