Is Peace an Empty Territory?

Something seems to be changing in the way the Gaza massacre is being told.
The killing of children (and their families), the explicit intentions to deport the survivors—more than a million people—to destinations that are unknown (and largely implausible), and above all the growing awareness that what we are witnessing is a genocide, are beginning to appear even in the reporting of some of the so-called mainstream media. Not without friction: one example is the clash on 17 May between the European Broadcasting Union and Spain’s public broadcaster RTVE, which preceded the start of the Eurovision Song Contest final with a 16-second video showing white text on a black background: “In the face of human rights, silence is not an option. Peace and justice for Palestine.” The broadcaster received an official warning as a result.

A multiplication of initiatives that gives reason for hope

Even more than the new attention from many media outlets (though not all) that had so far remained silent and absent on what is happening in Gaza, it is the multiplication of initiatives that gives reason to hope for a shift. Just to mention a few recent ones: the campaign “9 May: Gaza’s Last Day,” launched by a group of intellectuals including Paola Caridi and Tomaso Montanari, sought to state—on Europe Day itself—that if we as citizens, if Europe, do nothing, Gaza will die. The campaign met with overwhelming (and perhaps unexpected) success, offering people who feel the frustration of being able to make very little difference at least the opportunity to say: we are here. To put their face to it, along with their availability and their emotions.

And since we are journalists and work in communication, it is important to note the (widely shared) decision of the jury of the international literary prize dedicated to Tiziano Terzani to dedicate the award to the memory of Palestinian journalists killed in Gaza since 7 October, foregoing the selection of a literary work.

This decision was preceded a few days earlier by something never seen before: the National Council of the Order of Journalists approved by acclamation a motion calling for full and accurate reporting on Palestine. The rationale states: “In a year and a half of war, Israeli operations in Gaza have caused the deaths of more than 200 Palestinian journalists. This is an unprecedented massacre in the history of our profession, as demonstrated by a recent study by Brown University in the United States.” At least 40 of these colleagues, the motion recalls, were killed while holding the tools of their profession—a pen, a microphone, a camera—and wearing vests marked “press.” Clearly identifiable, therefore.

“The Israeli army is attempting to impose a media blackout on Gaza, silencing witnesses to the war crimes committed by its troops—acts also denounced by international NGOs and United Nations bodies. The attempt to obstruct free information is also evident in the Israeli government’s refusal to allow foreign journalists to enter the Gaza Strip. As a representative body of journalists, it is our duty not to remain indifferent and to denounce all this,” the motion continues.

Building the words to speak about peace

Silence is no longer an option, then. And while we may hope that this new and increasingly widespread attention will lead those who have remained silent so far to take different positions—“To the Israeli government we say enough; there has been a reaction, now let us move toward peace,” for example, stated Minister Tajani—it is precisely peace that is difficult to imagine. Not only because Netanyahu’s response has been the launch of the “Gideon’s Chariots” campaign, but because peace is difficult not only to build, but even to think about and represent.

This is shown very clearly in the drawings made by children from a Roman school, presented during the event “The Chronic Trauma of War,” organized by Zadig and the Circolo Gianni Bosio at the Casa della Memoria e della Storia in Rome on 13 May.

The children were asked to draw war and peace, and the drawings are immediately explicit. War is action: it is full of things happening—people shooting, fires, explosions, destroyed houses. Peace, at best, is a flowering meadow with birds singing, a rainbow—but people are absent. This goes as far as one drawing that places a red background filled with human figures next to a completely empty blue one. Children are unable to imagine peace as spaces populated by people living calm lives, engaged in everyday activities: reading a book, cooking soup.

Of course, drawings of war reflect what is seen and heard. But this also means that images and narratives of peace are missing: the collective imagination of peace is not being sufficiently nourished. This is hardly surprising. The rhetoric of war is frequent and easy. Precisely for this reason, it is evident that the efforts of communication and education must focus on building a “rhetoric of peace”: a new discourse made of words capable of describing it and envisioning it, words that are just as compelling and, above all, real. So that drawings may begin to fill with people living in peace.