In my early 20s, when university friends first came back from the West Bank with stories of what they had seen, I did not listen as I should have done.
One friend described the death of a child and sitting consoling her mother and said, “There’s just not enough sad in the world for how sad it is.”
I thought, “yes, yes, I know, let’s get onto talking about action we will take and what our solutions are and how we theorise all this.”
I feel thoroughly embarrassed at how callous I was. I feel deep shame and a need to make amends.
I understand better now why I was wrong.
Yesterday, we went to the ruins of Umm al-Khair to show solidarity. There were not enough activists there to keep a permanent protective presence.
So, as we were in the car on the way to a peace conference, we received news that the villagers had been shot by settlers. Apparently, it was a “revenge” attack on them for daring to show their devastation to internationals.
I listened to speeches with grand promises of peace, equality, and coexistence.
Then, in the car on the way back, we heard that the army had also gone in to shoot at the Bedouin too, and destroyed one of their temporary structures.
The people in Umm al-Khair now have had their homes, water, and electricity destroyed. And they have at least two elderly women in hospital. And these were people I met and looked in the eye and wished for God to give them strength. These were friends of friends with full lives.
After the conference, we had no discussions about the speeches or the ideas. There was nothing to talk about. Only Umm al-Khair. Only getting as many internationals and Israelis there as possible. Only doing everything possible to stop them dying.
It is a small piece of everything that is happening here. How can we talk ideologies when people are dying imminently? We may waste our entire time coming up with solutions while entire families, cultures, and livelihoods are destroyed.
This is my promise to myself. I will not be part of that.
I will never, for a moment, let myself think that ideologies matter more than human lives.
I will always prioritise people first.
Because there is not enough sad in the world, and I wish I had seen that sooner.
Sim Lev 