Marching Toward Gaza, Holding the Unbearable
Interview with Azul Thomé and Jonas Beck
In this conversation, I speak with soul activist Azul Thomé about her experience joining the Global March to Gaza. She shares the physical and emotional toll of being in Egypt, where she and others were beaten, humiliated, and tear-gassed while trying to reach Rafah. We talk about what it means to witness brutality, and how her experience connects to the long history of Palestinian suffering and her memories of war in Lebanon. Azul reflects on grief, resistance, and the choice to walk with prayer, even in the face of violence, despair, and state repression.
Jonas: Where do you come from, where are you currently?
Azul: I was born in Beirut in the sixties. My mother's French, my father Lebanese. He's still alive and in Lebanon. My mother died a few years ago. So that's a bit of my root. I lived in England for 35 years, so I feel I'm between these three countries mainly.
Jonas: What is your dedication?
My offerings? I think it's also in threes. It often connects with the animated living world, with soul activism and earth art. Sometimes one side of the triangle is stronger — soul activism has been especially strong for me the last two years.
Since the 7th of October, the course of my life and work has changed radically.
I returned to Lebanon to pray after being away for 12 years . So I guess what's happening for me now is learning what it means to pray in times of genocide and ecocide. That is the big question that moves me right now. What does it actually mean to pray? Is it selective or do we pray for everything and everyone? My heart is having to accommodate that question.
Azul in a ceremony by the poisoned source of River Beirut, Lebanon.
I'm having some strange adventures going on with my heart, in a physical and spiritual way, and I feel it's aligned with the big topic of my work, which is: you've been asked to learn to pray for Gaia. Are you willing to learn? Because that means you will be transformed by really responding to the question. So it's... wow. I'm in it. I'm in this very soil-like, liminal, curved, caterpillar sort of state of being. It's not always pleasant, but it's very alive.
Jonas: These questions of ritual and prayer you also bring to your work around Palestine, I wonder if you'd share a bit more about that, and specifically your march to Gaza, your experience in Egypt. I'm really interested in hearing how it was for you to be there?
Yeah. I want to start by talking about this vision that happened maybe three months after the 7th of October. I kept having visions or dreams, daydreams, of millions of us walking to Gaza. It was like, okay, one million in London, yes, but what if we don't go home. Let’s not go home to comfort and privilege. Let’s keep walking to Gaza. We would meet there and stop the genocide!
I tried last year to go to Rafah by myself. I thought, I'm just going to go and sit and pray, just because I can't bear waiting any longer. Nobody wanted to go with me, and I thought I had been to Lebanon, and I now needed to get closer to Gaza. Then the Egyptians, they made the third wall. That was just before they created the third wall and closed the whole road from what they called the beginning of the Sinai to Rafah. Then they closed the Suez canal road to Rafah and so I couldn’t go.
I went back to Beirut again, to get physically closer to Gaza, it was a visceral need to be as close as possible. I felt as if I was possessed by a vision — a mission.
So I started writing a book about the story that I imagined, which now is in English, French, and Arabic. It's a small book more of an offering, of twenty million of us walking, marching to Gaza carrying a red satchel filled with seeds on our hips. The first wave of us were to be killed, falling like seeds. It’s called The Walk of Seeds to Gaza. In the second wave something was waking up in the soldiers, in their soul and heart. The third wave — the soldiers put their weapons down. Things happened in their hearts. But it needed some of us to die. And I was ready to die. I was ready for it in the book. I felt okay, I’m in the first wave. I will fall like seeds. Everyone carried bags of seeds, so when we fell, the seeds would grow gardens… So that was a story. A prayer story.
And then this emergence happened in this reality — this call from different organisers: March to Gaza. Global March Gaza. First it was the March To Gaza. Then they fought, and they fell out. Everything collapsed.
They fought — no, I created this — no, I created it— I had the idea first — and so on. Our world was acting out once more , we were witnessing a system of war longing for peace. So the Swiss delegation “won”. They could claim the march as their idea and initiative. Whatever they did for winning. I wrote this poem to address that divide and its dangers called "The Elder Speaks." So I sent it to them at the beginning, both parties. I said, this has all gone sour. What are you showing as an example if you are fighting? What seeds in your heart and soul?
“The Elder Speaks”
I am the Earth Mother.
I am older than your maps, your borders, your wars.
I held you when you came into being.
I will hold you when you forget who you are.
There is something stirring now—not only in your cities,
not only in Gaza, in Rafah, in the ruins and the cries—
but in the deep riverbed of soul.
