Mothers of the world! Unite!

I don't like special days. Perhaps it is because I realize more deeply how they ruthlessly rub the world's hypocrisy in our faces. Being subjected to a bombardment of advertisements weeks in advance, adorned with refrains like “The most beautiful gift, special for mothers…” creates a feeling of alienation toward these special days… I turn off the radio, I delete them from my email. I block them from messages. I change the channel. Yesterday, while zapping in a state of exhaustion from these “Mother's Day” commercials, a news report on France 24 caught my eye.

“You are watching our bombardment, our slaughter, as if you were watching an ordinary movie,” a mother was saying! “We are losing a generation of children here. We are being massacred as a generation, and you are watching our slaughter as if you were watching commercials or movies,” she said!

She had clutched her two children to her chest, the deep wound of the cold face of war in her eyes, having taken refuge in the Nuseirat refugee camp, which had been turned into a shelter in the middle of bombed-out Gaza. The mother had an oud in her hand. “I silence the fear in my heart by playing the oud for my children,” she said. The children, exhausted by the war, and their mothers were singing songs. In the middle of the Gaza Strip, in a refugee shelter, Palestinian music instructors and psychologists were providing healing to children and their mothers through music.

Music instructors from the Edward Said National Conservatory of Music were teaching children exhausted by war how to resist through music… Tears streamed down my eyes.

I thought of the Palestinian Edward Said, author of the book “Out of Place,” who defined himself as a homeless activist, expelled from both the East and the West for speaking the truth…

“I believe in human agency,” he had said. “I have a concern, like resisting, like not staying silent.”

We all must have a concern like resisting, not staying silent, and taking action.

Why can't we stop this massacre?

Watching the world's hypocrisy confronts us with the unbearable weight of being human…

In 2024, the number of children slaughtered by Israel reached 14 thousand. The number of mothers killed has exceeded 10 thousand.

To be a mother in Gaza means to experience the unbearable pain of existence! Only another mother can feel the burning heart of a mother,

And perhaps stop it. And I feel like shouting from within, “Mothers of the world, unite!”

Happy Mother's Day…