Pascal T

This is quite something! Emmanuel Todd, probably France's greatest living intellectual: "After a long life of reflection, I have arrived at the conclusion that the destruction of American power will be the beginning of peace for the planet."

I'm re-upping this because I'm getting the impression that people are increasingly fatigued of pointing out Israel's war crimes: again today Israel blew up Rafah's water supply and killed dozens of civilians who had taken refuge in a school, which barely made a blip in the news... And I'm not going to lie, I'm guilty of this too: it's incredibly dispiriting to see that the enormous worldwide mobilization has yielded so little effect and the horrors continue apace. All the more so when IDF soldiers keep taunting the world by boasting about their actions on social media in total impunity, when you see things like Netanyahu being received like a demigod in the US Congress, and when those who protest all this are demonized in so many ways as "antisemites" or "useful idiots". But I'm also reminded of these words 👇 by 102 years old philosopher Edgar Morin, one of France's most revered intellectual figures, as well as a Jewish WW2 resistant who fought as a lieutenant in De Gaulle's France combattante. You can read the entire translation of words on Gaza below but this part is especially relevant at this point in time: "We are living through a horrible tragedy because we are also powerless in the face of this thing that is unleashing. At least, I say: bear witness! The only thing that remains if we cannot resist concretely is to testify. Let's resist in our minds, let's not be fooled, let's not forget, let's have the courage to face things head-on." The very least we can do is to bear witness. It was probably always naive to expect that our words as citizens would be heard - if our voices actually mattered when they disagree with the powers that be, we'd have noticed by now - but there's value in bearing witness in and of itself. Though our words may seem futile today, they are etching an indelible record upon the heart of history and humanity's conscience. And perhaps, in some hopefully not too distant future, these accumulated testimonies will rise like a chorus, forcing onto the world a reckoning it can no longer ignore. At the very least, history won't be recorded as "they died and we stayed silent".