Do not underestimate this.
You march with your bodies, yes—
but you are also marching with your ancestors,
with unborn children braided into your breath,
with the memory of justice buried beneath centuries of rubble.
I feel your heartbreak. I do.
Let it break you open, not apart.
Let it make you holy, not hollow.
The violence you see
is not only metal and flame.
It is the echo of soul wounds
unhealed, denied, devoured.
And if you carry those wounds into the march,
without tending them,
you will feed the same fire you wish to extinguish.
You must not become the shadow of your enemy.
You must not carry conquest in your mouths while calling for peace.
You are not marching to fix.
You are not marching to win.
You are marching to remember.
To become again a people worthy of life.
So let your grief be holy.
Let your rage be rooted.
Let your love be organized, clear, and radiant.
March not just to Gaza.
March into the center of your own soul.
March until you meet me there.
And when you do, I will tell you:
Yes, child. Now you are ready.
Now you can enter.
Now you can plant the seeds of forever.
Azul Thomé
6-5-2025
At some point, internal conflicts began to sour the march’s spirit, we were not enlightened about the inside stories. I was on alert. I’m not going with this familiar activist paradigm of division again. It's too toxic. It hurts the bodies and souls. I could feel it in the mycelium of my being. I was feeling depleted and tired. I was going to carry on writing my book instead of joining this call, however close it felt to my little book’s dream.
Then something more healthy emerged from the compost heap! A man spoke — he's a Swiss-Palestinian doctor — and another activist from Switzerland made a new call, in ways that felt more grounded. They presented the Global March To Gaza. The other ones were very angry, we heard, chose different dates and two rivers were born… Hard to know the truth in our digital era.
I went with the more aligned one. The organising went so fast. It grew in a few weeks, 60 delegations, 3,500 of us crowd-funded, trained and prepared.
I spoke to myself most days to get clear: You’re going to pray. You’re going to pray, because that’s what you do now. You pray and praise. Every footstep — to make offerings to the Sinai Desert and to pray for protection, care, and beauty. The preparation was a prayer. I couldn't sleep much. Many fears visited my nights and my heart. Whether it was scorpions, prisons or pirates of the desert, I faced fear nightly. Anyway, I had to go, the current was too strong. It was a collective mission, our duty of care.
What can I say? I went into horror, really. The days in Egypt were worse than what I experienced in Lebanon since 1975, my homeland that has seen a multitude of crises and suffering.
I was a bit naive to not have studied enough of the state of Egypt, the state of activists in Egypt, the state of Palestinians in Egypt, the corruption, the dictatorship, the trafficking of organs and drugs between Palestine and Egypt through the Sinai desert. The whole disgusting thing about making billions of dollars from the genocide. I found that out a bit late. Perhaps I tend to an innocent heart repeatedly and repeatedly shocked at the demonic and sadistic actions of our species.
It would not have stopped me to be more informed… Because I was warned. I remembered that truly I had been warned before flying to Cairo. I had messages sent to me saying: You are so naive, this is how it's going to be and describing almost all that we experienced on the 13th June 2025 at the second check point. Nobody wanted to hear, because we were on a mission. We didn’t want to let fear settle in our hearts. We needed to be in our strong hearts.
And so it was very frightening from the beginning with risks of deportation, detention and violence. From actually landing into something systemic. It was like the whole system, including hotels and taxis, was contaminated by dictatorship.
People were detained, deported. Mostly Arab-looking ones. French and Algerian. Then they would raid our hotels. The taxis were affiliated with the army. We got arrested somewhere. Got our passports taken. No questions allowed. Suddenly the officers did not speak English. Then they did. They played with us to destabilise our organism.
The organisation GMTG did not take care of us, I was furious with them. I said it out loud and was called a “moaner.” At the very last moment, on the day we were set to travel to Al Arish we were told not to go by bus, but instead in taxis carrying four people each. The reason given was to do with technical problems with the buses which we found out was not true. We were briefed to pretend to be tourists. At the first checkpoint many of us were arrested. I reached the second with my 3 camarades; we were all stopped there and hell began. I later heard that a handful passed through to reach AlArish.
One of the organisers of GMTG said, We now have the red light from the Egyptian authorities. We cannot move any further. I became very angry: When did you know about this? Did you know while we were in Cairo? Did you bring us here to use us? No answer came. Still today after asking on many platforms, no answer.
Horror arrived fast. The level of sadism shocked me. I witnessed the joy of hurting our bodies and of making us suffer: men dressed in white wearing keffieh on their heads walked through our bodies with whips, kicking and laughing.
