Imagine if...
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I want you to do something with me:
I want you to imagine your life exactly how it is...
except...there is no running water.
Nothing in the taps. No drinking water. No showers. You can't wash your clothes. Or boil the kettle for your morning tea or coffee. And speaking of morning coffee...the toilet doesn't flush. So you can't use it.
Normally you'd be able to ask your neighbours to use their water. But they're experiencing exactly the same situation as you.
In fact, your whole city is without water. And there's a fence around your city so it's not as if you can just drive to buy it.
You never know exactly, but once or twice a week (sometimes less) a truck will arrive with water and then everyone in the area scrambles to collect as much as they are allocated.
It's never enough so you have to decide how to ration it out.
Okay. I hope you've felt that scenario in your body.
For me it creates a feeling of panic. The thought that my kids can't just reach for a drink of water when they're thirsty makes my ribs squeeze my chest.
Not having access to water (showers, toilets, laundry, cooking etc etc) is just one out of hundreds of realities that families are dealing with on a daily basis in Gā”za.
In the exercise above you still have your home, your kids still have their school, your local hospital is still intact, you're not having to live in a makeshift tent, you don't have to dig a hole for a toilet and you don't have drones noisily flying around you and your loved ones 24/7. Drones that not just report back every movement...but can follow you into your tent and drop gr*nades and explosives.
Even if you don't believe there is a gen0cide happening...I think you can acknowledge that living without access to enough water is a basic human right.
And just that alone is enough reason for humanitarians to go out on the streets and ask our leaders to "do something."
For us here in Australia, that "something" is personally boycotting products from the country that is inflicting the injustice. And on a national level, it's demanding that our leaders sanction.
Boycotts and sanctions work. Because it's "turning off the tap" financially.
Iāve been watching the Genocide unfold and Iād never looked at it from this point of view.
Itās a really good analogy.
My first thought about lack of water would be how would I take my medication?
The answer: I would not have my lifesaving medication.
My second thought is how would I cook
The answer: I couldnāt and on realising this my heart sunk as I cannot imagine being unable to provide for my child.
When my daughter was small, we struggled financially BUT at least I had some money.
My third and final thought is hygiene
The answer: I thought about not being able to wash my hands especially after going to the toilet.
Not being able to clean my teeth properly.
Not being able to have a basic wash
We cannot imagine this and because we are ācomfortableā and feel safe, we take all of these things for granted.
I look at images of Gaza, the destruction of infrastructure, the child who smiles in spite of the carnage surrounding things. I see the struggles to get food but never thought about water and how this is affecting every person in Gaza.
Your article really made me think about an essential part or our lives which in the Western World we take for granted.