Why I haven’t said anything online about the crisis in the Middle East

Questions and stories around silence, complicity, toxicity, apathy and activism

1.        

Back in 2012, when I was researching Shallow Breath, I flew to Tokyo then travelled south to Taiji, a small fishing town that had gained worldwide notoriety after the release of the film The Cove. I met up with an activist called Rosie, and we went into Taiji itself under the cover of darkness, to meet up with half a dozen others, each of them there to document the horrors of the daily dolphin capture and slaughter during the September to March fishing season. The darkness was necessary: police and locals were hostile. I was told to take my passport with me, as the police would want to take my details (and they did). Arrests were common. A few days after I visited, some of the group would be taken into custody.

The day began early, as the group watched from a clifftop as the ‘banger boats’ (dolphin hunters) left for their daily hunt. Our eyes tracked them until they went beyond the horizon, and then we stared at that flat, empty line for the next few hours, praying that when the boats came into view again they would not be blowing black smoke. If they were, it meant that they were driving a group of terrified dolphins towards the shore, slowly corralling them to their death by banging metal poles on the sides of the boats to disorientate them. On the first day the fishermen came back empty-handed; but on the second, as I stood on top of a hotel roof doing research for another part of my story, I saw the black smoke billowing as the boats came in.

While I was in Taiji I witnessed dolphins being starved and force-fed; dolphins in tiny hotel swimming pools; and I went to the cove, although the waters were an innocent blue rather than the blood-red of slaughter day. I was grateful I didn’t have to watch the prolonged and terrible killing, which happens when the dolphins that are not deemed valuable enough for human entertainment are violently stabbed to death. Their mercury-riddled meat is eaten locally, and the irony that the fishermen might be slowly poisoning themselves and their families through their endeavours shouldn’t be lost on anyone.

I went to Taiji and I wrote Shallow Breath because I wanted to investigate the different relationships humans have with animals, ask questions, and raise awareness through my fiction. You might think that would make for a feeling of camaraderie between me and the activists, but that wasn’t the case at all: they were suspicious of me and my motives for being there, and disgusted that I wasn’t vegan, although they were polite and tolerant when providing me with information. They were obviously fatigued, furious, traumatised and burnt-out from witnessing and documenting innocent, unnecessary death, day after day.

When I see the intense suffering, vitriol and aggression happening online at the moment, particularly around the war in the Middle East, I think of this small group. The anger. The despair. The deep, unbearable pain of witnessing daily trauma while not being able to do anything to prevent it. I admired their ongoing determination not to look away, but I could also see what it cost them. Most of them were aware of this: they undertook their vigils in shifts of a few weeks, then went home to rest and recover, while others took a turn. Some stayed for longer, and you could see how the emotions and effects had intensified for those people. I understood their antipathy towards me, and I deeply admired them all for their bravery and conviction. But they were not particularly gentle or kind: they were enraged, wounded, and hurting.

For all their efforts, and all their suffering, the hunt in Taiji continues today.

How can we stop senseless killing? How can we make sacrifice and bravery count for those who bear witness? How can we effect change?

2.

In the ten years since I went to Taiji I’ve done various things to support causes I believe in. I’ve been a stall volunteer for Sea Shepherd. I’ve stood outside buildings waving placards. I’ve been on marches, not to mention all the letter-writing to petition politicians (gah, I’ve done a lot of that). I’ve often been prepared to stick my neck out online and make sure people know what I’m fighting for, and I’ve always believed in activism and peaceful protest as a counter-measure to injustice. But by the end of 2023 I felt burnt out, devastated by the result of the Australian vote for the Indigenous Voice to Parliament and what it said about the state of our society. Meanwhile, at the last School Strike for Climate, the vibe had changed from those first popular marches. Something lodged in my throat when the organisers started shouting ‘fuck the police’ as uniformed officers encircled us, and I was terrified I’d brought my kids to something that was about to go violently out of hand. However, I also understood that those angry people had had their homes raided, their lives upended, and they are on police watch lists, all for caring passionately about sustaining life on our threatened planet. Is it really a surprise they have become angrier, jaded, and deeply cynical, when despite all their efforts, the horrors keep on happening.

