It’s almost a year since ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people, began over 75 years ago, entered its final brutal genocidal phase. The level and scale of depravity displayed is unprecedented in recent history. Atrocities that were hitherto unthinkable, unspeakable have not only been committed with utmost impunity, the glee with which they have been carried out by individual perpetrators has been beyond revolting to watch in real time. Hospitals, universities, schools, refugee camps, ambulances, paramedics, children – all sites and persons previously protected and untouchable under International humanitarian laws and all targeted with the goal of annihilation. Even newborn infants couldn’t escape the horrific cruelty – my mind quakes imagining the terrible fate inflicted upon 5 premature babies whose bodies were discovered partially decomposed in their incubators in a bombed-out hospital that was forcibly evacuated. Even as I’m typing this, I just saw a video of a paramedic/rescuer stuff with cloth the emptied out skull of an infant killed by an Israeli bomb.
The Gaza genocide is the most documented, yet the most actively denied. Countless parents in utter despair held up bodies of their babies mutilated, headless, limbless imploring the wider world to make it stop. But, the wider world has so far been proven to be impotent – even large scale protests, campus encampments, damning UN reports have all been unable to stop the massacring machine. According to emerging estimates, the number of deaths after October 7 alone could amount to more than 14% of the Gazan population! Just a few days into the genocide when the death toll was in the low hundreds, doctors of a Gaza hospital held a press conference surrounded by white shrouds of martyred victims, but the world didn’t act to stop the killings then. A few weeks later, Palestinian kids held a press conference appealing to world, but the world didn’t act to stop the killings then. The world didn’t act to stop the killings when the first hospital was attacked, and now there isn’t a single undamaged hospital in Gaza. The world didn’t act to stop the killings when the first university was bombed, and now there are no universities left in Gaza. The world didn’t act to stop the killings when the first journalist was targeted and assassinated, and now close to 200 journalists are dead – largest in *any* conflict. All of this is not to say the world didn’t act at all – it did act, but to arm and fund Israel even more! All of us in the Global South are deeply aware of the hypocritical exceptionalism of the White Western world, but nothing has helped rip the mask of polite civility to reveal the grotesque fascist face underneath, which has been really the only real, enduring “Western value”.
There has also been a widespread, concerted effort to silence any and all criticism of Israeli policy, terming even notional symbolic gestures of sympathy towards the innocent Palestinian civilian deaths to be anti-semitic. This cynical deployment of false victimhood has been unprecedented and quite revealing in its vacuousness – meritless hurt feelings of an empowered group is much more important than the lives of an entire nation!
An ordinary, regular right-thinking person might feel legitimately helpless in the face of such support for genocide from powerful global entities. However, now is not the time for despair for those of us watching from afar – witnessing a genocide is a far better fate than experiencing it. Now is the time for global solidarity among global citizens. The leaders of the world, all the security councils and general assemblies of the UNs of the world, and the International Criminal Court and International Court of Justice have all been proven toothless and ineffectual in halting atrocities when they are being committed. The flame of humanity can only be kept alive by the proletariat. Deny the genocidaires by refusing to let them erase Palestine or Palestinians. Keep talking about Palestine, read and share Palestinian poems, follow the Martyrs of Gaza instagram page published from within Gaza, support Palestinian businesses, boycott Israeli businesses, volunteer your tech skills or simply educate yourself on the settler-colonial history of Palestine by reading these books I have curated.
Call for Donations
Since this is my birth month, I intend to spend it meaningfully by creating the following fundraisers. I intend to match and donate the fundraiser goal ($200 each) by the end of the month. If you are a friend reading this, or simply someone moved enough, please consider donating to these causes.
- Palestine Childrens’ Relief Fund
- HEAL Palestine
- United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA)
- Donate eSIMs
I will be updating this blog post with the progress of the fundraisers.
The call for hope in this post is deeply inspired by this poem by the martyred Dr. Refaat Al-Areer:
If I Must Die
If I must die,
you must live
to tell my story
to sell my things
to buy a piece of cloth
and some strings,
(make it white with a long tail)
so that a child, somewhere in Gaza
while looking heaven in the eye
awaiting his dad who left in a blaze—
and bid no one farewell
not even to his flesh
not even to himself—
sees the kite, my kite you made, flying up above
and thinks for a moment an angel is there
bringing back love
If I must die
let it bring hope
let it be a tale.