The past month, more than 2,500 Palestinians took part in a marathon, with hundreds of participants running inside Gaza itself. At the same time, surfers in the war-torn territory were catching waves and finding rare moments of joy, as reported by the Associated Press. A football match was also held and covered by Turkish state media.
If this is a genocide, it may well be the strangest one ever recorded.
Let me be clear: no one serious is denying the very real human suffering, the destruction, the displacement, or the tragic loss of life that war inevitably brings. War is not a comedy, and pretending otherwise would be grotesque. But the increasingly hysterical claims of a systematic, deliberate extermination, complete with mass starvation and the total erasure of a people, are getting harder and harder to reconcile with the images and reports coming out of Gaza.
While pro-Palestinian demonstrators in Sydney last Tuesday were being told that Israelis were deliberately starving Gazans to death and carrying out industrial-scale extermination, Gazans were limbering up for fun runs, waxing surfboards, and cheering at football matches.
Try to recall the chapter in Anne Frank’s diary where she and her friends went surfing or played organized sports during the height of the Nazi genocidal campaign. You can’t! because that reality simply did not exist. Actual genocides do not usually feature that weekend marathons, surfing sessions, and local sports leagues.
The contrast is jarring. On one hand, we have a narrative of unprecedented horror and famine. On the other, we have footage and reporting of normal civilian activities continuing under extraordinarily difficult circumstances. These scenes do not erase the genuine costs of the conflict, but they do severely undermine the credibility of those shouting “genocide” as the only possible description.
Words have meaning. Genocide is not a term to be thrown around lightly for rhetorical effect or political convenience. If Gazans can organize and participate in marathons, catch waves, and enjoy football matches, then perhaps it’s time for a more honest conversation about what is actually happening — one that acknowledges complexity, suffering on multiple sides, and the difference between a brutal urban war and systematic industrial extermination.
The marathon’s events in Gaza deserve to be acknowledged honestly, not memory-holed because they don’t fit the preferred narrative.
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