We, maybe 2500 people, were calmly sitting on a tiny piece of land in the desert aiming for shade, children arrived from nowhere and were then handed stones to throw on us, bottles of water hurled at us under forty-three-degree desert heat. The bottles hurt. Tear gas burned my lungs, already weak from Covid.
We had decided to stay at the check point for many reasons. Some did not get their passport back, others did not trust the “offer” of going into buses and others like me just could not leave, we had only begun to walk towards Gaza.
Most of those adolescent soldiers were Palestinian wearing Egyptian “Robocop” outfits. What an awful place for them. They did not hurt us, they were told to make a wall around us while the others did the harming. Children with stones may have been offered money or been told we are the “enemy”. Still, I will love them. My children, our children, that does not stop at the easily loveable ones.
I will pray for them with the support of our Mother Earth. My heart has to stretch, I need community for that sort of activism of the soul and heart. Grief and prayer go deeper with others.
I wrote a poem about the children when I returned :
“My children, our children”
He carried
in his large dark hands
a whip.
He carried
the whip —
used it on our huddled bodies,
sitting inside peace,
still marching in our soul.
He kicked and laughed —
laughed and laughed again —
whipped again.
They brought children,
many of them.
Brought them stones, some bigger than their own heads.
The stones were thrown at us,
striking the heart of peace.
Peace is growing.
My heart bleeds.
My children, our children.
Tear gas fired tears from my eyes —
it burned our lungs, but not our love.
Outlaws corrupted by greed and power,
travelling from Israel to Egypt,
placed their bodies in the centre of us.
They wore long white robes,
scarves on their heads, looking like
keffiyeh —
threw water bottles at us!
Humiliating
only
themselves.
Imprisoned water — at last freed.
Hundreds of humans,
dressed in black, RoboCop-like outfits,
temperature 43°C,
no older than 16,
likely in military service.
I stood by many of them,
looked into their eyes —
invited them to join us.
I knew they wouldn’t.
They couldn’t.
Palestinian rings on their young hands,
others showed us tears —
mixed with mine.
More water on the scorching sand.
My children. Our children.
I did not greet this green dot in the desert where we sat.
I didn’t even greet the desert.
I had forgotten my practice.
This is how strong dictatorship, occupation, colonisation,
corruption — can be to the soul.
I must be efficient, vigilant, vigilant,
vigil —
vigil —
vigil.
Children of Gaza — you are my children, our children.
We have tasted not even half a teardrop
of your 78 years of occupation —
and now genocide of your people.
We will keep marching to Gaza.
My children, our children —
we will never
abandon
you.
Azul Thomé
Written after the attacks on us at the second checkpoint towards Al Ismailia, Egypt 13-06-2025
Rumours spoke of these men armed with whips and laughter being paid by the Egyptian government to do their dirty work, probably tied to drug and organ trafficking. Sixty thousand people were massacred in Palestine in the last 22 months, many bodies, everything is monetised.
People make millions from wars and genocide, ecocide and trafficking. It felt like the darkest place. I thought I had seen darkness in Lebanon through child trafficking, mafia, and slavery. But this sadism, with the man laughing while he whipped us, still haunts me. I might need to paint it and burn it.
I was done with them. I needed to do all I could to find Palestinians in Cairo to give them all my gear and the money I raised and go back home before being hurt.
Physically and emotionally it has been very hard. My heart keeps breaking open, like Joanna Many (rest in Beauty dear teacher and friend) describes: when the heart breaks, the cosmos can enter.
I ask myself where to place my body now. I did not expect this walk towards Rafah's border to stop so soon. I kept seeing us walking through the Sinai, warned of forty possible checkpoints, but in deep imagination we reached Rafah and got the gates to open for the food and medicine trucks to move towards our Palestinian siblings. That counts; in Gaia’s imagination we arrived, and opened the gate of a heartful humanity, may the ripples widen and deepen.
Today I am a composting heap. My nervous system knows so much war and suffering that I may be reaching a limit. If this ceremony is finished, another will come, aligned with where I am. I will be a grandmother soon, I did this for him, my grandson, so one day, if he asks, Grandma, what did you do during the genocide? I can answer, I tried beyond fears towards love.
When I was nine and the bombs fell in Beirut, I often wonder why the world did not rise to stop it. Marching to Rafah was my way of rising for the children. I was ready to die; I had put my affairs in order. I was not ready for that level of dark sadism. That is what still hurts. These are the layers I am working through now.
