From the Editors

“Every day is the worst day,” narrates Lara Elborno as she inventories the suffering, hunger, maiming, and death suffered by Palestinians in the Gaza Strip since October 7, 2023.¹ Some of us thought that the devastation and impoverishment brought on by sixteen years of total siege, blockade, and repeated aggressions could not get worse. Yet, as the history of Palestine and the Palestinians teaches us, things can always get worse.² Every day—for three months and counting—Israel’s US-supplied arsenal has inflicted genocide.³ It is a betrayal to watch the shredding of our people. It is a betrayal to look away.

Hamas’s surprise attack on October 7, its defeat of an entire division of the Israeli army, and the failure of Israeli intelligence and surveillance technology constitute a “paradigm shift.”⁴ The attack transcended the 1948 Green Line, inflicted heavy casualties on Israeli civilians, and broke the Israeli “brand” of military invincibility. The “violent equilibrium”⁵ honed over the last sixteen years between Hamas and Israel has shattered. In response, Israel has delivered another paradigm shift, an attack of unbridled brutality facilitated by international, including Arab state, complicity. In the face of the greatest atrocities ever perpetrated against the Palestinian people beyond even those of 1948, and with the highest Palestinian death toll ever recorded, not one Arab regime has taken a single decisive political, diplomatic, economic, or legal action against Israel. Participation in the war has come from non-state actors like Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen, who have disrupted global trade in the Red Sea.⁶

This is not simply an Israeli war on Palestine. It is a US war on Palestine. Since 1948, the US has gifted Israel more than $260 billion in mostly military aid; this does not include the additional $14.3 billion Biden promised to Israel in November 2023.⁷ The dissonance between the US government’s words and actions in arming and enabling famine, annihilation, and genocide while speaking of humanitarian concerns offers a lesson we learn anew with sharpening depth and clarity. So brazen was the Biden administration’s fueling of Israel’s genocidal impunity that hundreds of US officials registered their protest.⁸

Ethnic cleansing is a foundational infrastructure of Israeli rule since 1948. Since October 7, 2023, the full force of genocidal intent and practice is on display, from the Israeli president’s assertion that an “entire nation” was responsible for the deaths of Israeli citizens on October 7, to the Israeli defense minister’s naming of Palestinians as “human animals,” to an Israeli parliamentarian’s demand for “a Nakba that will overshadow” 1948.⁹ These were not the only such threats. Israel’s security cabinet member and former head of the Shin Bet stated: “We are now rolling out the Gaza Nakba.”¹⁰

US and European media have been complicit in this genocide, parroting Israeli talking points and obscuring Palestinian suffering, when covered at all. For weeks, as the death toll in Gaza climbed toward 20,000, the New York Times continually obfuscated Palestinian loss. In the first twenty days, as Israeli forces targeted and ultimately forced the closure of al-Shifa Hospital, the largest in the Gaza Strip, US media produced a narrative of denial and erasure taken verbatim from Israeli talking points. Aided and abetted by Biden’s relentless gaslighting of Palestinian suffering, the US media blamed the injured for their own deaths, spreading false claims that the five buildings of the hospital were directly involved in Hamas activities. Two months later, as Israel waged a full-scale war on the entirety of Gaza’s health sector, killing nearly 300 health care workers and forcing the closure of hospital after hospital, mainstream media outlets began doing their jobs: they finally admitted that there was no evidence of military use of al-Shifa Hospital by Hamas.¹¹

In the last days of 2023, US outlets reported that Israel’s war on Palestine “sits among the deadliest and most destructive in recent history.”¹² Over a period of less than three months, Israel’s war of annihilation exceeded the destruction of the razing of Aleppo and the bombing of Mariupol, and was proportionally more intense than the Allied bombing of Germany during World War II.¹³ By the end of 2023, Israel had struck over 22,000 “targets” in the Gaza Strip,¹⁴ destroying 75 percent of all structures of northern Gaza and a quarter of the buildings in the southern area of Khan Younis.¹⁵ Experts have used satellite data to map the damage. The genocide has changed the very land; the Gaza Strip is “now a different color from space. It is a different texture.” ¹⁶

