I live in Cambridge, but I’m originally from Kibbutz Re’im in Israel, not far from the site of the festival massacre last weekend. My parents, sisters and young niece and nephews were there during the attack, but thankfully they are safe. Many others weren’t so fortunate.
It’s been a very tough time, and one way for me to cope has been through poetry, reading and writing. Here is my humble attempt inspired by the poem Spared by Wendy Cope, which was published by the Observer nearly 22 years ago (a month after 9/11). I don’t presume to be a professional poet (and English is not my first language), but the emotions and feelings are very similar: gratitude about being spared and getting another chance to love.
Spared, October 2023
“That Love is all there is,
Is all we know of Love”
– Emily Dickinson
It wasn’t us. We weren’t there
When terrorists attacked at dawn
Death and bloodshed everywhere
But we still live. And they are gone
Imagining how it would feel
Taken hostage by a gun
Or shot while dancing in a field
Not to see another sun
Or sleeping gently, unaware
When they approach and break the door
The sound of gunfire in the air
And then just silence evermore
But we are safe, and we are here
We weren’t there. We’re spared of this
I’ll softly whisper in your ear
That love is all. It’s all there is.
Guy Naamati
Cambridge
• Naomi Klein’s recent article struck a chord with me (In Gaza and Israel, side with the child over the gun, 11 October). I am a British Jew who has long supported the Palestinian cause. I have joined rallies, voted for boycotts, and even volunteered building houses in the West Bank. My heart bleeds for the children dying in Gaza.
But I won’t be going to any rallies. Because when I look at the rhetoric of those organising and participating in them – who will call on Israel to stop bombing but not Hamas to release hostages – I see a movement where even the slaughter of children can be brushed off, or justified. As Klein says, only a left “rooted in values that side with the child over the gun every single time, no matter whose gun and no matter whose child” can begin to overcome the divide between us. Not those justifying the murder of innocents as “resistance”.
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