The climate crisis continues to worsen. People are preparing for systemic collapse, both in society and in the natural world.

How do we continue to move forward with hope? I want to keep thinking, listening, learning, and taking action.

3.

Last year, I met a softly spoken mum who is part of a group I run for our homeschooled girls and families. This woman works as a nurse in emergency. The daily witnessing of pain, suffering and death is part of her job, but when she talks of her work, she radiates kindness. I’m sure she has her own private worries and fears, but this is not a woman anywhere close to burnout or suffering from compassion-fatigue. She is not taking on the entire troubles of the world, but through her empathy she is changing lives and lessening the burdens of all the patients and families she meets. I don’t think she’s discussing any particular crisis online. I do know that she’s making a tremendous difference in the world.

She will never run out of patients who need her.

There are many, many ways of making a difference.

4.

So many people are currently too scared to speak up about anything online for fear of being torn to pieces if they get a single word ‘wrong’. (And they haven’t got a hope of getting it right, because words can easily be twisted, misused, manipulated and weaponised.) We live in a culture where 24/7 access to information also means 24/7 access to trauma, chaos, heartbreak and horror. We are all inside this bubble together, and things are out of control.

What is the response to this? Because we also have our lives to live, and children to raise. We need to take care of each other. We need to believe in hope and goodness and the possibilities of the future.

If my time is finite, how do I use my voice to best effect? Is it better to spend my time fighting the horrors, the perpetrators, the misinformation and misunderstandings, or elevating the work of those doing incredible things?

5.

There is an amazing sequence in the film Racing Extinction, where the filmmakers and conservationists visit an Indonesian fishing village that routinely slaughters manta rays. At first, the filmmakers go on a hunt with the villagers and watch them kill one of these incredible creatures – and the film does not shy away from the event itself and the conservationists’ pain at what they’re witnessing. However, they go through this ordeal to understand from the fishermen’s perspective; and they do not judge these people for what they are doing. Instead, afterwards they gather the village together and show them a film about the beauty of manta rays. They offer them other options: promoting preservation over slaughter, tourism above hunting, innovation instead of tradition, careful to support, protect and work with the people of the village as well as the creatures of the ocean, because they know that nothing is truly solved when one life is prioritised as having more value over another. The effect is palpable, and the work continues, a long-term endeavour to make real, lasting change.

I want the killing to stop. A ceasefire NOW. I want all people, wherever they live, to feel safe in their homes and streets, for their children to have a future and not be inhumane collateral damage in another person, group or government’s horrific ideology.

6.

Silence can indicate many things: but it certainly doesn’t always mean complicity and apathy. Silence might be fear, distress, burnout, health issues, family trauma, and much more. It could be an understandable wariness of online spaces. And it can also mean disengagement, excuses, heads in the sand. It would take years to jump into one person’s life and effectively untangle the reasons for their silence, noise, perspective, and actions, and even if we tried, our determinations would probably be insufficient. So how can we assume to judge each other so quickly, so decisively, when we can barely scratch the surface of one other (and when we have to work so hard to understand ourselves)? If we look to judge others’ silence or noise, aren’t we perpetuating the same judgement that so easily deepens from accusations to violence?

There are many people who still believe in the essential importance of human rights and the power of humanity.  Some post about this a lot on social media. Others don’t. But we stymie our chances of progress when we squander our time sitting in judgement of others, rather than getting behind the many active, empowering and vital movements for change in our precarious, precious world.

I haven’t posted anything until today that references the terrible crisis in the Middle East. To take this as a sign of my disinterest or my lack of compassion and devastation at what I see on the news couldn’t be further from the truth. At the moment I’m busy learning more about those who are leading the charge in holistic solutions and conversations with an ongoing respect for human rights and a reverence for the natural world. There are many ways to make a difference.

However you are responding to world events, I wish you the courage of your convictions, and I wish you peace. I still believe in a world where there can still be togetherness in diversity, and oneness in our recognition of humanity over our personal identities, however we choose to express ourselves.