Occupatio*

*Occupatio is a classical rhetorical device that identifies facts or arguments by purporting not to refer to them. In this case we shall not mention the final ‘n’.

I am contemplating what sandwich I shall have for lunch.

So I am not going to talk about Gaza.

I shall not make reference to the 16,000 men women and children who have died under the Israeli onslaught since October 7th.

Nor can we talk of children buried under rubble. Nor the stink of death and ordure.

For that matter let us not discuss the displacement of 1.9 million people.

It would be invidious to recognize that 50% of those are children.

Neither is this the place to mention the UN analysis of 2018 that Gaza would be uninhabitable by 2020.

I shall not refer to seventeen-plus years of the Israeli lockdown of Gaza, the seventy-five years since 1948.

Nor can we discuss the restrictions on what has been permitted to go in and out of that strip of land, keeping the population at just a few calories above subsistence level.

I shall not mention that even before this episode more than 97% of Gaza’s water was undrinkable.

Nor shall I spend time talking about the 2,000 and 1,000-pound bombs manufactured by Boeing, supplied by the United States, dropped on Palestinian civilians.

I cannot begin to allude to the shattered dreams of mothers, fathers, children.

Nor is there room for discussing the hypocrisy of those who devalue the odium of antisemitism, nor of the asymmetry when it comes to islamophobia.

Please, I am preoccupied: make that pastrami on rye, pickle on the side.

HM  6 December 2023