Hunger in Gaza and Cousin Levi

Comes from the news of the latest days:

“Mahmoud al-Haw is one of several Palestinians gathered with a soup of the poor, frantically shaking the empty cups. In the front line, children cry and wield plastic buckets, hoping to receive some soup shells. The man progresses to his own, ritual he practices every day, because he fears his four children will be hungry.

Through the ruins of Jabalia, in northern Gaza, Haw spends up to six hours between crowds that, like him, aim to collect enough to feed his family. Sometimes you are lucky, and you find lentil soup. Others returns the house to shake. ”

What’s more, how good it would be if it was less or nothing more:

“I have a sick daughter. I can not give you anything. There is no bread, there is nothing. I have been here since eight in the morning, just to have a dish for six people, when not to one person,” the 39 -year -old man confessed to the Reuters agency. ‘ “The children are dying.” The unbridled search for food in Gaza

“Israel’s control over food and help Gaza has been a constant theme in the last 18 months. In fact, just two weeks after the start of Israel’s massive military campaign at the end of 2023, Oxfam International reported that only about 2% of the normal amount of food was being delivered to residents in the territory and warned of“ use of hunger ”Israeli promised a“ basic amount ” Foods for Gaza – But its policies have already created a catastrophic risk of hunger for millions of people

This news brings me to the great book “Is this a man?” of Primo Levi, who relates these days for the duty and need for a letter to new novel. This was hunger in the Nazi concentration camp, on pages of the indispensable writer’s account:

“The companions sleep. They breathe, snore, some complain and speak. Many snap their lips and move the jaws. They dream they eat; this is also a dream of all, a cruel dream; who created the myth of tantalum must know it. Not only can the food, clear, concrete, perceive their smell, fat and penetrating; Therefore, there is a different fact, and the act is interrupted. Then the dream dissolves, it is quoted in its elements, but it is soon restored, resumes, similar and diverse;

We learn the value of food; We, too, now scrape the bottom of the Gamela, and hold it under the chin when we eat bread, so as not to waste crumbs. We also now know that it is not the same thing to receive a soup shell removed from the surface, or from the bottom of the panel, and we are already in a position to calculate, at the base of the capacity of the various panels, which is the most convenient place when we enter the line. ”

And near the end of hell, Cousin Levi narrates the eve of the field’s liberation by the Red Army, when the Nazis fled in the stampede:

“Extracting the potatoes was not an easy job. Because of the ice, the earth was hard as marble. It was necessary to get hard with the pick to pierce the crust and to detach the warehouse. Most of us, however, would rather get into the holes left by others, penetrate the opening and reach the potatoes to the companions who waited outside.

An Old Hungarian had been harvested there by death. Harbling in the posture of the hungry: the head and shoulders under the earth, the belly in the snow, reaching out to the potatoes. Those who arrived later pushed the corpse a little and, cleared the opening, resumed the work. ”

It is an ironic tragedy, to offend deep our hearts, who descended from the murdered by Nazis apply today’s execution in the Gaza fields. What would Cousin Levi say of this betrayal of fraternity values? Is this a man? But I feel that themselves, the soldiers of the state of Israel, know that they are not men. And so they kill like crazy beasts.

My capacity and disability of fictionist do not allow me to write as cousin Levi. Not even make an attempt to caricature. I am incapable. So I can say that to Israel’s fascist state soldiers apply to Primo Levi’s question: Is this a man? And I finally answer, “These murderers, who commit a crime of war against humanity, are not men.” Get up from the tomb, Cousin Levi! Speak again, “Is this a man?”