A Palestinian man stands alone amid mountains of colourless rubble. He gazes into the camera with bloodshot eyes and emits a loud, hoarse, wordless noise. It can neither be described as a scream nor a yell, but rather something in between. Something raw and unnerving and yet acutely human.
He is speaking a language that all of us understand; it is the language of human suffering.
This man has intermittently appeared on my TikTok “For You Page” since Israel’s brutal siege on Gaza began in October 2023. My memory of him — of the look in his eyes and of the unsettling sound of his cry — returns to me often. Overwhelmed by the constant stream of disturbing images and videos coming out of Gaza, I return again and again to this one harrowing image, this one harrowing sound.
Recently, I realised that I can’t remember the last time I saw him. I opened the app and combed through the thousands of videos I have saved of desperate Palestinians trapped in Gaza — to no avail. What happened to him? I wondered. Is he still alive? What’s his name? Why on earth didn’t I save any of his videos?
Since October 7th, 2023, I have witnessed Israel commit the most egregious crimes against humanity I ever thought possible — live streamed directly to my phone. Babies blown to pieces. Hostages gang raped to death. Schools, churches, mosques, houses, apartment buildings, hospitals and refugee camps razed to the ground. Doctors, aid workers and journalists targeted and murdered in cold blood. Entire families wiped out in the matter of a few seconds. Small children killed from heart attacks induced by pure fear. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians systematically starved, tortured, abused and murdered by Israel, day in and day out.
During this time, I have also brushed my teeth. Gone to work. Met friends for coffee. Written emails. Cooked dinner. Folded laundry.
In between these tasks, I watch. I force myself to watch because I believe it to be my duty as a human being to bear witness to the endless stream of atrocities committed by Israel against the Palestinian people. I force myself to watch because in turning away, even for one second, I deny my own humanity.
My whole life, I was told that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is so complicated, I couldn’t possibly begin to understand it. It took me roughly two minutes of reading about the history to see that Israel is the aggressor and Palestine is the victim.
The media would like you to believe that the conflict began on October 7th, 2023. It did not. It began in 1897 when Theodor Herzl founded Zionism, an extremist political ideology that supports the establishment of a Jewish ethno state.
Soon afterwards, an increasing number of Jewish settlements began to pop up all over Palestine. In 1917, the British government signed the Balfour Declaration, declaring Palestine a “homeland” for Jewish people. All of this culminated in the Nakba (the Arabic word for “catastrophe”) and the founding of Israel in 1948. At least 750,000 Palestinians were expelled from their homes and 78 percent of their land was stolen. The Palestinians who survived were forced out into the occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip, where they now live — and die — under constant siege by Israel.
Long before October 7th — and indeed, long before Hamas was founded in 1987 — Israel routinely bombed, shot and kidnapped civilians in Gaza and the West Bank, including small children.
When Palestinians are not being physically attacked, they are living under the constant weight of apartheid. Palestinians traveling between the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Israel are required to carry permits and must pass through hundreds of checkpoints and roadblocks. Israelis (including illegal settlers) move freely, often using roads that Palestinians cannot access. If a Palestinian commits a crime (such as a four year old throwing a rock at a 70 tonne tank), they are tried in a military court with a 99% conviction rate, whereas Israelis are tried in a civil court.
Zionists love to point out that Israel withdrew its settlers and troops from Gaza in 2005 (as if this is somehow proof of how moral they are). In reality, Gaza has been under total Israeli blockade since the catastrophic six-day war in 1967, which resulted in Israel’s capture of Gaza, the West Bank, the Sinai Peninsula, East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights. Since then, Israel has controlled Gaza’s airspace, borders and maritime access, as well as all of the food, water, electricity, fuel, medicine and healthcare supplies that enter into the territory. Over 2 million Palestinians are crammed into a 25-mile-long strip of land, unable to leave, routinely bombed and shot at, while forced to rely on their captor, Israel, for all of their basic needs.
Telling a Palestinian that Israel “left” Gaza in 2005 is like telling a prisoner that their jailor has physically left their cell and now just controls it from the outside — so what the hell do they have to complain about? It’s an ignorant, deeply insulting and nonsensical argument to make.
