Messages from the Dead!
The dead all carried the same plea: Do not forget us. Remember our names, our faces, our stories. Do not reduce us to mere numbers—speak of us.
The world knows the stories of both the living and the dead here in Gaza. You have witnessed the agony of displacement, the destruction of homes, the erasure of memories, and the disfigurement of a city. You have seen starvation, dehydration, the burning of children, beheadings, and the targeting of shelters. You’ve read about those who perished from hunger, heat, exposure, or beneath the rubble. You’ve heard the cries of children, mothers, fathers, boys, and girls.
You were witnesses—not just to us, but to yourselves. Whether by choice or circumstance, you were complicit. But I’m here to tell you that I don’t want to be remembered. I don’t want this world to recall my name. I want to be an anonymous number in the collective memory. I will resent anyone who sees my picture or hears my voice among you. I despise the reality of belonging to this world. I loathe the fact that I am part of the side that must die and suffer for the other side to live. I hate that I am one of you, that I once believed in humanity, justice, and the law. I regret the time and effort I spent studying law to defend human beings when I should have first understood what the world truly considers “human”—not the hollow words written in texts and declarations.
Humanity died the day you—world leaders—first came into power, the moment you allowed yourselves to decide the fate of this world. Humanity died when you declared yourselves responsible for us, claiming the right to control our fate while denying us the same. Humanity, and human dignity, perished when you deemed yourselves superior to us, more deserving of life than us. You have failed, and your mission has failed.
I do not want to be remembered. I want to erase my existence from this world. I want to forget the twenty-five years I’ve lived in this bleak era. Over the past eleven months, I’ve tried to convince myself that I deserve to live, that there’s an end to all of this, that hope still resides within us, that we are the voice of truth, and that truth will prevail. But I believe I’ve reached the end—the end of my faith in myself, in my ability to endure, in humanity’s capacity to rise and free itself to save its own.
The people here in Gaza do not need your memories; they need your actions. They do not want to die for you to write history. They do not want you to document their deaths and suffering. They want to live, so they can write and remember their own disappointments in you.
