Monday 28 April 2025
I don’t read Hebrew but I do look at sites which translate the Israeli media. That’s where I found this information: Israeli army chiefs say the military are exhausted by 19 months of war in Gaza.
My first reaction was to laugh. So the executioner is tired from all the killing ? But are these soldiers aware of what they’re doing ? I try and imagine the suffering of the poor military: air force pilots exhausted by dropping all those tons of bombs which destroy houses in one, along with entire families. Or the girls who operate the killer drones whose fingers are tired from pushing the button to fire on tents and schools, like some video game. I say “girls” because they are nearly always women. It seems they’re more precise than men. Then there are the surveillance drone operators, whose eyes have grown weary from spying on us. And the tank drivers whose hands have grown fatigued from releasing shells that destroy entire neighbourhoods.
Poor soldiers, exhausted from bombing us, watching us, punishing us. If the executioner is so tired, what is the victim supposed to say ?
What do those who live with the nonstop buzzing of the drones have to say ?
What do the tens of thousands of people forced to move for the nth time from one place to the next have to say ? Or those living in tents in horrific conditions ? Or those who’ve been without food or drink for more than two months ? Or those bombed night and day ? Or the women and children queuing up in hope of a plate of lentils or rice handed out by aid workers ? Or the women queuing to go to the toilet ? Or the men who spend their days trying to find a small job or some help or something to stoke a fire ? And what about those who have lost their families, their children, their homes, their business ? And what should amputees say, or the disfigured, or those who have lost their sight ?
What do those living through all this suffering, with the ceaseless noise of the drones, have to say ? Or those unable to find any safe place to escape to ? Until now, the occupation army would say: “For your safety, move to the humanitarian zones.” There are no humanitarian zones, and the Israelis have finally abandoned that fiction. So what should sick people say, or the wounded waiting to be seen or for medical treatment abroad because there’s no means to treat them here ? Or those with cancer, kidney infections, diabetes, with no treatment available here ? What should doctors working almost 24 hours a day in accident and emergency say ? Especially when they have to triage the endless stream of sick people, choosing those with a chance of surviving ? That’s the worst thing for any doctor. And what should nurses say, faced with the worst atrocities perpetrated by the (now tired) executioner, the daily sight of mangled, headless bodies of children ?
I remember the testimony of a French emergency doctor, Raphaël Pitti, who spent several months in Gaza. He was used to war zones, having worked in different conflicts. He said he had never experienced the like of what he saw in Gaza and thought he could never live through something like that a second time. In a state of psychological exhaustion, he could not understand how the world said nothing, to the point of doubting the rest of humanity.
The massacres go on, and the Israelis continue to film themselves
We, Gazans, are now beyond exhaustion. No one can bear what we are living, between death and non-life. The worst for us is not being able to protect our families. It’s seeing someone close to us, or one of our children, wounded, without being able to treat them. The worst is seeing your child suffer, without painkillers or anaesthetics.
So I think about these “exhausted” soldiers. If I understand correctly – I don’t know the Israeli system in detail – they spend two or three months on the ground before getting time off. they aren’t stuck there for 19 months. And they don’t go hungry or thirsty. When a unit leaves a place, they leave behind their empty water bottles and food packaging.
When they finish their job of “protecting Israel” which consists of killing as many people in Gaza as possible, these soldiers return quietly home. They eat and drink well, they go out and above all they travel. They have a change of air to get over feeling psychologically unwell. We, meanwhile, are living through a genocide. A physical, psychological, media, military genocide. It is taking place before the eyes of the entire world, yet no one does a thing. I wonder what it would be like if everyone wasn’t seeing and knowing about it. For the massacres go on and the Israelis continue to film each other. Recently, I saw a photo of some soldiers burning down a villa that belonged to one of my friends. The photo caption read, “In three months we’ll be in Thailand.” For, having ransacked, destroyed and burnt down our houses, these poor soldiers need a change of air: they’re tired out by all the killing and destruction.
As for us, we’ve been living in this cage for 19 months. We can’t “have a change of air”. Our only scenery is total destruction, the blood of mangled children and the thought of those entire families still lying unburied in the ruins. We have lost all our humanity. Fatigue is mixed with humiliation. The exhaustion of being humiliated, that’s the worst feeling. We are tired of fearing being killed in our own homes, of being imprisoned under the ruins of our bombed house, of being endlessly forced to move on, of living in a tent, of not finding food for a hungry child, of not having a shekel to give them. The exhaustion of seeing people close to you, friends, dying each day and not being able to bury them; their bodies left on the ground, eaten by animals. And we can’t go and look for them because they’re in a “forbidden zone”. The so-called “most moral army in the world” lets dogs eat human bodies.
We are tired of the feeling of impotence, of being abandoned by the world; the feeling that we’re no longer human beings, as the former Israeli war minister put it, that same one who called us “human animals”. This feeling eats away at us deep down, destroying any strength we have left.
May those soldiers who need a change of air have a good time in Thailand. I understand them: they are really tired of killing, destroying and humiliating us. I hope they’ll treat themselves to a good Thai massage. I hope too that one day they’ll feel remorse and end their silence, as in previous wars. I know that some are refusing to return to Gaza. But the vast majority feel no remorse for what they have made us endure. As for us, we’ll rediscover happiness and we’ll remain on our land. And this tiredness will be transformed into courage and vigour, ready to build it all again.
Translated by Wendy Kristianasen