The Israeli military has not divulged the exact types of weaponry it is using, but experts are confident that the “vast majority of bombs dropped on the besieged enclave are US made.”¹⁷ Forensic analysts insist that Israel’s campaign is “one of the most intense civilian punishment campaigns in history.”¹⁸ Two-thousand-pound US-made MK-84 “bunker busters” have targeted Palestinians, with at least 208 of these devastating bombs dropped on the southern Gaza Strip alone.¹⁹ The US-made Joint Direct Attack Munitions (JDAM) “turns earth to liquid” and renders “instant death” to anyone within a hundred feet of the bomb’s impact.²⁰ Fragments of the Smart, Precise Impact, Cost Effective (SPICE) bombs have also been found. These “smart” bombs are produced by Israeli defense giant Rafael with the assistance of US technology. What has their precision meant?

At the time of this writing, a conservative estimate of the Palestinian death toll far exceeds 22,500, with at least 55,000 wounded, over 70 percent of whom are men, women, children, and the elderly who are noncombatants.²¹ An additional 7,000 people are missing, with most buried under the rubble. At least 5,000 are now disabled.²² A new acronym has taken shape in this genocide: the Wounded Child No Surviving Family (WCNSF).²³ At least 25,000 children have lost one or both parents.²⁴ The dead, wounded, and missing total over 4.5 percent of the Gaza Strip’s 2.3 million people.

Any honest observer of this war understands that the target of Israeli force and its US-supplied weapons is the Palestinian civilian. Hamas combatants are the “collateral damage.”²⁵ There are no “safe zones” in the Gaza Strip.²⁶ Indeed, after the dust settles, Israeli and US citizens alike will have to contend with their support and funding of a genocide that inordinately targets children, estimated at 40 percent of the climbing death toll.²⁷

But we are not numbers. Those are the words of a youth-led Palestinian nonprofit project in the Gaza Strip.²⁸ The poetry and labor of these youth as of so many remind us of the dreams and hopes now lying under the rubble. But those dreams²⁹ and hopes will live despite the effort to annihilate Palestine and the Palestinians.

We witness this genocide. We watch as the entirety of the Gaza Strip’s 2.3 million people become displaced, subjected to transfer and expulsion from their homeland that both US and Israeli officials discuss today as “humanitarian.”³⁰ We watch as Israeli soldiers round up men and boys, strip them to their underwear, and line them up with their hands above their heads, while women and other children are blindfolded in Yarmouk Stadium in Gaza City.³¹ We watch young children crumpled in pain over stretchers carrying their parents; we see mothers and fathers screaming in grief over the bodies of their children.

We watch our people attempt desperately to unearth with their bare hands the remains of their loved ones from under the rubble.³² We watch as Palestinians discover five decomposing premature babies in what remains of al-Nasr Hospital,³³ and discover scores more left on streets made dangerous by constant bombardment and sniping. We watch as the Israeli army delivers back to Gaza a truckload of eighty Palestinian bodies it massacred³⁴ and we watch our exhausted people struggle to identify those bodies before burying them in ditches. We look at these mass graves, at all those bodies wrapped in blue shrouds. We watch knowing that there is no turning back from this genocide.

We face the realities of the world to come. We know that the pace of death in the months ahead will be equally relentless. The “perfect storm for disease has begun,” said UNICEF’s chief spokesperson on December 12, 2023.³⁵ Kidney failure and diarrhea caused by dehydration have quadrupled during this war. Hunger, the lack of water, refrigeration, medical supplies, and a devastated health sector will lead to epidemics of dysentery, hepatitis, acute respiratory infections, and other contagious and preventable diseases in the months to come.³⁶ Disease, as one retired Israeli general explained, is an effective tool of war.³⁷

We witness how Palestinians in Gaza live in hunger. We know what starvation does to the body: feeding on stores of fat, moving to the muscles, eroding the heart, shutting down the immune system, rendering concentration impossible, and ending in a slow and painful death.³⁸ We watch as Israel hones starvation as a weapon of war.³⁹

We watch as the very field of medicine has come under attack.⁴⁰ We watch Ghassan Abu Sitta, the Palestinian surgeon specialized in conflict medicine with wartime experience in Iraq, Syria, and Yemen, treat the injured at al-Shifa and al-Ahli hospitals. We watch him narrate how white phosphorous shelling induces a chemical burn in “the deep structures of the body.”⁴¹ We listen as he reveals the destruction of Gaza’s health sector⁴² and how hospitals are depleted of morphine and analgesics. We watch as doctors amputate the limbs of their own children and as pregnant women endure C-sections, all without anesthesia.⁴³

