Nothing is Enough and Everything Matters
“We’re living what I can’t help but call a time of genocide”.
Paola Caridi is firm in her declaration, leaving no space for doubt. “It’s the hardest time since the end of the Second World War”, a hyper-genocide that’s destroying not only a people, but also their land, a country in its entirety. All the while the West remains mostly oblivious to the unfolding savagery.
Caridi is joined by Gad Lerner and Omar El Akkad. Together, they try to confront this disquieting time and investigate what, if anything, intellectuals can do. El Akkad speaks with discomforting clarity. Only a completely sociopathic society forces its people to know how to resist a genocide. “You’re not supposed to know offhand how to react”, and the only option you are left with is desperately looking for the best way to resist. “When I look in the mirror, I feel a sense of complete impotence, and a sense of complete complicity”. There’s no rhetoric in his words, only raw honesty. He seems to be uncomfortable, and the same uneasiness engulfs the audience, with everyone forced to face their responsibilities.
On the other hand, Lerner speaks about identity, of the necessity of dealing with the inevitable change spurred by the last few years. “After Gaza, I am more Jewish than before, because everyone keeps remembering me of my identity”. And yet, he acknowledges no peace will come without a devastating transformation “over the dead body of Hebraism”, at least the way he used to perceive it and live it.
He’s not afraid of being provocative. He not so subtly suggests that more people than we think might agree with the German Chancellor Merz, who affirmed that Israel is “doing our dirty work”. Killing those who don’t agree with us, “dispose of” the unwanted and the inconvenient. What if this was the only way to keep our society going? A rhetorical question, of course. But one that chills.
The conversation turns to the question of the colour line – does it still exist? Has it been substituted by some other kind of oppression? El Akkad is once again devastating: “the colour line doesn’t work unless the people at the bottom of the hierarchy know exactly where they stand, while the people at the top are completely oblivious to it”. And this colour line often becomes a social one.
While the two intellectuals clearly come from radically different backgrounds, the tension they create is a constructive one. Even though the situation doesn't invite optimism, the audience is left with the sense that something is moving, something is changing.
How, then, can we face the present? El Akkad offers his haunting answer: “Nothing is enough, and everything matters. Do something. Even the smallest thing. But do something. And if you don’t care about any of this, that’s fine, but consider what page [of the history book] you want to occupy”.