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In early October, when we Palestinians explained to the world what was to come, our testimony and foresight was seen as an exaggeration.
Our warnings about Israel’s frightening zeal for the use of excessive force were not taken seriously. Worse, our warning that Israel intended to commit mass murder of Palestinians was called “anti-Semitic.”
Today, official figures show that 33,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli airstrikes, artillery shelling and open-air executions with US-made bombs in Gaza and the West Bank. This figure does not count all the “missing people” who were trapped under rubble, shot dead in the streets or in their homes by occupation forces, or buried under sand by bulldozers.
And while Gaza bears the brunt of Israel’s appalling violence, Palestinians in the West Bank have been arrested by the thousands, including children, and most have been denied justice. They are being held in torturous and abusive conditions, resulting in at least 13 Palestinian prisoners being killed in the past six months.
Meanwhile, Palestinians with Israeli citizenship and in Jerusalem are often cracked down, detained, tortured, and attacked by Israeli mobs for simply sharing social media posts or watching what Israel calls “terrorist media.” and suffer under Israel’s strict apartheid laws.
If I had to sum up the past 26 weeks in one word, it would be a series of hours of last-minute work. I asked myself, what’s the point in writing another article about Israel’s ruthless sadism?
Between proposing this article and actually finding the strength to write it, over 3,000 Palestinian children, women, and men were murdered. The al-Shifa medical complex has been completely destroyed, and extrajudicial killings in the West Bank have only intensified.
A sense of paralysis and paralysis among Palestinians is one of the objectives of Israel’s strategy of “attrition.” A war of attrition aims to create conditions that exhaust, exhaust, and weaken the enemy. The purpose is to reduce the ability to counterattack.
Israel’s goal is to emotionally, morally, and spiritually exhaust those who resist its occupation and colonization, leaving them without motivation and determination to participate and mobilize in the face of brutal repression.
This strategy was also applied in “peacetime”. Following the European colonialists and their logic of peace, Israel has sought to completely subjugate the Palestinian people by making life impossible at all levels. While feeding a false narrative of “self-defense” to the world, the government is trying to protect the dying Palestinian people, not necessarily dead, but always faced with a choice between death and suffering, always on the brink. trying to create people.
I don’t think I can ever fully explain what it’s like to be Palestinian. We are all hurt in many ways, not because of a lack of words, but because of the realization that if I were a Palestinian. Speaking of fear, I’m not sure those listening can bear to hear all the pain embedded in the Palestinian experience.
For the past 182 days, Palestinians have been subjected to waves of deep grief, piercing pain, and devastating fear of anticipated loss. Just like us, a shiver of fear runs down your spine and you can’t escape it.
One of the most trying parts of this aggression is having to deal with this grief. So many people we know have been killed, arrested, or displaced. Palestinians are suffering not only physical displacement but also psychological displacement. Our mental and emotional anchors have been removed. It is excruciatingly painful to keep witnessing the bodies of Palestinians losing their lives in various ways.
The ability to bury murdered bodies also affects our lives, not just materially, but emotionally as well: destroyed homes, destroyed memories, and the destroyed hopes we were trying to gather. There is also no ability to collectively mourn a loss.
Continued exposure to Israel’s relentless psychopathy will not only help its people, who are still trying to survive the genocide committed by Israel, but also mobilize to stop the genocide that is occurring even as I write these words. There is also a feeling of collective burnout among those who are currently living in the United States.
Burnout is real. Many of us are too exhausted to say anything, unable to resist giving in to the illusion that our voices don’t matter and that we can’t accomplish anything. While we sit with these unpleasant and hopeless feelings, the war continues and the terror grows.
And it’s not just us Palestinians in Palestine. This extends to people all over the world who have stood up against genocide. Israel has responded to global resistance by increasing its atrocities, including the killing of international humanitarian workers, and by stepping up its lobbying efforts to punish its critics.
As governments refuse to take action to end the genocide, those mobilizing against the genocide are slowly and strategically disempowered, hopeless, and unable to halt the Israeli onslaught. I am being driven towards the belief that I cannot do it.
In May 2021, when Palestinians were in the midst of their biggest uprising in decades, showing real solidarity in Gaza, the West Bank, the 1948 territories and across the diaspora, I wrote for the Guardian: I wrote an article titled “Why Why”. Are the Palestinians protesting? Because we want to live.
I wrote this piece on my cell phone in between running from tear gas fired by Israeli soldiers and narrowly escaping a brutal assault by Palestinian Authority security forces.
It was a cruel time, a terrifying time, and a decisive time. In that work, I tried to capture the strategies of colonialism. “This is how colonialism works. Colonialism suffocates every part of your life and ends by burying you.”
I wasn’t trying to draw a silhouette of a murderer. I was trying to capture a moment of Palestinian defiance and renewed solidarity, from the river to the sea to the diaspora.
“This is a strategic, planned process, only to be thwarted or delayed, as oppressors almost always confront and challenge those they control,” I wrote.
Indeed, over the past decades, Israel has not been without challenges. The Palestinians continued to revolt against the repressive policies, launching one uprising after another, ranging from non-violence to diplomacy to armed resistance. As Israel’s conquest of Palestinian land, resources, and livelihoods intensified, so did the Palestinian struggle.
For the past six months, Israel and its supporters have sought to erase history and context and portray October 7th as an “unwarranted” and brutal attack on Israel. The reality is that on October 7th, people who have been suffocated by decades of colonialism and oppression will take their last breath to shout out to the world, refusing the impossible choice between death and suffering. It was.
Perhaps that’s what really shook Israel and its allies on October 7th. What sparked Israel’s anger was the fact that the Palestinians were still alive after decades of colonial pacification.
Please understand this. The only thing standing between our eradication and our survival is you, the international community. When Israel unleashed the power of genocide on us, it involved the rest of the world.
Israel’s genocide is made possible by international involvement. They use weapons provided by foreign governments and enjoy impunity guaranteed by foreign governments to avoid responsibility for their crimes.
Please recognize this. The Palestinians are yet to be buried, and the destruction is massive, but so are the survivors with dreams to pursue, miracles to witness, and faith in humanity to be re-instilled.
There is life in all the destruction, and Palestinians are fighting a fierce battle for it.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the editorial stance of Al Jazeera.
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