Palestine Letter: The sorrow after the massacre

A PALESTINIAN PASSES A DESTROYED BUILDING DURING AN ISRAELI MILITARY OPERATION IN THE AL-NUSEIRAT REFUGEE CAMP IN SOUTHERN GAZA, FEBRUARY 19, 2024. (PHOTO: © MOHAMMED SABER/EFE VIA ZUMA PRESS APA IMAGES)

"How can a person recover from the sight of the trained dog that attacked an older woman in her home in Jabalia and bit her arm while she was screaming? Every Palestinian who saw this older woman felt
she was his mother or grandmother.”

Editor’s Note | For the sake of our Planet’s insanity, The Voiceless Must Be Heard.

How can a person recover from the horror of what he saw? How can he live an everyday life after everything that happened to him and all this displacement, destruction, killing, and death? How can an ordinary person witness all these massacres and see how a person becomes a pile of body parts? Some are on the ground, and “Unknown No. 15” remains are written next to them. These scenes continue to play out every day for months. Can a person ever heal?

An ordinary person who follows the course of the war on television and social media may experience great sadness due to what he sees. But experiencing the massacre and genocide firsthand, researching its details, seeing its victims, listening to their stories and their helpless words, then writing their stories, word after word, feeling after feeling – is something else entirely. The writer listens to these stories repeatedly, each reminding him of his personal experience, to the point that he becomes weak and has no choice but to break down in tears.

Not a single story that I have published from October until now has been devoid of every single one of these emotions. There is not a single story devoid of its owners’ crying. Every family I went to meet in Gaza, the family was sitting in front of me with tears streaming down their face during a conversation. They could not stop, and in every story, I was in front of these people. Despite my persistent attempts to control my tears, I always failed and found myself crying with them and quickly trying to focus again and maintain my role as a journalist.

Working in the journalistic field during this genocide has never been more complicated than it has been in my entire life. For example, I had to go to meet children who had lost all of their families, and all that remained of them was the child whom I was going to meet.

When I went to meet these children, I always felt that asking my questions might be like walking in a minefield. A word or question could make this child lose his senses, burst into tears, or scream. They had lost all of their family. But I always tried to carry sweets and toys with me, talk to them, meet them, and seek help from the people who care for them and take care of them inside the hospitals.

When I went anywhere in the southern Gaza Strip, I would see many buildings whose destroyed walls bore the writing: “The people from this family that were bombed are still under the rubble.” They remained under the rubble for weeks and months without anyone being able to get them out.

How can a person recover from the sight of the trained dog that attacked an older woman in her home in Jabalia and bit her arm while she was screaming? Every Palestinian who saw this older woman felt she was his mother or grandmother. We are the ones documenting all this. When will we recover from all this sadness that we observe and document, and all this injustice that happens to our family and friends without being able to stop it? How will we forgive ourselves for having witnessed all of this and for it to continue to occur in our lives?

This war has brought sadness to all the families of the Gaza Strip without exception. Every family in the Gaza Strip has lost a lot, not to mention the home that almost all the families of the Gaza Strip have lost. Sadness looms over the hearts of the Palestinians in Gaza. It is slowly killing them and turning them into people who are losing hope little by little.