To boost people’s morale, sometimes you have to tell them lies

25 February 2024

Going out into the street this morning, I found myself surrounded by dozens people, children, whole families. I’m looked on as the neighbourhood journalist, and above all I’m a French-speaking journalist :

So Rami, your French friends must know something about the talks in Paris. Has anything leaked? Are we close to getting a truce? Should we be getting ready to go back to the north of the strip or to Gaza city? Should we get out of Rafah and make for al-Mawassi³ with our tents ?

People are impatient for Ramadan to arrive. Usually we don’t look forward to it, it means fasting and fatigue. But this year, people are saying: “If only it would come soon!” Because they’re hoping t will mean a truce, that the slaughter they’ve suffered since 7 October will stop. That’s the general mood.

This hope for a truce is all the stronger as for the last two or three days the strikes have been non-stop. They’re targeting the mosques and the apartment blocks. It’s as if the Israelis were having a warm-up before the match, as if they were getting ready for the ground invasion.

Right now, the massacres continue. On Saturday, a building near the downtown area of Rafah was targeted. A whole family was killed, the Shahins. Seven people are thought dead but undoubtedly it’s more than that. There are more bodies under the ruins. The rescue teams are still digging but I doubt they’ll find any survivors. And neither the firemen, nor the ambulance crews nor the municipality have the right equipment, no cranes, no bulldozers.

Sometimes you have to lie to people to cheer them up. To those who questioned me, I replied : “Yes, apparently something good is coming. Between now and the month of Ramadan, everything will come to an end. The United States is putting pressure on the Israelis, and the Egyptians on Hamas. We’ll end up with something”. That’s just an analysis, with a bit of common sense. Perhaps it’s my personal wish. That all this stops. I lied, but that lie calmed people down. Everyone was happy.

It sometimes hurts me to see that people are hoping to hear something positive. They know that my main aim is to cheer them up. You have to keep hoping and, above all, you have to have a long breath after more than five months of war. Or rather ethnic cleansing, with bloodshed and massacres that never stop.

Among those listening to me was the son of a friend. He asked me: ‘Uncle Rami, are we going home? When we get home, I’ll treat you to a pizza !” This child doesn’t know that if he goes home, there won’t be any pizza. There will be no more pizzerias. There will be nothing left. Everything has been destroyed. He thinks life will go back to the way it was. I replied: ‘Yes, of course, you’ll invite me for a pizza, and I’ll invite you for an ice cream. I was happy that this child could still dream. We have dreams together.

Translated by Noël Burch.