On stating the obvious..
And stating it again, and again, and again..
Dear reader.
I may not have much to say. I actually do not.
These 3 weeks, my mood oscillated between distracted at best, technically unable to function or pretend to act normal, to absolutely distraught and shattered at worst. And I genuinely believe I am not alone. Everyone I talk to from my friends around the world shares the same feeling.
This week I received two calls from Palestinian friends.
One told me she is going back to West Bank because she was too worried about her own mother and family there. Something along the words: “This is very difficult Abdulrahman. It’s a critical situation, and I want to be next to my mother. If we die, we die together. I won’t forgive myself if anything bad happens to them and I’m in Dubai or London.” So, this friend had to go to the Jordanian border for 2 days, beg and hope someone from that Jordanian border (which is controlled by the Israeli army) to let her in so that she can be with her family. Apparently the border is open for an hour a day. Either you wait for that hour to come at the border, or you leave and come back the next day. Such is the life for people in the ‘safe’ West Bank.
The other call I received was from a friend who was seeking if I knew anyone who can help a Palestinian woman from Gaza back in Kuwait. She lost 8 members of her family in one airstrike, and facing difficulties doing some administrative work in Kuwait. She left Gaza early September with lots of hope to provide for her family, and help them with financial support back in Gaza. It’s her first trip ever outside that siege, and that will probably be her last time seeing Gaza. Because no one knows what happens next.
If you follow me on IG, you’ll see that I’m very active in trying to support the calls for stopping this madness, and exposing what technically is a “death cult” because this obsession with making sure lots of people die is nothing short of the worst evil I’ve ever seen in my life. It destroys anything and everything and leaves no soul nor building alive.
They hit hospitals, churches, mosques, refugee camps, schools, clinics, ambulance vehicles, cars with white flags on them. It indiscriminately destroys and kills. They tell people to escape, and they kill them while they’re escaping. Promise them safety, and rob them from it.
If this state was really Jewish, it would’ve stuck with:
“Thou shall not commit murder”
But I’m not doing any of this because I enjoy it, or because I want to do it. I hate it. I absolutely loathe it. I want nothing to do with it. I got shadow banned, and I think I am still being severely restricted, due to the inherent racism and biases built in within the social media platforms. But hey, that’s still not why I’m writing..
“Do We Have Rights?”
These were the words from the Palestinian Representative to the UN, Riyad Mansour.1 It struck me today as I heard it not because they are powerful (which they are), but how desperate they were. The questioning is genuine.
How much is left for the Palestinian people and their supporters to demonstrate in their suffering to be considered as humans and for their pleas to be heard? They’re literally showing us whatever they could in order for us to believe them, yet the world not only refuses to see them, but also refuses to hear their asks for help.
People talk about how media is biased, and I always knew it was biased from very young age. At the end of the day, I’m an Arab Muslim and I know how the media intentionally portrays people like me. I thought people at the upper echelons of the media industry would have some ‘humanity’ in them, or any sense of dignity or shame when it comes to the immeasurable amount of suffering these people in Palestine have been going through for decades, and try to shed some light on the truth. Yet, the gut-wrenching disregard for human sanctity is so viciously visible in words we keep hearing again and again, with no moral compass in any of these people. It fills me with disgust, how cheap Palestinian life is in Western media.
Christiane Amanpour, reporting on her show uses the word “explosion”. Not an “airstrike”. It’s not the first time, nor will it be the last time we hear this deception.2 Similarly, People with absolutely high visibility like Wolf Blitzer called the airstrike that targeted the Baptist hospital he used the words “blast” and it took them more than a week of backpedaling and trying to find any excuse in the world to not say the truth, and the truth was revealed and yet, the refuse to have any journalistic dignity to say it. I can go on, and on, and on.
Words matter, and truth does matter. It’s a fine distinction, but it’s a life-or-death distinction. The lexical semantics here paint a completely different picture. We hear “casualties of war” or “collateral damage” or “unavoidable death”, when we talk about Palestinians, but Israelis were ‘slaughtered’. These words mean a whole lot of difference when we read them or hear them. They do pain completely different images in our heads. They humanize one side, and basically delete thousands of people from our image. ‘Collateral damage’ feels like a crumbling building, or a fallen sign, or some furniture on the street, but ‘slaughtered’ looks absolutely raw.