We watch as Israel turns knowledge producers into enemy combatants. We watch as Israel kills journalists. At the time of this writing, Israeli has targeted 102 journalists since October 7, more than one journalist a day.⁴⁴ None of us will forget the day Wael al-Dahdouh wept over his spouse, his child, and his grandchild.⁴⁵ He went back to work the next day. We watch as digital creators, photojournalists, and freelance journalists like Motaz Azaiza, Hind Khoudary, Bisan Awda, and Plestia Alaqad relay the voices, experiences, and realities of life under genocidal war.⁴⁶

We watch as poets, writers, and scholars are slaughtered one by one under the force of the world’s fourth largest military.⁴⁷ We mourn as acclaimed academic, novelist, and poet Refaat Alareer, a critical force in the creation of We Are Not Numbers (and who was writing for this journal at the time) loses his life to Israel’s arsenal. We mourn novelists and educators like Heba Abu Nada, Omar Abu Shawish, Abdul Karim Hashash, Inas al-Saqa, Jihad al-Masri, Yusuf Dawas, Shahadah al-Buhbahan, Nour al-Din Hajjaj, Mustafa al-Sawwaf, Abdullah al-Aqad, Said al-Dahshan, and Salim al-Nafar.⁴⁸

We watch as institutions of Palestinian social, cultural, political, and educational life are destroyed. We watch as an estimated 70 percent of Gaza’s schools are reduced to rubble.⁴⁹ We watch as Gaza’s Central Archives is obliterated, incinerating 150 years’ worth of archival materials.⁵⁰ We watch as Israel destroys every single one of Gaza’s eleven universities, including al-Azhar University and the Islamic University of Gaza,⁵¹ where many of our contributors studied and earned their degrees.

Before October 7, we recall, there were seventy-six cultural centers, three theaters, five museums, fifteen publishing houses and bookstores, eighty public libraries, and 145 heritage sites in the Gaza Strip.⁵² The Israelis have bombed the Gaza Municipal Library and the Rashad al-Shawa Cultural Center into rubble.⁵³ Thousands of books and documents, and all of these communal spaces now lie burnt to the ground. Just as genocide targets families in their entirety, attempting to erase the next generation by killing children in the thousands, a policy of epistemicide mandates the destruction of cultural and historical sites, libraries, and bookstores.

We watch as Israel flattens centuries-old places of worship, killing and injuring hundreds seeking shelter inside them. We watch as survivors of the bombing of the Church of Saint Porphyrius in Gaza City, said to be the third oldest church in the world, scream into cameras that the Christians of Gaza are becoming extinct, pleading to the Christian world to act.⁵⁴ We watch as the oldest mosque in Gaza, the seventh-century Great Omari Mosque, is bombarded, knowing that it is one of 104 mosques and three churches destroyed by Israel in Gaza since October 7.⁵⁵ We know that making life unlivable and the Gaza Strip uninhabitable—a promise on which the Israelis delivered slowly for the last sixteen years and rapidly since October 7—is predicated on devastating these infrastructures. As one Israeli general hoped: “Gaza will become a place where no human being can exist.”⁵⁶

Palestinians in other parts of Palestine have also been subject to Israeli brutality. We watch as Israeli forces conduct nightly raids in the West Bank. We watch as the bloodiest year for Palestinians in the West Bank got even bloodier. Since October 7, Israeli forces have killed more than 300 Palestinians in the West Bank.⁵⁷ The Netanyahu government has prioritized the Israeli army’s aiding and abetting of settler terror, going so far as to deploy most of its soldiers there. Today, that aiding and abetting has reached new heights, with the government openly arming settlers and citizens alike.⁵⁸

We watch as a new McCarthyism attempts to shut down speech and action in support of Palestine and the Palestinians in North America and Europe. We watch as cynical indignation renders the call for freedom from the Mediterranean Sea to the Jordan River a marker of “genocidal intent.” We will never forget the policing of dreams of liberation at the very moment that an actual genocide is taking place. The attempt to erase, criminalize, and exclude Palestinians from the category of the human, and the uses and abuses of colonial language, are as old as the hundred-year war on Palestine.⁵⁹

