Palestine before the world was watching

The horrible attack on Israeli civilians on October 7, 2023 left almost 1,300 Israeli women, children, and innocents dead. This attack set the world up in an uproar, with at least 40 nations condemning Hamas, a Palestinian militant and political resistance group, and explicitly labeling this as a terrorist assault. Israel then began an onslaught of horrific bombings upon the Gaza Strip, killing an estimated 20,000 civilians, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. Protests began sprouting all over the world in support of Palestinian rights and freedom, while many in opposition protested for Israel’s right to defend its nation and citizens. 

The rest of the world is in panic. 

Many people consider this conflict to be straightforward and new, consider the Hamas attack a surprise to the Israeli people, and consider the Palestinian casualties a necessity of war. 

Many people do not take into consideration the decades of history between these two states, the silent suffering of the Palestinian people, and the origin behind the state of Israel. 

This began years ago, at the end of World War I, when the Ottoman Empire conceded Palestine to the British Mandate, which placed thousands upon thousands of Jewish migrants there, ignoring the rights and needs of the Palestinian people. 

The newly-formed Israeli state created more than 750,000 Palestinian refugees, who were displaced from their homes and forced beyond the borders of Palestine. Israeli forces had taken about 78% of ethnic Palestine, destroyed more than 530 villages, and massacred about 15,000 Palestinians. 

This phenomenon was named the Nakba. 

Since the Nakba, Israel has constructed and expanded settlements on occupied Palestinian land, restricted Gazans access to clean water, electricity, and fuel, and forced the Palestinian people to live under a constant state of occupation and restriction. 

Since the Nakba, 6,407 Palestinians have died between 2008 and 2023. 

Since the Nakba, the people of Palestine have had their backs turned on them by the rest of the world. A lack of media coverage in their silently dying civilians, no accountability being placed for the numerous Ramadan bombings upon mosques, and even with the rising numbers of Palestinian casualties in the beginning of the war, so many nations refused to call for a ceasefire for a war upon innocents. The United States of America, a veto power in the United Nations, continues to refuse to accept a ceasefire.

Since October 7, the world has sat with their eyes glued to the screens of their phones, their laptops, their TVs, on the edge of their seat, wondering what sort of atrocity will hit the civilians of Palestine next. Whether it be complete darkness and isolation from the world, child starvation, or mass destruction, people have been watching with our eyes widened and breathing stuttered.

Since October 7, the Israel-Hamas war has haunted the international public, widening their eyes to the formerly ignored Palestinian suffering. 

For many decades, Palestinian agonization has been an ahistorical phenomenon, as deaths have been untied from reality and exist unreal to the human eye. Palestinian children have stood on wide, international stages to audition for help, acknowledgement, and sympathy. Often, that sympathy is not granted to them, even with the fictitious events of their deaths. 

News reporters will not narrate the truth (even going as far as denying the rising death toll in Gaza), government officials will misinform the great public, and infamous political figures will gallantly deny the entire existence of the Palestinian people. 

No one dares to fight for the rights of forgotten, denamed people. 

For decades, the Palestinians have been a forgotten people.

This uproar—this fight between the rights of the Palestinians and the defense of the Israeli government—was flamed by the Hamas attack on October 7, 2023.

Who knew about the Palestinian suffering before the attack? Who knew and did nothing?

For decades, Palestinian children and civilians have been silently and slyly murdered. Their rights have been suppressed and their needs have become a mindless theory in the real world. The eyes of the world have never turned to the lives of innocent Palestinian losses. The eyes of the world have never turned to the brutal, disastrous clash between Israel and Gaza. 

Until October 7. 

Until an attack upon the Israeli civilians. 

Now, protests roar all over the world for the defensive rights of the Israeli government to defend their ability to bomb the Gaza Strip. Protests also shout all over the world for the rights of the Palestinian people to live, to exist, to want more. 

These protests were nowhere to be seen during the multiple bombings of the Gaza Strip before October 7, the numerous bombings during Ramadan, upon mosques, and upon children. 

Condemn death. Condemn the brutalization of bodies. This is an easy, simple ask. Condemn the loss of innocent life. But condemn the loss of all innocent life.