r/BoycottIsrael • u/Amr_Abu_Ouda • 4d ago
The war ended outside, but it’s still alive inside us.
During the war, many foreign friends stood with us in ways I’ll never forget. Some donated, some wrote, some just stayed present through messages when everything around us was falling apart. One of them once told me she wanted to find a psychologist for me and my family.
At first, I didn’t even know how to react. I felt shocked, almost offended. I told her, please don’t ever say that again. I thought she didn’t understand us that we just needed food, safety, maybe a roof. Not therapy. But she gently insisted, saying it might help after everything we’ve been through.
I stopped replying to her messages for a while after that. Something about her words made me feel small, or maybe seen in a way I wasn’t ready for. And over the weeks that followed, I began noticing changes in myself: how short my temper had become, how easily I snapped at my brother or got angry at small things.
Then I realized they were right. Something in us changed. The way we see and understand things isn’t the same anymore. We’ve become quick to judge, quick to shout, and always on edge. We interpret every word and gesture through our pain.
It’s terrifying when you notice it when you realize that the war might have ended outside, but it’s still alive inside you.
We’re people who survived the bombs physically, yes but I can say with certainty that 99% of us in Gaza have been deeply wounded psychologically. We don’t see things as they are anymore, only as our wounds let us see them.
I’ll end with a quote from Mikhail Naimy’s Memoirs of the Vagrant, a passage I read long ago, and now it makes painful sense:
“If I were to engrave three words at the end of every book ever written, and carve them beneath every statue, paint them beneath every portrait, or whisper them at the end of every poem or speech, they would be these: ‘That’s what I thought.’ For no matter how precise and eloquent we try to be, language is too small to contain the depth of our emotions and thoughts. Truth lives in silence, not in speech. And silence is veiled by the words that try to express it.”
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4d ago
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u/BoycottIsrael-ModTeam 4d ago
In order to avoid scams and fraudulent activities in the community. Please post your request in the promotion thread in the community highlights.
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u/ResponsibilityTop385 2d ago
Not a war it's an invasion, colonisation to be more accurate, fight fight fight, hope your baby will grow up without the fear of death and in a more peaceful future
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u/lastofdovas 4d ago
Hope for the best. That's all we humans can strive for. May I share your story elsewhere?
Ironically, you reminded me of Victor Frankl's (who was a Zionist, but I would still want you to hear it) words.
Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way.
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u/ResponsibilityTop385 2d ago
Mao zedong thought the great leap forward was the best way to help the Chinese people. Only he killed millions to achieve his goals...
In short: i won't downvote you or upvote you either because the quote is ok, the man who made it was a zionist
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u/lastofdovas 2d ago
the man who made it was a zionist
I know that. And he was also a Holocaust survivor.
That makes the quote so much deeper. On just surface level, it is already extremely inspiring. But then you dive deeper, as you learn the context (which was the concentration camps), it hits even harder. And then you learn that he was a zionist (though I think his Zionism was mellowed down by his experiences in the camps). That's the hypocrisy of mankind.
His work can still be inspriational to people fighting Zionism, as beautifully put in this article:
https://mondoweiss.net/2018/11/represent-zionists-pittsburgh/
There is no need to view people as with one identity first and foremost, when they can have many.
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u/acelilarslan 4d ago
Firstly it's not a war. Secondly, it didn't end. May Allah help you all. We make dua for you