On Attention

Simone Weil said 'Attention is a form of prayer.'

For the French Jewish writer Simone Weil, attention was not mere concentration or study, it was something more profound: a form of surrender and openness. ‘The capacity to give one’s attention to a sufferer is a very rare and difficult thing,’ she wrote. ‘It is almost a miracle; it is a miracle.’

Yesterday, Israel confirmed to the world that it has pummelled Gaza, one of the most densely populated places on earth, with 6,000 bombs in six days. The scale of such terror is unimaginable, but there is a calculus: in less than a week, Israel, with the full backing of Europe, the United Kingdom and the United States, dropped more bombs on civilians in Gaza than the US coalition dropped against ISIS per month between 2014-2019. During that period, the American coalition bombed Iraq and Syria – no comparison in terms of size to the concentration camp that is the Gaza enclave – between 2,000 and 5,000 times a month. Marc Garlasco, a former United Nations War Crimes Investigator, calculated that Israel has dropped more bombs in under a week than the United States was dropping in Afghanistan in a year.

What it means in actual, human terms is that according to the United Nations:

• 1 in 5 Gazans is now homeless

• 90 schools and counting have been damaged or destroyed

• more than 2,000 residential buildings and homes are beyond repair if not reduced to rubble

• 11 mosques have been obliterated

• and 423,000 Gazans are now internally displaced.

There are no ambulances for this shattered population under siege. Gazans carry their wounded children to whatever medical facilities are operational in their arms, in the back of run-down cars, hoping not to find themselves under bombardment while fathers dig through the rubble with their bare hands, searching in the dirt and debris for their sons and daughters. Language, already a desperate casualty, is so important: I say children because according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health, 60% of the wounded are women and children.

Be deliberate with your words and chose them correctly – language has been weaponized over the last week to inflame sentiments, to turn civilians into threats, and to justify large scale massacres and ethnic cleansing. Language has also been neutered and comically defanged. When asked to raise their voices against this apocalyptic violence, the statements of human rights careerists and celebrities have been mind-numbingly vapid and incoherent. They serve only as a great reminder that the powerful’s empathy extends only so far as themselves. We should not expect anything intelligent or principled out of them. This is the banality of identity politics: women identify only with women, Asian actors only with other Asian actors, and so on. There is certainly a price to be paid for speaking out in support of Palestinians as they face an onslaught from a nuclear armed superpower backed by all of the West’s democracies, who are openly supporting Israel’s slaughter with arms, money and pressure, but be under no illusion: you and I are not the ones who will be paying that price.

Human Rights Watch has now verified that Israel used white phosphorous in Gaza and Lebanon during the past week – the use of which is internationally banned and constitutes a clear war crime. White phosphorous is unlawful because it sets the skin on fire causing ‘excruciating burns’ – according to HRW, white phosphorous burns on even ‘10% of a human body are often fatal’ because of damage to the liver, heart and kidneys. Israel has often used this weapon indiscriminately; it used it against civilians in Lebanon during their invasion in 1982 and against Palestinians countless times – 2008, 2009, 2013 to name a few.

But for Israel, there is no end to the catalogue of suffering they are prepared to put Palestinians through. This morning, Israel announced it intention to flatten Gaza, to erase it from the map, calling on 1.1 million Gazans to evacuate within 24 hours or face the consequences. How can Gazans go anywhere? They are under naval, air and land blockades and Israel has cut their access to fuel. How should fathers and mothers carry their wounded children to nowhere? It is a frighteningly disingenuous warning: Israel knows that Gazans cannot go anywhere, they have locked them in that open air prison for decades. But there are other reasons that Gazans cannot go anywhere. Seventy percent of Gazans are already refugees, previously displaced from their homes and villages by Israel. They have a memory of being swept out of their homes, never to return. This horror did not begin a week ago; Israel has been displacing Palestinians for 75 years.

The Palestinian Red Crescent will keep their medics on the ground in Gaza. ‘We did not and will not leave,’ they said in a statement issued this afternoon. ‘Our medics will carry on their humanitarian duties. We won’t leave people to face death alone.’ It is certain that the next 24 hours will bring fresh horror to Gaza and however terrified we are, we must all be believers and practitioners of miracles now – the kind that Weil wrote about – the miracle of giving our unbroken attention to those who suffer. Attention is a form of prayer, Weil said. Don’t be complicit, don’t drop your gaze as hard as it is to look.