Genocide in Gaza: A Chronicle of Misery

“Don’t look left,” Atef Abu Saif warns his son as they flee Israeli attacks in northern Gaza, because soldiers target those who don’t keep their eyes fixed straight ahead. Don’t hurry or they’ll think you have an evil intent. Don’t carry large bundles or they will suspect you of transporting weapons. Don’t do anything that will give them reason to shoot you.

It is during a time of peace that novelist and journalist Abu Saif and his 15-year-old son, Yasser, visit Gaza on a Thursday to see relatives, intending to return to their home in the West Bank on Sunday. But on Saturday, October 7, the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas launches an armed incursion into southern Israel, massacring over a thousand Israeli citizens, including hundreds of young people attending a music festival. Israeli retribution is swift and brutal, as Hamas leaders must have anticipated. Don’t Look Left recounts, in diary form, Abu Saif’s experiences as he goes from one place of shelter to another, to escape the rain of rockets and drones, trying to guess from where the next assault will come. The book recalls Abu Saif’s documentation of Israel’s 2014 attack on Gaza, The Drone Eats with Me: A Gaza Diary, an account of the relentless destruction and deprivation Israel levied on Gazans for a period of 51 days following the kidnapping and murder of three Israeli teenagers in the West Bank by Hamas-affiliated militants. As a result of the yet more devastating 2023 assault, Gazans in the north are forced farther and farther south. Among the displaced are Abu Saif and Yasser, who end up living in tents near Rafah without enough food or protection from the cold. On day 85 of the war, they are granted permission to exit to Egypt, possibly because of Abu Saif’s position as minister for culture in the Palestinian National Authority (PNA).

The PNA has limited control over Palestinian enclaves in the West Bank in civil matters and internal security. In 2006 the administration of Gaza passed from the PNA, controlled by Fatah, a coalition party formally known as the Palestinian National Liberation Movement, to Hamas in elections Hamas won by a plurality. Further elections were suspended due to the ongoing conflict between Fatah and Hamas over control of the governing apparatus. In the 2019 anti-Hamas demonstrations in Gaza protesting poor living conditions, Abu Saif, along with many others, was savagely beaten.

In his diary, Abu Saif makes no mention of the Hamas attacks that triggered the war. This is quite puzzling. Possibly this is because the atrocities of Hamas have been well publicized, unlike much of the retribution of the Israelis. Or possibly because the events of October 7, unjustifiable as they were, didn’t come out of nowhere, and you would have to go back to 1948 and before to understand the complex origins of the conflict. [For the backstory, see Thomas Storck’s guest column “Clarifying Our Thinking about the Holy Land” in this issue. — Ed.]

As we learn in Abu Saif’s chronicle of misery, the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) has had the objective of forcing Gazans to the south of the strip — but for what dénouement? In the north, the IDF has destroyed residences, schools, hospitals, mosques, churches, farms, and even graveyards. At times, the IDF has warned the residents of a particular apartment complex that they must leave, with very little notice. Then the building is leveled. This means the IDF does not always target buildings where terrorists are hiding; why would they give their enemies an opportunity to escape? Whole neighborhoods are eliminated in this fashion. The frequency of the bombings leads adults and children to write their names on their bodies, so they can be identified if they’re pulled from the rubble.

The sufferings of Abu Saif’s 23-year-old niece, Wissam, are particularly poignant. This recent graduate of an art institute and her sister were the only members of their immediate family who survived when their residence was struck. But Wissam lost her legs and right hand. There are no painkillers at Al Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, so she begs her uncle for a lethal injection, confident that Allah will forgive her. “But he will not forgive me, Wissam,” he replies, reminding her of the “wisdom of the Almighty.” Later, with difficulty Wissam is evacuated to the south when the Al Shifa Hospital comes under siege. She is then permitted to exit to Egypt, where she will receive treatment at a hospital and wait for prosthetics. The remaining patients and staff are given one hour to leave before the Israeli Army takes over the hospital, which is eventually destroyed. Abu Saif does not address the possibility that Hamas militants had been using the hospital as a base, an accusation made by Israel. Nevertheless, we must ask whether this justifies the demolition of the hospital, Gaza’s largest.

The privations Gazans experience increase over the course of the war. Even water becomes scarce, as Israelis have cut off power sources that provide electricity for water pumps. Electrical power is only available intermittently, affecting communication with the outside world, as it is difficult to recharge phones and computers. When Abu Saif and Yasser flee to the south, food becomes even more difficult to obtain, along with cooking oil, which is in short supply, as most of it is used as fuel for vehicles for want of gasoline. A man already living in Rafah, a writer, has burned 200 of his books to provide fuel for cooking. “My kids need bread,” he remarks. “What use are books if I let them die of hunger?” A malnourished mother cannot produce enough milk for her newborn. Very little humanitarian aid reaches the people.

Shining through Abu Saif’s diary is the organic nature of Gazan society. People willingly share what little they have. When a rocket hits a building, men rush out in the middle of the night to rescue those buried under the rubble, to take the injured to the hospital, and to locate the bodies of those killed for proper burial, which is very important in Islam. They frantically try to locate the relatives and friends of those affected by the attacks. Abu Saif is concerned about dozens of his relatives and numerous friends and colleagues. Gazans live in a social context of interconnectedness.

We do not have to follow the logic of the conflict to make a moral judgment about the targeting of civilians. Over half of the tens of thousands of Palestinians who have perished are women and children. As we read in the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church, “The right to use force for purposes of legitimate defense is associated with the duty to protect and help innocent victims who are not able to defend themselves from acts of aggression”; displacement, the forced transfers of land, and ethnic cleansing are condemned (no. 504). Abu Saif writes, “It’s not Hamas they’re cleansing. It’s Arabs.” Don’t Look Left provides the documentation.

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