It has been over 200 days and the genocide has not ended. More than 35,000 Palestinians have been murdered by Israel and that number will likely grow as you read this.
As women are raped, children are orphaned and innocent civilians are imprisoned, starved and murdered by the genocidal Israeli regime, some are still debating the humanity of Palestinian people, whether or not Israel should be held accountable and if they should end the violence.
I remember the very first protest I attended, and the raw shock and horror felt by everyone. No one there could have ever imagined such inhumanity to persevere for this long, no one would have thought that thirty weeks on, we would still be protesting. And yet, all these weeks later, such protests, which amass tens of thousands of people, do not even receive mainstream media attention.
Palestine has never been free in my sixteen years of life, never experiencing liberty or freedom from the bombardments, blockades and apartheid system of Israel.
From a young age the importance of the Palestinian cause, or any cause of injustice for that matter, has been embedded in me by my Muslim, Egyptian family.
However, never in my life, not even in the escalations on Palestinians in the West Bank and Al Aqsa mosque in 2021, were my eyes opened to such rampant apathy.
I cannot comprehend how people can continue to see such injustice, to watch it aired on their screens and continue to support a complicit government; to continue to support genocidal brands and to somehow excuse the behaviour of Israel.
Never in my life have I been so aware of the utter dehumanisation of a people, the Palestinian people.
Where two lives lost can somehow be treated so differently, on the mere basis of where one person was born.
Where loss of life is considered normal, even justifiable.
Palestinian author and academic Randa Abdel-Fattah explains how Palestinians are “condemned to die” in the public eye; where death and destruction are not subject to the horror and sadness they deserve, but rather considered acceptable.
Palestinians have sacrificed their dignity to record and share their daily pain:
- the pain of infants screaming in disbelief at the death of their parents,
- the pain of a grandmother who must cook an Iftar of crushed herbs and grass for her fasting grandchildren,
- the pain of a twelve-year old boy as he recounts being imprisoned and abused in Israeli prisons,
- the pain of a mother, who after nine years of trying to conceive, lost her newborn baby,
- the pain of children starving, wincing at the falling of bombs, unable to play with amputated limbs, protecting their family after the death of their parents.
Many of us, myself included, feel increasingly desensitised to such graphic and heart wrenching content.
We must recognise the inherent beauty in every life in Gaza, and the loss of each innocent person’s livelihoods, dreams and aspirations should bring us together to reject violence here in Australia and around the world, for our siblings in Palestine, Congo, Sudan and anyone around the world who faces persecution and abuse.
However, I do not believe feeling desensitised should deter us from maintaining momentum, rather it is indicative of how long and heartless the genocide in Gaza has been and how we cannot and must not let the importance of every life in Palestine, or anywhere around the world for that matter, be undermined.
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