All these are excuses for implicitly saying: “Yes, I condone barbaric blanket bombing of Palestinians. Because I’ve dehumanized them enough for you to not see people when people die.” Hence, the passionate plea from the Palestinian UN rep., to see people as humans. We just need you to see Palestinians as humans. They don’t have blue eyes, and blonde hair. Their flag isn’t yellow and blue. They’re still human though. Arabs are humans. I swear I’m telling you the truth, I’m one of them.
Throughout these 3 weeks, we all saw every trick in the book to do linguistic gymnastics in order to justify one side’s atrocious war crimes against another, and calling it a ‘war’ is nothing short of ridiculous because words have meaning and implications. Let me tell you, these reports have won Hall of Fame places in hell for hiding the truth, and gold medals in immorality and deceit. Let’s not even talk about genocide enablers, justifiers, and supporters, from politicians all over the world.
Today, we woke up with the news in Jabaliya. I won’t share the photo of that site in the body of this letter, but it’s here.
I urge you to look at it and ask yourself this question:
“What justifies 6 bombs, each weighing a ton, that not only turns a multi-story building into dust, but also digs a crater that is 10 feet deep? What justifies it into a refugee camp INSIDE a refugee camp?”
Do you see how wild this is? How insane this whole thing is? Ok, Let’s assume we believe the narrative that we’re fed. This logic then justifies something like this:
“There’s a hostage situation in a mall somewhere in America, so the cops or the special forces decide to go in killing everyone in the mall, because they want to kill the bad guy..”
This is the logic that the occupation forces are using, being enabled by the US. It’s nothing short of a genocidal ‘death cult’ logic. A logic that wants death to as many people as possible. Justify that to yourself, then you’ll find a justification to everything that is happening to the Gazans. And I’ll congratulate you because you have no soul left in you.
Also, if you look at the article, you’ll see the mind-boggling obfuscation of truth. Words like “widespread damage” replace the visible truth: 400 people killed in that attack. 400 souls disappeared from the face of the earth, and hidden behind carefully crafted words.
Someone made a comment on instagram and it goes like this:
“You are asking me to understand why Israel should continue to kill.
I’m asking you to understand why innocent Palestinians should live.”
The superintendent In the building where I live is from Bosnia, and I spoke with him briefly in the past about his experience as a child in the Bosnian war.3 I saw him at the beginning of this continuous war crime against the Palestinian people in Gaza and how atrocious this thing was, and I said: “I’m sure you’ve seen horrible things such as these.” His response was: “No, not like this. I have seen horrible things, but it’s nothing compares to these people in Gaza. I thought these things that happened to us in Bosnia will never happen again, but they’re happening now..”
My Bosnian friend was separated from his father at the age of 8 years old. He also witnessed Srebrenica Genocide.
By the time I wrote this letter, and by the current UNICEF estimations (a child is killed every 10 minutes in Gaza), I pray that 6 children didn’t leave us..
…..
Let that sink in.. I hope you’re not going insane as I am..4
You can find the full speech here:
https://www.youtube.com/live/UNQ0cY0dCFM?si=avJzN6QgMbcZevMQ&t=10665
You will see in that clip, how Hanan Ashrawi teaches Amanpour how to use proper language. If you want more: News Coverage of Israel and Palestine Makes Me Ashamed to be a Journalist https://www.vice.com/en/article/dy35p7/palestine-israel-coverage-ashamed-journalist
I didn’t even want to read this again, I just want to urge to your humanity, to imagine Palestinians as people just like you, and act upon it..
The west and the US already made the decision they are ok and very comfortable with this carnage annihilation. Slaughter wouldn’t even begin to describe whats happening to the Palestinians. And yes it is a death cult committing those atrocities. One cant help but think and even believe this is not incidental nor a coincidence. It is a planned atrocity. Their entourage of clowns for reporters does nothing but bark those sentiments. Integrity does not exist.