I'm writing this from my study in Europe, where the autumn light filters through windows that have never known the sound of falling bombs. The irony isn't lost on me—here I sit, safe in my wheelchair, contemplating horrors unfolding thousands of miles away while sipping morning coffee that tastes of normalcy.
But normalcy feels like a lie when I read about Givat Gobi.
The Theater of Annihilation
Picture this: a hillside in southern Israel where people arrive daily with rented binoculars. They're not birdwatching. They're not stargazing. They're watching Gaza burn—live, in real-time, like spectators at a football match . The smell of popcorn would complete this grotesque carnival, wouldn't it?
This isn't war reporting. This isn't documentation. This is genocide as entertainment, and it represents something so fundamentally broken in our humanity that I struggle to find words adequate to the horror.
Antonio Prete's devastating account forces us to confront three uncomfortable truths that challenge everything we tell ourselves about civilization. First, that we've somehow evolved beyond the Roman Colosseum—we haven't, we've just moved the arena. Second, that modern warfare has rules and limits—it doesn't, not when one side holds all the power. Third, that the international community will intervene when things go too far—they won't, not when geopolitical interests override human lives .
The Sound of Silence
Here's what keeps me awake at night: the silence. Not from Gaza—that's filled with the screams of children, the crash of collapsing hospitals, the desperate cries of parents digging through rubble with bare hands. No, the silence I'm talking about comes from Washington, from Brussels, from the halls of power where men in expensive suits offer "concerns" and "deep worry" while continuing to ship weapons .
240 journalists have been killed trying to show us the truth . They died so we could see, so we could know, so we could act. Instead, we've turned their sacrifice into content, their final photographs into debate topics, their voices into political talking points.
The texture of this betrayal feels rough against my conscience, like sandpaper against skin.
When God Becomes a Real Estate Agent
What strikes me most about Prete's analysis is how he exposes the perverse logic underlying this destruction. There's an American plan—detailed, architectural, complete with resort hotels and shopping boulevards—to transform Gaza's coastline into a vacation paradise once it's been "cleared" of Palestinians . The cynicism is breathtaking: they're literally drawing up blueprints over mass graves.
This isn't war; it's urban planning through genocide.
The plan apparently draws inspiration from Baron Haussmann's renovation of Paris after 1848—designed specifically to prevent popular uprisings by making barricades impossible. The historical parallel is chilling: then, as now, the powerful reshape geography to eliminate resistance, to make the inconvenient disappear.
The Stranger's Wisdom
Prete introduces us to Edmond Jabès, a Jewish intellectual who understood something profound about identity and belonging. When a Israeli minister declared that "all Palestinians are terrorists," Jabès simply stood up and walked out, followed by the entire audience . No speeches, no debates—just the quiet dignity of refusal.
Jabès wrote about the stranger within ourselves, about hospitality as a crossroads of paths, about the miracle of recognizing the "you" in every encounter . His vision of Judaism—rooted in diaspora experience, in knowing what it means to be foreign—stands in stark opposition to the nationalism that now kills in Judaism's name.
Reading Jabès today feels like discovering a different planet, one where Jewish identity meant protecting the vulnerable rather than creating them.
The Weight of Names
Cardinal Zuppi read the names of dead Palestinian children at Sant'Anna di Stazzema—a place that knows something about massacres . Each name carried the weight of a story cut short, dreams interrupted, futures erased. This is what Prete calls "proximity to individual bodies"—the recognition that behind every statistic lies a universe of human experience.
We've become experts at abstraction, at converting human suffering into geopolitical analysis. We discuss "acceptable losses" and "strategic objectives" while children starve and hospitals burn. This distance isn't just intellectual—it's moral. It allows us to sleep while others die.
We Are All Complicit
Here's my revelation, the thought that cuts through all the analysis and leaves me raw: we are not passive observers of this genocide. Every day we don't act, every weapon shipment we don't block, every economic relationship we don't sever makes us accomplices . The binoculars on Givat Gobi are just a more honest version of our own spectatorship.
I sit here in my comfortable European study, writing about horrors I cannot fully comprehend, and I realize that my words—our words—are not enough. They never were. The gap between witnessing and acting, between knowing and doing, has become an abyss that swallows conscience whole.
What Remains
The Israeli Knesset has legally annexed the West Bank . Settlements expand daily, protected by state violence. The logic is simple and terrifying: might makes right, God grants territory, and international law is for other people.
Meanwhile, in Gaza, the methodical destruction continues. Not just of buildings and bodies, but of the very possibility that we might still call ourselves civilized. The binoculars on that hillside reflect more than distant explosions—they reflect who we've become when we think nobody's watching.
As I finish writing this, the afternoon light has shifted. Somewhere, far from here, another child has died while the world debates and delays. Another family has been erased while we craft careful statements about "both sides."
The stranger that Jabès wrote about isn't just the Palestinian under bombardment—it's the part of ourselves we've abandoned in our rush to normalize the unthinkable.
This is Gerd Dani writing for FreeAstroScience, where we believe that understanding our world—and our failures—requires the same rigor we bring to understanding the cosmos. Sometimes the most important science is the study of how human beings lose their humanity.
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