For the people in Gaza it was a war that threatened to destroy life in a split second or slow agony. For the rest of us it was a war of words and images; a testing ground that showed us where friends and nations stood. We will never forgive some of these, just as those who have been maimed or traumatized by falling bombs may never forgive those who have launched them.

I cannot speak of the pain of the victim – it is unintelligible to me. I can only speak of my own, lesser pain – that of being able to do nothing while the dealers in death are having their market day. Of living among people made blind by what? By hatred, paranoia or indifference? I don’t even fully understand what lies behind it. My assumption is that the motivation really isn’t any of these, but a kind of mass psychosis that affects people in times of war. Perhaps those of us who are not so affected have no right to judge those who have been. After all, the roots must be in human qualities that we all share and if conditions had been a little different, it might have caught us too. There are other kinds of mass hypnosis affecting all of us, some of the time. It just happens that war fever is one of the worst.

With all of that, there are some people who are not actually taken over and occupied by the national spirit. They just quietly succumb to it, or retreat into themselves, asking to be woken up when it’s over. The Middle East is mad againe – nothing to do about it.

But there are no private havens and no way that our spirits cannot be affected by war. It is inside and outside. When people are dying, a part of us is being killed; a part of us is doing the killing. Hey, this is crazy talk! No wonder they gave me my exemption.

Naomi Klein has an interesting article in The Nation, January 7: “Israel: Boycott, Divest, Sanction”. The idea just reiterates what has been said for years – that if the policy worked in South Africa, it could work here. Klein deals in the article with the main reasons for boycott and the main objections. She doesn’t go very much into the psychology; about how this might affect Arab-Jewish relations, for instance, or how Jews react to what they see as a contemporary example of age-old antisemitism.

Perhaps, in order to be effective, boycott and sanctions could be more enthusiastically adopted by Jewish and Palestinian peace organizations, working together. That sounds like a contradiction in terms, but doesn’t have to be. Klein does give the example, in her article of the Free Gaza Movement, which also has a letter calling for sanctions and signed by Israelis. Gush Shalom, the Israeli “peace block” has long advocated a boycott of produce from Israeli settlements. Today I received an email from Juliano Merr Khamis (dramatist and co-director of Arna’s Children) an invitation to sign an open letter to Mira Awad. Awad has been chosen to represent Israel together with Noa (Ahinoam Nini) in this year’s Eurovision Song Contest. The letter calls upon Awad to rescind her decision because “The Israeli government is sending the two of you to Moscow in order to propagate a false image of Israeli-Arab “co-existence” and obfuscate its daily massacre of Palestinian civilians.” (for more, see the letter itself). Mira Awad is a Christian Palestinian with Israeli citizenship. On the other side of the Green Line, the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel has long been active, with partial success. In 2006, the organization was responsible for persuading ex-Pink Floyd artist Roger Waters to move his performance from Tel Aviv to Wahat al-Salam – Neve Shalom. That Waters made the concession of moving the concert to the Arab – Jewish peace village satisfied Palestinians at the time. Would it today?

By converting Gaza into a blood bath, Israel has convinced the whole world that when it comes to “self-defence” it means business. Today the body count stood at 914 Palestinians for 13 Jewish and Arab Israeli citizens. The world needs to show Israel that it too means business, if it wants to reverse a pattern of steadily escalating regional violence. And unfortunately there may be a need for some form of sanctions.

Today was Dorit’s birthday and her mother had arranged tickets a month ago to a play at HaCameri – Tel Aviv’s municipal theatre. The play was “Was it a Dream” – a love affair between a leading actress of the 1930s, and a poet of the time. Of course, it was completely bizarre to be attending a play while there is a campaign of mass murder going on in Gaza. And, no surprise, the theatre was full. The audience behaved like every theatre audience – dozing during the slow parts, clapping occasionally, tittering at jokes. I managed with the conversational Hebrew, glancing up at the English titles when the dialogue included poetry.

The Gaza offensive is purportedly intended to produce the kind of peace that will allow ordinary Israelis anywhere in the country (including the Occupied Territories) to pursue ordinary affairs – like going to plays – without worrying about rockets raining down on them. The only difficulty with this objective is the insanity of the execution. Or maybe the campaign isn’t quite insane, but deliberately designed to perpetuate the conflict. With regard to its stated goals – the reduction of the threat of rocket attacks on its territory, and “a change in the security realities of the region”, Israel will fail miserably. The campaign is just an amplification of Israel’s previous modus operandi, which hasn’t managed to cow Palestinians into submission over the 60 years of Israel’s existence or the 40 years of its occupation of Gaza and the West Bank. If Israel’s intention is to keep Gaza and all Palestinians hostile but weak, perhaps it will succeed for a time. One motivation for that would be to delay a permanent peace agreement, which Israel knows will necessitate painful concessions.

Whether by madness or intention, the Middle East will be a less stable and more dangerous place after this campaign. Remembering the Joni Mitchel song, perhaps peace was just a dream some of us had.

F. writes from London:

…My heart, soul, and mind is in Gaza and I feel I cannot concentrate or think about anything else. Like you, we are braving the bitter cold to demonstrate against Israel’s new holocaust. Today we were 200,000 people marching in London, even though the metropolitan police and BBC will say it was no more than 50,000. There was so much passion and support for Gazans and Palestinians.