There are other things we must watch. People the world over have come to the basic conclusion that Israel’s regime of apartheid and settler colonialism will breed and engender resistance. A global movement of unprecedented numbers and commitments has rocked the world, demanding a ceasefire on every continent. We watch creativity and courage flourish. We watch as songs from the past, notably that of Palestinian George Totari who wrote “Leve Palestina” in exile, become the anthems of people calling for freedom.⁶⁰

Most importantly, we watch the Palestinians themselves, shaping life under the force of death. We watch as displaced Palestinians in makeshift tent camps bring joy to throngs of hungry and cold children in song and dance. We watch as a new generation, like the nine-year-old Lama Jamous, report, record, and voice the realities of Palestinian life under the force of genocide.⁶¹

Palestinians are not the embodiment of a future threat. The rhetoric that the young who are now disabled, orphaned, and bereft will grow to become vengeful is a denial of everything we have learned about Palestinian futurity over the last seventy-five years. Palestinians teach us to live despite the trauma, despite a foreclosed future. As long as Palestinians exist, we will write, make music, archive, and labor, tirelessly, again and again, for freedom.

Rashid I. Khalidi
Sherene Seikaly

Notes

1 Lara Elborno, “Every Day Is the Worst Day,” Jadaliyya, December 29, 2023, https://www.jadaliyya.com/Details/45670/Every-Day-is-the-Worst-Day.

2 Hana Sleiman, “History as a Cautionary Tale,” History of the Present 13, no. 1 (2023): 133–35, https://doi.org/10.1215/21599785-10253369.

3 “How Big Is Israel’s Military and How Much Funding Does It Get from the US?,” Al Jazeera, October 11, 2023, https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/10/11/how-big-is-israels-military-and-how-much-funding-does-it-get-from-the-us; Harry Davies and Manisha Ganguly, “Gaza War Puts US’s Extensive Weapons Stockpile in Israel under Scrutiny,” Guardian, December 27, 2023, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/dec/27/gaza-war-puts-us-extensive-weapons-stockpile-in-israel-under-scrutiny.

4 Rashid Khalidi, “A Paradigm Shift in the Hundred Years’ War on Palestine?,” Mondoweiss, November 18, 2023, https://mondoweiss.net/2023/11/a-paradigm-shift-in-the-hundred-years-war-on-palestine/.

5 Issac Chotiner, “Where the Palestinian Political Project Goes from Here,” New Yorker, October 11, 2023, https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/where-the-palestinian-political-project-goes-from-here.

6 Kate Kelly, Edward Wong, and Vivian Nereim, “U.S. Prepares to Lift Ban on Sales of Offensive Weapons to Saudi Arabia,” New York Times, December 21, 2023, https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/21/us/politics/weapons-sales-saudi-arabia-yemen.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare.

7 Isabella Hammad and Sahar Huneidi, “The Uses and Abuses of Language in Israel’s War on Palestinians,” Nation, December 21, 2023, https://www.thenation.com/article/world/language-israel-gaza-palestine/?fbclid=IwAR3nXmoBimiAqDr5glQHdTEDQSEKJw5BZ0JU_vie6w5UKiRi4HXVAQbUTl8.

8 Maria Abi-Habib, Michael Crowley, and Edward Wong, “More than 500 U.S. Officials Sign Letter Protesting Biden’s Israel Policy,” New York Times, November 14, 2023. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/14/us/politics/israel-biden-letter-gaza-cease-fire.html.

9 Chris McGreal, “The Language Being Used to Describe Palestinians is Genocidal,” Guardian, October 16, 2023, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/oct/16/the-language-being-used-to-describe-palestinians-is-genocidal.

10 Michael Hauser Tov, “‘We’re Rolling Out Nakba 2023,’ Israeli Minister Says on Northern Gaza Strip Evacuation,” Haaretz, November 12, 2023 https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2023-11-12/ty-article/israeli-security-cabinet-member-calls-north-gaza-evacuation-nakba-2023/0000018b-c2be-dea2-a9bf-d2be7b670000.

11 Louisa Loveluck et al., “The Case of al-Shifa: Investigating the Assault on Gaza’s Largest Hospital,” New York Times, December 21, 2023, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/12/21/al-shifa-hospital-gaza-hamas-israel/.