Equally, anyone who still thinks a “two-state solution” is possible — or ever was possible — is living in la-la land. First, it would not be feasible to establish a Palestinian state given the vast number of illegal Israeli settlements that are scattered all over the West Bank. In order to create a viable Palestinian state, these settlers would need to either permanently leave or live under Palestinian rule, neither of which they are open to doing.
The closest Israel and Palestine ever got to reaching an agreement was the 1993 Oslo Accords. At that point, Palestine had abandoned the dream of reclaiming the land that was stolen from them in 1948 (and again in 1967) and agreed to recognise Israel in return for control over Gaza and the West Bank. The Israeli Prime Minister at the time, Yitzhak Rabin, refused to recognise Palestine. He would only go so far as to recognise “a Palestinian entity which is less than state.” Needless to say, the Oslo Accords fell short of delivering Palestinian statehood and Israel’s occupation continued.
Although Hamas has said that it would accept a Palestinian state just in the West Bank and Gaza, the Israeli Parliament voted against this. For decades, the ongoing narrative has been that Israel’s kind and generous offers are consistently refused by the mean and stubborn Palestinians. This is simply not true. Israel’s so-called “generous offers” proposed a fragmented, non-sovereign Palestinian state with limited control over its borders, resources, and capital. They also legitimised Israeli settlements, denied the right of return for Palestinian refugees and even stipulated that Israel could invade Palestine at any time in case of an “emergency.” Does this sound like an offer you would accept?
The Egyptian comedian Bassem Youssef put it perfectly: “Dealing with Israel is so difficult. It’s like being in a relationship with a narcissistic psychopath; he fucks you up and then he makes you think it’s your fault.”
As for October 7th: Israel knew about the attack for an entire year leading up to it and pulled IDF soldiers off the Gaza border two days beforehand (make of that what you will). Accounts from that day — including allegations of rape and “40 beheaded babies” — have time and time again proven to be false. It has also been reported that the IDF ordered a “Hannibal Directive” on its citizens, which means that many of the people killed that day were actually killed by Israel.
Per international law, Israel does not have the right to self defence because it is an occupying power. As human rights attorney Noura Erakat wrote in 2012, “A state cannot simultaneously exercise control over territory it occupies and militarily attack that territory on the claim that it is ‘foreign’ and poses an exogenous national security threat.”
However, international law does permit an occupied people to resist their occupier. General Assembly resolution 37/43 “reaffirms the legitimacy of the struggle of peoples for independence, territorial integrity, national unity and liberation from colonial and foreign domination and foreign occupation by all available means, including armed struggle.”
It’s also important to note that Hamas is actually a product of Israel’s own creation. The resistance group was initially funded and propped up by Israel in order to weaken and neutralise the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO), before it was democratically elected by Palestinians in 2006.
In 2015, Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich revealed how Hamas has helped Israel to maintain its control over the Palestinians.
“The Palestinian Authority is a burden, and Hamas is an asset,” Smotrich explained. “It’s a terrorist organisation, no one will recognise it, no one will give it status at the [International Criminal Court], no one will let it put forth a resolution at the U.N. Security Council.”
It’s obvious that Israel’s goal has always been the total annihilation of the Palestinian people. On October 10, 2023, Israel’s then-Minister of Defense, Yoav Gallant, famously said: “We are imposing a complete siege on the city. There will be no electricity, no food, no water, no fuel, everything is closed. We are fighting human animals and we are acting accordingly.”
In a recent interview with Channel 12, Tzippy Scott, a member of the Israeli Knesset, gloated: “Tonight we killed nearly 100 people from Gaza and no one cares. Because everyone has become used to the fact that 100 Palestinians can be killed in a single night during war, and the world doesn’t care.”
If you’re still not convinced that the collective punishment of Gazans post-October 7th is wrong, think of it this way: George W. Bush and Dick Cheney are responsible for the death of an estimated 1 million Iraqis. Can you even imagine if Americans were equally punished for the war crimes that our government has committed? Not one of us would be left standing. Would you call that “self defence”?
Anyone who thinks that only a small number of Israelis share this genocidal sentiment is deluded. Over two thirds of Jewish Israelis are opposed to letting humanitarian aid into Gaza. Eight out of ten Jewish Israelis support Trump’s proposed plan to ethnically cleanse and forcibly displace all 2.1 million Palestinians from the Gaza Strip. 95% of Jewish Israelis believe that the IDF has used either an “appropriate use of force” or “too little force” in Gaza.
