I’ve been thinking about failure a lot recently in the shadow of Gaza. About the failure of humans to prevent — yet again — the most serious of crimes. About the failure of politics. About the failure of international law. And about the failure of writing.

I have a friend in Gaza. A victim-survivor of the US-Israeli genocide. His wife and three young daughters fled to Cairo in May 2024. A few days ago, after the signing of the ceasefire agreement, I had a thought: I should message my friend and suggest that he write down everything that he has been through in Gaza over the past two years. His memoirs would form, so I thought, a valuable contribution to the historical record. But I caught myself. The historical record for what purpose? I will note here that I’m a history graduate.

I started reflecting on the limitations of writing when I first began writing about my friend in Gaza. That was a year ago – halfway through the genocide (if we assume it is now over). I had been asked to write about him by my Arabic teacher in Cairo, who is a well-known Egyptian author. As I went to write, I couldn’t shake a question: Why write about the genocide? I pose that question now and ask the reader to consider the following: Everything that had been written before 7 October about the Holocaust, and about genocides, and about Palestine — and an awful lot had been written — failed to prevent the genocide in Gaza.

Like many, I studied Animal Farm at high school. At university I studied Primo Levi’s If This Is a Man. Why are these works, and works like them, taught and studied? The answer lies in the implicit assumption behind our education model: that the production and transmission of knowledge leads to understanding and understanding leads to positive social and political change. That same model can be applied to certain kinds of literary production – journalism, political writing, narrative non-fiction, and memoir etc. A literary work is produced, it is consumed, and some positive mental shift occurs in the reader. Orwell was a political writer, with political intent, but he wrote with a literary aesthetic. His genius — and his popularity — was in blending the two and making political writing into an art form.

Much has already been written about the genocide in Gaza. Books and diaries have been published and journalistic thought-pieces abound. Much more will follow in the coming months and years. Academics the world over are studying the genocide and will produce new knowledge about it. New subjects will be taught at universities and syllabuses will be updated. Much of that knowledge production will take place in a country that is home to 13 of the world’s top 20 universities and many of the world’s most respected magazines and newspapers. That same country — the US — is also the chief sponsor of the genocide. Many of those writing about the genocide will hope, consciously or otherwise, that their small contribution to this outpouring of knowledge will somehow “make a difference”. But will it? Did the genocide in Gaza happen because there wasn’t enough knowledge around before 7 October? Will a contemporary Animal Farm critiquing political extremism in Israel or a Gazan If This Is a Man stop the next genocide?

I say all this not to make a case for the futility of academic research, or of writing (clearly not), or of teaching. Not at all. I’m also not suggesting that the assumption behind the model I outlined above is wrong. Behaviour change is complex and multi-factoral at a societal, let alone a global, level. Things might now be a lot worse without the function of that model in the post-World War II period. So it would be unfair to place responsibility for global failures at the feet of those involved in the production and transmission of knowledge. Your local history teacher or politics professor are not to blame. But with that caveat, and in the shadow of the genocide in Gaza, we must also be cognisant of the inadequacy of that model. We must ask: what must we do differently now? More of the same will not suffice.

I will make two broad suggestions.

The first is that those involved in the production and transmission of knowledge — and here I am referring to academics, writers, teachers, journalists, artists, editors, publishers, analysts, commentators — must more actively focus on fostering behaviour change. The “this is what happened” and the “this is why it happened” and “this is why it matters” are clearly critical. But it’s not enough. We must see more in the vein of “this is what needs to be done”, and “this is how you can do it”, and “here are the resources to do it”. In short, we need to become more political — more activist — in the professional sphere.

The second is more personal. Those involved in the production and transmission of knowledge must make personal change. If you write, or if you teach, and if you read because you care, then you must also do. If you read, you must boycott. If you write, you must divest. If you teach, you must march. If you earn, you must donate. If you research, you must advocate. If you analyse, you must organise. Now is the time to be engaged in political action.

I will leave you with a final defence of the word, through the words of my Gazan friend. I asked him recently where he finds the strength to keep going, other than through his faith. He wrote back: “We gain strength from all of you who supported us. Even if just through the word. The word makes us stronger. The word makes us patient. The word makes us braver and braver.”

We can’t abandon the word. But we must accept its limitations.

The views expressed in this article may or may not reflect those of Pearls and Irritations.