Why Gaza Matters

With the death toll steadily rising in Gaza, the number of Israeli strikes shows no sign of slowing. In fact, earlier today, Israel rejected International calls for a 48-hour ‘humanitarian ceasefire’ saying such a prospect was ‘unrealistic’. Capturing the ‘lead story’ in most international media broadcasts (BBC, CNN, Fox News, Al Jazeera) since the crisis began on Saturday, during the past 24 hours we have seen that prized media position slip to second or third billing - in one case trailing such important news flashes as the fate of a rowdy England footballer or the rundown of the top ten music albums of 2008.

Perhaps for that reason, Gaza matters a little more.

Rather than wade into the readily available raft of facts and figures on the number of bombs dropped, casualties predicted, or estimated shortages in medicines and supplies (the mainstay of traditional reporting), it is critical to recognize just ‘why’ the situation in Gaza is important. As the media tires of what is sure to be a long and protracted story with fewer truly ‘unique’ angles, let us drop the trivial rhetoric of who fired what object at whom first, who refuses to recognize the other’s rights, or even who is morally correct in their belligerence.

“What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty or democracy?”  - Mahatma Gandhi

The situation in Gaza matters not for what it empirically describes - conflict, devastation, passion and outrage - but functions as a microcosm of the most basic of human dramas enacted daily by nations, movements, groups and even individuals: the desire for freedom, control, and self-determination.

In the ongoing struggle to realize this human right - a situation wholly taken for granted by most of us in the West - the Palestinian people of Gaza have appealed repeatedly to the international community, their leaders, and eventually to hardline movements to embody and carry on this struggle. Regardless of the paths, the betrayals, and the ongoing disappointment, the 1.5 million Gazans living in the largest ‘open air’ prison in the world have chosen to endure; they have made the ‘choice’ to survive. Perhaps for that reason, Gaza matters a little more.

Viktor Frankl, an Austrian psychiatrist, Holocaust survivor and founder of Logotherapy discovered freedom existed even in the darkest corners of the concentration and extermination camps of Nazi Germany during the Second World War. As he wrote in his defining work, Man’s Search for Meaning:

“Everything can be taken from a man or a woman but one thing: the last of human freedoms to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”

For Frankl, the existential choice of freedom lies beyond prisons, boundaries, and even the limits of the human body. In his eyes, this ‘ability to choose one’s attitude’ no matter how limited the choice appears, is the true path to freedom. Through it all, we in the West who regard ourselves as ‘free’ perhaps have a great deal to learn from the Palestinians - who at this moment are suffering and fighting and dying and surviving.

“The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.”  - Albert Camus

Perhaps for that reason, Gaza matters a little more.