Even more horrific, Israelis routinely gather on observation decks — often with their children — to watch the bombs drop on Gaza from afar, cheering as if they were watching a sports match. This sick behaviour has been going on for several years. Would you call this a sign of a moral, just and sane society? What about all of the violent Israeli settlers who have been illegally encroaching on Palestinian land for decades? This video of a Jewish man from Brooklyn stealing a Palestinian’s home in the West Bank in broad daylight gives you a small taste of what the Palestinians have been subjected to:
Israelis are now preparing their next phase of settlements in Gaza.
“Now we conquer, cleanse and stay […] Along the way, what remains of the strip is also being wiped out,” Smotrich said at a recent news conference, adding: “As part of the war, the IDF is moving the population out of combat zones … The population will reach the south of the strip, and from there, with God’s help, move to third countries under President Trump’s plan.”
Trump has repeatedly threatened to help Israel ethnically cleanse Gaza of Palestinians. In January, he told reporters: “You’re talking about probably a million and a half people, and we just clean out that whole thing and say: ‘You know, it’s over.’”
The war crimes that Israel commits against the Palestinians are immeasurable, undeniable and incomprehensibly evil. Israel has dropped an estimated 100,000 tonnes of explosives on Gaza since October 7 and destroyed 88 percent of its infrastructure. That is the equivalent to dropping over 6 atomic bombs on a plot of land about half the size of New York City, which is more than double the number of bombs that were dropped on London, Dresden and Hamburg combined during World War II. It’s impossible to know exactly how many Palestinians have been murdered since October 7th, but a July 2024 study from The Lancet found that it could be over 186,000. One can only guess how much that number has increased since.
Just imagine for one moment. You have spent your entire life trapped in an open-air prison. Nearly every single building has been destroyed. Your children, spouse, parents, brothers, sisters, cousins, grandparents, aunts and uncles have either been murdered, severely injured or are starving to death. The people carpet bombing you are the same people denying you food, water and medicine. Meanwhile, the rest of the world watches in silence and does nothing.
The same people who don’t bat an eyelid in the face of genocide get offended by protestors exercising their first amendment rights. So-called champions of free speech like Ben Shapiro and Jordan Peterson have embarrassed and shamed themselves beyond repair. Peterson calls anti-genocide protestors “sanctimonious psychopaths” who are “pro-Hamas.” Shapiro, who for years has touted the catch-phrase, “Facts don’t care about your feelings,” has full-blown meltdowns whenever presented with facts about how Palestinians suffer under Israeli rule.
The ones who are willing to speak up have been silenced, arrested, sacked from their jobs, stripped of their university degrees — even abducted in plain sight and sent to far-away detention centres — all for taking a stand against genocide.
While humanity’s capacity for genocide itself is nothing new, our level of exposure to it is. Previously mindless activities like scrolling on TikTok have become dystopian nightmares. A video of a girl reviewing different shades of lipstick will be followed by a man screaming in front of a pile of rubble, covered in blood and holding the lifeless body of his “legally murdered child”. Palestinians are forced to caption their videos with the names of celebrities, TV shows and other pop culture references to trick the algorithm into caring about them. They routinely beg the world to see them as human beings. The world watches on, silent, indifferent, unmoved.
Our phones bring us closer to Gaza but they also serve as reminders of the vast distance between us. We can turn our phones off, set them on the table and continue on with our day. Palestinians cannot. This is what separates the witness from the victim; the viewer from the viewed; the living from the not-yet-dead.
Unlearning decades of brainwashing takes time. It is a jarring and disorienting experience to realise that the real war criminals have been here this whole time. Confronting these truths forces us to confront the hidden truths within ourselves. It threatens the illusionary foundation upon which our entire lives have been built. Most people are not willing to do this. It is often easier to have faith in a multitude of lies than to accept one singular truth.
Despite the recent terrifying and relentless attacks on free speech in the west, I will not stop speaking about Palestine. I will not be intimidated into silence. Not now, not ever.
A searing piece of writing. Thank you for speaking out. We must keep this front and centre so all the world's cowards and apologists for this genocidal and evil state of Israel - in western 'governments', the Zionist-controlled media and NGOs - have no place to hide from their naked complicity in the most horrific case of inhumanity ever witnessed. Those who support, condone and are silent about this will be condemned to the lowest circle of Hell.
This item should be in all future history books. Never forget, never forgive.