Thank you so much for sharing. I remember following the march online and at a certain point,I saw that many people who were clearly deeply dedicated to the cause suddenly said they were leaving. And that was quite shocking for me. The level of censorship, the prosecution of activists. I also find very important what you said about this sadism. If you look at what happens in Gaza, you can't argue this is solely to wipe out Hamas or even just to displace Palestinians. There is a sort of enjoyment in the destruction. And that's very scary, very difficult.
Yeah. Thank you. I just want to say, something that gave me a bit of strength is: we didn't even experience half a tear of what the Palestinians people experienced for seventy-eight years of occupation. Or what other countries experience all the time. And I think that was probably important for us. It was important for me to feel it. Maybe we needed to feel it. To be informed. Oh, that’s how they are treated. What we had was nothing, but we had a glimpse. We felt it in our bodies. We were laughed at. We were played with.
No, you can’t go in. I take your passport. I’ll give it when I want. You can’t go anywhere. You have to go in that bus. We’re not telling you where we’re taking you. Otherwise you can stay here, but you can’t have water or food. They did that with us. So we had a microcosm. Like a tiny microcosm of the unimaginable sufferings that Palestinians in Gaza experience every day…
Now, we need a different way of organising. What happened to us in Egypt was terrifying. The young Lebanese people, I saw and supported them organising when there was trouble, so inspiring. So fast. So caring. There’s no leader. Absolutely none.
We will learn. I have and feed faith — if we have time. I don’t know if we have time though. We are really on the edges now. As long as we breathe, we have an opportunity to go towards a humanity that is deeply in love with life. I think that is what’s exciting. Even if we have one more day to experience such belonging.
A hundred percent. And there needs to be action. We can all do something. Of course, not just individually, but together. I think that's very important.
I wanted to touch on what you said about the microcosm experience. From my own time in Lebanon, I felt something similar; it was a very impactful experience for me. I grew up in Switzerland. It's very safe, clean, well off and so on. My trip to Lebanon in March 2024 —and that was even before the full-scale war —gave me a glimpse of what it means to be in that context of uncertainty, conflict and struggle.
My learning with all the people I met last year, and it was a whole bunch of different kinds of people, is that I would get worried when I saw the news: I’d ask, Are you okay? And they would say, Yeah, we’re just planting tomatoes. And I’m like, But the news...? And they’d say, Don’t worry, we’re 20 kilometers away. Twenty kilometers. Oh my God. That’s from here to the next town.
I saw that a lot of people have moved into the mountains now. Very locally placed. That’s been the way they protect themselves. Some of my beautiful friends there, they don’t look at the news. If something happens, the phone rings. The parents are in the south. They’ll call, and things will mobilize. But it isn’t like what you experienced. What I experienced last time — and it was difficult — is that I didn’t have a base. I didn’t have a base, like you. I was floating around. And I think when you have a base, and you have family, and a strong circle of friends, because you depend on that, it’s essential. It’s not: Oh, that would be nice.
I also remember my father. I was talking to him on the phone from France — I could hear the bombs exploding, it was last year. And he was laughing and joking. And I thought he was mad. I said to him, They've got you, you've lost your mind. He said, No, they will never take my laughter. What a beautiful thing. It’s defiant. It’s a kind of joyful defiance, saying they can’t take everything away from us. Our joy, our creativity, our love, our faith. They can take everything else. And they have. And they are.
They can destroy homes, but they can’t keep people from rebuilding them and going back to the south of Lebanon, for example. They’re not going to stay displaced. The people are not going to not go back.
Yes. I was nine years old. I was in Beirut as I said earlier. Bombs had destroyed so much, people were crying, shouting, screaming. A few days later, people rebuilt. Like this. And they knew another bomb might destroy it. I internalised that cartography, that language somehow. Let’s collapse fully, let’s grieve fully, let’s feel fully and make the world of our longing over and over again… until it becomes too much for the heart!
Then let's plant seeds. I think my next experience in Lebanon would be to learn Arabic and plant forests together. To grow Gardens. Not to go towards the violence of war. There’s nothing to do in these fields. Now the destructive force is too great. We must retrieve. They need to implode, I really think they need to implode. No empire lasts forever. They do eventually collapse.
So now I sense — go towards Life. And know your seeds, protect them and regenerate the soul and soil. Do ceremonies and rituals. Pray at least once a day so hate does create refuge in your bloodline. Know your rivers and their songs. Listen, breathe.
