When the deaf in Gaza started to hear, the world was deaf‎ ‎. ‎‎By Issa Qaraqe‎ Translated by Ibrahim Ebeid

‎ When the deaf in Gaza started to hear, the world was deaf‎
 ‎‎By Issa Qaraqe‎
Translated by Ibrahim Ebeid.

‎I watched the film (Vibrations for Gaza) by the Palestinian director Dr. Rehab Nazzal, I was surprised that the deaf children in the Gaza Strip with whom the director lived, and watched their behavior during the successive wars launched by Israel on the Strip, have become hearing the horror of explosions, concussions and the sound of destruction, they hear with their trembling bodies, and with their surprised eyes, they hear screams and pleas, they hear their terrified features, the vibrations of their organs, they hear what the faces of the terrified people fleeing from the bombing and death say, they hear the last words uttered by the severed heads, and the last storm of human remains They hear what is above ground and underground in this Zionist-American hell, and what the martyrs say in crowded cemeteries.‎
‎The deaf in Gaza are the only ones who heard the sound of death claiming lives around the clock, they heard the sound of children and women falling individually and in groups, the comprehensive survey of homes and families, the fires in tents, schools and hospitals, the sound of bombs that awakened all the disabled senses, the sound in the ears, mind and brain, the sound under their feet, above them and around them, the sound of hunger, diseases and mute emotions.‎
‎The deaf are hearing while the world has been hit by deafness, the international community is frozen and all feelings are dead, there are no laws and no justice, no exhalation, no inhalation, no protection, no medicine, no air or water, no one hears and no one sees, as if nothing is happening in Gaza, the eye sees and the eye of the world is blind.‎
‎Every member of the deaf body moved and complained, every pulse and nerve. At the same time, the rest of the international community, human rights institutions, and guardians of human dignity did not fall asleep and remained feverish.‎
‎The sound of the drone penetrated the body, the buzz and roar of explosions day and night, whistling, smoke and grilled meat, no sleep or wakefulness, the disability of the deaf did not provide them with calm and tranquility, they drew the sound of death on their school notebooks and their bodies, nightmares that speak and speak, and when they found everything closed, the human conscience is closed, I watched them go to the sea to wake up the waves in sign language, the sea carries blood, corpses and vibrations, the sea of Gaza is not a mute devil.‎
‎In the bloody and horrific war of extermination on Gaza, some hear and do not speak, some speak and do not hear, and some cover their eyes and join the ranks of the dead.‎
‎In the war of extermination on Gaza, I saw the deaf and dumb and many of them around us, with us a. Ins, helpless, indifferent, calcified, spreading a language against the Palestinian spirit in a battle that pushed the Palestinian into absence, speaking words in speech, closing their ears with mud and dirt, as if they had died humanly and nationally in a way that has no glory or bereavement, I wish they had remained silent.‎
‎The slaughtered and charred children of Gaza say: We hear with the heart, not with philosophy and heresy, and whoever was afflicted with the disability of silence has faded into ruin, and whoever is satisfied to swallow his tongue and wait for Gaza to leave existence has died in death silent and swept away by oblivion, the sound is movement, resistance and life, the sound is thought, culture and space in space, let alone many who abandoned their humanity, closed their ears and mouths and turned into a deaf machine.‎
‎Don’t say: we didn’t hear, our bodies didn’t tremble under the barrage of shells, rockets, fires and bullets, don’t say why we were humiliated, tortured and snatched our humanity from our flesh and bones in prisons and camps, don’t say why our women and youth were raped in interrogation centers and their bodies were thrown in refrigerators or containers, and don’t say we didn’t hear the sound of raids, arrests, bulldozing homes and camps, settler and attacks, don’t say that our emotions were not shaken in front of the scenes of massacres and the scattering of bodies, Zionist crimes beat your hearing, dreams and being to the point that death and murder In front of your homes in Rafah and Ramallah, has death overflowed so that the springs of life will remain silent in you? Has the homeland from sea to sea become a homeland for death and martyrs?‎
‎Deaf children in Gaza are hearing now, but the new man of annihilation, who was melted by fire, and engineered by this war emotionally, psychologically, physically and politically, has sunk from vein to vein in dullness, and if a person is not free with his hearing and tongue, he will not be free in his positions, it is an audio, visual and physical annihilation, the annihilation of a homeland, identity and will, a faith and spiritual annihilation, the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) said: Whoever sees one of you as a denier, let him change it with his hand, and if he cannot, then with his tongue, and if he cannot, then with his heart, and that weakens faith, O people: listen, speak and move, get out of the funerals that are no longer for the dead only, but for the living, self-extermination and spiritual destruction, which is the most dangerous form of extermination, and we are a people who only want life and freedom, and freedom has an eye, ear, tongue and gun, and what does not excite us kills us and robs us of our soul from the place.‎
‎Deaf children in Gaza hear, war and trauma heal souls, and the ear sees before the eye sometimes, they hear more than we hear, they see more than we see, they see Zionist tanks, planes and bulldozers, not only targeting Gaza, but seeking to destroy our narrative and story, the Nazi gas ovens have become a pretext to burn and bulldoze our lives and silence our voice from the land, history and memory.‎
‎We will not believe that the victim turns into an executioner, history lies, and the so-called Israeli tragedy is not solved by committing a Palestinian tragedy and a humanitarian catastrophe unparalleled in contemporary history, history lies, and Gaza is the witness, the witness, the truthful, the truth and the martyr, it is not our competence as Palestinians to provide a solution to the security complex of the Israeli invaders and war criminals, our country is our country, let them search for their country if they have a country far from our full lives.‎
‎Deaf children in Gaza hear and the world is deaf, so you who hear, do not separate the sound from the light, do not separate the body of Gaza from Jerusalem and the occupied West Bank, do not leave Haifa alone, talk about the inclusive national identity, do not turn the division into an identity as the martyr Walid Daqqa said, do not separate the flesh from the bone and the image from reality, please do not speak a collapsed language, and do not write with dead fingers.‎