These days I am afraid of the news. Every day a new form of escalation. Missiles fired. Missiles intercepted. Whole residential blocks turned to rubble. Bodies in flight. Bodies dislocated. Bodies evaporated into thin air. Bodies rendered indistinguishable. Bodies dehumanised, subtracted from soul. The blinding pursuit of land at the expense of those already inhabiting it. Lives torn away from their relational systems. Bodies in flight. Bodies that were seeking refuge from flight having to flee again, and again, and again. The horror!

Being a mother makes every loss feel more acute, even if it is not your own, even if it is not connected to you through flesh and blood. If you are a mother; if you are feminist; if you are capable of feeling, it is impossible not to grieve for the monumental devastation that seems not to cease, that doesn’t pause to catch its breath, only escalates, only accelerates, growing more colossal with the hour. I grieve for our collective humanity, because I don’t know how we can go back to the world we knew before the repercussive actions after October 7, 2023, when misinformation and sentiment were mined to justify the siege of Gaza and the subsequent and ongoing displacement, destruction and devastation. International law has been flouted so often; it doesn’t mean anything. Since the Israeli forces do not hold themselves accountable to anyone, there is only impunity. There is an audacious commitment to the military-industrial complex. There is only the might of weaponry. People are being killed like flies, like their existence, their subjectivities never mattered.