12 Julia Frankel, “Israel’s Military Campaign in Gaza Seen as among the Most Destructive in Recent History, Experts Say,” Associated Press, December 22, 2023, https://apnews.com/article/israel-gaza-bombs-destruction-death-toll-scope-419488c511f83c85baea22458472a796

13 “Israeli Destruction of Gaza Surpasses That of Mariupol, WW2 Germany,” TRT World, December 22, 2023, https://www.trtworld.com/middle-east/israeli-destruction-of-gaza-surpasses-that-of-mariupol-ww2-germany-16341083; “Israeli Bombardment Destroyed over 70% of Gaza Homes: Report,” Al Jazeera, December 31, 2023, https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/12/31/israeli-bombardment-destroyed-over-70-of-gaza-homes-media-office.

14 Melanie Lidman, “These Numbers Show the Staggering Losses in the Israel-Hamas War as Gaza Deaths Surpass 20,000,” Associated Press, December 22, 2023, https://apnews.com/article/israel-hamas-war-gaza-death-toll-numbers-de06ce2c5711ce17a4704276f5c1a5c4.

15 Frankel, “Israel’s Military Campaign in Gaza.”

16 Frankel, “Israel’s Military Campaign in Gaza.”

17 Frankel, “Israel’s Military Campaign in Gaza.”

18 Frankel, “Israel’s Military Campaign in Gaza.”

19 Robin Stein et al., “A Times Investigation Tracked Israel’s Use of One of Its Most Destructive Bombs in South Gaza,” New York Times, December 21, 2023, https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/21/world/middleeast/israel-gaza-bomb-investigation.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare.

20 Frankel, “Israel’s Military Campaign in Gaza.”

21 Nicholas Kristof, “So Many Child Deaths in Gaza, And for What?” New York Times, December 6, 2023, https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/06/opinion/gaza-israel-deaths.html.

22 Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, “New Catastrophic Plight in Gaza: Israel’s Attacks Leave More Than 5,000 Palestinians Disabled,” United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, December 7, 2023, https://reliefweb.int/report/occupied-palestinian-territory/new-catastrophic-plight-gaza-israels-attacks-leave-more-5000-palestinians-disabled-enar.

23 Nedal S. Hamdouna, Aseel Mousa, and Julian Borger, “The Plight of Gaza’s ‘WCNSFs’ Wounded Child, No Surviving Family,” Guardian, December 22, 2023, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/dec/22/the-plight-of-gazas-wcnsfs-wounded-child-no-surviving-family#:∼:text=The%20conflict%20has%20filled%20hospital,but%20there%20are%20always%20exceptions.

24 “Over 10,000 Infants and Children Killed in Israel’s Gaza Genocide, Hundreds of Whom Are Trapped beneath Debris,” Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, December 9, 2023, https://euromedmonitor.org/en/article/6020/Over-10,000-infants-and-children-killed-in-Israel%E2%80%99s-Gaza-genocide,-hundreds-of-whom-are-trapped-beneath-debris#:∼:text=Euro%2DMed%20Monitor%20further%20estimated,without%20a%20place%20to%20live.

25 Azmi Bishara, “The Gaza War Is on the Cusp of a New Phase … Paths of Calm and Diplomatically, Politically, and Militarily Escalations” [in Arabic], al-Araby, December 24, 2023, YouTube video, 59:14, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vzb25YhfUEw.

26 Bethan McKernan and Sufian Taha, “Gaza Civilians Afraid to Leave Home after Bombing of ‘Safe Routes,’” Guardian, October 15, 2023, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/oct/14/gaza-civilians-afraid-to-leave-home-after-bombing-of-safe-routes.

27 Hamdouna, Mousa, and Borger, “The Plight of Gaza’s ‘WCNSFs’ Wounded Child.”

28 For more information, visit https://wearenotnumbers.org/.

29 Visualizing Palestine, “We Had Dreams,” November 3, 2023, YouTube Video, 2:48, https://visualizingpalestine.org/visuals/we-had-dreams.

30 “Israeli Lawmakers Keep Pushing for Transfer under the Guise of Humanitarian Aid,” Haaretz, December 27, 2023, https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/editorial/2023-12-27/ty-article-opinion/israeli-lawmakers-keep-pushing-for-transfer-under-the-guise-of-humanitarian-aid/0000018c-a7d6-df5f-a79c-e7ff4d150000.

