In the open field

Today: Zito Madu, a journalist and author of The Minotaur at Calle Lanza.

Issue No. 125

Football in Palestine
Zito Madu

Football in Palestine

by Zito Madu

About two weeks ago, there was a video on my timeline of an Israeli attack on Palestinians in Gaza. In that sense, it was a day like any other. As with all the other, similar videos, I felt the familiar tension between wanting to witness, to see for oneself with one’s own eyes, the horrors being committed against human beings in Gaza and the West Bank, and knowing that simply witnessing these things is not enough on its own; knowing how the endless stream of videos will wear on you, to the point that it reduces your capacity to think, or to work, or to critically engage with what you’re seeing. At least that is so for me. 

I hesitated to watch the video because of that tension, but also because this one included children playing football. I had seen videos of Palestinian kids in Gaza playing football before, videos that had been used to show how, even in a man-made hell, children were still finding joy with the game, and this video was the inverse. A return to the current norm—the joy wiped out, and dominance reinstated through the interruption of the game and the dead bodies afterward. But I watched the video.