A Routine of Wars

Abed Abou Shhadeh

Quite a few events have taken place in our lives at the beginning of the current decade: from the COVID-19 pandemic, through the violent events and the war on Gaza of May 2021, the judicial overhaul, October 7, and the massacre in Gaza.

And yet, for me this is also the most beautiful decade of my life – the decade in which my two children were born, a daughter and a son.

My daughter was still in her mother’s womb when, during the events of May 21, the police decided to disperse a peaceful demonstration we attended, using tear gas and stun grenades.

My son was in his mother’s womb when Israel killed dozens of innocent people in Gaza, including babies.

In these years, we have also witnessed the radicalization of Israeli politics and the strengthening of the messianic right: discourse about “transfer” (forced displacement of Palestinian population) and the rebuilding of the Jewish biblical Temple (where Al-Aqsa mosque resides today), and recently even the United States Ambassador to Israel supported the idea that Israel could expand “from the Nile to the Euphrates” – an idea that even the opposition leader Yair Lapid did not unequivocally reject.

But what may be even more troubling is the routine, and the way so many are getting used to this new madness.

It is this routine that prevents us from internalizing the kind of world into which our children have been born. The relative calm we have known over the past eighty years – periods in which there were spans of years and even decades between formative events – has likely come to an end. We are now required to get used to a routine of wars.

At the same time, sanity in political discourse is also disappearing. While the entire world is concerned about the implications of the current war by Israel and the United States against Iran, the political discourse in Israel sometimes sounds like a military public relations campaign: from media channels reporting how many launchers have been destroyed, to opposition leaders engaged in English-language advocacy on behalf of a prime minister who is considered by many to be one of the most dangerous figures in the world.

I do not know what the outcomes of the war will be. But in the rush to the shelters with the children, and in the brief conversations with neighbors between one siren and the next, even the children are beginning to feel that this is the new normal.

My daughter is four years old and already more experienced. My son is not yet a year old.

And this is not what is truly frightening. What is more frightening is that after the war, the situation of so many people will only worsen: from post-trauma, to war injuries and bereavement, to economic crisis. A troubling mix of realities that may give rise to even more fascism.

And when the guns fall silent and the pilots land, those same people who supported and encouraged the most dangerous person in the world will be the ones who pay the price.

And when they fail to pay their taxes, they will look for someone to blame. The cost of living will destroy families. Those same media channels – that justified the horrors in Gaza and disregarded the blood of so many innocent Gazans – will make sure to bring in more “economic experts” who will explain to the Israeli public that the problem is Palestinian citizens, and that they must be dealt with.

At a time when many in Israel choose to dismiss international law and international institutions, it is important to remember that these are the bodies that have tried to preserve logic and order in the international system. The choice of the United States to dismiss them, in favor of Israeli interests and with the aim of preventing prosecution for war crimes, is pushing the international system toward chaos.

This is our fate on this piece of land.

The question that remains is whether we stay and risk our children’s lives, or whether we run away leaving our homeland behind. A homeland for which generations before us paid such a heavy price in order to remain.

And in a parallel reality – were it not for the many formative events mentioned at the beginning of the text – I would probably be no less concerned about another issue that should trouble us all, but which we are too preoccupied to address seriously: global warming.

It is possible that in an era of international chaos, wars, and the weakening of international institutions, it will be even more difficult to confront it as well.

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