31 “Shocking Footage Shows Israeli Forces Round Up, Strip Dozens of Palestinians at Gaza Stadium,” New Arab, December 26, 2023, https://www.newarab.com/news/israeli-forces-round-abuse-palestinians-gaza-stadium.

32 Wafaa Shurafa and Samy Magdy, “Thousands of Bodies Lie Buried in Rubble in Gaza: Families Dig to Retrieve Them, Often by Hand,” Associated Press, November 17, 2023, https://apnews.com/article/israel-palestinians-gaza-buried-rubble-airstrikes-89c0e8d0934d573d94d2fbfeba44d933.

33 Alex MacDonald, “Israel-Palestine War: Five Dead Premature Babies Discovered in Gaza Hospital,” Middle East Eye, November 29, 2023, https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/israel-palestine-war-gaza-dead-premature-babies-nasr-hospital

34 “Israel Returns 80 Bodies to Gaza after Confirming They’re Not Hostages,” Reuters, December 27, 2023, https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/palestinians-work-identify-80-dead-handed-over-israel-2023-12-27/.

35 Bassam Masoud and Saleh Salem, “Gaza Faces ‘Perfect Storm’ of Deadly Diseases,” Reuters, December 14 2023, https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/gaza-faces-perfect-storm-deadly-diseases-2023-12-14/.

36 Masoud and Salem, “Gaza Faces ‘Perfect Storm’ of Deadly Diseases.”

37 “Retired Israeli General Says Spread of Disease in Gaza ‘Will Bring Victory Closer,’” New Arab, November 21, 2023, https://www.newarab.com/news/israeli-general-praises-spread-disease-gaza.

38 Real Talk Doctor (@realtalk.doc), “Half of Gaza’s Population of 2.3 Million Is Starving,” Instagram, December 15, 2023, https://www.instagram.com/p/C04eG5mumqa/?igsh=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==.

39 “Israel: Starvation Used as Weapon of War in Gaza,” Human Rights Watch, December 18, 2023, https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/12/18/israel-starvation-used-weapon-war-gaza; “Lethal Combination of Hunger and Disease to Lead to More Deaths in Gaza,” World Health Organization, December 21, 2023, https://www.who.int/news/item/21-12-2023-lethal-combination-of-hunger-and-disease-to-lead-to-more-deaths-in-gaza.

40 Masoud and Salem, “Gaza Faces ‘Perfect Storm’ of Deadly Diseases.”

41 Abby Sewell, “A British Palestinian Surgeon Gave Testimony to a UK War Crimes Unit after Returning from Gaza,” Associated Press, December 9, 2023, https://apnews.com/article/ghassan-abu-sitta-gaza-war-crimes-testimony-c0a40d6edc02bb0b91c94eb39cd8110d.

42 Sewell, “A British Palestinian Surgeon Gave Testimony.”

43 “‘Nightmarish’: Gaza’s Pregnant Women Endure C-sections without Anesthesia,” TRT World, October 17, 2023, https://www.trtworld.com/middle-east/nightmarish-gazas-pregnant-women-endure-c-sections-without-anesthesia-15823792.

44 Nadia Taha, “It’s Time for Gaza’s Journalists to Be Treated like the Heroes They Are,” Nation, December 12, 2023, https://www.thenation.com/article/society/gaza-journalists-heroes/.

45 “Family of Al Jazeera Gaza Bureau Chief Killed in Israeli Air Raid,” Al Jazeera, October 25, 2023, https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/10/25/family-of-al-jazeera-gaza-bureau-head-killed-in-israeli-air-raid.

46 Yasmeen Serhan, “Palestinian Journalists Offer a Rare Glimpse into Life in Gaza. But for How Long?,” Time, modified December 8, 2023, https://time.com/6343715/israel-hamas-war-journalists-gaza/.

47 “These Countries Have the Strongest Militaries,” U.S. News & World Report, accessed January 5, 2023, https://www.usnews.com/news/best-countries/rankings/strong-military.

48 Dan Sheehan, “These Are the Poets and Writers Who Have Been Killed in Gaza,” Lit Hub, December 21, 2023, https://lithub.com/these-are-the-poets-and-writers-who-have-been-killed-in-gaza/.

49 Frankel, “Israel’s Military Campaign in Gaza.”

50 Mohammed Majed, “‘Israel Destroyed Central Archives of Gaza City’: Head of Gaza Municipality,” Anadolu Agency, November 29, 2023, https://www.aa.com.tr/en/middle-east/-israel-destroyed-central-archives-of-gaza-city-head-of-gaza-municipality/3068555.

51 “‘They’re Coming for Us All’: Israel’s Assault on Gaza’s Education,” Dawn, November 7, 2023, https://www.dawn.com/news/1787087#:∼:text=%E2%80%9CAll%2011%20Universities%20in%20Gaza,education%2C%E2%80%9D%20The%20Guardian%20reported.

52 “The Zionists Destroy Libraries and Destroy Historical Documents in the Gaza Strip” [in Arabic], al-Omah, December 4 2023, https://alomah.net/%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%B5%D9%87%D8%A7%D9%8A%D9%86%D8%A9-%D9%8A%D8%AF%D9%85%D9%91%D8%B1%D9%88%D9%86-%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%85%D9%83%D8%AA%D8%A8%D8%A7%D8%AA-%D9%88%D9%8A%D8%B9%D8%AF%D9%85%D9%88%D9%86-%D8%A7%D9%84/.

53 Mohamad El Chamaa, “Gazans Mourn Loss of Their Libraries: Cultural Beacons and Communal Spaces.” Washington Post, last modified December 1, 2023, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/11/30/gaza-library-palestinian-culture/.

54 “Israel Bombs Greek Orthodox Gaza Church Sheltering Displaced People,” Al Jazeera, October 20, 2023, https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/10/20/war-crime-israel-bombs-gaza-church-sheltering-displaced-people.

55 Ahmed Asmar, “Hamas Decries Israeli Bombing of Great Omari Mosque in Gaza as ‘Heinous Crime,’” Anadolu Agency, last modified December 9, 2023, https://www.aa.com.tr/en/middle-east/hamas-decries-israeli-bombing-of-great-omari-mosque-in-gaza-as-heinous-crime/3077648.

56 Giora Eiland, “This Is Not Revenge: It’s Either Us or Them” [in Hebrew], Ynet, October 10, 2023, https://www.ynet.co.il/yedioth/article/yokra13625377.

57 “‘Unparalleled’: Israeli Army Raids Ramallah, More Occupied West Bank Cities,” Al Jazeera, December 28, 2023, https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/12/28/unparalleled-israeli-army-raids-ramallah-more-occupied-west-bank-cities; “UN Report: Türk Warns of Rapidly Deteriorating Human Rights Situation in the West Bank, Calls for End to Violence,” United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, news release, December 28, 2023, https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2023/12/un-report-turk-warns-rapidly-deteriorating-human-rights-situation-west-bank.

58 Noa Shpigel, “Ben-Gvir’s Ministry Distributed 14,000 Gun Licenses Illegally, Israel’s Deputy AG Says,” Haaretz, December 27, 2023, https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2023-12-27/ty-article/.premium/ben-gvirs-ministry-distributed-14-000-gun-licenses-illegally-israels-deputy-ag-says/0000018c-acea-d45c-a98e-afeef7530000; “Far-Right Israel MK to Distribute 10,000 Rifles to Settlers,” Middle East Monitor, October 11, 2023, https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20231011-far-right-israel-mk-to-distribute-10000-rifles-to-settlers/; Claire Parker et al., “Israel Wants Civilians to Arm Up. Gun Permit Applications Are Soaring,” Washington Post, last modified December 9, 2023, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/12/08/israel-gun-carry-permits/.

59 Hammad and Huneidi, “The Uses and Abuses of Language.”

60 Kubra Solmaz, “How a Swedish Song from the 70s Became a New Palestinian Anthem,” TRT World Magazine, December 6, 2023, https://www.trtworld.com/magazine/how-a-swedish-song-from-the-70s-became-a-new-palestinian-anthem-16110940?fbclid=IwAR2GBqyMv35GbO4f83vjxOBzpU5p7-nnptjA3bL2HzSAa1_jtIovGZ9NYPU.

61 Lama Jamous (@lama_jamous9), Instagram profile, accessed January 5, 2023, https://www.instagram.com/lama_jamous9?igsh=OGQ5ZDc2ODk2ZA==.